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Title: Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar
Author: Holmes, Thomas Rice
Language: English
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ANCIENT BRITAIN
AND
THE INVASIONS OF
JULIUS CAESAR
BY
T. RICE HOLMES
HON. LITT.D. (DUBLIN)
AUTHOR OF ‘A HISTORY OF THE INDIAN MUTINY’
‘CAESAR’S CONQUEST OF GAUL,’ ETC.
‘There seems no human thought so primitive as to have
lost its bearing on our own thought, nor so ancient as to
have broken its connection with our own life’.--E. B. TYLOR.
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1907
HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH
NEW YORK AND TORONTO
PREFACE
This book is in one sense a companion of my _Caesar’s Conquest of
Gaul_; and much that was written in the preface of that volume is
equally applicable here. The last three chapters of Part I, and
the later articles in Part II, are intended to do for Britain what
I formerly tried to do for Gaul; but whereas the main object was
then to illustrate the conquest, and the opening chapter was merely
introductory, my aim in these pages has been to tell the story of
man’s life in our island from the earliest times in detail. What
has been called ‘prehistory’ cannot be written without knowledge of
archaeology; but from the historical standpoint archaeological details
must be handled, not for their own sake, but only in so far as they
illustrate the development of culture. The two books are constructed
on the same principle: in this, as in the other, the second part is
devoted to questions which could not properly be discussed in narrative
or quasi-narrative chapters, though I am encouraged by the judgement
of expert critics, British, American, and Continental, of _Caesar’s
Conquest of Gaul_, to hope that general readers who are interested in
these matters may not find the articles which deal with them tedious.
Those on Stonehenge, Ictis, and the ethnology of Britain, although
they controvert certain opinions which are commonly accepted, will, I
hope, tend to place facts in their true light. Two articles deal with
well-worn themes,--the identity of the Portus Itius, and the place of
Caesar’s landing in Britain. These problems have been pronounced by
eminent scholars, including Mommsen, to be insoluble; nevertheless, I
venture to affirm that in both cases the inquiry has now been worked
out to demonstration. Critics who may be disposed to regard this claim
as arrogant or frivolous will, I trust, read the articles through
before passing judgement upon them. The questions would have been
settled long ago if any competent writer had bestowed upon them as much
care as has been expended in investigating Hannibal’s passage over the
Alps.
Books and articles on various branches of the study of ancient Britain
are practically innumerable; no other book, intended to treat it
comprehensively from the beginning to the Roman invasion of A.D. 43,
has, so far as I know, yet appeared.
I wish to express my gratitude to all who have in any way helped me. I
am indebted to Sir John Evans for figures 1-6, 8-11, 14, 15, and 18-29,
as well as for an opinion, most kindly given, in regard to certain
coins which are not mentioned in his _Coins of the Ancient Britons_; to
the Director of the British Museum for figures 30, 36-9, 41, 43, and
44; to the Society of Antiquaries for figures 7, 13, 16, 31, 35, and
40; to the Delegates of the Oxford University Press for figures 12 and
32-4; to Dr. Joseph Anderson for figure 17; and to Canon Greenwell for
a proof of a valuable and interesting article--‘Early Iron Age Burials
in Yorkshire’--which, I believe, is to appear in _Archaeologia_.
Captain Tizard, R.N., F.R.S., kindly answered various questions which
I asked him about tidal currents. Mr. E. J. Webb, Sir George Darwin,
Professor Postgate, Professor Haverfield, Mr. Clement Reid, F.R.S., Mr.
George Barrow, F.G.S., Captain J. Iron, Commander Richmond, R.N., and
Commander Boxer, R.N., gave me information, which, in every instance,
will be found, acknowledged either in footnotes of Part I, or in Part
II, on various points of detail.
It is vain to plead that work would have been better if circumstances
had been more favourable. But if any indulgence may be accorded to an
author who, except on holidays, can only find leisure for writing or
research after he has fulfilled the duties of an exacting profession,
and who, in order to gain time, has worked steadily throughout his
vacations for nearly thirty years, I am entitled to it.
11 DOURO PLACE, KENSINGTON, W.
_October 19, 1907_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE iii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv
PART I
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER II
THE PALAEOLITHIC AGE
Reasons for devoting a chapter to the Palaeolithic Age 13
Tertiary Man 13
The Ice Age 14
Continental Britain 19
The relation of palaeolithic man to the Ice Age 22
‘Eolithic’ man? 25
The environment of palaeolithic man in Britain 30
Whence did he come? 30
Chronological puzzles 31
Palaeolithic skeletons 33
Palaeolithic artists 35
Range of the palaeolithic hunters in Britain 35
Where their tools have been found 36
Inhabited caves 37
Cave implements and river-drift implements 38
Divers forms of tools 41
Palaeolithic workshops 42
Handles 44
Uses of tools 45
Culture of the palaeolithic inhabitants of Britain 45
Religion 49
Totemism 51
Was the domestication of animals a result of totemism? 55
Magic 57
Was there a ‘hiatus’ between the Palaeolithic and the
Neolithic Age? 59
CHAPTER III
THE NEOLITHIC AGE
The early neolithic immigrants 62
The origins of British civilization were neolithic 63
Geography of neolithic Britain 64
Who were the later neolithic invaders? 64
Evidence from dolmens 65
Relics of the neolithic population: their settlements 67
Flint mines and implement factories 69
Difficulty of determining age of stone implements 71
Indefiniteness of the prehistoric ‘Ages’ 72
Stone implements 73
The two main divisions of flint implements 73
How flint implements were made 73
Celts 75
Their uses 77
Chisels and gouges 77
Axes, axe-hammers, anvils, and mullers 78
Implements made of flakes 79
Javelin-heads and arrow-heads 80
Bone implements 82
Pygmy flints 82
Specialization of industries 83
A lost art 83
Dwellings 84
Food and cookery 88
Agriculture 89
Treatment of women 91
Duration of life 91
Clothing and ornaments 91
Trepanning 92
The _couvade_ 94
Hill-forts 95
Primitive writing 99
Sepulture: barrows and cairns 100
Inhumation and incineration 110
Human sacrifice 112
Traces (?) of cannibalism 113
Interment of animals 114
Religion 115
An alien invasion: period of transition 119
CHAPTER IV
THE BRONZE AGE AND THE VOYAGE OF PYTHEAS
A Copper Age preceded the Bronze Age in certain countries,
but has not been proved to have existed in Britain 121
Bronze implements used for many centuries in Europe before
the Iron Age 123
Where did the European bronze culture originate? 124
Origin and affinities of the bronze culture of Britain 126
Period of its commencement 126
Physical characters of the late neolithic and early
bronze-using invaders of Britain 127
Their social organization 128
Character and results of the invasions: the invaders poor
in bronze weapons 129
Evidence of finds as to the settlements of the invaders 129
Stone implements used long after the introduction of bronze 132
Hill-forts 132
Primitive metallurgy 139
Bronze implements:--celts 139
Sickles 144
The Arreton Down hoard 145
Halberds 145
Shields, swords, spears 145
Moulds 148
Decoration of weapons 149
Hoards 149
Pasturage 150
Agriculture 151
Signs of amelioration in the conditions of life 152
Dwellings 153
Lake-dwellings 153
Hut-circles 154
Inhabited camps 156
The Heathery Burn Cave 157
Dress 160
Pins and buttons 161
Weapons mounted with gold or amber 162
Ornaments 163
Distribution of wealth: sources of gold, ivory, and amber 167
Why was Wiltshire exceptionally rich in ornaments? 169
British trade and the spiral 170
Comparative backwardness of culture in Britain 171
The information obtainable from graves 172
Round barrows, cairns, and sepulchral circles 173
Chronology of the barrows 181
Cremation and inhumation 184
Sepulchral pottery 191
The ‘drums’ of Folkton Wold and their significance 199
Sepulchral evidence as to religion 200
Engraved stones 205
Sun-worship 207
Stone circles and other megalithic monuments 207
Stonehenge 213
The voyage of Pytheas 217
Ictis 221
‘Ultima Thule’ 224
Pytheas and the ethnology of Britain 227
The passing of the Bronze Age 230
CHAPTER V
THE EARLY IRON AGE
Iron probably introduced into Britain by Gallic invaders 231
The Belgae preceded by other Brythons, who began to arrive
about 400 B.C. 232
Ethnology of the invaders 234
The order in which the various tribes arrived unknown 235
‘Late Celtic’ art 236
Coral and enamel 237
Swords and scabbards 238
Mirrors 239
Brooches and pins 240
Ornaments 241
Woodwork 241
Pottery 242
The noblest creation of Late Celtic art 244
Imported objects of art 246
British ships and coracles 247
Trackways 247
Coinage 248
Iron currency bars 250
Mining 251
Agriculture 252
Dwellings of the rich 254
Towns 254
Hill-forts 255
Some permanently inhabited 257
Hunsbury 259
Inhabited caves; pit-dwellings; ‘Picts’ houses’; beehive
houses; and brochs 260
The Glastonbury marsh-village 263
Dress 264
Reading and writing 265
Inequalities in culture 266
Intertribal war and political development 268
Instances of female sovereignty: the condition of women 269
Political and social conditions of Britain and Gaul compared 270
Religion 271
Sepulchral usages 286
The Druids 289
Ties between Britons and Gauls 299
How the Britons were affected by Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul 300
CHAPTER VI
CAESAR’S FIRST INVASION OF BRITAIN
Caesar obliged to secure his rear before invading Britain 301
He contemplated invasion as early as 56 B.C. 301
Campaign against the Veneti necessary in order to secure
command of the Channel 303
Campaign against the Morini 305
Its failure leaves Caesar’s base not quite secure 305
Caesar determines to sail from the Portus Itius (Boulogne) 306
He attempts to obtain information about Britain from Gallic
traders 307
Gaius Volusenus sent to reconnoitre the opposite coast 308
Envoys from British tribes sent to Caesar to promise submission 308
He commissions Commius to return with them and gain over tribes 309
Volusenus’s voyage of reconnaissance 309
Kentishmen prepare for resistance 312
Certain clans of the Morini spontaneously promise to submit 312
Caesar’s expeditionary force 313
Sabinus and Cotta sent to punish the recalcitrant Morini and
the Menapii 314
Caesar’s voyage 314
His cavalry transports fail to put to sea in time 314
He anchors off the Dover cliffs 315
Late in the afternoon he sails on to Walmer--Deal 316
The landing vigorously resisted 316
Caesar’s victory indecisive owing to want of cavalry 317
The Romans encamp 317
British chiefs sue for peace 318
The cavalry transports dispersed by a gale 318
Caesar’s fleet partially wrecked 319
The British chiefs prepare to renew hostilities 320
Caesar labours to retrieve the disaster 320
The 7th legion surprised and attacked while cutting corn 321
Military operations suspended owing to bad weather 322
The Britons, attempting to rush Caesar’s camp, are defeated
with heavy loss 323
Caesar compelled by the approach of the equinox to return to Gaul 323
Causes of his partial failure 323
Two transports fail to make the Portus Itius: the troops whom
they carried attacked by the Morini 324
Punishment of the Morini and Menapii 324
Thanksgiving service at Rome for Caesar’s success 325
CHAPTER VII
CAESAR’S SECOND INVASION OF BRITAIN
Caesar builds a fleet for a second expedition 326
Mandubracius flees from Britain and takes refuge with Caesar 327
Caesar winters in Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum 327
His correspondence with Cicero 327
Cicero’s hopes and fears about the second British expedition 329
Caesar returns to Gaul 329
He is obliged to march to the country of the Treveri 330
Returning to the Portus Itius, he finds fleet and army assembled 331
He resolves to take Gallic chiefs of doubtful fidelity as
hostages to Britain 331
Dumnorix resolves not to go 332
The fleet weatherbound 332
The fate of Dumnorix 333
Caesar sets sail, leaving Labienus in charge of Gaul 333
The fleet drifts north-eastward out of its course 334
The landing-place, between Sandown Castle and Sandwich,
reached by rowing 335
Leaving the fleet at anchor in charge of a brigade, Caesar
marches against the Britons 335
forces the passage of the Stour near Canterbury 337
and storms a fort to which they had retreated 337
Next morning he sends three columns in pursuit 337
but is forced to recall them by news that many of his ships
had been wrecked 338
He beaches the ships, constructs a naval camp, and repairs damage 338
Results of the disaster 338
Caesar again marches towards Canterbury. Cassivellaunus
elected commander-in-chief of the Britons 339
The Romans harassed by British charioteers 340
Trebonius routs the Britons 341
The British infantry disperse 341
War-chariots _versus_ Roman troops 341
Caesar marches for the country of Cassivellaunus 343
whose chariots harass his cavalry 344
Caesar crosses the Thames 345
Cassivellaunus orders the kings of Kent to attack the naval camp 346
Caesar enters the country of the Trinovantes, who furnish
hostages and grain 346
Five of the confederate tribes submit 346
Attack on the naval camp repulsed 347
Caesar’s hurried journey to the coast and its significance 348
Cassivellaunus sues for peace 349
Caesar and his army return to Gaul 350
Caesar’s description of Britain 351
Review of Caesar’s invasions of Britain 352
CHAPTER VIII
THE RESULTS OF CAESAR’S INVASIONS OF BRITAIN
The importance of Caesar’s British expeditions underestimated
by his contemporaries and by historians 355
Development of British commerce 357
The British inscribed coinage and its historical value 358
The dynasties of Cassivellaunus and Commius 361
Tasciovanus 361
Epaticcus and Cunobeline 361
Cunobeline’s coins prove growth of Roman influence in Britain 362
His conquests 362
Flight of Dubnovellaunus and Tincommius (?), the son of
Commius, to Rome 363
The later adventures of Commius 364
His conquests in Britain 365
Tincommius, Verica, and Eppillus 365
Augustus contemplates an invasion of Britain 367
Why he abandoned his intention 367
Continued growth of Roman influence in Britain 368
Cessation of British coinage in certain districts which had
belonged to the sons of Commius 368
Relations of Cunobeline with Rome 369
His exiled son, Adminius, takes refuge with Caligula 369
Death of Cunobeline 370
Unpopularity of his dynasty intensified on the accession of his
sons, Caratacus and Togodumnus 370
Invasion of Britain by Aulus Plautius 371
Review of British history from 54 B.C. to A.D. 43 371
The Roman conquest and its results 372
Permanence in English history of prehistoric and Celtic elements 372
PART II
THE ETHNOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN.--
I. Introduction 375
II. The methods of anthropology 376
III. Eolithic man (?) 379
IV. Palaeolithic man 380
V. The Pygmies (?) 390
VI. Neolithic man 393
VII. The ‘Pictish Question’ 409
VIII. The Round-heads 424
IX. The Celts 444
X. Conclusion 455
THE NAMES ΠΡΕΤΑΝΙΚΑΙ ΝΗΣΟΙ, _BRITANNI_, AND _BRITANNIA_ 459
THE BIRTHDAY OF RELIGION 461
DUMBUCK, LANGBANK, DUNBUIE 463
INHUMATION AND CREMATION 465
SEPULCHRAL POTTERY 467
STONEHENGE 468
THE CASSITERIDES, ICTIS, AND THE BRITISH TRADE IN TIN.--
I. The Cassiterides 483
II. Ictis and the British trade in tin 499
DENE-HOLES 515
THE COAST BETWEEN CALAIS AND THE SOMME IN THE TIME OF CAESAR 517
THE CONFIGURATION OF THE COAST OF KENT IN THE TIME OF CAESAR 518
I. Between Ramsgate and Sandown Castle 519
II. Between Sandown Castle and Walmer Castle 521
III. The Goodwin Sands 525
IV. The South Foreland and the Dover Cliffs 528
V. Dover Harbour 530
VI. Between Dover and Sandgate 531
VII. Romney Marsh 532
PORTUS ITIUS.--
I. Review of the controversy 552
II. The data furnished by Caesar, Strabo, and Ptolemy 554
III. Caesar sailed from the Portus Itius on both his
expeditions 556
IV. The value of Caesar’s estimate of the distance between
the Portus Itius and Britain 557
V. The estuary of the Somme 558
VI. Ambleteuse 563
VII. Calais 565
VIII. Wissant 565
IX. Boulogne 585
THE PLACE OF CAESAR’S LANDING IN BRITAIN.--
I. Introduction 595
II. The data furnished by Caesar and other ancient writers 596
III. The day on which Caesar landed in 55 B.C. 600
IV. Did Caesar land at the same place in both his expeditions? 603
V. The various theories about Caesar’s place of landing 604
VI. The question of the tides 605
VII. The theory that Caesar landed at Pevensey 611
VIII. The theory that Caesar landed at Lympne or Hythe 622
IX. The theory that Caesar landed at Hurst 638
X. The theory that Caesar landed between Hurst and
Kennardington 639
XI. The theory that Caesar landed opposite Walmer and Deal 644
XII. The theory that Caesar landed at Richborough or Sandwich 662
THE CREDIBILITY OF CAESAR’S NARRATIVE OF HIS INVASIONS OF BRITAIN 666
THE DISEMBARKATION OF THE ROMANS IN 55 B.C. 673
THE SITE OF CAESAR’S CAMP IN 55, AND OF HIS NAVAL CAMP IN 54 B.C. 673
THE WAR-CHARIOTS OF THE BRITONS 674
THE OPERATIONS OF THE BRITONS DURING THE LAST FEW DAYS OF
CAESAR’S FIRST EXPEDITION 677
WHERE DID CAESAR ENCOUNTER THE BRITONS ON THE MORNING AFTER
HIS SECOND LANDING IN BRITAIN? 678
CAESAR’S EARLIER OPERATIONS IN 54 B.C. (_B. G._, v. 9-11) 685
CAESAR’S SECOND COMBAT WITH THE BRITONS IN 54 B.C. 688
THE COMBAT BETWEEN TREBONIUS AND THE BRITONS 692
WHERE DID CAESAR CROSS THE THAMES? 692
CAESAR’S PASSAGE OF THE THAMES 698
THE SITE OF CASSIVELLAUNUS’S STRONGHOLD 699
DID _LONDINIUM_ EXIST IN CAESAR’S TIME? 703
THE JULIAN CALENDAR AND THE CHRONOLOGY OF CAESAR’S INVASIONS
OF BRITAIN 706
TOPOGRAPHICAL NOTES 735
ADDENDA 739
INDEX 743
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE PAGE
1 Harpoon-head (Kent’s Cavern) 43
2 Flint flake (Reculver) 43
3 ‘Tongue-shaped’ implement (Biddenham, Bedfordshire) 43
4 Oval implement (Dartford Heath) 43
5 Rough-hewn celt (Mildenhall, Suffolk) 75
6 Polished celt (Coton, Cambridgeshire) 75
7 Hafted celt (Solway Moss) 76
8 Chisel (Burwell, Cambridgeshire) 77
9 Double-edged axe-head (Hunmanby, Yorkshire) 78
10 Flint knife (Saffron Walden) 79
11 Curved blade (Fimber, Yorkshire) 80
12 Leaf-shaped arrow-head (Yorkshire Wolds) 81
13 Lozenge-shaped arrow-head (Yorkshire Wolds) 81
14 Triangular arrow-head (Amotherby, Yorkshire) 81
15 Barbed arrow-head (Rudstone) 81
16 Ground-plan of chambered barrow (Uley) 104
17 Horned cairn of Get 106
18 Flat bronze celt (East Riding of Yorkshire) 142
19 Flanged bronze celt (Norfolk) 142
20 Flanged bronze celt with stop-ridge (Northumberland) 142
21 Winged bronze celt (Dorchester, Oxfordshire) 143
22 Looped palstave (Brassington, Derbyshire) 143
23 Socketed celt (Kingston, Surrey) 143
24 Arreton Down blade 145
25 Bronze shield (Yetholm, Roxburghshire) 146
26 Leaf-shaped bronze sword (Battersea) 147
27 Bronze spear-head (Thames) 148
28 Jet button (Rudstone) 161
29 Bronze torque (Wedmore, Somersetshire) 164
30 Gold lunette (Llanllyfni, Carnarvonshire) 164
31 Amber necklace (Lake, Wiltshire) 166
32 Drinking-cup 192
33 Food-vessel 193
34 Cinerary urn (Goodmanham, Yorkshire Wolds) 193
35 Incense-cup (Bulford, Wiltshire) 194
36 Chalk ‘drum’ (Folkton Wold) 200
37 Bronze mirror (Trelan Bahow, Cornwall) 239
38 Brooch (Water Eaton, Oxfordshire) 240
39 Wooden bowl (Glastonbury) 242
40 Late Celtic urn (Shoebury, Essex), 243
41 Patterns on Late Celtic pottery (Glastonbury), 243
42 Late Celtic shield (Battersea) 245
43 Bronze open-work ring (Stanwick, N.R. Yorkshire) 265
44 Circle of interments (Aylesford) 287
MAPS
South-Eastern Britain 305
East Kent 313
Romney Marsh and Hythe harbour (illustrating theories of
their topography in 55-4 B.C.) 531
[The maps of South-Eastern Britain and East Kent, like all maps
of Ancient Britain, are inevitably inexact; but the errors are
unimportant. The Dover cliffs, for instance, have lost by erosion,
but one cannot say how much (see pages 528-30); nor is it possible to
indicate the exact nature of the slight change which the coast has
undergone between Sandown Castle and Walmer Castle (pages 521-5).
Again, I have not attempted to delineate the coast west of Pevensey or
west or north of Reculver precisely as it was in 55 B.C., because, even
if such an attempt had been successful, nothing would have been gained
for the purpose of this book. As far as possible, however, the maps
represent the conclusions reached in the article on the configuration
of the coast of Kent in the time of Caesar. The outline of Richborough
harbour and of the estuary between Thanet and the mainland is intended
to show approximately the high-water mark of spring tides. At low tide
the channel was very narrow (page 519).]
ANCIENT BRITAIN
AND
THE INVASIONS OF JULIUS CAESAR
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
When Caesar was about to sail on his first expedition to Britain, he
summoned the Gallic traders whose vessels used to ply between Gaul
and the Kentish coast, and tried to elicit from them information;
but, to quote his own words, ‘he could not find out either the extent
of the island, or what tribes dwelt therein, or their size, or their
method of fighting, or their manners and customs, or what harbours
were capable of accommodating a large flotilla.’ Even after he had
seen the country and its inhabitants with his observant eyes he was
not much better informed: all that he could learn about the aborigines
he summed up in a single sentence; and later writers, Greek, Italian,
and mediaeval--Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, Augustus Caesar, Pomponius
Mela, Tacitus, Suetonius, Dion Cassius, Herodian, and the rest--added
very little to the knowledge which he had gathered. Yet the materials
which are now available for a description of prehistoric and pre-Roman
Britain, however limited their range, are so abundant that the
difficulty is to use them with discrimination and to fashion the
essential into a work of art. How have these materials been obtained?
When the general reader takes up a history, he accepts the narrative in
a spirit more or less sceptical. He knows that it has been composed,
either directly or at second hand, from written, perhaps also from
oral testimony; and he rarely troubles himself to inquire what the
evidence is, or with what diligence and acuteness it has been sifted.
But when he is invited to read an account of the evolution of culture
among people who recorded nothing and of whom nothing was recorded,
it is natural that he should insist upon peering into the writer’s
workshop that he may judge for himself what the materials are worth.
During many centuries, while the materials were most abundant, they
remained unused. Many of them were rifled by treasure-seekers, carted
away by builders, or destroyed by the plough. Even when the Renaissance
turned men’s minds to the study of the past, they had no thought
of any sources of information except the written documents which
they were only beginning to learn how to use. The Italian scholar,
Raymond de Marliano, the Dutch geographer, Abraham Ortels, made
futile guesses about topographical questions suggested by Caesar’s
_Commentaries_, but never dreamed that there was anything to be learned
of a people who had lived in Britain when the South Foreland and Cape
Grisnez were still undivided. Camden travelled over the length and
breadth of England, amassing stores of information, much of which he
did not know how to interpret, and built up geographical theories
upon place-names, which, in default of linguistic science, were of
necessity worthless. Even the great French scholars of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries--Chifflet, Du Fresne, Scaliger, Sanson,
and d’Anville--although their geographical essays are still worth
reading, failed to determine the port from which Caesar had sailed
to Britain. Stukeley, who was one of the first to excavate barrows
and describe their contents and who made valuable observations of
some of our megalithic monuments, encumbered his folios with fanciful
speculations which only served to entertain his contemporaries and
to mislead posterity.[1] But these men had no access to the sources
which are now open to many who are intellectually their inferiors; and,
notwithstanding the smallness of their achievement, they did their work
as pioneers.
About the middle of the eighteenth century a spirit of antiquarian
curiosity was aroused in England. The Society of Antiquaries, which
had been founded in 1717, received in 1752 a charter from George the
Second; and in 1770 appeared the first number of their principal organ,
_Archaeologia_, which is still in course of publication. Many of the
earlier papers were crude and superficial, showing keen interest in
the things of the past, but naturally betraying ignorance of the
methods by which alone the significance of antiquarian discoveries
could be ascertained. Early in the nineteenth century, however, Sir
Richard Colt Hoare and his friend, William Cunnington, began to
excavate the barrows of Wiltshire; and with their labours the era
of scientific investigation may be said to have begun. Hoare had
in earlier life been an ardent fox-hunter; but, as he grew older,
he found that barrow-digging was a pastime more exciting still.
Craniology was at that time unborn; and Hoare omitted to measure
the numerous skeletons which he discovered or to utilize them for
the advancement of ethnology. Even the work that he professed to
do was often marred by a lack of thoroughness which, although it
was inevitable in a pioneer, irritated the critical spirit of later
explorers.[2] But with all its limitations the _Ancient History of
North and South Wiltshire_, the first volume of which appeared in
1812, was an important work. A few years earlier, John Frere had
recorded in _Archaeologia_[3] the discoveries of stone implements
which he had made at Hoxne in Suffolk. Such discoveries had of course
in innumerable instances passed unrecorded. In the British Isles, as
in many other lands, flint arrow-heads were regarded by the peasants
who found them as fairy-darts; while stone axes, which in Scotland,
Ireland, and Cornwall, are still deemed to possess medical virtues,
were said to have fallen from the sky.[4] In the time of Charles the
Second, however, Sir Robert Sibbald, greatly daring, affirmed that
the fairy-darts had been made by man;[5] and nearly a century before
the time of Frere an implement, which has since been assigned to the
Palaeolithic Age, had been found near Gray’s Inn Lane, and had been
vaguely described as ‘a British weapon’. But Frere saw that the tools
which he had collected were not to be ascribed even to the ‘painted
savages’ who had resisted the invasion of Caesar; and although even
he did not suspect their immeasurable antiquity, he declared that
they must have belonged to ‘a very remote period indeed’ and to ‘a
people who had not the use of metals’. In 1824 Dr. Buckland, who had
spent some years in exploring ossiferous caves, published an account
of his work in _Reliquiae Diluvianae_, a book which, by attributing
the phenomena that it recorded to an universal deluge, impelled
geological research in a wrong direction, and delayed for many years
the recognition of the truth that the earlier human occupants of
the caves had been contemporary with the mammoth and other extinct
animals. Soon afterwards MacEnery, whose example was followed by
Godwin Austen, examined Kent’s Cavern near Torquay, a task which was
systematically completed some five-and-twenty years ago by a committee
of the British Association. It was not, however, before the middle of
the nineteenth century that the knowledge of the Stone Ages began to be
built up on a sound foundation. From 1841 to 1860 Boucher de Perthes
was patiently exploring in the neighbourhood of Abbeville and Amiens
the gravels which the river Somme had deposited in the Pleistocene
Period, and collecting flints which were proved to have been shaped by
the hands of man. Lyell, Prestwich, John Evans, Lubbock, and Flower
visited the scene of his labours, and testified to the authenticity
of his discoveries; and after long controversy the most reluctant were
forced to admit that the human race had existed at a period infinitely
more remote than had hitherto been imagined. Similar discoveries
were soon made in England, in various European countries, in Africa,
Asia, and America. In our islands, as well as on the Continent, as
antiquarian zeal became more widely diffused, the need of organized
effort was felt; and, side by side with the leading academies--the
Society of Antiquaries, the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, the
Royal Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, the Royal
Irish Academy, the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, and the
Cambrian Archaeological Association--local societies were gradually
formed in every important provincial town. Accident from time to time
revealed objects for which no search had been made. Ploughmen guiding
their teams, navvies working upon roads or in railway-cuttings, miners
and quarrymen, labourers draining land, sportsmen groping after game
which they had shot, came upon antiquities of the nature of which
they were ignorant. Evans, in the intervals of leisure which he could
win from a busy life, indefatigably collected implements of stone,
bone, and bronze, systematized the discoveries of a host of minor
workers, and marshalled facts and deductions in volumes which have
become classical; and, not content with this, he supplemented the
labours of Akerman, Hawkins, Roach Smith, and others, and revealed
to his countrymen the origin, the varieties, and the geographical
distribution of the coins which their British ancestors had minted,
and the historical value of which he was the first to emphasize. His
son, who has lately become famous as the explorer of Crete, carried
his researches further afield, but often found time to grapple with
British problems; contributed to our knowledge of Stonehenge and
other megalithic circles; and by his discoveries at Aylesford in Kent
threw a beam of light upon the history of the Celtic Iron Age. Boyd
Dawkins explored the caves of Somersetshire, Derbyshire, and Wales.
Bateman, Thurnam, Davis, Warne, Greenwell, Mortimer, and Atkinson
of Danby continued in a more scientific spirit the labours of
Hoare,[6] and recorded the discoveries which they had made in numerous
barrows. General Pitt-Rivers brought the experience of a soldier,
the sagacity of a man of the world, and the genius which was his own
to the investigation of archaeological and anthropological problems;
demonstrated the value of thorough excavation[7] and of accurate
pictorial illustration; impressed upon the rising school of students
the need of precision in recording the circumstances of every find;
and by expending a considerable fortune in adding to knowledge set an
example of enlightened generosity. Sir Arthur Mitchell, in a series of
lectures[8] which have been described as a masterpiece of sceptical
irony, warned antiquaries, but in no didactic spirit, to think, and to
think again, before they drew conclusions from the records which the
spade had revealed. The Devonshire Association appointed committees to
examine the antiquities of their richly dowered county, and printed a
series of reports upon the megalithic monuments, the graves, and the
‘hut-circles’ of Dartmoor. John Abercromby traced from Great Britain
to the original seat of manufacture the sites where the so-called
drinking-cups, which accompanied so many British interments of the
earlier round barrows, have been found; while Romilly Allen, following
in the steps of Wollaston Franks, helped to elucidate the development
of the art of the Bronze Age and the Late Celtic Period. Professor
Gowland disclosed by excavation the origins of Stonehenge, and by
his metallurgical knowledge enabled us to understand the methods of
prehistoric miners. Charles Read made intelligible, even to casual
visitors, the collection of antiquities in the British Museum which
illustrates the culture of the Ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron. Francis
Haverfield, scholar, archaeologist, and practical excavator, while
making himself the foremost authority on the history of Roman Britain,
incidentally enlarged the records of pre-Roman times. Joseph Anderson
carried on the work which Daniel Wilson had begun, and described
the successive stages of culture through which the inhabitants of
Scotland had passed from the earliest to the beginning of the historic
period. Coles, Christison, and Bryce added significant details to the
information which his lectures had given. But it would be tedious
to prolong the list of workers. Everywhere the success with which
the last resting-places of the dead had been made to tell their tale
stimulated antiquaries to search for fresh relics that might help them
to realize more fully how those dead had lived. Flint quarries and
workshops, where primitive tools were fabricated, hut-circles, Scottish
brochs, lake-dwellings, pits, and ‘earth-houses’ were explored; and, in
response to the exhortations of Pitt-Rivers, camps and other earthworks
were patiently excavated, although, for lack of funds, research of this
kind has not progressed very far. The exploration of the far-famed
marsh-village at Glastonbury is nearly complete; and the results which
have been obtained, collated with those that were yielded by the
examination of the camps of Cissbury, Lewes, Hod Hill, and Hunsbury,
have done much to dispel the old fancy that the ancient Briton was a
savage.
But perhaps no intelligent man ever progressed far in archaeological
study without discovering for himself this caution:--though the relics
of man’s handiwork, unlike his written history, cannot lie, their
meaning may in divers ways be misinterpreted. They will not yield it up
except to the trained and discerning eye.[9]
Meanwhile toilers in other fields were co-operating with the
archaeologists. Physical anthropology began to make strides. Since
Davis, Thurnam, and Rolleston described the skeletons which had
reposed in the long barrows and the round barrows of Wiltshire,
Gloucestershire, Yorkshire, and Northumberland, since Huxley wrote
his memoirs on the river-bed skulls of England and Ireland, greater
accuracy of method has been evolved, and Beddoe, Turner, Garson, and
Haddon have supplemented and corrected their predecessors’ work.
Geologists endeavoured to determine the configuration of the land
at the time when man first lived in Britain; and a definite result
was attained when borings made in implement-bearing beds showed the
relative chronology of the period during which palaeolithic hunters
had inhabited the eastern counties. Burial customs revealed by the
opening of barrows and cists, holes drilled in the stones of dolmens,
strange devices sculptured on graves and on rocks, suggested problems
as to the religious ideas of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, which
the archaeologist, the ethnographer, and the folklorist attempted to
solve. Philologists studied the Celtic languages, and succeeded in some
measure in deducing from place-names and other relics of the ancient
dialects information bearing upon the history of the invasions and the
distribution of the two great branches of the Celtic stock.
A great advance was made when the Comparative Method was brought to
bear upon the study of primitive culture. It was recognized that the
antiquities of our own island could not be adequately comprehended
without reference to those of other lands. For at every turn the
inquirer found himself arrested by obstinate questionings. Whence had
the immigrants of the Old and the New Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and
the Early Iron Age set out? Whence was the knowledge of bronze derived?
What was the starting-point of the culture of the Iron Age? What were
the first beginnings of Late Celtic Art? How was one to account for
the existence in remote countries of this or that British custom? The
British archaeologist who would intelligently ponder these questions
must take account of the work which has been done by Cartailhac, the
brothers Siret, Bertrand, Edouard Piette, Salomon Reinach, Montelius,
Sophus Müller, Arthur Evans, Ridgeway, Myres, and Flinders Petrie in
elucidating the antiquities of France, Spain, Italy, Central Europe,
Scandinavia, the Aegean Sea, North Africa, and Egypt; and the British
ethnologist cannot afford to be ignorant of what Broca, Hamy, de
Quatrefages, Salmon, Hervé, Manouvrier, Virchow, Ranke, and Sergi have
done for the ethnology of Europe. Pitt-Rivers saw that ethnography,
which informs us about the arts and crafts, the manners and customs of
surviving savage tribes, can give archaeology indispensable aid;[10]
and all who have compared the contents of the American Room and the
Ethnographical Gallery in the British Museum with what they have
seen in the Prehistoric Room will believe the Keeper when he assures
them that ‘in all probability the resemblance between the perishable
productions of the modern savage and those of prehistoric man, which
are now lost, was as great as that which undoubtedly exists in the
case of implements of stone and bone which have remained’:[11] but
in endeavouring to apply their knowledge to the elucidation of the
antiquities of a particular country they will not forget to be on their
guard. Nor may we neglect the facts which folk-lore societies have in
late years so diligently collected; but those who have learned from
the great works of Tylor how much of primitive custom still lingers
in the depths of modern civilization will become sceptical when they
are invited by less sober reasoners to trace the origin of this or
that surviving superstition to any one race or tribe or period of the
remote past; and readers who have accepted with enthusiastic admiration
the seductive theories of _The Golden Bough_ should weigh well the
criticism which Sir Alfred Lyall, qualified by intimacy with primitive
peoples as well as by a sceptical and cultivated intellect, has
published of that brilliant and truly epoch-making book.
When we have finished our survey of prehistoric times we shall find
that while we can still rely upon the aid of the archaeologist and
the anthropologist, other materials have been accumulating which
will enable us to read our classical texts with an insight that was
impossible for the old-fashioned historian. The texts themselves have
been purified and restored. Inscriptions have yielded new information
on matters of history, ethnology, and religion; and the vast labour
which has been expended by those who have striven to elucidate the
most interesting of all subjects cannot wholly fail to help us when
we inquire what the British Celts thought of man’s relation to the
universe. As one scholar after another has noted the significance of
dates recorded in Cicero’s correspondence, and compared them with the
relevant passages in the _Commentaries_ and other ancient writings,
chronological difficulties have gradually disappeared. Physical
geography and geology, supported partly by written documents, partly
by archaeological discoveries, have combined to reconstruct the map of
the coast on which Caesar landed. Astronomers and hydrographers have
perfected our knowledge of tidal streams, and thereby forged a key
which, for those who possess the indispensable knowledge of seamanship
and of ancient military history, can unlock the secrets of Caesar’s
voyages. Military experts and soldiers who have served in the field are
willing to help us to understand the story of his campaigns.
But after the student has digested all the information which he can
extract from books and manuscripts, from museums, from travel and
observation, perhaps from practical experience in digging, and, above
all, from those who combine learning with knowledge of the world, of
affairs, and of men, he will find that his materials are still, and
on certain points must always remain inadequate. Some branches of
research, indeed, are virtually complete. All, or nearly all, that
sepulchres and skulls and coins can teach us of Ancient Britain and
its inhabitants we know. Many more implements, weapons, ornaments, and
urns will be accumulated; but it may be doubted whether they will add
sensibly to that knowledge which is really worth having. But much still
remains to be learned. The geological record is still incomplete; and
one of our most accomplished field-geologists is hopefully looking
forward to a time when it may be possible to determine the uttermost
antiquity of man and to illuminate the dark era that intervened between
the Pleistocene Period and the apparent commencement of the Neolithic
Age.[12] His experience has enabled him to tell archaeologists that
in order to solve chronological problems, they cannot afford to
neglect even the shells which abound in many burial-mounds.[13] There
is room also for many labourers in excavating stone circles, camps,
and earthworks, and determining their age, in exploring habitations,
wherever they can be found, and learning what they can teach about
those who constructed them.[14] What has been already done in this
department has produced the most fruitful results: the speculations of
Dr. Guest, for instance, in regard to the so-called ‘Belgic ditches’,
have been stultified by pick and shovel.[15] But such work, which in
other civilized countries is an object of national concern, languishes
here for want of funds. No British Government can expect support from
the intelligence and the public spirit of its constituents in spending
money upon archaeological research, or has the courage to give them
a lead;[16] and where are the wealthy Englishmen who will follow the
example of their American cousins in endowing such work?
Nevertheless, enough is already known to justify an attempt to create
a synthetical work, the aim of which shall be to portray in each
successive stage and to trace the evolution of the culture--nay, in
some sort even to construct a history--of prehistoric Britain, and to
rewrite the history of the period which is illustrated by contemporary
records. Not only is the subject fascinating; it is an indispensable
introduction to the history of England. I have tried to bear ever in
mind the interdependence of all the sciences which can help to restore
the past, and to remember the warning, ‘Let him that thinketh he
standeth take heed lest he fall.’ It is easy to laugh at the guesses
of Camden and the theories of Stukeley; but they were only framing the
hypotheses which are as necessary for the progress of archaeology as
of other sciences; and certain theories which in our own day have been
acclaimed with enthusiasm, while serving their purpose like theirs,
will, like theirs, be found open to criticism.
But we need not exercise ourselves overmuch in the region of theory.
Though we must be content to remain ignorant of many things, the story
of Ancient Britain, gaining as it progresses firmness of outline and
fullness of detail, can be constructed upon a basis of fact.
CHAPTER II
THE PALAEOLITHIC AGE
[Sidenote: Reasons for devoting a chapter to the Palaeolithic Age.]
A chapter devoted to Palaeolithic Man may perhaps appear irrelevant
to a work the aim of which is to serve as an introduction to English
history; for it has been questioned whether in this country he left
any descendants, and therefore whether he exercised even the smallest
influence upon the later immigrants. But in France, if not here, the
Palaeolithic merged, perhaps by a long period of transition, into the
Neolithic Age:[17] the neolithic inhabitants of Britain were of course
descended from palaeolithic ancestors; and in every part of the world
in which it existed the palaeolithic culture was apparently much the
same. There are therefore other reasons besides that of sentiment for
attempting in this book to describe the life of primitive men and the
surroundings in which they lived: yet sentiment has its weight; for no
one who is not heedless of the past would forget the efforts of those
who, in hard struggle with nature and with fierce beasts, were the
unconscious founders of European civilization. Without the faith of
the Shinto ancestor-worshipper one may share his daily repeated pious
gratitude,--‘Ye forefathers of the generations, and of our families,
and of our kindred, unto you, the founders of our homes, we utter the
gladness of our thanks.’[18]
[Sidenote: Tertiary man.]
The palaeolithic people had acquired a degree of skill in the
manufacture of stone tools which is only attainable by the most
practised modern imitators. But the progress which they made during the
incalculably long period of their existence was so small that they must
have needed ages to ascend to the level at which we are able to observe
them. Therefore, although no skeletons, no implements have yet been
found which can be referred, in the opinion of all experts, to the
Tertiary Period, the most sceptical are willing to believe that man,
even if he did not deserve the appellation of _Homo sapiens_, did then
wander upon the face of the earth.[19] But how, when he had assumed
the erect position and had begun to make intelligent use of the hands
which gave him such an advantage in contending with other carnivorous
animals more powerful than himself, he learned slowly and by repeated
efforts to chip the flints that he picked up into serviceable shapes;
how in the struggle for a livelihood the stronger or the more cunning
prevailed; how with developing intelligence came keener susceptibility
to pain as well as to pleasure; how men’s fancies were quickened by
light and darkness, sun, moon, and stars, and their fears excited by
storm and flood and fire; how they strove to communicate to each other
their alarms, their desires, and their joys--these things may only be
imagined; and the imagination of those who have read most wisely and
have most observantly studied the ways of modern savages will lead them
least astray.
[Sidenote: The Ice Age.]
The Tertiary was merging into the Quaternary or Pleistocene Period
when the climate which had before fostered the palms and crocodiles
whose fossils have been discovered in the London Clay,[20] but had
been gradually changing, became intensely cold. Snow fell thickly
upon the mountains of Scandinavia; glaciers began to creep down the
valleys; and gradually the ice accumulated until it overspread the
whole of Northern Europe, filled the basins of the Baltic and the
North Sea, hid mountains and uplands in Scotland, and choked the dales
of Northern England, of the Midlands, and of Wales; while isolated
glaciers were formed even so far southward as the valleys of the
Beaujolais and the Lyonnais. The ice has left its record upon the
Highland and Cumbrian mountains, whose rugged crags it moulded into
flowing curves; upon rocks which were scratched by stones embedded in
slowly moving glaciers; in the mud, stiff and tenacious, which they
deposited as they grided over many kinds of rocks, and which, being
interspersed with stones, large and small, is called boulder-clay; in
rocks which they transported and dropped far from their native sites,
and by which the directions that they followed can still be traced; in
moraines which mark the limits of their descent and their recession;
in lakes that were formed, after the ice had disappeared, in glens
which moraines had dammed;[21] in the Arctic plants which survive on
mountains, and in those whose fossil remains have been found in Norfolk
near the level of the sea. In many places the boulder-clay lies in two
or more layers, separated by stratified sands and gravels, from which
it has been generally inferred that the Ice Age was interrupted by a
period--here and there by short intervals--during which the climate
was mild. Told briefly and in general terms, the tale which a learner
might piece together from geological textbooks[22] is something like
this. The cold was most intense during the earlier stage, when the
lower boulder-clay was being deposited, and, little by little, Britain
rose until it became one with the Continent, with Ireland, and with
Scandinavia, and extended far westward into the Atlantic Ocean. Then,
we are told, the ice-sheet that covered Scandinavia was six thousand
feet thick; and though it became thinner as it advanced southward, it
shrouded the hill-tops in Scotland, where boulders were lifted right
over the water-parting, and dropped on the western side, and scored
its marks upon rocks in the Lake District at heights of two thousand
five hundred feet; while, spreading over Ireland, it went out to sea
beyond Cork and Kerry, where the wall of ice broke off and floated
away in bergs. Then the land slowly sank until in the interglacial
period only the hills stood out above the sea, and Great Britain
became an archipelago. Again the movement was upward, though often
interrupted and perhaps not general in extent: the climate was again
becoming severe; and, although the rigours of the first period were not
repeated, local glaciers crept down the higher valleys north of the
Midlands, while icebergs floated over the parts that remained submerged
and over the North Sea. Now too, as in the earlier period, the cold
was not everywhere continuous: there were oscillations during which
the glaciers alternately advanced and retreated. As the Ice Age was
beginning to near its end, the land continued to rise until the North
Sea, the English Channel, and the Irish Sea once more disappeared.
In the latest stage of all, when Arctic conditions were about to
vanish even in our northern latitudes, there was a gradual subsidence:
Scotland was lowered about one hundred feet beneath the present level
of the sea, as the highest ‘raised beach’ along the shores of the great
estuaries testifies; and the waters rushed in over the sinking valley
of the Dover Strait.
Such was the orthodox faith: but the rising geologists have discarded
some of its articles; and even among the faithful there are pious
doubters. Many authorities deny that the sea-shells which are found
on hills in North Wales, Cheshire, and elsewhere, prove that they
were once submerged: those shells, they insist, were ploughed up by
glaciers out of the sea-floor; and they require us to believe that they
were carried up the sides of the hills to heights of thirteen hundred
and fifty feet above the sea-level.[23] But although these shells
are probably not in their original position, and the mere presence
of marine organisms is no sufficient proof of former submergence,
shells have been found near Inverness, five hundred feet above the
sea, in the very place where they lived and died. Still, it does not
follow that the submergence which they attest was interglacial.[24]
Some inquirers believe that the glaciers advanced and retreated once
and no more;[25] that there was only one slight elevation of the land
and one slight subsidence: others that Britain was not only elevated
twice, but also twice partially submerged; others that it was finally
severed from the Continent in the earlier part of the Ice Age, when
the drainage of Northern Europe, pouring into the North Sea and barred
by the ice-sheet from escaping northwards, cut for itself a channel
across the isthmus which now lies below the Dover Strait.[26] One
expert still insists that when man first entered Britain the whole
country stood at least six hundred feet above its present level:[27]
another, in the same work, denies that its greatest elevation was more
than seventy feet;[28] and their editor looks helplessly on. One writer
suggests that there may never have been an Ice Age, in the strictest
sense of the term, at all, but only local glaciers, such as now exist
in Greenland.[29] Another has laboured to show that the accumulation of
ice-sheets ‘merely marked one or more culminating epochs in a period
when the climate was at least as commonly temperate as Arctic’.[30]
Others even now maintain that not one only, but five interglacial
periods interrupted the intense cold;[31] others again that there
was no interglacial period at all, but only local ameliorations of
climate.[32] Another fertile theme of controversy has been the origin
of the boulder-clays. But the confession of a Fellow of the Royal
Society, who, as a member of the Geological Survey, lived in Norfolk
for eight years, studying its geology, suggests that, after all, a
sense of humour may compensate for inability to fathom the mysteries
of the Ice Age. ‘After spending about a year in Norfolk,’ he says, ‘I
began to believe I knew all about the drifts, but during the following
seven years of my sojourn in that county, as I moved from place to
place, I somehow seemed to know less and less, and I cannot say what
would have been the result, but fortunately the geological survey of
the county came to an end.’[33] Fortunately, too, it is not essential
to our study of palaeolithic man to decide in every case between the
theories of rival geologists. All admit that in Britain the Thames was
the extreme southern limit of glacial movement, although even in the
southern fringe Arctic conditions prevailed; that glaciers covered
a large part of the country north of the Thames, and on the higher
regions coalesced into ice-sheets: the view that the lower boulder-clay
was a _moraine profonde_ has at last been generally adopted;[34] while
almost all agree that there was at least one interglacial period, and
that there were climatic variations in certain tracts. Nevertheless one
of the ablest and most experienced of our field geologists has recently
given weighty reasons for his own conviction that even this solitary
age of amelioration should not be regarded as an established fact.[35]
[Sidenote: Continental Britain.]
But, if we are to study the Palaeolithic Age intelligently, we must
endeavour to test for ourselves the dogma that Britain was then
continental. That dogma has recently been questioned by geologists who
have minutely re-examined in the field the phenomena of the Glacial
Epoch. Mr. Clement Reid, for instance, holds that in the Palaeolithic
Age England never rose more than seventy feet above its present
level,[36] and that men first entered it across a narrow strait which
was formed in the earlier period of glaciation.[37] It is certain that
the sea then washed the coast of Sussex and the western counties; for
near Selsea there is a patch of boulder-clay--the only one south of
the Thames--which must have been deposited by shore-ice, and there are
rocks belonging to Bognor or the Isle of Wight, to the Channel Islands,
and to Brittany, which were transported by icebergs and dropped when
they melted under the summer sun.[38] Again, before the first English
boulder-clay was formed Arctic plants flourished near Cromer; and,
says Mr. Reid,[39] ‘as these occur just above the present sea-level,
and lie evenly on the strata below without deeply channelling them,
the height of the land at the commencement of the Glacial Epoch, in
Norfolk at any rate, must have been almost the same as it is now’. The
same observer assures us that in Southern Britain the first intense
cold was succeeded, after an interval of which geology has nothing
to tell, by an interglacial period in which the land sunk about one
hundred and forty feet below its present level, so that shingle was
deposited on what is now Portsdown Hill;[40] and that it then gradually
rose until, long before the second glaciation began, its level, marked
by fresh-water and estuarine deposits, once more virtually coincided
with the present line.[41] But, he tells us, at some time after the
disappearance of the ice which deposited the latest boulder-clay of
Norfolk the land stood rather higher than now;[42] and he holds that
even in the early part of the Neolithic Age Britain must have been
almost connected with the Continent, for many of the river valleys were
excavated to depths of from sixty to seventy feet below the present
level of the sea.[43] The submerged forests of Devonshire, Cornwall,
and the Bristol Channel, which contain traces of neolithic handiwork,
flourished at a time when the land stood from fifty to seventy feet
above its present elevation.[44]
But there are other facts which demonstrate that at some time after the
first period of intense cold--perhaps in that interval of which geology
has nothing to tell--the Continent must have included Britain. As we
shall presently see, not only the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, the
glutton, and other Arctic animals, but also many species which prefer
a temperate climate, and others which are now tropical, lived in this
country side by side with palaeolithic man. Nearly all of them had
been represented here before the earliest glaciers of Scotland were
formed.[45] But even on the southern side of the Thames the cold was
so intense during the earlier part of the Ice Age that none of the
tropical, none even of the temperate species could there have lived:
since the land was barren, treeless, and frozen,[46] even the mammoth,
protected though it was by its woolly coat, could have found little
food;[47] and large herds of Arctic animals travelled as far southward
as Italy and Spain.[48] It is therefore evident that the beasts of
tropical and of temperate climes whose remains have been found in the
river-drift and in caves along with palaeolithic implements must have
entered Britain after the coldest period had ceased.[49] Moreover, vast
quantities of bones of Pleistocene mammals, some of which, such as
the reindeer, have never been found in Britain in preglacial deposits,
have been dredged up out of the bed of the North Sea, principally from
the Dogger Bank;[50] and it is therefore clear that at some time after
the climax of the Glacial Period that sea or a large part of it did
not exist. It cannot indeed be proved that the men of the river-drift
and the caves entered Britain as soon as the other animals;[51] and
possibly the Dover Strait may have existed as a narrow channel at
the time of their arrival: but since the bones that were raised from
the Dogger Bank appear to belong to the time when the Thames was
laying down the gravels in which men’s tools have been found,[52] it
seems probable that the land bridge was standing in some part of the
Palaeolithic Age.
[Sidenote: The relation of palaeolithic man to the Ice Age.]
It has been demonstrated that palaeolithic men were living in East
Anglia after glaciers had finally disappeared from that part of the
country. The valleys of the Ouse and its tributaries, in the gravels
of which their implements are to be found, were worn down through
boulder-clay.[53] Excavations at Hoxne in Suffolk have shown that the
people who left their tools there lived at a time which was separated
by two climatic waves, attested by the flora of two sets of strata,
from the age in which the latest boulder-clay of that district had
been deposited.[54] Moreover, in many cases in which evidence has
been adduced to show that palaeolithic remains are of glacial or
interglacial date, doubts have arisen either as to the artificial
character of the flints or as to the age of the beds in which they
were found.[55] When, for instance, a member of the Geological Survey
announced that he had found palaeolithic implements at Brandon
in Suffolk in three interglacial beds, separated by layers of
boulder-clay,[56] Sir John Evans suggested that the clay was not in its
original position, but had slipped down from a higher level.[57] Again,
Dr. Henry Hicks and Sir Joseph Prestwich were convinced that the cave
of Cae Gwyn in the Vale of Clwyd had been inhabited before the climax
of the Ice Age.[58] Here a flint flake was taken out of earth separated
by a superincumbent bed of clay from a layer of sand and gravel, above
which again rested boulder-clay that, in Hicks’s judgement, showed no
sign of having ever been disturbed, and which, in the opinion of Mr.
Clement Reid,[59] must have been deposited before the last glaciation
of the district. Even this evidence, however, is not unanimously
accepted. Flints have also been found in the Cromer Forest Bed at East
Runton, which was certainly preglacial; but Sir John Evans cannot see
on them the faintest marks of human workmanship.[60]
Nevertheless, it is not improbable that when the hunters whose tools
have been exhumed from the drift of South-Eastern Britain were living
in a comparatively mild climate, Scotland, the Lake Country, and the
highlands of Yorkshire and Wales may still have been partially buried
beneath ice.[61] The high-level drift of the Thames valley, which has
yielded so many implements, is believed by eminent geologists to have
been laid down at a time when ice spread over Northern Britain;[62] and
in support of this view it has been contended that in those regions
no palaeolithic implements have been found.[63] The argument cannot
be easily set aside; but it has been pointed out that in the northern
districts, owing to the extreme scarcity of flint, stone tools could
only have been made of harder rocks, on which it is not so easy to
detect marks of human agency; that the alluvial deposits in those
parts are not readily accessible to search; and that, if they are
patiently explored, implements may yet be recovered from them.[64]
Some years, however, have elapsed since this suggestion was made; and
it has not yet been verified. Moreover, the absence from the country
north of Yorkshire, save in a few preglacial deposits, of such bones as
have been found with palaeolithic remains seems to indicate that the
animals contemporary with palaeolithic man were unable to find food in
Northern Britain owing to the continuance of an Arctic climate.[65]
Man was undoubtedly living in Southern Britain in the cold period that
succeeded the so-called interglacial period of Sussex and Hampshire;
for the plateau gravels that cap the Bournemouth cliffs, in which
his tools have been found, are older than the valley gravels of the
Hampshire Avon and the Stour, which were formed towards the end of the
Ice Age by torrents that streamed over frozen chalk downs impervious
to water and swept away the fragments of their crumbling surface.[66]
Furthermore, stone implements have been found at Caddington below, and
near London embedded in, a stratum known as ‘contorted drift’, which is
believed to have been formed in a period of great cold;[67] and it is
merely a question of words whether this period is to be included in the
last phase of the Ice Age.[68]
[Sidenote: ‘Eolithic’ man?]
But there is one district from which evidence has been obtained that
has convinced many who sought conviction, that there were men in
Britain before the first British palaeolithic tool was made. In the
village of Ightham, near Sevenoaks, lives a tradesman, named Benjamin
Harrison, whose discoveries have caused much searching of heart, if
they have not revolutionized our knowledge of the life of early man.
In 1885 he began to search for old stone implements on the chalk
plateau between the valleys of the Medway and the Darent. There,
embedded in patches of gravel that must have been drifted on to the
plateau from hills higher still, which had been already worn down by
denudation even when palaeolithic hunters were roaming among herds of
mammoths in the valley of the Thames, he found flints of divers shapes
which seemed to him to bear sure traces of man’s handiwork, and which
have been termed ‘eoliths’, or stone implements of a dawning age.
Nearly all of them, indeed, were so rude that the chipping on their
edges has been ascribed by sceptics to the action of nature. But if
even a small fraction of them could be proved to be authentic, the
contention of their finder would be established. They recur, again and
again, in certain well-defined and peculiar shapes; the chips have in
many cases been removed not from the exposed parts but from concave
sides which, he would have us believe, natural agents could hardly
have affected;[69] if Sir John Evans and other experts are unable to
accept them as artificial, Canon Greenwell,[70] Pitt-Rivers,[71] and
Prestwich[72] were convinced that they had been wrought by man; even
the labourers who picked them out of the gravel hardly ever failed
to distinguish them from the surrounding flints;[73] and, if we may
believe the champions of their authenticity, those who assert that they
were shaped by nature have failed to produce stones of similar forms
from the valley-drift.[74] Now when the hunters of the Thames valley
were making their tools, Britain had the same main features of hill
and dale that it has to-day; but when the gravels were being drifted
on to the Kentish plateau, Thames and Medway were yet unborn; and,
filling the great valley that now lies between the North Downs and the
Lower Greensand hills, some five miles further south, the plateau rose
southward to Central Wealden uplands two thousand feet or more above
the sea. With no special knowledge of geology the antiquary who spends
a holiday in walking from Sevenoaks or Wrotham on to the plateau may
satisfy himself that this is true. Mingled with the eoliths in the
patches of drift are fragments of chert that must have been washed
down from the Lower Greensand at a time when it rose high above the
plateau’s level; for south of the eolithic area, inclining upward
below the chalk and below the Upper Greensand, the outcrop of the
Lower Greensand shows itself still. The plateau drift lies upon rock
of preglacial age;[75] and although there is no evidence that it is
itself older than the Pleistocene period, some geologists hold that it
was deposited soon after, perhaps before, British glaciers began to
form.[76]
But assuming that the eoliths are artificial, does it follow that
they are older than the oldest palaeoliths, or that they were wrought
by a race different from the men of the valleys? Mr. Clement Reid
has pointed out that the gravel at Alderbury, some three miles below
Salisbury, in which multitudes of eoliths have been found, is on
exactly the same level as that of a gravel three miles lower down
the valley, where Prestwich picked up a palaeolithic implement which
had fallen from a yet higher elevation.[77] If the position of this
implement was an index of its age, eoliths were being used in Wiltshire
after palaeoliths had begun to be manufactured.[78] On the other hand,
it is asserted that eoliths have lately been found in Tertiary deposits
on the high plateau above the Avon;[79] and one geologist, who rejects
all eoliths, would argue that Benjamin Harrison’s labours have not
been vain. Many palaeolithic implements have been found on the Kentish
plateau, but never embedded in association with eoliths: most of them
are unworn, and look as if they had remained on the very spot where
they were lost; and it is easy to see that they are far less ancient
than the eoliths. But certain implements have also been found there
which, although they were not lying in the gravels, appeared to bear
marks of having been derived from them and washed down in the same
drift that contains the eoliths. Like the latter they were stained
deep brown, covered with glacial scratches, and coated with the white
deposit of silica.[80] If this argument had been generally accepted,
one might conclude that the greater antiquity of British man does not
depend for its proof upon the authenticity of the eoliths. What all
admit is that in France flints of eolithic form have been found even in
Tertiary beds.[81]
But while the extreme antiquity of many eoliths is certain, the
question of their authenticity has recently been debated with
renewed and redoubled vigour. About two years ago an eminent French
palaeontologist, Monsieur Marcellin Boule, announced that in the
process of manufacturing cement at Mantes many flints had been
converted into eolithic forms;[82] and it has been contended that the
conditions which were actually observed in the factory were analogous
to those of the torrential streams by which flints may have been
dashed hither and thither as they were swept on to the Kentish plateau
in primaeval times.[83] An ardent advocate of the authenticity of
eoliths insisted that some of the Kentish types would be looked for in
vain among the machine-made specimens from Mantes;[84] but a sceptic
affirmed that he had himself found an eolith, manifestly untouched by
man, with its notch accurately fitting against another stone, the two
having been ground together by a natural process which he described as
the slipping, sliding, and foundering of the insoluble surface material
from higher to lower levels.[85] Although it was objected that certain
rectangular eoliths with blunt edges could not have been produced
except by art,[86] it is permissible to doubt whether the human origin
of eoliths will ever be established beyond dispute; and he who reflects
that they have been met with not only in Tertiary beds but in those
immeasurably later deposits which were contemporary with or but little
older than palaeolithic man[87] will leave them for the present
without regret to the consideration of enthusiasts.
[Sidenote: The environment of palaeolithic man in Britain.]
Let us then try to conceive of the environment of those palaeolithic
hunters of whose culture we have clearer indications in a late phase
of the Ice Age, when the glaciers of Southern Britain had passed away.
Then the configuration of the country was very different from that
which we behold. The chalk ranges of Kent and of Picardy were unbroken.
The Thames, fed sometimes by torrential rains, flowing rapidly and
fitfully in the broad shallow valley which it was excavating, was
depositing gravels on the slopes that bordered it, a hundred feet above
the level of its existing waters,[88] and wandering far eastward across
a plain from whose now sunken surface bones of mammoth and reindeer,
of hyena and bear have been dredged, to swell that greater Rhine which
found no outlet till it reached a far northern sea. Mammoths, woolly
rhinoceroses, and giant elks with antlers ten feet across, roamed
in the forests; hippopotamuses swam in the streams;[89] brown bears
and grizzly bears and lions and hyenas made their dens in caves, and
dragged into their dark and sinuous recesses the prey which they had
torn down in the open.
[Sidenote: Whence did he come?]
The earlier palaeolithic immigrants, impelled perhaps by scarcity of
game, had crossed the valley of the Dover Strait doubtless from the
nearer parts of France or Belgium; but the original home of the race is
unknown, for palaeolithic tools have been found not only in this island
and almost every European country except Scandinavia, but also in North
Africa, in the valley of the Nile,[90] in Palestine and Asia Minor,
the Euphrates Valley, Somaliland, India, and North America: as a high
authority has remarked, they are ‘so identical in form and character
with British specimens that they might have been manufactured by the
same hands’;[91] and the same may be said of those which were wrought
by the Tasmanians, who, fifty years ago, had not yet been exterminated
by the pioneers of Christian civilization.[92]
[Sidenote: Chronological puzzles.]
Many attempts have been made to calculate the number of millenniums
that have elapsed since our Palaeolithic Age began and since it came to
its end. Croll, the author of the astronomical theory of the Ice Age,
finally concluded that that epoch ceased about eighty thousand years
ago;[93] and Sir Archibald Geikie laboured in his youth to estimate
the time which the rivers would have taken to excavate their valleys
from the days when they were depositing the high-level gravels to the
era when they reached their present depth.[94] But any one who uses
his powers of reflection will see how many elements of uncertainty
must stultify such a method as this;[95] and, since the cause of the
Ice Age remains unknown, the calculations of Croll were futile.[96]
Indeed, if it were possible to prove that eighty thousand years have
passed since the beginning or since the end of the Palaeolithic Age,
not much would be gained; for whose mind can conceive what such a
period means? The wiser archaeologists have given up the quest of
chronological precision; and they know that the imagination may be
stimulated by more legitimate means. Go to Caversham and stand upon the
gravels washed down by the Thames in his lusty youth:[97] one hundred
and twenty feet below he is flowing now; think of the ages that passed
while his waters were hollowing out that valley, which was as it is
still before the Palaeolithic Age had passed away. Walk along the cliff
near Bournemouth, and look out over the Solent Sea. That cliff was once
a river bank; and even the cautious geologist who has described how
Hampshire was wrought into its present form is willing to believe that
man had then appeared in our land. Where you see salt water he would
have seen dry land, bounded far away by a range of hills which linked
the downs of the Isle of Wight to those that rise behind Weymouth Bay,
and of which the Needles remain as lonely relics: he would have seen
the Solent flow, a mighty river, enriched by the tribute of the Stour,
the Avon, the Itchen, and the Test.[98] Ascend the hill on which stands
Dover Castle, and gaze upon Cape Grisnez. Let the waters beneath you
disappear: across the chalk that once spanned the Channel like a bridge
men walked from the white cliff that marks the horizon to where you
stand. No arithmetical chronology can spur the imagination to flights
like these.[99]
[Sidenote: Palaeolithic skeletons.]
The dwellers on the plateau, if they did exist in preglacial times,
have left us no memorial save their tools: but can we picture to
ourselves the lineaments of the palaeolithic hunters who came after
them? Human bones, including two perfect skulls, closely associated
with the bones of hyenas, have been recovered from a cave near
Plymouth. The average height of the people to whom they belonged was
little more than five feet: the skulls have hardly been described with
sufficient accuracy to enable us to compare them with others of the
same period; but, in regard to breadth and to the degree of projection
of the lower jaw, they were not very different from the majority of
modern British skulls.[100] Two other human skulls have been found
in England for which palaeolithic age has been claimed--one near
Swanscombe in Kent, the other near Bury St. Edmunds; but the former
may not be as old as the bed from which it was unearthed; and the
other was so broken that its contour could hardly be restored.[101]
But almost all the older palaeolithic skulls that have been found in
Western Europe belong to the same type, which is generally called after
the famous specimen that was exhumed nearly half a century ago in the
Neander valley in Rhenish Prussia, and of which the most characteristic
examples were derived from a cavern at Spy in the province of Namur.
The Swanscombe skull has somewhat similar characters; and it has been
supposed that the earlier palaeolithic inhabitants of Britain belonged
to the Neanderthal race. Unfortunately, however, the dates of the
Neanderthal and Spy specimens cannot be fixed. The latter may belong
to the comparatively advanced period in which the best palaeolithic
stone implements of France were manufactured: the former was not seen
in place by a competent observer, and its age is quite uncertain.[102]
If the very few skeletons that we possess are typical, these men were
short, big-boned, and powerfully built. Their heads were long and
narrow, their foreheads amazingly low and retreating, and their jaws
heavy and projecting. But their most striking features were enormously
massive and outstanding brow ridges. Although the Neanderthal skull
was described by Huxley as the most ape-like of all human skulls,
and although for some time after its discovery it was the subject of
animated discussion, it and its congeners were thenceforward regarded
by all anatomists until the beginning of the present century as human
in the strictest sense of the word. Within the last few years, however,
a German anthropologist has endeavoured to prove that it and the two
skulls of Spy may only be called human in a limited sense: he refuses
to class them under the head of _Homo sapiens_, and refers them to an
older species, which he calls _Homo primigenius_. This view, however,
has not made influential converts: the Neanderthal skull was capacious
enough to lodge a brain as large as that of many a living savage; and
trained observers have pointed out that skulls of like contour have
belonged in modern times to men of considerable mental power.[103]
A considerable number of skeletons have lately been discovered in
Moravia, which, although like the Neanderthal race they had long skulls
and prominent brows, belonged to a higher type, and, as the length of
their thigh-bones showed, were of great stature;[104] while the caves
of Baoussé-Roussé, near Mentone, were the resting-place of very ancient
men, in whose skeletons anatomists have detected certain negroid
characteristics, although their skulls must have contained a large
volume of brain.[105]
But the Palaeolithic Age was of such vast duration that before its
close Britain may well have been invaded by new races. In the latest
period there were living in the Riviera a people whose physical
features connect them with the earliest French neolithic race; and
in South-Western France skulls of like type have been found at
Laugerie-Basse and Chancelade in the valley of the Lozère.[106]
The relics of these men which have been discovered in the caves in
which they dwelled show that some of them were worthy to be called
forerunners of Pheidias and Praxiteles. With their tools of flint or
chert they carved ivory dagger-handles, or, as we are now assured,
objects of uncertain use,[107] adorning them with figures of the heads
of reindeer, and scratched on horns or tusks drawings of mammoths,
deer, horses, and hunters spearing salmon, of which the finer examples
are recognized by modern artists as true works of art.[108] A single
specimen, found in the Robin Hood Cave in Creswell Crags, is all that
we can show:[109] but implements with which it was associated present
points of likeness to those of the French caves which justify the
assumption that the primitive artists of France sent emigrants to our
land.
[Sidenote: Range of the palaeolithic hunters in Britain.]
The palaeolithic nomads, whether of the earlier or the later race,
pushed their way as far north as Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, and
Denbighshire, perhaps even into the East Riding of Yorkshire; and as
far west as Glamorganshire, Caermarthenshire and Devonshire:[110]
but almost all the remains of their handiwork have been found in
the south-eastern district of England,--in Kent, especially the
neighbourhood of Reculver, Sussex, Hampshire, Essex, Middlesex,
and Surrey, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Northamptonshire,
Oxfordshire and Berkshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk.
[Sidenote: Where their tools have been found.]
The places in which these relics lay buried may be grouped in four
classes,--the plateau gravels, already described; gravels which were
apparently deposited not by rivers but by heavy rains which, falling
upon frozen chalk downs, destroyed the shattered surface and swept
it away in floods;[111] the river-drift, and caves; and, unlike the
belongings of the neolithic herdsmen, those of the older inhabitants
are not to be found, except in special cases, on or near the surface
of the earth. The amateur who has acquired the rudiments of geology
and has learned to discern stone implements among the fragments of
rock which surround them, knows that in the gravels and sands which
rivers deposited at various elevations when they were flowing now here
now there in higher and wider channels he may hope to find specimens
to add to his collection. Common sense too teaches him that in the
same valley the higher terraces were formed before the lower, and
that the tools which they contain, however closely they may resemble
those which are embedded below, are nevertheless, as a rule, far
older.[112] If he asks himself how they found their way into these
gravel beds, reflection will soon suggest the answer. It would seem
that although the palaeolithic hunters dwelled sometimes near lakes or
ponds, they usually settled on the banks of streams. Fishing, hunting,
wading through fords, warned by swiftly rising floods to quit their
habitations, they lost or abandoned the weapons which now serve our
purpose instead of theirs. But in some cases beds which contained
palaeolithic remains are so situated that a tiro would never suppose
that they had been deposited by running water at all. Few even of
professed geologists would have thought of searching on the hill-tops
at Caddington, near Dunstable; yet old stone implements have been found
there in profusion. When the men who made them were alive the hills
were valleys, and the valleys which now lie below the hills did not
exist. Nor would it have occurred to any but a geologist that the tools
which were espied lying at the foot of the cliffs between Reculver and
Herne Bay had fallen from the gravels which line their summit.[113]
[Sidenote: Inhabited caves.]
Kent’s Cavern and the Brixham Cave, near Torquay, the Wookey Hole
‘Hyena Den’, near Wells, the Long Hole Cave in Glamorganshire, and the
caves of Creswell Crags, on the north-eastern border of Derbyshire,
are perhaps the most famous of their class. Heaps of bones have been
found in all of them, which proved that the men who, from time to
time, inhabited them were contemporary, like those whose tools are
recovered from the river-drift, with animals of which some, like the
mammoth, the straight-tusked elephant, and the ‘sabre-toothed’ tiger,
have disappeared from the face of the earth, and many have long been
extinct in Britain. Generally in the lower strata the stone tools
are exactly like those found in the river-drift; while in the higher
they are as a rule more elaborately finished, and are associated with
needles, harpoons, and other implements of bone. The same sequence is
discernible in the palaeolithic caves of France and Belgium.[114]
[Sidenote: Cave implements and river-drift implements.]
Let us compare in some museum the sets of tools and weapons which have
been taken from caves with those of the river-drift. Are the latter
older than the former, and is it possible to establish in either or in
both a chronological succession of types? Taken by itself, the form of
palaeolithic implements, at least in this country, is not generally
a criterion of their age; but neither the forms of those that have
come from the caves nor the bones which accompanied them forbid us to
believe that the oldest are at least as old as any that belonged to
the drift. Generally speaking, the fauna of the caves and of the river
gravels are identical.[115] It is therefore certain that, although
in general aspect a collection of implements derived from the former
source is unlike one from the latter because the two were deposited
in different circumstances, some of the deposits in the drift and
in the caves were contemporaneous.[116] Since a few implements of
river-drift form have been found in caves along with those of higher
types, it seems reasonable to conclude that the same men possessed
both; and if those which are characteristic of the caves are almost
entirely absent from the drift, is not the explanation partly that
they were more perishable, partly that many of them would not have
been used in the field? In other words, there is no reason to believe
that the later occupants of the caves were men of different race or of
different habits from the contemporary hunters whose lost tools have
been given up by the drift.[117] Long ago Monsieur de Mortillet framed
a chronological classification of French and Belgian palaeolithic
implements according to their types, which, though of late years it has
been modified, has been provisionally accepted; but in this country
it has been found impossible to follow his example: the same types
exist here, but the relative antiquity of the specimens can seldom be
determined; for implements of the oldest French types have been found
in deposits which belong to the close of our Palaeolithic Age.[118]
Even when implements from the high-level terraces are compared with
those of the lower, no marked distinction is observed. In certain cases
of course a local classification has been established. Thus the stone
implements in the upper strata of two of the caves of Creswell Crags
belonged to the advanced type which is called after the settlement of
Solutré in the department of Saône-et-Loire;[119] and the implements
of North-East London which, from their position at the bottom of the
excavations as well as their colour, were evidently the oldest, were
also inferior in workmanship to newer specimens found above them some
twelve feet beneath the surface, and far inferior to the newest of
the same district, which were recovered from an old land-surface,
two or three feet below the existing ground, generally called the
‘Palaeolithic Floor.’[120] Again, in the brick-fields of Caddington
excavation revealed an ancient land-surface on which a palaeolithic
colony had made their tools. At a later time a new surface about two
feet higher was formed by brick-earth, which must have been swept
down by heavy rains from the hills above; and on this more implements
appeared. Above it again is a bed of contorted drift, containing
implements whose deep ochreous colour would seem to show that of the
three series they are the oldest: evidently they were washed down
from the hill-tops on which perhaps lived the earliest inhabitants of
the district, and which, as they were gradually worn away, formed a
deposit in what were then valleys, but are now in their turn hills. The
lowest implements, which were of course older than those next above
them, belong to the type called after the cave of Le Moustier in the
valley of the Vezère, which is itself later than the type associated
with the high-level gravels of the Somme.[121] It has been suggested
that when the evidence of plants or of strata is wanting, the relative
age of palaeolithic implements may be provisionally estimated by the
animal remains with which they are found. The straight-tusked elephant,
the ‘big-nosed’ rhinoceros, and the hippopotamus were characteristic,
we are told, of the earliest palaeolithic times;[122] the mammoth, the
woolly rhinoceros, the cave-bear, and the hyena of a later period;
and the reindeer was specially abundant towards the close of the age.
But it is now generally recognized that if this orderly succession of
fauna existed in Aquitaine, it cannot be distinguished either in our
island or in Northern Gaul. When we find Arctic and tropical animals
commingled, when we see that the bones of big-nosed rhinoceros and
woolly rhinoceros, of straight-tusked elephant and hyena and reindeer
have been dug out of the same beds,[123] we may conclude that it is
hardly worth while to gauge the antiquity of the works of palaeolithic
craftsmen by such tests as these.
On a general review it should seem that the French chronological
classifications of palaeolithic implements, even applied to England,
contain a measure of truth. The implements which are commonly found
in the river-drift and other deposits in the open field undoubtedly
began to be manufactured before those which are characteristic of the
caves; and those of Mousterian type were first made, both in England
and in France, long before the development of the elegant Solutrean
forms and the period in which flourished the artists of South-Western
France.[124] But both in France and in England Mousterian implements
were still used during the later period;[125] and even drift implements
of the oldest kind continued to be used by palaeolithic hunters of the
latest generation.[126]
[Sidenote: Divers forms of tools.]
In order to apprehend the culture of the palaeolithic races, it is
necessary to be conversant with the forms of their tools. The great
majority were made of flint; but in places where flint was scarce
or difficult to obtain other stones, for example, chert, quartzite
pebbles, sandstones, and felstone, were used. The principal forms
were flint flakes, which were probably intended to serve as knives,
sometimes even as saws (for a few of them are serrated),[127] and,
in certain instances, as scrapers for dressing hides; implements or
weapons, pear-shaped or tongue-shaped in outline, more or less acutely
pointed, and more or less truncated at the butt, some of which look
like spear-heads, though they may have been grasped in the hand; and
oval, almond-shaped, and occasionally heart-shaped or triangular
implements, which have a cutting edge all round. Each of these forms of
course comprises many varieties, not only in contour but also in the
mode of chipping; and a few tools of abnormal shapes have also been
found, as well as natural blocks of flint, called ‘hammer-stones’,
which were used in the process of manufacture, and most of which were
slightly trimmed in order to make them more serviceable. Near Ipswich a
lady has recently discovered a tiny implement which, it has been fondly
suggested, some hunter may have wrought as a toy for his child.[128]
Among the bone implements were harpoons, barbed sometimes on one,
sometimes on both sides, which have been found in Kent’s Cavern and
other caves, and which closely resemble those that are used by the
Eskimos of our own day; and needles drilled by bone awls, with eyes
so small that the threads of reindeer sinew which they received could
hardly have exceeded a thirtieth of an inch in diameter. Moreover,
it is more than probable that clubs, wooden tools, and utensils and
vessels of skin were also used, which, from their perishable nature,
have long since disappeared.[129]
[Sidenote: Palaeolithic workshops.]
The explorations of antiquaries have revealed more than one of the
open-air workshops in which the primitive tool-makers plied their
trade. Near Crayford, on a sandy beach beneath an old chalk cliff
that overhung the Thames when on its southern side its bed was nearly
two miles wider, excavation discovered the surface, strewn with flint
flakes, in actual contact with mammoths’ bones, on which the workers
had lived and toiled until a great flood drove them away, leaving the
sediment which for countless ages concealed their remains. The inferior
quality of the flint showed that they had not known how to win it by
mining from the rock, but had been obliged to content themselves with
such stray blocks as they could find. The enthusiast who discovered
the site was actually able to fit many of the flakes together, and
to reconstruct the original blocks from which they had been struck
off.[130] At Caddington, where hammer-stones and punches, great blocks
of flint which had been used as anvils, and innumerable flakes and
cores bore their silent testimony, Mr. Worthington Smith inferred from
the confusion in which finished and unfinished tools were left that
the settlers, terrified perhaps by some violent storm, had suddenly
quitted their abode. He found an implement which had been ruined by
an ill-directed blow of the hammer, and one which had been re-flaked
and re-pointed by a later worker; and his practised eye detected
that the craftsmen had flaked their tools differently from those of
Crayford.[131] Speaking generally, however, the methods of working
were the same as those which are still followed by the ‘knappers’ of
Brandon in Suffolk, who manufacture gun-flints for African savages. The
flakes which were to be used as knives or scrapers were detached from
the blocks by a stone hammer; and the larger implements were trimmed
into the various shapes which have been described, by blows along their
edges, which chipped off small splinters. The effect of the hammer
was to produce on the flake, just below the point where the blow was
delivered, a protuberance, which is called the ‘bulb of percussion’,
and which of course left a corresponding cavity on the block from which
the flake was detached. This bulb is the mark by which a manufactured
flint may be recognized; but on tools whose artificial origin is
manifest even to an untrained eye it has often been obliterated by the
process of chipping.[132]
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
[Illustration: FIG. 2. ½]
[Illustration: FIG. 3. ½]
[Illustration: FIG. 4. ½]
[Sidenote: Handles.]
Inquisitive antiquaries have raised the question whether any
palaeolithic implements were furnished with handles. The Tasmanians
simply grasped their tools in their hands;[133] and there is little
evidence that the Britons mounted theirs:[134] but the triangular
sharply-pointed flints which have been already described might
sometimes have been used as arrow-points or javelin-heads.[135] Some
were doubtless missiles and nothing more.
[Sidenote: Uses of tools.]
But, as experts who have passed their leisure in recovering, comparing,
and classifying these things confess, it is impossible to define the
various purposes to which this or that stone tool was applied. ‘Who,’
says Lord Avebury,[136] ‘could describe the exact use of a knife?’
We only know that with his rude implements the palaeolithic hunter
did all the work that his hand found to do,--felled trees, chopped
wood to feed his fire, dug up esculent roots, scooped out canoes,
killed and cut up the animals on which he subsisted, skinned them and
dressed their hides to clothe himself withal, encountered his enemies
in battle, and defended himself in conflict with the beasts against
which his keen sight and hearing, his intellect, and these weapons,
which it enabled [Sidenote: Culture of the palaeolithic inhabitants of
Britain.] him to fashion, were his sole protection.[137] Yet as we look
at the tools in a museum, nearly the same at the end as the beginning
of our immeasurably long Palaeolithic Age, we marvel even more at the
mental stagnation of the primeval savage than at the skill which he
had laboriously attained; and we wonder how it was that men who had
learned to chip their blocks of flint so accurately remained content,
generation after generation, with the art which they had acquired,
and never thought of grinding the cutting edge against another stone
and thus producing a better and sharper weapon. ‘We see in our own
times,’ wrote Sir Charles Lyell,[138] ‘that the rate of progress in
the arts and sciences proceeds in a geometrical ratio as knowledge
increases; and so, when we carry back our retrospect into the past,
we must be prepared to find the signs of retardation augmenting in a
like geometrical ratio.’ It would seem that in the Palaeolithic Age
men had no pottery and grew no corn: they certainly had no cattle;
and, though they lived by hunting, they had no dogs.[139] Perhaps they
sometimes dug pits to trap their game; for one of the engravings from
La Madelaine may have been intended to depict a beast impaled upon a
wooden stake.[140] Their numbers must have been very small; for people
who live by the chase alone require for their sustenance forests of
vast extent.[141] Some, as we have seen, lived in caves; others, as
we may infer from the remains that have been picked up beneath the
cliffs of Oldbury,[142] by Sevenoaks, under projecting ledges of rock;
generally perhaps, and especially in districts in which no caves were
available, the dwellings were huts or shelters made of trees and
boughs. Some of the bones that were found in Kent’s Cavern, some even
of the gravels that have yielded eoliths,[143] show traces of fire,
which was probably produced by the friction of sticks or by striking
flint against iron pyrites;[144] and one is tempted to infer that the
hunters or their women learned to make their food more palatable by
cooking. The numberless fractured bones which were strewed in the
caves had evidently been pounded for the sake of the marrow, which in
every age was a dainty dish for prehistoric folk; and in the closing
period, when harpoons had been invented, men were able to vary their
diet of meat and herbs and wild fruit with divers kinds of fish. By
that time too they had acquired the art of sewing, and doubtless they
made themselves coats of skins, perhaps even, like the cave-dwellers
of the Pyrenees, long gauntlets of fur;[145] while fossils that have
been found with natural holes artificially enlarged may justify the
assumption that, like the cave-dwellers of France, they adorned
themselves with necklaces.[146] The figure of a horse engraved on a
bone that was disinterred from one of the Creswell caves suggests, as
we have seen, that in this country, as in France, there were men who
were not destitute of the artistic faculty: but this solitary specimen
can hardly compare with the best of the drawings that delighted the
explorers of the contemporary French caves. It is difficult for any one
who looks at these life-like sketches to believe that those who made
them were not inspired by love of art; but the ingenuity of a modern
archaeologist, who observes that the Australian aborigines scratch on
rocks the likenesses of animals as charms to promote their fecundity,
has suggested that they were merely talismans intended to supply the
hunter with abundant game. As he insists[147] that the animals which
the artists represented were all edible, one may fairly ask whether
they were accustomed to feed upon the glutton,[148] the serpent, and
the wolf;[149] whether they counted each other as legitimate prey;
what could have been the utilitarian motive for depicting an otter
chasing a fish;[150] and what was the object of engraving the strange
quasi-human creature which the antiquary who discovered it in the
cavern of Mas d’Azil described as an ‘anthropomorphic ape, nearer
akin to man than the anthropoids that we know’.[151] Nevertheless it
is not improbable that religion, which has stimulated savage as well
as mediaeval and modern art, may have been one of the motives of the
cave-dwellers; and perhaps the artist was sometimes a magician, though
it would be idle to speculate on the purpose of his spells.[152]
Disciplined imagination, working upon a basis of ascertained fact,
may help one to picture the lives of those primitive inhabitants of
our island. We can see them returning at evening to the fires which
their women had kindled, and which served at once to warm them, to
cook their food, to keep off beasts of prey, and to scare away the
malignant spirits of whom, if they were like other savages, they were
yet more in dread. We may see a vast herd of reindeer crossing the
ford at Windsor, and wolves watching for their chance to spring upon
stragglers. We may hear the trumpeting of the elephant, the roar of the
lion, the bellowing of the wild bull, the howl of the hyena, the snort
of the hippopotamus, as it splashed or swam in the waters of the Thames
or the Ouse. We may imagine the hunter striving by sign, or gesture, or
rudimentary language, to express his delight when he has succeeded in
the chase, his despair when ill success leaves him and his to pine with
hunger, his terror when the eclipsed moon turning to red, when flood,
or lightning, or pestilence warns him that the spirits of nature are
wroth, his grief when bear, or bison, or famished wolf has slain his
wife or child. How he disposed of his dead he has left no sign: but in
the caves near Mentone, which were inhabited in successive periods of
the Palaeolithic Age, there were evidences that the corpses had been
decently interred;[153] and the skeletons found in Moravia[154] had
been carefully protected by a rampart of stones.[155]
[Sidenote: Religion.]
Had the primitive people of Britain any religion, or any ideas that
contained the germs of religious belief? It is not enough to point to
modern savages like the Tasmanians, whose material culture was lower
than that of the palaeolithic Britons, but who certainly believed in
a spiritual world.[156] The cave-dwellers of Mentone were interred
with their implements and ornaments, perhaps intended for use in a
future state;[157] but such evidence is not forthcoming here. The
painted pebbles, however, and the ‘bull-roarers’ which were treasured
in the caves of South-Western France may well have had analogues among
the inhabitants of this island[158] who were in the same stage of
culture; and doubtless, like the similar objects which are shown by
the natives of Central Australia, they were connected, more or less
closely, with religious ideas.[159] No savage tribe, indeed, has yet
been observed of whom it can be proved that they were without religion;
for some travellers who have affirmed the contrary have been unable
to comprehend ideas which differed wholly from their own; some have
recorded facts which gave the lie to their own denial; some have
confessed that after long intercourse they had discovered the existence
of beliefs which they had never suspected; and all who have been
qualified by tact and sympathy to deal with savages have recognized
how hard it is to induce them to disclose their inmost thoughts.[160]
But much depends upon the sense in which the word Religion is to be
understood. The great anthropologist whose writings have given the
most powerful impetus to the study of primitive culture has taken
as his ‘minimum definition of religion’ the belief in spiritual
beings;[161] and although it might be rash to affirm that materialism
is inconsistent with religion, and no sympathetic reader would deny
that the Latin poet who denounced ‘foul religion’ with such fierce
earnestness had a religion of his own, Professor Tylor’s words may
serve as our guide.[162] It is true that the conception of a spiritual
being formed by a primitive mind has hardly anything in common with
that approved by a theologian or a philosopher: for the savage, as for
Tertullian and Origen, spirits are not immaterial; they are exceedingly
subtle, but still corporeal. Nor, indeed, are they necessarily
immortal. Savage religion is utterly different from that which has
been the guide of life to men who, though they had put away all hope
of everlasting life, retained their sense of the nobility of human
nature,--‘to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and
to keep himself unspotted from the world’; utterly different from that
which inspires the idealist to whom theology is a vain thing and the
supernatural unreal, but who clings to his belief that man’s punishment
or reward hereafter is simply to be what he has become, that his
destiny is to grow in grace, lapsing perhaps, but again aspiring, until
his spirit becomes one with the indwelling spirit of God. Yet, although
the orthodox may refuse the name of religion to an animism begotten of
fear and unconnected with ethics, though idealists may scoff at the
conception of spiritual beings which invests them with bodily form and
ponderable and mortal albeit ethereal substance, that animism was the
seed out of which their own faith--its framework but not its nobler
part--was evolved.
He whose mind is informed by the teaching of ethnography may conceive,
if he has a sympathetic imagination, the mental state that gave birth
to primitive religion; but if his reading has not been wasted, he will
understand how vain would be the attempt to ascribe to this or that
prehistoric people any known savage creed. For, alike in origin and in
essence, the forms of modern animism are manifold. To the palaeolithic
Briton fire, leaping roaring and devouring, devastating flood, rushing
wind, lightning flash, disease, death itself,--all may have been
animated by spirit, or have been themselves spiritual beings. Elves,
goblins, phantoms may have been created by his brain, and have seemed
to flit before him when prolonged fasting had stimulated the creative
power of his fancy. The conceptions that were ultimately to become
the greater gods of polytheism may have arisen in his mind as in the
minds of other savage men. At least we may believe that, unless he
differed greatly from the modern savages whose handiwork resembles his,
he began to people the universe with spiritual beings when he became
conscious of his own soul; that the phantasms which he saw in dreams
were for him real and alive; that every spirit in which he believed
originated in the curiosity that led him to seek the cause of every
natural phenomenon; that, although social friction had compelled him
to recognize a moral code, his religion and his morality were not one
but two, not mutually supporting but distinct; and, finally, that no
thought of future retribution or reward troubled or comforted his heart.
[Sidenote: Totemism.]
Intimately connected with primitive religion is totemism, that strange
institution which has been observed in various stages of survival
among the North American Indians, the forest tribes of South America,
the aboriginals of Western and Central Australia, the Malays, the
hill-tribes of Central India, certain Mongoloid tribes of Central
Asia, in Bechuanaland, and in the Bantu district of South Africa;[163]
which in every case began before those whom it affected had come to
domesticate animals, to till the earth, or to fashion pottery;[164] and
which tends to decay when hunting gives place to pasturage.[165] One
cannot but inquire whether an institution so widespread existed among
the prehistoric inhabitants of Britain; and, although no distinct case
of totemism has been found or recorded in Europe,[166] the inquiry is
not perhaps so hopeless as it may at first sight appear.
The leading principles of totemism have been so often defined that
they are doubtless familiar to many readers. Evidently it originated
at a time when men were not possessed by the fancy that they were a
distinct branch of creation, but felt their kinship with other animals,
which they had hardly begun to regard as inferior.[167] The members
of the clans which form a totemic tribe trace their descent generally
from some animal, sometimes even from a plant or an object which we
should call inanimate, and bear its name. But how did the conception of
relationship between a clan and an animal or vegetable species arise?
It has been suggested that metempsychosis may supply the explanation.
Some great man perhaps gave out that after his death no hare was to be
eaten by his clan because a hare would be possessed by his soul. Thus
not only his own children and grandchildren but also hares would be his
descendants; and he would be the founder of a totem-family, which might
develop into a totem-clan.[168] On the other hand, it has been argued
that when totemism began descent was necessarily reckoned in the female
line, and that it is therefore useless to search for its origin in
anything--for example, ‘a paternal soul tenanting an animal’--which was
deemed to be inherited from a male ancestor.[169]
Until a recent date it was an article of faith among anthropologists
that, except in special circumstances, the life of a totem-animal
was, in the eyes of the clan which belonged to it, sacred, and that
marriage between the members of any one clan was absolutely tabooed. If
a clansman of a Crocodile clan desired a wife, he must seek her from a
Wolf clan or from some other. But within the last few years totemism
has been carefully and minutely observed among the Arunta tribe of
Central Australia; and the records of these observations mark a new
era in anthropology. With the Aruntas totemism does not forbid the
slaughter of the totem-animal and does not prescribe exogamy: it is
based upon the belief that they are descended from ‘quasi-human animal
or vegetable ancestors, whose souls are still reborn in human form in
successive generations’.[170] It has, however, been maintained that in
the organization of this tribe there are still discernible traces of
totemism of the primitive type, involving both exogamy and respect for
the life of the totem-animal;[171] and also that their totemism is so
decadent that nothing can be learned from it as to totemic origins.[172]
Totemism is indeed a subject of extraordinary difficulty: its
literature is enormous and rapidly growing; and it is out of the
question in this book to do more than point out its problems, and put
the reader in the way of pursuing the study for himself. The problem
of its origin can never be solved with certainty; for the institution
cannot now be observed in its primitive state; and any attempt to
trace it backward must start from conjecture as to the original social
condition of man.[173] Perhaps the most plausible and ingenious
theory rests upon the assumption, for which considerable evidence has
been adduced, that groups of men originally designated one another by
animal and plant names, and that these names were accepted even when
they were bestowed in derision. Such a group, finding itself called,
let us say, by the name of the pig, and not knowing how it had come by
the name, would naturally believe that there was an intimate connexion
between itself and the porcine species.[174] The taboos which forbade
the slaughter of the totem-animal and marriage between a man and a
maiden of the same kin would, it is argued, follow when once the
universal belief, that ‘the blood is the life’ and therefore sacred,
was evolved.[175]
There are superstitions and names which suggest that totemism may once
have existed in Britain; but even if their evidence is accepted, it
is of course impossible to point out the source from which they were
ultimately derived. They may have belonged to our early Neolithic Age,
or they may have been introduced later, when totemism had died out, by
invaders who had received them from inferior tribes with whom they came
in contact. We are assured that Cornish fishermen believe that drowning
men sometimes assume the form of animals;[176] that in the village
of Burchurch in Shropshire it is deemed unlucky to kill a bat;[177]
that at Great Crosby in Lancashire the goose is held sacred;[178] and
that certain Scottish clans derived their names from animals.[179] The
familiar passage in which Caesar observes that the Britons counted it
impious to taste the flesh of hares, fowls, and geese[180] has also
been interpreted as a survival of totemism.[181] But this is a mere
guess. The greatest of anthropologists has warned us not to assume that
every sacred animal is a totem:[182] the association with a clan of a
species of animals is only one form of animal-worship. It is, however,
quite possible that if these animals had once been totems, they were
revered by clans with whom the ancestors of the British Celts had mixed
before they emigrated from Gaul; for broken bones of the hare, which
were found in one of the caves of Perthi-Chwareu in Denbighshire, show
that at all events in that part of neolithic Britain the animal was
eaten.[183]
[Sidenote: Was the domestication of animals a result of totemism?]
Some anthropologists have argued that the domestication of animals and
even agriculture resulted from totemism.[184] Thus Monsieur Reinach
insists that the domestication of the boar is an irrefragable proof
of its former sanctity; for, he argues, if men had always thought
themselves entitled to kill and eat boars, boars would never have
multiplied under human protection, and become the ancestors of domestic
swine. Domestication, he considers, implies a long truce between men
and animals, something analogous to the Golden Age, celebrated by poets
of antiquity, in which men were vegetarians. One may be pardoned for
maintaining a sceptical attitude towards a theory which is obviously
incapable of proof, which to men who live remote from libraries but
in the midst of animals presents insuperable difficulties, and which,
moreover, seems to imply that prehistoric tribes were excessively
stupid. If it were true, one would expect to find that oxen, sheep,
and pigs had been reared in the Palaeolithic Age, and that modern
totem groups had domesticated or were now domesticating totem animals.
But the only animal which the cave-dwellers of South-Western France
apparently domesticated was the horse, which was doubtless lassoed
and fastened not because it was sacred but for food;[185] and the
Aruntas have no domestic animals. A hungry Australian would have no
scruple in killing and eating an animal, not belonging to his own
totem-species, which by his wife would be deemed sacred: the Bantus
have sheep and oxen, but neither the ox nor the sheep is among their
totems. What motive could savages have had for keeping totem-animals in
captivity in large numbers unless they had desired to eat their flesh
or to drink their milk, and why should they have toiled to provide
food for them in winter? Why should the domestication of any species
be impossible unless the lives of the animals were spared for a long
term of years; and why, if every bull and ram were suffered to gratify
its sexual instincts unchecked, and cows and ewes were unmilked and
unused, should they become tame.[186] It is surely not incredible that
primitive hunters, not belonging to Bull or Boar clans, who saw that
wild oxen and wild boars were good for food, should have conceived the
idea of ensuring a more constant supply by trapping young animals,
taming them, and breeding from them. Totemism may conceivably have
had some influence upon the domestication of animals; but it seems
probable that there was room for common sense.[187] And the mere fact
that a piece of sculpture representing an ear of barley was found in a
cave at Lourdes hardly seems sufficient to justify the conclusion that
barley was an object of worship in the Palaeolithic Age, and that its
subsequent cultivation was due to totemism.[188] What we may safely
conclude is that exogamy, with which totemism is commonly associated,
although they may have been originally distinct, was one of the chief
factors in consolidating groups and allying them together.[189]
[Sidenote: Magic.]
The subject of totemism naturally leads on to that of magic; for in
Australia totemic groups have developed into co-operative magic-working
societies; and there is no rashness in assuming that magic flourished
everywhere before the end of the Palaeolithic Age. We are often told
that magic was based upon a confused association of ideas; that it was
the embryo of science;[190] and that priest and magician have ever
been foes. There is much truth in this: but magic is not to be so
easily explained; and most of us are still far from sympathetically
understanding the mental state in which it originated. To say that one
kind of magic is an outgrowth of the law of similarity, the magician
fancying, for example, that by making drawings of animals he can cause
their species to multiply; that the other depends upon the law of
contact, when, for instance, it is supposed that whatever is done to a
weapon will correspondingly affect the person whom it wounded,[191]--to
say this is not to fathom the magician’s mind. Magic, notwithstanding
the hostility with which priests have regarded magicians, cannot be
separated from religion by a line of demarcation; nor indeed is it
always possible to differentiate magicians from priests.[192] It has
been well said that magic, as observed among primitive tribes, is
‘part and parcel of the “god-stuff” out of which religion fashions
itself’.[193] Australian magicians believe that their powers are
conferred upon them by supernatural beings;[194] and the magicians of
many tribes call upon spirits to aid them in working their spells.[195]
One of the most important functions of the magician is to ensure an
adequate fall of rain; but in New Guinea this duty belongs to the
priest of the god by whose favour the rain is believed to fall.[196]
Vast learning has been expended to prove that monarchy originated in
magic;[197] but we only know that magicians have sometimes succeeded
in making themselves kings;[198] and doubtless in certain cases magic
may have helped to sow the seed out of which gradations of rank were
evolved.[199] But this would be but one more illustration of the
accepted truth that family, tribe, priesthood, monarchy--all our
institutions--are rooted in savagery.[200]
[Sidenote: Was there a ‘hiatus’ between the Palaeolithic and the
Neolithic Age?]
The close of the British Palaeolithic Age is veiled in obscurity.
‘Mesolithic’ implements, whose form might show that they belonged to a
period of transition between Palaeolithic and the Neolithic Age, have
been diligently sought for; and some of the seekers insist that they
have found them:[201] but the claim has not won general acceptance;
and even if it could be established, a doubt would remain whether
the makers of those implements belonged to the palaeolithic race of
Britain or to a race which had come from abroad after our Palaeolithic
Age had passed away. In the words of a high authority[202] ‘there
appears, in this country at all events, to be a complete gap between
the River-drift and Surface Stone Periods, so far as any intermediate
forms of implements are concerned; and here at least the race of men
who fabricated the oldest of the palaeolithic implements may have,
and in all probability had, disappeared at an epoch remote from that
when the country was again occupied by those who not only chipped but
polished their tools.’ It has been urged by those who would extend this
characteristically guarded conclusion that out of forty-eight mammalian
species which were living in Britain in the older, only thirty-one
survived into the later period; that Britain was united with the
Continent in the former, and was an island in the latter; and that in
caves which were inhabited in both periods the strata that contained
palaeolithic remains were separated by a layer of stalagmite, the
formation of which would have required many centuries, from the upper
neolithic stratum. But all these arguments do not prove that there was
a breach of continuity between the two ages. If seventeen mammalian
species perished, thirty-one did survive. If Britain was continental in
the Palaeolithic Age and insular in the Neolithic, the contrast does
not exclude the possibility that man survived with his fellow animals
from the former into the latter: at the time when the Hoxne implements
were lost the land stood only a few feet above its present level,[203]
and a strait must have separated Britain from Gaul; nor, on the other
hand, is it absolutely certain that the earliest neolithic immigrants
did not cross the Channel valley on foot. And if the stalagmite which
lay between palaeolithic and neolithic implements proved that in
certain caves the stage of culture represented by the lower strata was
separated by a vast gulf of time from that represented by the higher,
it still remains possible that some descendants of the primitive
hunters may have survived to meet the neolithic invaders. Whoever
maintains that there was a ‘hiatus’ between the two stone ages in
Britain must frame some theory to account for the disappearance of the
palaeolithic race. Either they must have been utterly destroyed by some
cataclysm which could hardly have been less fatal to the thirty-one
mammalian species that survived; or they must have been struck down
by a pestilence, such as has never been recorded, that spared none;
or they must have died out, although there was no civilized race to
expedite their fate; or they must one and all have emigrated for some
reason which cannot be explained. It is true that in the valley of
the Lea near London and at Caddington the old land-surface on which
they lived is covered by ‘contorted drift’, above which no undisturbed
palaeolithic relics have been found; and it has been supposed that
the cold to which the formation of this deposit was due forced the
inhabitants to migrate southward. But this evidence has not been taken
seriously; and it has also been suggested that the emigration, if it
took place, was caused by an outbreak of disease, which, if it was
real, may have been merely local. Again, it has been asserted by the
most persistent advocate of discontinuity that the ‘cave men’ fled in
terror before neolithic persecutors;[204] that their line of retreat
is indicated by implements in the caves of Germany and in refuse heaps
of Siberia; and that the extinction of certain mammals and the flight
of others was due to the change of climate which resulted from the
new-born insularity of Britain.[205] But if the cave-men were driven
away by neolithic invaders, what becomes of the alleged hiatus? why
should implements in Germany and Siberia be connected with British
fugitives? and if mammals abandoned Britain because it had become
an island, how did they get away? Somewhere or other the newer was
evolved from the older culture: the palaeolithic skeletons which have
been found in the caves near Mentone are not distinguishable from
those of the same Ligurian coast which were interred in the Neolithic
Age;[206] and evidence from stratified deposits in the valley of the
Seine, lying one above another in unbroken succession, as well as the
remarkable discoveries at Mas d’Azil and in the Riviera, have convinced
the anthropologists of France that in their country a hiatus did not
exist.[207] Therefore those of us who cling to the belief that the
neolithic immigrants who first ventured to launch their frail canoes on
the narrow Channel and ran them aground on the Kentish coast may have
found the new-born island inhabited by men of an older race have some
reason to show for our pious faith.[208]
CHAPTER III
THE NEOLITHIC AGE
[Sidenote: The early neolithic immigrants.]
No one can say how long after the close of the Ice Age the first
neolithic immigrants appeared;[209] nor can it even be positively
affirmed that in Northern Britain the last glacier had then melted
away. If they sailed across the Dover Strait, it was, as we have
seen, extremely narrow; and we can hardly be sure that it existed
at all.[210] Neolithic hunters, who may not have belonged to the
earliest horde, roamed in forests which now lie buried beneath the
Bristol Channel and the waves that break upon the Land’s End;[211]
and from the depths at which their remains have been dug up it may be
reasonably inferred that Southern Britain then extended at least as far
as the line which is marked upon our maps and charts by the ten-fathom
contour. But while in England the land stood above the modern level, in
Scotland it lay below; for along the margin of the fifty-foot raised
beach there are heaps of refuse left by men who lived at a time when
the estuary of the Forth ran up to Falkirk, and the lands which form
the Carse of Stirling were submerged:[212] dug-out canoes have been
found embedded in the basin of the Clyde more than twenty feet above
the present high-water mark;[213] and in a cave which was discovered
by quarrymen in a cliff facing the bay of Oban, a hundred yards from
the existing beach, dwelled hunters and fishermen, whose mode of
life is attested by their deer-horn harpoons, the remains of the oxen
and deer on which they partly subsisted, and the bone pins with which
they fastened their clothing.[214] The character of the relics has led
experts to the conclusion that the people to whom they belonged were
among the earliest of the neolithic inhabitants of Western Europe;
indeed it may be that they were descendants of a British or a Pyrenaean
palaeolithic stock. The harpoons are of the same type as those which
in the caves of South-Western France are assigned to the close of
the Palaeolithic Age and to a time of transition between it and the
following epoch, and which in recognized neolithic deposits have never
been found either in Britain or in Gaul; and the general aspect of the
Scottish and the Gaulish remains is virtually the same.[215] There are,
moreover, other indications that the British Neolithic Age began long
before the period to which the great majority of the antiquities that
lie in our museums belong. A few years ago there were brought to light
traces of a settlement which some primitive clan had formed on the bank
of a stream that flows through Blashenwell Farm, hard by Corfe Castle.
These settlers had lived in great part upon limpets, which they must
have eaten raw, since the broken shells showed no trace of fire: they
did not till the soil; they had no domestic animals and no pottery;
and their tools were of the rudest kind.[216] Moreover, besides the
implements that lay beneath the submerged forests, there have been
found in the bed of the Trent, and in the Ham Marshes, thirty feet
below the surface, skulls which are so far different from those that
have been recovered from barrows and cairns as to suggest that the
oldest neolithic invaders may have belonged to another stock.[217]
[Sidenote: The origins of British civilization were neolithic.]
But whoever they may have been, whatever the date of their arrival, it
was an era since which the history of this country has been continuous.
Their descendants are with us still: they or later comers brought with
them the seeds of cereals and plants which are cultivated still, and
animals the descendants of which still stock our farms; they practised
handicrafts and arts from which the industries of modern Britain have
been in part evolved.[218]
[Sidenote: Geography of neolithic Britain.]
The subsidence which is proved by the submerged forests was going on
throughout the Neolithic Age, and only ceased about three thousand
years ago. While the forests were insensibly sinking, the valleys
that stretched behind them were flooded by the advancing sea, which
penetrated through the chalk downs into the Weald in long fiords, and
doubtless often carried the canoes of the later invaders.[219] But we
cannot fix even approximately the period at which these people began to
arrive.[220] All that can be said is that it was many centuries before
the Bronze Age, which probably began in this country about eighteen
hundred years before the Christian era.[221]
[Sidenote: Who were the later neolithic invaders?]
These hordes doubtless set out from various parts of northern Gaul; but
to determine their origin is perhaps impossible.[222] The skeletons
that have been exhumed from the neolithic tombs of England, Scotland,
and Ireland, except some which were interred in the very latest period,
when invaders of a widely different race were beginning to arrive,
belong, for the most part, to the same general type. All, or almost
all, had long narrow skulls: their faces were commonly oval, their
features regular, and their noses aquiline: most of them were of middle
height, and their limbs, as a rule, were rather delicate than robust.
Men with the same physical characters lived contemporaneously in
Gaul and the Spanish peninsula, and are still numerous in the basin
of the Mediterranean; and the race to which they belonged is often
called the Iberian, though there is no reason to believe that its
British representatives belonged to the Iberian rather than to some
other branch of the Mediterranean stock.[223] But it is remarkable
that while early in the Neolithic Age Gaul and Spain, as well as
Central Europe, were overrun by invaders of a totally different kind,
who were extremely short and sturdy and had broad round heads, there
is no evidence that men of this race reached Britain until the very
end of the period, and then only in comparatively small numbers.[224]
One would be inclined to infer that tribes of the Mediterranean stock
began to migrate into Britain before many of the round-headed race had
settled in Gaul. Vain attempts [Sidenote: Evidence from dolmens.] have
been made to trace the migration to its original starting-point by
the distribution of the dolmens, or rude stone sepulchres,[225] which
are found in many European countries. A dolmen, in the strict sense
of the word, is composed of large stones set on end, which wholly or
partially enclose a space, and are covered by other stones or by a
single stone, which rests upon their upper ends. Most of the chambers
in our chambered barrows virtually answer to this definition; and
if the enclosing mounds were removed, would appear as dolmens.[226]
Some few, however, as well as chambers which have been explored in
Brittany, were roofed over, like the so-called beehive huts, by layers
of stones, which, as they rose, gradually approached each other, the
highest supporting a flat slab whose weight kept them in place, while
the pressure of the superincumbent cairn or barrow gave solidity to
the whole.[227] But although the dolmens which are generally so called
may be older than the chambered barrows,[228] they also were almost
always covered or at least fenced by earthen mounds or cairns, which,
in many cases, were still visible little more than a century ago.[229]
There is no reason to suppose that in this country or in Ireland they
were built by tribes of a different stock: it is impossible to draw
a sharp distinction between the two classes of graves;[230] and for
our present purpose they may safely be grouped together. They abound
in Syria and Northern Africa, along the western side of the Spanish
peninsula, over nearly the whole area of France, in Northern Germany,
Wales[231] and the west of England, Ireland, South-Western and Northern
Scotland, Denmark, and Scandinavia. Some archaeologists conclude that a
dolmen-building race gradually moved westward from Syria, crossed the
Straits of Gibraltar, and thence passed through Spain and Gaul into
Britain; while others insist that the place of their departure was
Scandinavia. But it is not improbable that dolmens, which exist also
in India, Japan, and many other countries, and which might have been
built all over the world if stones had been everywhere available for
their construction, were not originally designed by any one people,
and that the resemblances which have been pointed out between those of
widely separated regions were simply due to the similarity with which
different tribes acted in similar circumstances. The neolithic skulls
and the neolithic sepulchral pottery of Scandinavia are unlike those
of Britain; while, on the other hand, the British dolmens belong to an
earlier stage of culture than those of Africa. Everything points to the
conclusion that the earliest dolmen-builders of Britain retreated from
Gaul before the sturdy round-headed invaders;[232] and it is useless
to inquire whether the Mediterranean stock, to which the British, like
the earlier French dolmen-builders, belonged, originated in Europe, in
Asia, or in Africa. We only know that the oldest traces of the race
were discovered in the Riviera.[233] Some philologists, however, affirm
that the modern Celtic dialects are distinguished by peculiarities of
syntax which show that they were influenced by contact with an older
language akin to the Hamitic dialects of Africa.[234]
[Sidenote: Relics of the neolithic population: their settlements.]
Relics of the neolithic population have been found over the whole
extent of Great Britain and in the adjacent islands, from Kent to
Cornwall, from the Isle of Wight to Shetland, not only in barrows
and cairns, but also in caves in which they lived and died, in the
neighbourhood of the quarries from which they obtained flint for
manufacturing their tools, in pit-dwellings, on the margins of lakes,
in the beds of rivers, in ditches, in peat-mosses, in sandy wastes
where the sand had been blown away from the soil which it had long
concealed, in fens, on open downs, and in fields by the accidental
impact of a plough. Their sepulchres, as we shall afterwards see,[235]
remain in comparatively few regions; but on the more cultivated lands
many have doubtless been destroyed. It is reasonable to suppose that
the settlements were made successively throughout a long period; and
that the earliest comers took possession of the choicest lands in
the south. Those who came later would displace their predecessors
if they had the power, and if the prize seemed worth a struggle:
otherwise they would move on to the nearest vacant lands; and so in
the course of ages, and after much bloodshed, the whole island came
to be occupied. But each successive horde found large tracts of the
country through which they plodded overgrown by forests or covered
by morasses; and they must often have had to travel far before they
could obtain a suitable abode. Except the gigantic Irish elk and the
wild ox known as the aurochs, which survived into the Bronze Age, and
which, later still, Caesar found roaming in the German forests,[236]
the great beasts which had lived in Britain with palaeolithic man were
no more; but brown bears and grizzly bears, beavers and wild cats,
still survived; herons, swans, and cormorants flitted over the fens;
red deer, wild boars, and even a few reindeer remained to supply the
new comers with game; and in every forest wolves were lurking to prey
upon their cattle.[237] If we were to mark upon a map all the places
at which neolithic implements have been found, it would correspond
more or less closely with one constructed _a priori_ by a geographer,
ignorant of the results of archaeological research, who appreciated
the requirements of early settlers. He would expect to find that they
had avoided as far as possible the toil of cutting down woods, and
that they had selected dry uplands, where the subsoil was porous and
their cattle could find pasture, and which overlooked river-valleys,
where they themselves could get water and fuel, and on the slopes of
which they could build sheltered dwellings. He would not therefore be
surprised to learn that the traces of occupation are most numerous
on the chalk downs, the Derbyshire moorlands, the Pennine Range and
the Yorkshire Wolds, the Malvern Hills, and other high lands which
fulfilled the necessary conditions.[238]
Without his tools the settler could not build his hut, cut his
firewood, or kill and dress a calf or a kid from his herd. Let us
therefore try to ascertain how he made them, and how far he had
improved as a craftsman upon the rude methods of his palaeolithic
predecessor.
[Sidenote: Flint mines and implement factories.]
Within the last half-century archaeologists have succeeded in revealing
some of the factories in which the prehistoric cutlers wrought. The
nature of their materials of course still depended upon the rocks which
were to be found in the district where they lived. Those who could
get no flint used quartzite, basalt, felstone, greenstone, porphyry,
diorite, or whatever stone they could obtain.[239] But flint was still
the staple material. The palaeolithic hunters were obliged, as we have
seen, to use stray blocks: their successors had learned how to win the
flint from the bed of chalk in which it lay. Among the chief centres
of mining and manufacture were Brandon in Suffolk and Cissbury, which
is on the South Downs, about three miles north of Worthing. Grime’s
Graves, the mines which supplied the famous factory of Brandon, are
situated in a fern-clad wood, and occupy more than twenty acres.
The so-called graves are circular shafts, about twenty-five feet in
diameter at the mouth, from thirty to fifty deep, and on an average
twenty-five feet apart. Most of them were connected by galleries, which
had been tunnelled in directions that followed the seams of the flint.
The tools with which the excavations were made were stone ‘celts’, or
hatchets, and picks made of the brow-tines of the antlers of reindeer.
Unlike modern picks they were one-sided; and a specimen encrusted with
chalk on which the owner’s finger-prints are still visible, is now
lying in the Prehistoric Room of the British Museum. More than one of
the lamps were found by the aid of which the workmen had groped their
way through the galleries,--small cups hollowed out of chalk, which
they had evidently filled with oil or fat and furnished with some kind
of wick.[240] When the flint had been hewn out with the hatchets,
which have left their marks upon the sides of the galleries, it was
hauled up to the surface, perhaps in baskets made of wicker or hide,
and carried to the workshops, where it was wrought into implements,
which were afterwards bartered for such articles as the manufacturers
required. Innumerable flakes and chips of waste flint were found, which
testified to their activity. One of them at least was a sculptor as
well. A fragment of a human limb, modelled out of chalk, was discovered
by the antiquary who first explored the site; and he tells us that the
anatomical features were ‘rendered with an accurate knowledge of the
parts’.[241] But what most impressed him was to find in one of the
galleries a set of tools lying upon a piece of unfinished work in the
position in which they had been laid some four thousand years ago.[242]
Walking through the wood to the open heath of Broomhill, he came to
the pits that yield the material which the ‘knappers’ of Brandon still
manufacture into gun-flints for African tribes. The industry has been
carried on since neolithic times, and even then it was ancient; for
Brandon was an abode of flint-workers in the Old Stone Age. Not only
the pits but even the tools show little change: the picks which the
modern workers use are made of iron, but here alone in Britain the old
one-sided form is still retained. Only the skill of the workers has
degenerated: the exquisite evenness of chipping which distinguished
the neolithic arrow-heads is beyond the power of the most experienced
knapper to reproduce.[243]
The flint works at Cissbury have a general resemblance to those of
Grime’s Graves; but the pits were sunk on a different principle.[244]
They are contained in an entrenchment which did not exist at the time
when the earliest were made, but was almost certainly constructed in
the Neolithic Age.[245] The extreme rudeness of the tools which were
found in them has led to the belief that they are older than Grime’s
Graves;[246] but, on the other hand, stone implements of the rudest
kind were manufactured for special purposes long after the Stone Age
had passed away.[247] Moreover, many of the ruder Cissbury tools appear
to be unfinished; and it may have been intended that they should be
perfected by the people with whom they were exchanged. Many of the
smaller pits contained not only stone implements but also fragments
of pottery and remains of horses, goats, deer, and horned cattle; and
from this Pitt-Rivers, who first explored them, concluded that they had
been used as dwellings after they had ceased to serve their purpose as
quarries, or had been inhabited by the workers who obtained their flint
from the larger pits. On this site also deer-horn picks were found; and
Pitt-Rivers, wishing to test their value, provided a set of similar
tools, with which he and one of the labourers whom he employed dug a
pit three feet square and three feet deep in an hour and a half.[248]
[Sidenote: Difficulty of determining age of stone implements.]
With the better material which was thus obtained the neolithic
craftsmen fashioned implements of which some can hardly be
distinguished, even by experts, from those of the older period, though
the greater number are recognizable even by a tiro. It must, however,
be remembered that in many cases one cannot tell whether a find of
stone implements belongs to the Neolithic or to the Bronze Age; and
some are probably later still. Indeed it would be impossible to point
to any kind of stone implements which ceased to be manufactured in
Britain when bronze was introduced.[249] [Sidenote: Indefiniteness of
the prehistoric ‘Ages’.] One of the first cautions which the student
of archaeology gives himself is that the epochs into which it has been
found convenient to divide the Prehistoric Period were not definitely
separated. It has been well said that they shade into one another like
the colours in the solar spectrum.[250] The age in which we are now
living affords an illustration. In one sense what might be called the
Mechanical Age began when the first motor-car appeared on a London
street; but we are still living in an era of transition, which will not
end until, if ever, horses shall have ceased to be used for traction.
Similarly stone tools continued to be used throughout the Bronze Age
and the Late Celtic Period; and in certain remoter parts of the British
Isles they are being used to-day.[251] When they are found associated
with primary interments in long barrows or chambered cairns, or when
they are met with in large numbers in other deposits which there is
no reason to assign to a later period, they may as a rule be safely
referred to the Neolithic Age; but, as we shall presently see,[252]
there are certain implements of stone which were undoubtedly used in
the Bronze Age, and of which it cannot be said with certainty that in
this country they were used before. Some interments, however, which are
ascribed to the Age of Bronze may have belonged to the older race, who
still remained in their neolithic age although they were glad to use
any bronze tools upon which they could lay their hands. Similarly the
grave of an Australian savage who was buried some sixty years ago was
found to contain, besides a piece of flint, a clay pipe, an iron spoon,
and the handle of a pocket-knife.[253]
[Sidenote: Stone implements.]
The several kinds of tools that first began to be used in the Neolithic
Age present numerous varieties of form which, in this book, it would
be irrelevant to describe. To deal with them is the province of
archaeology; and the reader who wishes to make himself acquainted with
them can do so, after he has mastered the literature of the subject,
by visiting the collections in our museums and by himself becoming
a collector. Here we desire only to learn so much as may help us to
understand how neolithic man lived, and from what origins the culture
which succeeded his was evolved.
The Neolithic Age is sometimes, especially on the other side of the
Channel, called the period of polished stone:[254] but most of our
flint implements were neither ground nor polished; they were merely
chipped. Many specimens indeed, from one cause or another, have never
received their finishing touches; but many others were of such a kind
that grinding or polishing would have been labour lost.[255]
[Sidenote: The two main divisions of flint implements.]
Neolithic flint implements may be grouped in two classes. In one, which
comprises the larger kinds--axes, hammer-stones, and the like--the
implement was made out of a block of flint, and the splinters struck
off during the process of manufacture were either mere waste or
utilized for making smaller tools.[256] The other class consists of
tools which were made out of flakes, the core, after all the required
flakes had been detached, being thrown away.[257]
[Sidenote: How flint implements were made.]
Flint fresh from the quarry was easier to manufacture; and accordingly
the cutlers established their workshops close by the mines. Their
methods were perhaps not everywhere the same; but it is easy to form a
general idea of them from observing the processes which are followed
by tribes which are still in their stone age and by the knappers who
ply their trade near Grime’s Graves. Sometimes, like the Cloud River
Indians, the workers may have applied a pebble or a punch of deer-horn
to the surface of the flint block, and produced flakes by striking it
with his stone hammer; but Sir John Evans believes that the flakes
were generally struck off with a hammer or a pebble alone; and he has
found experimentally that by this simple method a practised hand can
attain almost perfect precision. Laying the flakes which he had thus
removed with the flat face uppermost upon a smooth block of stone, he
has succeeded by blows of a pebble in chipping their ends into whatever
form he desired. Similarly hatchets were first rough-hewn by striking
splinters from the flint block, and afterwards gradually chipped into
the proper shape. Whether the material was flint or some other stone,
the method would have remained the same. When it was desired to attain
the utmost perfection, the implements were ground, not upon a revolving
but upon a fixed stone, and polished by stone rubbers in conjunction
with sand.[258] The process by which the arrow-heads and spear-heads
were manufactured, whose exquisite workmanship entrances all who see
them, cannot be described; for the modern tribes who make such weapons
work in various ways. Small stone tools, however, are often found, with
blunted ends, made out of thick flakes, which may have been used in
arrow-flaking, and which accordingly have been termed ‘fabricators’;
and as they are most numerous in the districts which have yielded the
greatest number of arrow-heads, the appellation is probably correct.
Arrow-heads have indeed been recently made with them, but with
somewhat obtuse edges; and it has therefore been suggested that the
fabricator was only used for removing irregularities from the flake,
and that the final chipping was accomplished with a tool of deer-horn,
which, pressed deftly against the edge of the flake, detached minute
splinters. The surface of many flint arrow-heads and javelin-heads is,
however, covered with beautifully uniform fluting, like ripple-marks on
sand; and the most experienced modern operators confess that they do
not understand how this effect was produced.[259]
[Illustration: FIG. 5. ½]
[Illustration: FIG. 6. ½]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
[Sidenote: Celts]
It may be well to enumerate the various tools which would have formed
a complete outfit for a neolithic household. The kinds which were
made from a block of stone were celts, which comprised hatchets and
adzes, and of which some may have been used as chisels and knives;
axes perforated for the insertion of a handle; chisels and gouges;
hammer-stones, pestles, and whetstones. Most readers are familiar with
the term ‘celt’; but not every one is aware that it has no connexion
with the name of the people who were the latest prehistoric invaders
of these islands, and is simply an Anglicized form of a Latin word,
meaning a chisel, which does not occur except in the Vulgate.[260]
Some celts were ground or polished only on the edge; some over their
whole surface; and a few are so exquisitely finished on both sides that
the labour which was devoted to them would have seemed excessive unless
it had been a labour of love.[261] On the other hand, many were neither
ground nor polished; and some of the ruder ones may have been used as
agricultural implements.[262] Several have been found with pointed
butts and extremely elongated oval sections, which have the closest
resemblance to celts from the West Indies, and illustrate the truth
of the observation that identity in form of implements, weapons, and
other objects belonging to widely separated lands does not necessarily
prove community of origin, but as a rule merely shows that similar
wants in similar circumstances produce similar results.[263] Although
those celts which were used as hatchets or adzes were evidently
mounted, there are some that show grooves on both sides or notches
on one side, which seem to have been intended to enable them to be
easily grasped.[264] Most of the handles, having been made of wood,
have naturally perished; but two hatchets, now in the British Museum,
have been found with their handles complete,--one in Solway Moss by
a man digging peat for fuel,[265] the other in the bed of a Cumbrian
lake called Ehenside Tarn.[266] Unlike the Swiss lake-dwellers, who
had learned to fix their blades in deer-horn sockets, which were
sufficiently elastic to prevent the wooden hafts from being injured by
concussion,[267] the makers of these hatchets had simply mounted them
in a hole which fitted the butt, but which, by the jar of repeated
blows, must soon have become split.[268]
[Sidenote: Their uses.]
[Illustration: FIG. 8.]
Like the stone hatchets of the Maoris, neolithic celts were doubtless
used not only for felling trees,[269] chopping firewood, and
slaughtering cattle, but also as battle-axes; and the profusion in
which the ruder kinds have been found at Cissbury and Grime’s Graves
shows that they also served as miners’ tools.[270]
[Sidenote: Chisels and gouges.]
Among the chisels some of the most interesting are small specimens,
which came from Suffolk and the Yorkshire Wolds, and which may have
been designed for wood-carving, and one from the Fen country, the end
of which is described as exactly like that of a narrow ‘cold chisel’ of
steel, used by engineers.[271] Gouges, which are abundant in Denmark
and Sweden, are very rare in this country. It has been suggested that
canoes, for making which they were perhaps chiefly used, were more
necessary in Scandinavia than in Britain; and it is significant that
the best British gouges all come from the fens, where canoes must have
been needed for crossing the floods.[272] It is probable, however, that
although gouges may have been used in finishing the vessels, the heavy
work of hollowing the trees out of which they were formed was largely
performed by the agency of fire, as among the North American Indians of
comparatively recent times.[273]
[Illustration: FIG. 9. ½]
[Sidenote: Axes, axe-hammers, anvils, and mullers.]
No stone implements are more familiar to students of antiquities
than the axes, axe-hammers, and hammers, in which, as in those of
our own day, holes were drilled for the insertion of handles. Many
of them were probably used as weapons of war. Some of the axes are
double-edged, though the edge is often blunted, as though it had been
intended rather for striking than for cutting; while the axe-hammers
resemble an ordinary hammer at one end, and are sharpened at the
other.[274] It would perhaps be impossible to prove that any of these
tools were used in Southern Britain in the Neolithic Age, although
they were not uncommon on the Continent;[275] and most of those
which are to be seen in our museums undoubtedly belong to the time
when bronze was common:[276] but some few have been found in Scotland
in chambered cairns.[277] Not one of them is made of flint.[278] Of
the implements which are known as hammer-stones some which have deep
cup-shaped depressions may have served as anvils or mortars; and others
again--quartzite pebbles or flint cores, which were found at Cissbury,
Grime’s Graves, and other places--were apparently used for chipping
flints. Some nearly globular stones, whose battered surfaces testify to
hard wear, were doubtless for triturating grain or edible roots.[279]
[Illustration: FIG. 10. ½]
[Sidenote: Implements made by flakes.]
The varieties of tools which have been made out of flakes are too
numerous to particularize. Simple flakes, flat or triangular in
section, varying in length from nine or ten inches to one inch, are the
most abundant of all stone implements, and are to be found in every
quarter of the globe. Here they are generally made of flint and are
rarely ground. Some of them may have been used as surgical instruments;
for, as we shall presently see, trepanning of the human skull was
practised in the Neolithic Age.[280] Others were made into saws, the
teeth of which are occasionally so fine that to the unaided eye they
are hardly visible.[281] Many, shaped like horse-shoes, ducks’ bills,
oyster-shells, or short spoons, or nearly round, were used for dressing
hides, for scraping haematitic iron ore in order to obtain the red
pigment which served primitive man as rouge,[282] and perhaps, in
conjunction with nodules of iron pyrites, for producing fire.[283] Some
were fashioned into awls and drills;[284] others into knives, daggers,
and curved blades, which may perhaps have [Sidenote: Javelin-heads
and arrow-heads.] been sickles.[285] But the most beautiful weapons
made out of flakes were javelin-heads and arrow-heads, which in this
country are almost always of flint. If British neolithic workmanship
did not on the whole reach the level of that of Denmark, in fashioning
missile weapons our armourers could hold their own. Whether any
given specimen was an arrow-head or a javelin-head, a javelin-head
or a spear-head, can generally be decided only by size. Many are
so small that no one can mistake the purpose for which they were
intended; but it is not certain whether the largest were attached to
spear-shafts, properly so called, or served as javelins. Arrow-heads
and javelin-heads may be grouped in four classes, each of which
has several varieties,--leaf-shaped, lozenge-shaped, stemmed, and
triangular; but some five or six arrow-heads have been picked up
whose outline was characterized by ogee curves. The stemmed heads are
generally, and the triangular, which are rare, occasionally barbed.
Although the various kinds were used contemporaneously, barbs were
perhaps of comparatively late invention,[286] and may have been evolved
in the struggle for existence as the population became more dense.[287]
Not a single barbed arrow-head or javelin-head has ever been found in a
long barrow;[288] but they occur in the chambered cairns of Scotland,
as well as in certain English round barrows which were erected towards
the end of the Neolithic Age;[289] and a fine specimen was associated
with many beautifully finished implements in a neolithic village at
West Wickham.[290] A leaf-shaped arrow-head was found in a peat-moss
at Fyvie, in Aberdeenshire, still fixed in a cleft in its shaft;
but the cord or sinew by which it had doubtless been secured had
disappeared.[291] Arrow-heads may also have been made of hardened wood
or bone, which holds poison better than flint.[292]
[Illustration: FIG. 11. ½]
[Illustration: FIG. 12.]
[Illustration: FIG. 13.]
[Illustration: FIG. 14.]
[Illustration: FIG. 15.]
[Sidenote: Bone implements.]
The archers of many countries use wrist-guards to protect their
arms against the recoil of the bowstring; and for this purpose the
prehistoric Britons made rectangular plates of stone or bone, curved to
fit their wrists and perforated near the angles with holes to enable
them to be fastened. Most of those which have been collected belonged
to the Bronze Age; but they probably came into use before.[293] Various
other implements of bone--awls, needles, chisels, and perhaps daggers
and lance-heads--were also common in the Neolithic Age;[294] and it is
worth noticing that a well-known collector has found palaeolithic tools
which, as his practised eye discerned, had been picked up and reflaked
by neolithic men.[295]
[Sidenote: Pygmy flints.]
Of all stone implements the most curious are the tiny objects which are
known as ‘pygmy flints’, and which have been found not only in certain
parts of Britain[296] and Ireland,[297] but also in France, Belgium,
Spain, North Africa and Egypt, Palestine and India. They are all made
of minute flakes; and in one of our collections the marks of working
could not be detected without the aid of a microscope, while sixty-four
specimens, many of which were no more than a quarter of an inch long,
weighed less than half an ounce. Numerous guesses, which need not be
repeated, have been made as to their use. Everywhere their forms are
identical; and, partly for this reason, partly because in many places
no other implements were associated with them, it has been supposed
by lovers of the marvellous that they were the work of a peculiar
race.[298] If the latter reason were valid, we should be compelled to
assume that the Lilliputians had sent out many colonies from the land
where Gulliver found them. But every archaeologist knows that tools and
other articles of identical form are to be found in divers continents;
and pygmy flints may often have lain with others and have escaped
observation.
[Sidenote: Specialization of industries.]
A survey of the implements and other relics arranged in a
representative collection teaches us that men had already learned the
necessity of a division of labour. Some clans who used flint implements
could only have obtained them by barter. Even in the great factories
of Grime’s Graves and Cissbury the miners were evidently distinct from
the cutlers, as were both from the herdsmen. But in other settlements,
where mining and cutlery were apparently not predominant industries,
implements have been found of such perfect finish that their
manufacture would seem to have been the special or the sole occupation
of skilled members of the community.[299]
[Sidenote: A lost art.]
But there was one thing which the forerunner of neolithic man had
done, and which he could not do. Among his relics we may look in vain
for the carved dagger-handles, the engraved antlers, and the other
works of art of the palaeolithic caves. Except in Grime’s Graves, not
a single attempt to portray the human figure, or animal, or plant
has ever been found among the deposits of the Neolithic Age. If the
artists of Derbyshire and Aquitaine had left descendants, perhaps they
were massacred or enslaved, perhaps their individuality withered under
oppression: whatever may have been the cause, the old creative art was
dead.[300]
[Sidenote: Dwellings.]
Provided with their tools, the neolithic herdsmen were able to
construct dwellings which, humble as they were, must have been
comfortable in comparison with the shelters that had satisfied the
hunters of the older time. Unfortunately, however, the evidence
relating to the domestic life of the neolithic people is far less
complete than that which has been preserved in regard to their Swiss
contemporaries. In that age and for many centuries after it had come to
an end the inhabitants of northern and western Europe, like the ancient
Romans whom Horace[301] eulogized, were content to live in habitations
which were small and mean, while, under the influence of superstitious
terror as much as of reverence, they constructed the mansions of
their dead chieftains on a magnificent scale. Thus, while neolithic
sepulchres are still conspicuous upon the western hills, few buildings
have left traces which can be referred with absolute certainty to the
same period.[302] Many of the ‘hut-circles’ and pit-dwellings which
have been excavated contain no trace of metal; but it is generally
impossible, in any given instance, to dismiss all doubts as to their
antiquity when we find others, precisely similar, which were certainly
occupied, if not built, by people who used implements of bronze. Still
it is not credible that such dwellings were constructed for the first
time after the introduction of metal working; and it is reasonable to
believe that they were common before the earliest bronze implement was
imported into Britain. Indeed a pit-dwelling has been found at the
eastern end of a long barrow near the village of Hanging Grimston on
the Yorkshire Wolds; and, as it was proved by excavation to be older
than the barrow,[303] it must have been dug in the Neolithic Age.
There were of course villages of some sort at Cissbury and Grime’s
Graves; and at Grovehurst, near Sittingbourne, are the remains of
huts which were occupied by implement-makers.[304] A group of pits on
the sheltered southern slope of Croham Hurst, about a mile south of
Croydon, the fields near which are thickly strewn with flint flakes,
probably formed the winter abode of a small community:[305] on Hayes
Common a village has been explored, comprising about one hundred and
sixty pits, the period of which was determined by the discovery of
a neolithic workshop, on the floor of a pit of identical form, at
Millfield in the immediate neighbourhood; and the neolithic age of
a settlement at West Wickham was as clearly proved by the nature of
the implements.[306] At these places, at Weybourne in Norfolk, on
the Hampshire Downs, and elsewhere, the sites of such dwellings are
indicated by circular depressions, ranging in diameter from six to
thirty feet and from two to six feet deep, which, though they generally
occur in groups, are sometimes isolated. Each is surrounded by a bank,
formed of the excavated earth, in which the entrance is marked by a
gap. The bank was in certain cases prevented from falling in by a stone
circle; and upon it was reared a hut, sometimes perhaps formed of
stones, but more often of interlaced boughs, while the roof, in which
a hole was left for the escape of smoke, was probably thatched with
fern or heather or turf, and, if it happened to be large, supported
by a pole or the trunk of a tree, the position of which seems to be
indicated by a mound in the centre of the pit.[307] A cluster of huts
was apparently sometimes surrounded by an entrenchment, which protected
the inhabitants and their cattle from night attacks.[308] Rude as these
structures were, they fulfilled their purpose. The soil on which they
were built was generally dry: the pit not only ensured warmth but also
enabled the roof to be carried to a sufficient height: the bank, by
throwing off the rain, kept the interior dry; and while in certain
cases the remains of a hearth made of flints are found in the centre,
in others it would seem that cooking was performed outside. Thus one
group of pits on Hayes Common, the dimensions of which are within
the ordinary range, is associated with smaller depressions, which
apparently contained cooking-hearths.[309] A small fire might have been
safely lighted inside the hut to warm the inmates; but a large one,
such as would have been necessary for cooking a joint or an entire hare
or sucking-pig, might have ignited the inflammable roof.[310]
A remarkable group of pits has recently been excavated in
Wigtownshire.[311] Piles had been driven into them to support a wooden
floor, the object of which was doubtless to keep them dry; and the
marks on the piles seemed to their discoverer to show that they had
been cut with stone hatchets.[312]
Three entirely subterranean chambers, of a kind which has been met
with nowhere else in the British Isles, have lately been discovered by
navvies who were digging a sewer-trench at Waddon, near Croydon. They
were about twelve feet in diameter and seven feet high; and although
they contained fragments of Romano-British pottery, the flint flakes
and blocks which lay upon the floors were assigned by the experienced
antiquary who explored them[313] to the Age of Stone. While he was
impressed by their exact resemblance to certain Portuguese neolithic
chambers which were used for burial,[314] he suggested that they might
also have served as shelters in times of excessive heat or cold.
Unlike their Swiss contemporaries, who built their huts on platforms,
supported by piles driven into the beds of lakes, the neolithic Britons
lived mainly if not exclusively on land. Lake-dwellings indeed abound
in the British Isles; but exploration shows that almost all were
erected in the Late Celtic Period; and the only one in Britain which
can with any show of reason be referred to the Age of Stone is in
Holderness, which, before it was drained, was covered with marshes and
shallow meres. One of a group of five, called the West Furze dwelling,
contained a large number of flint flakes: but a bronze spear-head was
also found in it; and the evidence is not sufficient to show that it
was built in a pre-metallic period.[315]
[Sidenote: Food and cookery.]
The food of the neolithic population has left more abundant traces
than their homes. The bones which are strewed in their sepulchres and
settlements show that they lived in great part on venison and the flesh
of the wild boar;[316] and the skull of an aurochs, which was found in
the Fen country with a stone weapon sticking in it,[317] proves that
they also followed the largest game. Unlike the palaeolithic hunters,
they used dogs in the chase; and it has been plausibly conjectured that
these animals were the first to be domesticated. For man was a hunter
before he was a herdsman; and the dog would soon begin to lick the hand
that rewarded it with a share of the slaughtered boar or deer.[318]
It would seem, however, that when with advancing age dogs had become
too slow for hunting, they were killed and eaten; for canine bones,
apparently of old animals, were found at Grime’s Graves.[319] Neolithic
immigrants introduced sheep,[320] goats, and pigs as well as horned
cattle; and all the bones of the latter which have been collected from
their refuse-heaps and graves were those of small oxen, the scientific
name of which--_Bos longifrons_--is familiar to all students of
antiquities, and which resembled their living descendants, the Kerry
cattle of Ireland and the small black animals of the Welsh mountains.
Some authorities believe that these and all our varieties of domestic
oxen are descended from the aurochs, which, as we have seen, was living
in this country in palaeolithic times, and suggest that its calves were
trapped and tamed;[321] while others maintain that _Bos longifrons_
was introduced by neolithic immigrants. The extreme smallness of the
prehistoric domestic oxen is as easily accounted for as that of the
mountain cattle of the present day. The tribes who kept them had but
limited pasturage: forage in winter was probably scanty; and the
milk which was needed by their calves was largely consumed by their
owners.[322] The broken bones of cattle which were found at Grime’s
Graves belonged to very young animals, which the implement-makers who
bred them evidently could not afford to rear.[323] The meat was boiled
in rude hand-made vessels of earthenware heated by red-hot flints, or,
as we may infer from the frequent occurrence in barrows of charred
bones, roasted or broiled over the fire; and the remains of each meal
were left to accumulate in the huts.[324] It has been suggested by
one of the most eminent of living anthropologists that the ornament,
so often observed on prehistoric earthenware, which was produced by
impressing a cord upon the clay while it was soft, may be traceable
to an earlier time when the art of the potter had not been evolved,
and vessels were made of plaited cords and also perhaps of skins and
hollowed wood.[325]
[Sidenote: Agriculture.]
Although agriculture was practised by the later neolithic inhabitants
of Denmark[326] and the lake-dwellers of Switzerland,[327] there is
very little evidence that their contemporaries in this country tilled
the soil. A few of the stone pestles which have been found belong, it
is true, to that period,[328] but it is impossible, except perhaps
in a very few instances, to affirm that they were used for grinding
corn;[329] and although, as we have seen, certain rough-hewn celts
may have been agricultural implements,[330] it is doubtful whether
they all belong to the Age of Stone. Cereals and textile flax-fabrics,
which are abundant in the lake-dwellings, are absolutely wanting in
every British neolithic deposit that has been explored.[331] Negative
evidence of this kind may not be worth much: nevertheless there is
reason to believe that agriculture was rare in Britain before the
introduction of bronze. Barrow-diggers have often noticed that the
teeth of neolithic skeletons are, as a rule, remarkably perfect; while
those of the skulls found in round barrows and unchambered cairns
are very much worn down; and it has been reasonably argued that the
difference was due to food. The people of the Bronze Age, who were
undoubtedly cultivators, subsisted in great part upon grain, which
was probably ill cooked, and must have been largely mixed with stony
grit from contact with the rude mullers by which it had been ground.
The neolithic people, on the other hand, lived mainly upon milk and
flesh-meat.[332] Pastoral tribes do not turn to agriculture until their
numbers have increased to such a degree that they have no prospect of
being able to live by hunting and on the produce of their flocks and
herds alone: they prefer an easy life; and agriculture, especially to
those whose implements are primitive, is difficult and laborious.[333]
If corn was grown, it was probably on the open chalk downs.[334] The
richer soils were covered with forest; and, although the stone axe was
a better tool than any which the primitive hunters had possessed, the
neolithic herdsman must have shrunk from the labour of cutting down the
trees and dragging them away. Fire would have been of no avail. Men
who have cleared forests in New Zealand will tell you that the fiercest
flames will not destroy standing trees: twigs and leaves burn like
tinder; but the trunk remains unconsumed.
[Sidenote: Treatment of women.]
There is evidence, though it is hardly needed, that the inevitable
hardships of life were not equally shared, and that the lot of the
women was worse than that of the men. Judging from the measurements of
the neolithic skeletons, the disparity between the sexes in stature
was as great as it is among modern savage tribes. The average height
of the men was about five feet six inches, of the women only four
feet ten inches: the difference in civilized communities is about
half as much.[335] It is perhaps safe to conclude that when food was
scarce, the men thought first of themselves, and that the women not
only suffered from the effects of early child-bearing,[336] but had
more than their [Sidenote: Duration of life.] share of toil. No doubt
disease, the attacks of wild beasts, and frequent accidents, as well as
intertribal wars, tended to shorten the duration of life: at all events
Thurnam calculated that the average age of the people whose skeletons
he had examined was not more than forty-five years.[337]
[Sidenote: Clothing and ornaments.]
The sheep and goats and the wild red deer which supplied the tribes
with food doubtless clothed them as well; and it may be questioned
whether in this respect they had advanced much beyond the primitive
denizens of caves. The lake-dwellers of Switzerland were expert
spinners: the textile fabrics which lay unnoticed for millenniums
in their settlements show what they could achieve.[338] Our own
forefathers may have been as skilful: but evidence is lacking; and
their pottery was so inferior to that of the Helvetians, they lagged
so far behind them as tool-makers, that we may reasonably assume that
their women also were less proficient in domestic arts.[339] The
perforated disks of stone and baked clay, called spindle-whorls, by
which the spindle was made to rotate, have indeed been found in great
numbers here; but not a single specimen can be assigned with confidence
to the Neolithic Age.[340] British ornaments too of that period are
very rare.[341] No doubt the Britons were as fond of display as other
barbarians: there is, as we have seen,[342] some evidence that they
decorated their bodies with red paint; but a few lignite beads, found
in the long horned cairn of Yarhouse,[343] and a single bead of shale,
found in a long barrow in Gloucestershire,[344] are all the personal
ornaments that we can unhesitatingly refer to the Age of Stone. An
ingenious archaeologist, who perhaps knows less of human nature than of
books and museums, has argued that the origin of jewellery was rooted
in superstition;[345] and those who know that natural holed stones
are still prized as amulets in the more primitive villages of this
country[346] may easily persuade themselves that savage men and women
had faith in the prophylactic properties of the perforated teeth and
beads which they hung round their necks: but nobody who can understand
the passion for sparkling gems which possesses many women and some men
will believe that the love of adornment for its own sake was not as
deep-seated in primitive human nature as superstition.[347]
[Sidenote: Trepanning.]
But amulets of a different kind, which are abundant in other lands,
appear to be almost entirely wanting in our own. It is not difficult
to understand that in material culture the prehistoric inhabitants
of Britain should have been outstripped by those of the Continent;
but it is remarkable that a practice, the motive of which was mainly
superstitious, and which was prevalent not only in every European
country but also in America, has in this island apparently left but
one vestige, which belonged to the Late Celtic Period. Sixty trepanned
skulls were found in the cavern of Baumes-Chaudes in the department
of Lozère; and twenty years ago a French physician had collected one
hundred and sixty-seven. The operation was evidently performed either
by scraping the skull with a stone implement or with a stone saw;[348]
for an eminent surgeon has remarked that saw-cuts are distinctly
visible on some of the French trepanned skulls. In a few cases the
object was to remove dead bone; but as most of the skulls show no trace
of disease, it has been conjectured that the patients were afflicted
with epilepsy, and that the operator’s aim was to relieve them by
permitting the escape of the demon who was believed to be the author of
their sufferings. It is, however, certain that the skull of a corpse
was sometimes trepanned; and the edge of the perforation in specimens
of this class generally shows signs of an old cicatrization. The
explanation may easily be found. Some of the fragments which had been
removed from trepanned skulls were evidently used as amulets, for they
are carefully rounded, polished, and perforated for suspension; and one
was actually found hanging from a Gallic torque, or gold collar, of
the Early Iron Age. Most probably, as the famous anthropologist, Paul
Broca, concluded, these amulets were taken posthumously from the skulls
of persons who had survived the operation, being regarded as potent
prophylactics.[349]
[Sidenote: The _couvade_.]
Folk-lore societies have collected countless instances of beliefs or
customs preserved by the lower classes of modern nations, many of
which are certainly of very remote origin, although it is generally
impossible to say where they originated, or whether they belonged to
this or that people of antiquity. But there is evidence that one custom
which appears utterly meaningless to those who have not inquired its
original meaning, which is retained by peoples who have long forgotten
what that meaning was, but which with others is still or was in
comparatively recent times not merely a survival but a reality, existed
among our neolithic ancestors. Every one has heard of the _couvade_,
or hatching, which ordains that when a child is born the father should
take to his bed, and there remain for days or weeks after the mother
has resumed her ordinary mode of life. We learn from Greek writers that
it prevailed among the ancient Corsicans,[350] the Tibareni of Pontus
in Asia Minor,[351] and the Iberians of Northern Spain;[352] and with
various modifications it exists or has existed among the Basques and
the Caribs of the West Indies, in South America, California, Greenland,
West Africa, Southern India, the Indian archipelago, and Eastern Asia.
It originated in a belief that the real parent was the father, and that
between him and his child there was a physical union so intimate that
unless he rested and were nursed and abstained from ordinary food, his
child would suffer. But this belief was not primitive. Matriarchy, it
would seem, was the root of family life: descent was reckoned through
the mother, for the father was often unknown. It has been conjectured
that when paternal relationship began to be acknowledged, fathers felt
the need of insisting upon their rights, and that accordingly a parody
of lying-in gradually became a custom.[353] An Irish legend shows that
the _couvade_ survived in Ulster into the Christian era;[354] and a
few years ago a similar custom was observed in a remote district of
Yorkshire.[355] Although the peoples who have retained the _couvade_ in
modern times, like those among whom its existence was noted by ancient
writers, are, with hardly an exception, neither of Aryan nor of Semitic
origin, it is perhaps conceivable that it may have been brought into
the British Isles in post-neolithic times by invaders who had accepted
it from races whom they had subdued; but it is far more probable that
it was a widespread custom of the Neolithic Age belonging to tribes of
the Mediterranean race, to which the neolithic Britons, as well as the
Iberians and Corsicans, belonged.[356]
[Sidenote: Hill-forts.]
Although the neolithic tribes of Britain had common customs and
superstitions,[357] and were, for the most part, sprung from one stock,
they were not of course a nation. Arriving in successive hordes,
and settling wherever they could find room, they were separated by
mountain, stream, forest, and morass, as well as by the lack of horses,
vehicles, and roads. But as their numbers multiplied and it became
more and more difficult to find sufficient food, the struggle for
life must have led to intertribal war, and men’s minds must have been
exercised to improve their weapons and to fortify their settlements
and cattle-pounds not only against the wolves, which they had ever
with them, but also against depredation. Every one who knows the
South Downs and the hilly districts of the midlands, the west, and the
north, has noticed the camps and earthworks which crown almost every
height; but, as we have already seen, there are only a few of these
entrenchments of which the period of construction is known, although
we have abundant evidence that many have been occupied by successive
races or in successive stages of culture. Almost all of them have
been superficially explored, and implements of neolithic form have
been found in many; but the reader knows that such implements were
used in the Bronze Age and in the Iron Age even in those parts of the
country where bronze and iron were common. If stone tools were found
in the original body of a rampart or beneath the silt in a trench,
without any objects of metal or any such tools or pottery as were
characteristic of the Bronze Age or of later times, it might fairly be
presumed that the people who built the camp were in their neolithic
stage.[358] Except the camps that are known to be Roman, and others
which have been proved by excavation to be Norman, most of those that
have been thoroughly explored were evidently constructed after the
art of metal-working had become known; and this is also true of those
that have been scientifically examined in France.[359] There are,
however, not a few British strongholds for which neolithic age has been
claimed, though perhaps in some instances on insufficient grounds.
Thus it has been asserted that Whit Tor camp on Dartmoor has yielded
ample evidence of neolithic origin;[360] but all the excavations of
hut-circles, kistvaens, and barrows that have been made on Dartmoor
tend to show that it was not occupied before the Bronze Age.[361] A few
of the pits which abound in the hill-fort of Eggardun in Dorsetshire
have been explored; and it is said that one of them contained ‘typical
neolithic pottery’.[362] But, in the absence of an exact description
of the vessels, such an argument is unsatisfactory, although it might
have some weight if they resembled the coarse unornamented bowls which
were found in the long barrow of North Bavant in Wiltshire[363] or the
neolithic bowls of the Scottish chambered cairns.[364] Still there are
entrenchments, such as Chanctonbury Rings,[365] on the downs some six
miles north of Worthing, Beltout,[366] within which stands the Beachy
Head lighthouse, the Maiden Bower camp near Dunstable,[367] and some
on the Surrey Hills,[368] in and around which flint implements have
been found in such profusion that they may be provisionally referred
to the Neolithic Age.[369] Even Cissbury camp, which contained
numerous relics of the Early Iron Age, may have been constructed in
the age of stone: a single cutting, only eleven yards long, revealed
numerous worked flints lying, without pottery or metal, on the chalk
bottom; and Pitt-Rivers suggested that the entrenchment might have been
made for the protection of the mines.[370] It is true that no bronze
implement was found, from which it might be argued that the camp was
not constructed before the Iron Age: but, for aught that we can tell,
bronze may still be lying beneath the soil; for the cost of excavating
the whole camp, without which it is impossible to prove the negative,
would be enormous. Certain small entrenchments in Franche-Comté were
unquestionably constructed in neolithic times;[371] and it may be
safely said that in an age when life and property were so insecure
every isolated settlement must have been in some way fortified. Many
of the entrenchments on the South Downs are, however, so slight that
they could only have protected flocks and herds against wolves; and
this may also have been the purpose of the thickset hedge, undoubtedly
of prehistoric origin, that marks the line along which the downs were
bounded by the Wealden Forest.[372]
[Sidenote: Primitive writing.]
Although the historian who endeavours to press archaeology into his
service is struck by the general similarity in material culture between
the peoples of different lands, and is sometimes inclined, overlooking
the differences in detail, to think that in describing one he would
be describing all, he presently remembers that if historical records
were to be destroyed, much the same state of things would confront
the archaeologist of the remote future; and in his own researches he
meets with differences which lead him to believe that in every land
the first beginnings of a national culture and of a national character
were already being evolved. In this country or in that significant
relics are discovered of which in others there is not a trace. One of
the more sensational discoveries of recent years may set us wondering
whether in prehistoric Britain vestiges of primitive writing will ever
come to light. Many people have heard vaguely of the painted pebbles
and the frescoes of Mas d’Azil and the other caverns in the Western
Pyrenees which the veteran archaeologist, Edouard Piette, has for many
years diligently searched. On one of the objects found in the cavern of
Lorthet--a spirited engraving on reindeer-horn representing reindeer
and salmon--are to be seen two small lozenges, each enclosing a central
line: ‘justly proud of his work,’ says Monsieur Piette, ‘the artist
has appended his signature.’[373] Be this as it may, other explorers
have exhumed from the Placard cave at Rochebertier and the caves of
La Madelaine and Mas d’Azil antlers incised with signs which exactly
resemble various Greek and Phoenician letters, and may be compared with
signs that have been found in an island of the Pacific. These signs are
not letters but symbols: they are not combined in such a way as to form
words or inscriptions.[374] But, says Monsieur Piette, being symbols,
they do constitute a kind of primitive writing.[375] True writing
is, however, evident on a potsherd taken from a neolithic settlement
at Los Murciélagos in Portugal.[376] If this fragment could itself be
proved to be of neolithic age, it would follow that in that remote time
the art of writing was already known to at least one branch of the
Mediterranean stock. But not a trace of writing, not even one of the
alphabetiform symbols which were so widespread in the Pyrenees even
in the late Palaeolithic Age, has yet been found in any prehistoric
deposit in this island.
[Sidenote: Sepulture: barrows and cairns.]
So far we have been trying to piece together an account of the life of
neolithic man. But it is of the last scene of all that the vestiges
which he has left behind are most unmistakable. His sepulchres have
been thoroughly and scientifically explored. Moreover, it is from
them that much of the knowledge which we possess of his daily life
has been gleaned. They afford evidence about his political and social
organization, his religion, and his customs; and when we have examined
them we shall be able to form a more vivid idea of the way in which he
lived.
We have seen that the dead were sometimes buried in caves wherein they
or their forefathers had dwelled;[377] and the humbler folk who had
not the means of erecting sepulchral monuments must have dug graves
of which no apparent trace remains; but the funerals that have told
their own tale were those of chieftains, their families, and perhaps
their favourite slaves, who were buried beneath mounds which, in divers
forms, are found all over the world.[378] Savage communities indeed
are commonly ruled by councils of elders; but in the period when the
neolithic barrows were being erected the Britons had certainly passed
beyond this stage. The means by which the revolution was effected were
probably various. If the most adroit magician in a community of which
every member practised magic may sometimes by force of character have
made himself a chief,[379] it is certain that when property accumulated
and group began to prey upon group, the instinct of self-preservation
must have led men to submit to the rule of him who was marked out as
the fittest to command in war.[380] Those who love to look for the
places in this land that are hallowed by their associations with an
older world may have seen the long barrows which are conspicuous on
the hills that command Salisbury Plain and on other western heights,
the chambered cairns of Scotland, and the dolmens of Cornwall and
Wales. These sepulchres are far rarer than those of the Bronze Age,
not more than sixty having been counted in Wiltshire, where they are
most numerous, while the round barrows of the same county number nearly
two thousand;[381] and the area of their distribution is far less
extensive. In Gloucestershire, Somersetshire, and Dorsetshire they are
not uncommon; a few are to be seen in the East Riding of Yorkshire;
and Kent, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Durham, Cumberland, and Westmorland
have each one.[382] Chambered cairns which are related to chambered
long barrows are found near St. Asaph and in Caithness;[383] and other
chambered cairns and chambered round barrows, which belong to the
latest period of the Stone Age or to a time of transition, exist in
Orkney, Inverness-shire, Argyllshire and some of the adjoining islands,
the Holm of Papa Westray, Derbyshire, Wales, Cornwall and the Scilly
Isles, and the islands of the Channel.[384]
The materials of which these monuments are composed vary of course
according to the nature of the country in which they were erected.
Stone was used where it was abundant, and earth or rubble where
stone was not to be obtained. The significance of the barrows lies
not in their substance but in their form; but it is probable that
the absence of chambered barrows in South Wiltshire and Dorsetshire,
where unchambered ones are common, is due simply to lack of the
necessary stones.[385] The eminent Swedish archaeologist, Nilsson,
argued that the ‘passage-graves’, or chambered barrows, of Scandinavia
were designed on the model of subterranean dwellings; but the little
evidence that remains tends to show that no such analogy existed here;
and the Eskimos and Lapps, whose dwellings Nilsson had in view, bury
their dead in tombs of a different kind.[386] Antiquaries who have had
experience in opening chambered and unchambered barrows consider that
the two classes were erected in the same period;[387] and the nature of
the interments, as we shall presently see, justifies this conclusion.
The orientation of the long barrows and of the chambered cairns which
are classed with them seems to show that the builders intended that
the spirits of the dead might look upon the rising sun. The axis of
the barrow or cairn generally lies either due east and west or in a
direction approximating more or less closely thereto; and the broader
and higher end of the barrow, where, as a rule, the sepulchral deposits
are found,[388] generally faces eastward. In a few instances the axis
lies between the north and the south, the broad end pointing sometimes
northward, sometimes southward. When the direction is not due east, it
varies between north-north-east and south-east; and one may reasonably
conclude that this variation depended upon the place of sunrise at
the time of the year when the barrow was erected. Similar varieties,
combined with the same general tendency to point the barrow towards the
east, have been observed in the neolithic tombs of other countries.[389]
[Illustration: FIG. 16.]
Long barrows vary greatly, not only in their materials and orientation,
but also in their size and shape. Many of them exceed a hundred feet in
length; and the chambered barrow of West Kennet is three hundred and
thirty-five feet long and seventy-five broad at its eastern end.[390]
More striking, however, than the mere dimensions of a long barrow
is the disproportion between its whole extent and that part of it in
which alone the dead were laid. The immense toil which must have been
expended in constructing such a monument by labourers who had only
deer-horn picks and stone tools proves not only density of population,
effective organization, and the despotism which the chiefs must have
exercised, but also a religious awe the compelling force of which we,
who live in a world that has grown old, can hardly conceive. Some of
the mounds might in outline be compared to a very elongated egg, others
to one-half of a pear cut lengthwise and laid upon its flat side.[391]
The trenches from which the material was excavated extend along their
sides, but never encircle the ends.[392] The chambered barrows are of
many kinds, no two being exactly alike. Some have a central gallery,
entered by a doorway at the broad end, so low that it is necessary to
stoop or even to crawl. Generally the chambers, placed opposite one
another in one, two, three, or even six pairs, open out of the gallery
like the chapels in a Gothic cathedral; while occasionally, as at West
Kennet, the gallery leads to a terminal chamber; and in other instances
both lateral and terminal chambers are found. At Rodmarton and Nether
Swell in Gloucestershire there is no gallery; and the chambers open
externally. Galleries and chambers are alike built of stones set on
edge, which (the interstices being filled in with dry walling) support
flags laid horizontally across; though occasionally, as at Stoney
Littleton in Somersetshire, the roof is constructed of converging
layers of stones which form a rude arch.[393] Some so-called chambered
barrows, for instance Littleton Drew in Wiltshire, have no chambers,
but only cists, or shallow graves excavated in the soil and built up
with stone slabs. The mounds were generally faced with dry walling;
and on the chalk downs of North Wiltshire, where blocks of sandstone
abounded, the wall was often, as at West Kennet, surrounded by a
peristalith formed of stones erected at regular intervals. These stones
have disappeared; but drawings, made in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, show what they were like.[394] The architects were inspired
by a vivid sense of beauty. The enclosing wall, as it approached the
broad and high end of the barrow, was turned inwards by gradual and
graceful curves, which generally terminated in great stones that served
as the jambs of the entrance. Even when there was no gallery, this
symmetrical curve was still adopted, and its termination marked by
monumental pillars.[395] The Wor Barrow on Cranborne Chase, an oval
mound of such uncommon form that Pitt-Rivers, before he opened it,
felt doubtful whether it did not belong to the Bronze Age, appears to
have been a chambered sepulchre of an abnormal kind. When the tumulus
had been removed, a trench, enclosing an oblong space, appeared in the
chalk which had formed the old surface. Stake-holes were detected in
the trench; and the famous antiquary concluded that the stakes had been
simply ‘a wooden version of the long chambers of stone’.[396]
[Illustration: FIG. 17.]
Intimately related to certain chambered long barrows are the famous
horned cairns, which exist only in Caithness. Although their forms also
are various, the larger cairn of Yarhouse being extremely elongated
while that of Ormiegill might be almost exactly contained within
a perfect square, the ruling idea remained the same. The exterior
wall, which is always double, develops eastward and westward into
horn-shaped projections, which curve outwards. Thus the four sides
form four symmetrical concave curves; whereas in English chambered
barrows, like that of Uley and some of the barrows at Upper Swell in
Gloucestershire,[397] the curvilinear projections which correspond with
the horns exist only at the eastern end. An opening between the eastern
horns in the Scottish cairns gives access to the chamber, which is
commonly divided into three partitions by two pairs of stones, crossing
the side walls and leaving a passage between.[398]
Just as the long are earlier than the short horned cairns, so the
latter are earlier than the round chambered cairns of Scotland; for no
horned cairns were erected after the Scottish Bronze Age had begun,
whereas, although the round chambered cairns were developed towards the
close of the Neolithic Age, and although metal has never been found in
them,[399] their external form was reproduced in the Bronze Age, when
chambers were no longer built.[400] The chambers of the round cairns
also are divided into sections; and one of them, near Loch Etive in
Argyllshire, shows traces of an encircling trench and rampart.[401]
In Southern Britain the chronological sequence was probably the same:
the round chambered cairns seem to be later than the chambered long
barrows. The Park Cwm tumulus in the peninsula of Gower, which has
a central avenue and two pairs of opposite chambers opening out of
it,[402] has been likened to the Uley barrow; but its form is round.
The chambered tumulus of Plas Newydd Park in Anglesey, which is
roughly oval,[403] may possibly represent an earlier and transitional
form.[404]
Round chambered barrows exist in Derbyshire, the design of which is
purely local. Thus the Five-Wells barrow, near Taddington, has two
chambers, each of which was approached by a gallery entered through a
kind of port-hole on either side of the mound. The skulls that have
been found in these tombs are of the neolithic type: but a barrow on
Derwent Moor, which is commonly assigned to the same period,[405]
contained an urn, ornamented with designs characteristic of the Bronze
Age, in which a piece of copper was found;[406] and an experienced
antiquary has remarked that in cataloguing the remains found in the
Derbyshire barrows he ‘found it almost impossible to separate the
Neolithic from the Bronze Age interments’.[407] In West Cornwall
also there are gigantic chambered cairns, round or oval, the date of
which is uncertain. No bronze has been found in them, but abundance
of pottery, and cists which are undoubtedly later than the chambers.
One, standing on the cliff which rises above Cape Cornwall, contained
a double-walled dome, and reminded its explorer of the huge tope at
Bhojpur.[408]
Chambered cairns of a peculiar kind remain in Argyllshire and the
islands of Islay and Arran, the like of which have been discovered
nowhere else except on the opposite coast of Ireland.[409] Nearly
all the pottery that has been found in them closely resembles that
of the dolmens of North-Western France and the Pyrenees, while none
exactly like it has been exhumed in England; and, combining these
facts with the geographical position of the sepulchres themselves,
the antiquary who has explored them concludes that their builders
came late in the Neolithic Age from Brittany, and, sailing up St.
George’s Channel, settled on the opposite shores of Scotland and
Ireland.[410] Physically, however, they belonged, as their skeletons
show, to the same stock as the great majority of the neolithic people
of Britain.[411]
[Sidenote: Inhumation and incineration.]
Here, as also in France[412] and Northern Germany,[413] funerals
were performed both by inhumation and incineration. In the barrows
of South-Western Britain, cremation, although not unknown, was very
rare;[414] in Yorkshire[415] and the chambered cairns of Bute,[416]
almost universal. Judging from the analogy of other countries and from
the fact that inhumation persisted into the Bronze Age, and then for
a long period was generally superseded by cremation,[417] it seems
probable that the latter was not introduced until a comparatively late
epoch.[418] The two modes of burial were, however, contemporaneous
not only in different parts of the country but in the same district
and in the same grave. Burnt and unburnt bones have been found lying
together in such a manner as to prove that they had been interred at
the same time.[419] Cremation was generally performed in the chamber
or on the floor of the barrow where the body was deposited.[420] When
the corpse was buried entire, it was usually laid upon the ground[421]
with the knees doubled up towards the chin, or placed sitting in a
similar posture by the side of the tomb.[422] This custom, which was
almost universal in prehistoric times, and is still practised by many
savages, is best explained by the assumption that it was thought seemly
to bury the dead in the position in which they had slept, and that, for
the sake of warmth, they had commonly lain down to rest in an attitude
which most of us have occasionally adopted for the same reason.[423]
In some barrows only single skeletons have been found; but generally
in unchambered barrows, where more than two persons had been buried in
one grave, the bones lay heaped together as though the bodies had been
unceremoniously flung down;[424] while in certain cases they were found
disjointed in such wise that it was evident that the dead had not been
buried entire, or, as is often the case in savage countries and even
in Brittany and the Catholic cantons of Switzerland, until long after
the flesh had decayed.[425] The Balearic islanders, in the time of
Diodorus Siculus,[426] used to sever the bodies of their dead in pieces
and inter them in urns; and the same practice prevailed in Spain in the
Age of Bronze.[427] British explorers, moreover, have often noticed,
in opening barrows, that skeletons were incomplete, many of the bones
being absent.[428] Since the piled skeletons belonged to old and young,
male and female, it can only be concluded that corpses were often
stored, as in a mortuary, until a sufficient number had accumulated,
and then buried all together.[429] In a barrow situated at Upper Swell
in Gloucestershire, Rolleston found evidence which convinced him that
interments were sometimes made successively upon the same spot. An
undisturbed skeleton was here surrounded by a great quantity of bones,
the arrangement of which was such that he was forced to conclude that
they had been displaced in order to make room for it.[430] In chambered
barrows successive interments were of course regular, gallery and
chamber being designed to admit them.
[Sidenote: Human sacrifice.]
Thurnam was convinced that in the barrows which he explored there
were unmistakable evidences of human sacrifice. In nearly all of them
he found fractured skulls, the broken edges of which were so sharp
that he inferred that the skull had been cleft in life by a club or
a stone axe; while in some cases one skull only was unmutilated. His
conclusion was that the few entire skulls were those of chiefs or
their relatives, while the others belonged to slaves or captives who
had been sacrificed. In one instance, in which only two interments
were met with, the broken skull was that of a woman, while the bones
of the other corpse, which belonged to a man, had been imperfectly
burned. Thurnam argued that the burnt bones belonged to a chief, and
that the woman was his wife.[431] Rolleston, on the other hand, could
see no reason for believing that the broken skulls had been cleft
deliberately.[432] He pointed out that the fragments were so numerous
that if the persons to whom they belonged had been sacrificed, they
must have been slaughtered by a succession of wanton blows; that the
fractures were utterly different from those of skulls which are known
to have been broken by deliberate blows, and resemble those which have
been caused by the shifting of soil or the collapse of stones; and he
argues that from what we know of the sentiments of savage and barbarian
peoples it is in the last degree improbable that slaves or captives,
if they had been sacrificed, would have been allowed to repose side by
side with their lords. Nevertheless it is not safe to reject all the
evidence which Thurnam adduced. In a round barrow near Stonehenge Hoare
found a skull which appeared to have been cut in two as deftly as by a
surgical instrument;[433] and one may believe that what was done in the
Bronze Age was not unknown in the Age of Stone. When we remember that
evidences of human sacrifice have been detected in French neolithic
tombs,[434] and that the practice was universal in ancient times,[435]
we shall be safe in assuming that neolithic Britain was no exception
to the rule that after a chieftain’s obsequies his dependents were
immolated in order that their souls might be set free to minister to
his.[436]
[Sidenote: Traces (?) of cannibalism.]
But Thurnam also believed that the long barrows contained evidences
of cannibalism.[437] The numerous passages in which ancient writers
accused the inhabitants of the British Isles of devouring their own
kind refer mainly to the Irish:[438] but they were speaking of their
contemporaries; and when some of the Yorkshire barrows were opened it
was evident that the flesh had been removed from the bodies before
they were interred.[439] But even if cannibalism was practised in our
Neolithic Age, the motive was not hunger. The numerous bones of oxen,
swine, red deer, goats, and horses[440] which are found in the barrows,
mingled with fragments of pottery, prove that a funeral was an
occasion for a feast, and may show that, as in later times, offerings
were made to the ghosts of the dead.[441] If human flesh was eaten, it
was doubtless in the hope that moral qualities which had distinguished
the dead might be absorbed by the living.[442]
[Sidenote: Interment of animals.]
Perhaps the most curious feature in neolithic interments is that
animals were sometimes buried entire.[443] It is not indeed surprising
that at Eyford in Gloucestershire there was buried with a woman a dog
which may have been her companion;[444] but in a long barrow near
Stonehenge was found the skeleton of a goose which had evidently not
been eaten.[445] Was it a sign that neolithic people had the same
religious prejudice against eating geese which Caesar noted,[446] or
had this goose been sacrificed?[447]
[Sidenote: Religion.]
We can hardly err in regarding the sepulchral monuments on which such
stupendous labour was expended as witnesses of a belief which may
be called religious, and perhaps as a further illustration of the
apophthegm, ‘The first begetter of gods on earth was fear’.[448] For
if the spirits of ancestors are believed by savage tribes to be on the
whole well disposed towards those whom they leave behind, yet when
their bodies do not receive due burial their wrath is terrible.[449]
The most eminent of modern French archaeologists maintains that
the dolmens, chambered tombs, and standing stones of France were
erected under the influence of Druids;[450] and in this country also
the belief has long been growing that Druidism was of non-Celtic
and neolithic origin: but since our knowledge of it is confined
to the period when it was a Celtic institution, we must defer our
consideration of it.[451] But, apart from the graves themselves, there
is hardly any certain evidence in our neolithic interments of religious
belief. While in France, Scandinavia, Northern Germany, and other
lands, the tombs of this period were stored with implements, ornaments,
and weapons, the spirits of which were doubtless consecrated to the
service of the dead,[452] such relics are so rare in Britain[453] that
unless the barrows were despoiled in bygone days by heedless explorers,
we can only suppose that it was not generally thought necessary to
provide those who had passed away with the means of continuing their
life in another world; and it may be that the few arrow-heads, flakes,
and other objects which have been found in graves were rather intended
as marks of reverence or affection than for use.[454] On the other
hand, some of the implements found in neolithic barrows are said to
have been intentionally broken;[455] and this is often done by savages
in the belief that the souls of the implements[456] may thus be set
free to be of use to the spirits of the dead.[457] The holes that
are to be seen in the stones of dolmens in many lands are here so
rare[458] that we may hardly regard them as evidence of a belief that
spirits must be allowed an exit from their graves; although such a
belief has been common to many peoples, and may even linger on among
ourselves, as in France and Germany, in the superstition which often
impels survivors to open door or window when life is ebbing away[459].
It must be confessed that we know little more of neolithic than of
palaeolithic religion. Fetichism, which is ubiquitous--the belief that
spirits inhabit or operate through stocks and stones and what not;
the belief by which the Dorsetshire peasant who treasures his holed
pebble for luck is still animated--may be assumed to have belonged
to both.[460] The worship of saints may be a survival of the worship
of ancestors.[461] The traces of the adoration of wells and lakes
and rivers which may still be observed in the remoter parts of Great
Britain and Ireland, where peasants offer pence to the spirit of the
spring, and children were lately bidden to beware of the river-sprite
who was waiting to drown them, are undoubtedly linked to a prehistoric
faith;[462] and so is that superstition which prevails in New Zealand,
in the Malay Archipelago, and on the banks of the Ganges, and which
among the islanders of St. Kilda and the Shetlanders of Scott’s day
impelled men to refuse aid to a drowning comrade because they feared
to balk the marine demon of his prey.[463] Nor need we doubt that,
like other savages, our neolithic forefathers saw sun, moon, and stars
as living beings, or that, like the Australian aboriginals and the
nameless tribes who passed on to the Greeks the myths which were by
them invested with poetic form, they invented stories to account for
the wonders which they saw in the starry heavens.[464] Neither need we
hesitate to believe that, as each clan had its chief, so the clansmen
saw, above elves and kelpies, gnomes and goblins, rock-spirits and
tree-spirits, the mightier deities of Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon,
Fire, Water, and Thunder.[465] We may believe, if we please, that they
prayed, as savages, nay Christians, often pray, not that they might
become better, but that they might be better off.[466] We may suppose
too that magic, which is even now used in remote villages as an engine
of extortion,[467] was still a power by which men strove to ensure
supplies of food or to make rain fall in time of drought, perhaps
also a weapon by which the man of intellect made himself obeyed. But
when we consider the infinite variety of forms which superstition
assumes, we see that it would be vain to contend that any one belief
now held by this or that savage tribe was identically part of the
faith that was professed in Britain in the Neolithic Age. Even the
fancy that an ethereal soul survived bodily death may not have been
universal; and as the Tonga islanders and the Virginians are said to
have believed that only the souls of chiefs would live again,[468] so
it is conceivable that the slaves by whose sweat were built the barrows
in which their lords were to be interred were regarded as doomed to
annihilation. And when we are told that some quaint superstition which
the folklorist discovers in Devonshire or the Highlands is non-Aryan,
and must therefore be traceable to the people who were here before
the first Celtic invader arrived, we may ask how it is possible to
disprove that it had been inherited by the Celt from remote ancestors
or had been borrowed by him from non-Aryan tribes while he was still
a wanderer. We must be content, if we can but catch something of the
spirit of neolithic religion, to remain in blank ignorance of its
details. We must keep in mind that in unnumbered centuries it cannot
have remained the same, and that in diverse regions its manifestations
must have been various. We must not ask for more than the assurance
that to the herdsmen who pastured their cattle on our downs all
Nature was animated; that in their eyes ‘as the human body was held
to live and act by virtue of its own inhabiting spirit-soul, so the
operations of the world seemed to be carried on by the influence of
other spirits’;[469] and that, like all savage and half-savage peoples,
they were enslaved by custom, fettered by taboos, and compelled,
when they were driven by necessity to violate them, to expiate their
offence by complex rites.[470] It may, however, be presumed that the
religion of neolithic man progressed when he ceased to be a wanderer,
and especially when he began to till the soil. Supernatural beings were
not of necessity gods to be worshipped; but when the god of a community
became the lord of its land, he was its protector, nay, its father,
who, in return for due reverence and sacrifice, would do his utmost to
guard it against human enemies and hostile deities.[471]
And perhaps, since primitive worship concerned the community rather
than the individual,[472] common superstitions and participation in
sacrificial feasts were already beginning to do their work of creating
the sense of kindred between divers groups, out of which, ages later
and after successive new invasions, war and policy were to develop a
state.[473]
We have gathered some scraps of information from the tools and weapons
and pottery, the dwellings and mines, the graves and the skeletons
of neolithic man. Can these dry bones live? Only for him who has
imagination, which, as the historian whose own was supported by a vast
armoury of solid knowledge declared with splendid paradox, ‘is the
mother of all history as of all poetry.’[474] It is not when we are
reading the memoirs in which discoveries are recorded, not when we are
wandering through the galleries of a museum, that those happy moments
come in which we discern the faint outlines of the prehistoric world,
but rather when we are roaming over sand or moor or upland, looking
for the tools that those old workers wrought, in the midst of the
monuments which their hands upreared. Not the outward life alone comes
back to us--the miner with lamp and pick creeping down the shaft; the
cutler toiling amid a waste of flints; herdsmen following cattle on
the downs; girls milking at sundown; lithe swarthy hunters returning
from the chase; fowlers in their canoes gliding over the meres; serfs
hauling blocks up the hillside to build the chambers in yonder barrow;
the funeral feast; the weird sepulchral rites; the bloody strife for
the means of subsistence between clan and clan:--we think also of the
meditations of the architects who created those monuments in memory of
the dead and of the adventurous lives of those who were thus honoured;
of their survivors’ desperate denial of death’s finality; of the
immeasurably slow, age-long movement of expanding civilization; of the
influence of superstition, paralysing, yet ever tending to consolidate
society; of the enthusiast whose thoughts soared above the common
level; of the toil that spent itself in millenniums past, but is still
yielding fruit; of unrecorded deeds of heroism and of shame; of man’s
ambition and of woman’s love.
[Sidenote: An alien invasion: period of transition.]
Before the Neolithic Age came to its end invaders began to appear who
had not yet learned the art of metal-working, but who belonged to a
race of which the people in possession knew nothing.[475] Sepulchral
customs began to change. Long barrows were erected still, but, as in
France, Holland, and other lands,[476] mounds of circular form were
rising, and at last supplanted them. It was a time of transition; and
although in the far west and the far north the Stone Age lingered on,
another was approaching, which had long since dawned in more favoured
lands,--the Age of Bronze.
CHAPTER IV
THE BRONZE AGE AND THE VOYAGE OF PYTHEAS
[Sidenote: A Copper Age preceded the Bronze Age in certain countries,
but has not been proved to have existed in Britain.]
Those who have learned to realize the extreme slowness with which
material culture was evolved in its earlier stages would be disposed to
doubt whether the first metallic implements were made of bronze, and
to ask whether, at all events in some part of the world, the Neolithic
must not have merged into a Copper Age. It is easy to imagine that the
accidental melting of a piece of copper ore may have suggested the
possibility of fashioning the metal into tools; and that inventive
cutlers took impressions of stone axes in clay, and found that they
could make from them copper axes which were not liable to break:[477]
but one can hardly believe that simultaneously the discovery should
have been made that the softness and bluntness of copper could be
remedied by mixing with it a small proportion of tin. It is indeed
not inconceivable that bronze was the first metal which was ever
manufactured; for near the surface copper ores often contain tin
oxide; and it has been proved that by smelting such ores bronze can
be produced.[478] But of course only experiment could have shown that
tools made of this metal were better than copper. The Egyptians were
acquainted with the use of copper long before they began to manufacture
bronze;[479] and in many parts of the British Isles as well as of the
Continent copper implements have been discovered which belonged to
prehistoric times.[480] But such discoveries do not necessarily prove
the existence of a Copper Age: they may often be accounted for by
the supposition that tin, which is far less widely distributed than
copper, was temporarily wanting. In many cases implements of copper and
of bronze have been met with in intimate association; and sometimes
copper implements of advanced type with primitive bronze.[481] When,
on the other hand, copper implements are repeatedly found in deposits
which are known to be older than the oldest bronze in the districts in
which they occur, the conclusion is irresistible that they were used
there before bronze was manufactured.[482] There was certainly a Copper
Age in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Cyprus; and probably also in Hungary,
Northern Italy, Spain, and Ireland, with which, in ancient times, Spain
was closely connected, and in which copper celts were unmistakably
modelled upon those of stone: but for Britain the evidence is not
sufficient.[483] We must assume then provisionally that in our island
the metal which was first used for cutting-tools was bronze.
[Sidenote: Bronze implements used for many centuries in Europe before
the Iron Age.]
Certain metallurgists, however, maintain that a Bronze Age, properly
so called, may never have existed; and that iron may have been
manufactured during and even before the period to which the bronze
tools that are exhibited in museums belong. Iron was undoubtedly
known to the Egyptians at a very remote date, perhaps as early as
bronze.[484] Primitive methods of extracting iron from its ore, which
are still practised in India and Africa, require far less skill than
the manufacture of bronze: the metallurgists argue that since iron is
rapidly oxidized by air and moisture, the iron tools which they assume
to have been made in the so-called Bronze Age must have perished in the
conditions to which most of the bronze tools that have been discovered
were exposed; and they insist that iron tools have actually been found
in association with objects of the early Bronze and even of the late
Neolithic Age.[485]
The inconsistency of these arguments is self-evident; and if their
authors had known the rudiments of archaeology, they would never have
published them.[486] Hundreds of iron weapons have been recovered from
the Thames: a competent archaeologist has affirmed that there was not
one which could not with certainty be attributed to some period later
than the Bronze Age; and since numerous articles of stone and bronze
have been found in the same bed, he reasonably concludes that if iron
implements had been used in the Bronze Age, some few at least must have
come to light.[487] Nor is there any reason to suppose that if iron
tools had been laid in graves of the Bronze Age, they would necessarily
have perished beyond recognition; for in the famous Tyrolese cemetery
of Hallstatt, and in many other deposits that, like it, belonged to
the transitional period when bronze and iron were simultaneously used,
the iron objects, oxidized though they are, retain their distinctive
forms.[488] Yet in the numerous British barrows of the Bronze Age, and
in the hoards of the same period that have been unearthed in England,
Scotland, and Wales, not a trace of iron has ever been found.[489]
Nothing then can be more certain than that in Britain, as in the rest
of Europe, the Iron Age was preceded by a long period during which the
only metals used were copper and bronze.[490]
[Sidenote: Where did the European bronze culture originate?]
Every antiquary knows that bronze did not reach this country until long
after it was first used in Southern Europe, and that it was common in
Egypt many centuries before; but in what part of the world it was first
manufactured remains an unsettled question.[491] The oldest piece of
bronze that has yet been dated was found at Mêdûm in Egypt, and is
supposed to have been cast about three thousand seven hundred years
before the birth of Christ. But the metal may have been worked even
earlier in other lands; for a bronze statuette and a bronze vase, which
were made twenty-five centuries before our era, have been obtained
from Mesopotamia; and the craft must have passed through many stages
before such objects could have been produced. Yet it would be rash to
infer that either the Babylonians or the Egyptians invented bronze; for
neither in Egypt nor in Babylonia is there any tin. Some archaeologist
who shall explore the virgin fields of the Far East may one day be able
to prove that bronze was worked by the Chinese, in whose country both
copper and tin abound, earlier than by any other people; but even so
it will still remain doubtful whether the art was not independently
discovered elsewhere. There is no evidence that the bronze culture of
Mexico and Peru did not originate in America;[492] and although it was
once believed that all the tribes of Europe ultimately derived their
knowledge of the metal from Asia,[493] there are many who now maintain
that it is impossible to detect in European deposits of the Bronze Age
the slightest trace of Oriental origin.[494]
[Sidenote: Origin and affinities of the bronze culture of Britain.]
But whatever may have been the case in Southern lands, there is no
doubt that the knowledge of bronze came to this country from abroad.
The old theory that it was a result of Phoenician commerce with Britain
has long been abandoned;[495] and British bronze implements are so
different from those of Norway and Sweden, Denmark, and Hungary that
it cannot have been derived from any of those countries.[496] German
influence was felt at a comparatively late period;[497] but from first
to last the British bronze culture was closely connected with that of
Gaul, and through Gaul with that of Italy.[498]
[Sidenote: Period of its commencement.]
The period when bronze first appeared in Britain can only be
approximately fixed. It is certain that in the south-eastern districts
iron tools began to be used not later than the fourth century before
the Christian era.[499] The final period of the British Bronze Age
is marked by the discovery of bronze-founders’ hoards, all of which
contain tools or fragments of tools which are known as socketed celts,
or other socketed instruments which were contemporary with them. These
hoards are so numerous and so widely diffused, and the objects of
which they are composed are so varied in form, that the time during
which they were deposited cannot, in the opinion of experts, have been
less than four or five hundred years. But before the first socketed
celt was cast the bronze culture passed through earlier stages, during
which the flat celts that resembled those of stone were being used,
and then gradually giving way to improved forms, which in their turn
were succeeded by later developments. The veteran archaeologist who has
handled and examined almost every specimen of these numerous varieties
has arrived at the conclusion that the British Bronze Age must have
begun at the latest between 1400 and 1200 B.C.;[500] and while no one
would now contend for a later date, there are some who maintain that
bronze was first used in Britain twenty centuries before the Christian
era.[501]
[Sidenote: Physical characters of the late neolithic and early
bronze-using invaders of Britain.]
After the Bronze Age set in, as before the close of the preceding
period, bands of invaders, wholly different in physical type from the
neolithic aborigines, landed successively through long ages upon our
eastern and southern shores. They came from the Netherlands, from
Denmark and its islands, perhaps also from Scandinavia and from Gaul.
They must not, however, be identified either with the invaders who
introduced the Celtic language into Gaul or with any Celtic-speaking
people. There is no evidence, and it is in the last degree improbable,
that any Celtic tribe had appeared in Gaul at the time when the alien
immigrants began to settle in Britain, or that Celtic had then taken
shape as a branch of the Indo-European language. Those immigrants have
often been described as a tall, stalwart, round-headed race; but the
evidence of sepulchral remains shows that they sprang from various
stocks. Those of the type which is commonly regarded as specially
characteristic of the Bronze Age were taller and much more powerfully
built than the aborigines: their skulls were comparatively short and
round; they had massive jaws, strongly marked features, enormously
prominent brow ridges and retreating foreheads; and their countenances
must have been stern, forbidding, and sometimes almost brutal. Similar
skulls, which have much in common with the primitive Neanderthal
type,[502] have been exhumed from neolithic tombs in Denmark and the
Danish island of Falster. But the skeletons which have been found
in some of the oldest Scottish cists belonged to men whose average
height, although they were sturdy and thickset, was barely five feet
three inches, and whose skulls, shorter and rounder than the others,
as well as their milder features, proved that they were an offshoot
of the so-called Alpine race of Central Europe, of which there were
numerous representatives in Gaul. Again there were tall men with
skulls of an intermediate type; while others, who combined harsh
features and projecting brows with narrow heads, and whose stature was
often great, would seem to have been the offspring of intermarriage
between the older and the newer inhabitants. Not a single skeleton of
the characteristic British round-barrow type is known to have been
discovered on French soil: the round-headed inhabitants of Gaul were
as conspicuously short as those of Britain were generally tall; nor,
excluding the Britons of the Alpine stock, was there any physical
resemblance between the two peoples. The British invaders of the Alpine
stock, judging from the pottery which was found with their skeletons,
came for the most part, as we shall afterwards see, not from Gaul but
from the valley of the Rhine. Moreover, the round-headed people of Gaul
settled there first early in the Neolithic Age, before a Celtic word
was spoken; and although their descendants formed the substratum of the
Gallic population who, in Caesar’s time, called themselves Celts, that
name was introduced by conquerors of a wholly different stock. Probably
a Celtic invasion of Britain took place before the British Iron Age
began: but the remains of such invaders are not recognizable in any
British graves.[503]
[Sidenote: Their social organization.]
Each of the invading clans was doubtless ruled by a chief; for many of
the burial mounds which they erected were intended for the great alone,
and could only have been constructed by the organized labour of many
hands.[504] They must have respected family ties; for women and even
babies were interred with scrupulous care; and more than one barrow
was reared for the reception of a single child.[505] Yet infants have
so often been found buried along with women that one can only conclude
that infanticide was as prevalent in ancient as in modern Britain.[506]
Only the children were slain because their mothers could no longer
nurse them, not because they desired to rid themselves of trouble.
[Sidenote: Character and results of the invasions: the invaders poor in
bronze weapons.]
In Wiltshire and other parts of Southern Britain the old population
would seem to have been largely dispossessed or subdued; but the
skeletons found in the barrows of Derbyshire and Staffordshire, of
Yorkshire and the other northern counties, indicate that there the
immigrants mingled more or less peacefully with the people whom
they came among.[507] Fighting no doubt took place everywhere; but
the notion that bronze weapons gave the first invaders victory is
disproved by the fact that in the earlier part of the era bronze was
both costly and rare.[508] If chieftains had bronze, their clansmen
were still armed with old-fashioned weapons; and until the new age was
far advanced, the neolithic tribes, in so far as they were conquered,
must have yielded to superior numbers, superior skill, or superior
strength. Probably in certain districts they were never conquered, and
never permitted the intruders to dwell among them. Among a vast number
of stone implements that have been found lying on the moors west of
Rochdale and Ashton-under-Lyne bronze was searched for in vain;[509]
and one may provisionally infer that these hillmen were protected by
the strength of their territory.
[Sidenote: Evidence of finds as to the settlements of the invaders.]
Bronze implements or other relics of the Bronze Age have been found in
almost every county of England, Wales, and Scotland, and in some of
the adjoining islands;[510] but their distribution appears to imply
that, as might have been inferred from the geographical features,
some districts were far more densely populated than others. The lands
which the new comers selected were mainly those which were already
occupied by the neolithic inhabitants. The relics are most abundant in
those which are now most sparsely peopled, but which were then sought
after because, even when the soil was poor, it was dry, well-watered,
and comparatively open. The moors of Derbyshire, Yorkshire and other
Northumbrian counties, Devonshire and Cornwall; the bracing uplands of
East Anglia; the downs of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Berkshire, Hampshire,
Dorsetshire, and Wiltshire; and the wolds of Lincolnshire,--these were
the tracts which the immigrants occupied in the greatest numbers. The
Midlands, on the other hand, would seem to have attracted comparatively
few: Durham, for some unexplained reason, was generally avoided;[511]
while the northern and north-western tracts of Scotland were almost
entirely neglected.[512] The Yorkshire Wolds afford an interesting
example of the motives which determined the choice of abode. Their
scanty vegetation could not have tempted a people who depended for
their subsistence mainly upon their flocks and herds; yet the numerous
barrows with which they are studded and the flint implements which have
been picked up in thousands from their surface prove that they were as
thickly peopled as any other part of Britain. The reason was that they
were unencumbered by the forests which could only have been cleared by
arduous labour; their climate was healthy; and, above all, they were
so completely isolated by the wooded valley of the Derwent, the swamps
of Holderness, the broad estuary of the Humber, and the morasses which
then covered the plain of York, that their occupants were secure from
all attack.[513]
In certain parts of England the routes by which invaders advanced may
be traced by the sites at which bronze implements have been found. In
Worcestershire, for example, these spots have been mapped along the
line of the Avon from Warwickshire to the Severn, and again in the
valley of the latter river, where it was apparently crossed by ancient
trackways. The implements in these two counties belong to comparatively
late periods.[514]
The settlements must often have been desperately resisted, more and
more as time passed and unoccupied lands became rare. But it would be
a mistake to assume that the struggle was always between aboriginal
communities and round-headed invaders. There must have been much
intermingling between the old population and the new: gradually the
use of bronze weapons must have spread to neolithic clans or to those
who could obtain them by barter or theft; and by the time when the
Bronze Age was far advanced tribes of mingled stock must often have
presented a united front to enemies from over sea. Even when the
invaders had slowly made their way from the Channel to the far north,
and from the German Ocean to the Irish Sea, hunger or the lust of
booty would often lead to intertribal raids. Gradually weapons were
improved; and we shall presently endeavour to trace their evolution.
Even to the very end of the period, however, not only the rank and file
but the wealthiest chief, who had a complete set of bronze implements
and weapons, and who could afford to decorate the handle of his blade
with ivory, amber, or gold, to wear gold buttons on his clothing,
sometimes even to adorn his charger with a gold peytrel, shot arrows
tipped with flint. Flint arrow-heads, leaf-shaped and barbed, have been
found by thousands in deposits of the Bronze Age, but in this island
never one of bronze. Even when daggers had given place to swords and
bronze spears were common, battle-axes were made not of bronze but of
stone.[515]
[Sidenote: Stone implements used long after the introduction of bronze.]
Stone implements indeed, such as were in use in the Neolithic Age,
have been found so often in the graves of chieftains associated with
those of bronze that we may be sure that, at least in the earlier part
of the Bronze Age, even the wealthier classes could not afford to
discard the older material; while among the needy population of the
Yorkshire Wolds many barrows contained no implements except those of
flint or bone.[516] Bronze saws have very rarely been found in this
country, although they were common enough in Southern Europe;[517] and
since all our bronze gouges are comparatively late,[518] it may be
inferred that during the earlier Bronze Age these tools were everywhere
still made of flint. In the west of Scotland, at all events, metal
tools were apparently unknown until long after the first round-headed
people landed, and probably until long after bronze had begun to be
used in Southern Britain.[519] We may indeed be sure that the Stone
Age continued for centuries later in remote parts of the country; and
perhaps in certain islands bronze may have remained unknown.
[Sidenote: Hill-forts.]
When a clan had succeeded in establishing itself, it had to provide for
its protection against cattle-lifters and slave-hunters; and gradually
and by immense labour great strongholds were constructed on suitable
sites. Comparatively rare in the south-east, they are conspicuous on
nearly all the hilly districts of England, Wales, and Scotland;[520]
but it is in the western and south-western counties that they most
abound. Devonshire and the adjacent parts of Somersetshire contain
not less than eighty; and almost every spur on Salisbury Plain is
fortified.[521] The multiplicity of these camps bears witness not
only to density of population and constant warfare, but also to the
utter disunion which existed at the time when they were constructed.
Supposing that the majority of the forts in Dorsetshire, for instance,
were built in the Late Celtic Period, we should have to conclude that
the Durotriges, who then inhabited that district, were merely a loose
aggregate of scores of clans, ever ready to prey upon one another; for
if the forts had been destined only to repel the attacks of some other
tribe, they would hardly have been so numerous and so widely scattered.
It is true that the Gallic Morini in Caesar’s time had not become
welded into one state, and that the Kentish clans were under four
petty kings; but in the period when the older earthworks were thrown
up it would seem that far less progress had been made towards union.
But even supposing that most of the prehistoric forts were later than
the Bronze Age, their purpose accorded with the methods of primitive
warfare. A chain of modern fortresses impedes an invader because,
while they remain uncaptured, he cannot pass between them without
exposing his line of communication. But in ancient times, when one
tribe attacked another, it had no communications to guard: the invaders
carried their food with them, and when it was spent trusted for support
to the enemy’s country.[522] If a tribe had desired merely to protect
its frontier, it would not have erected hill-forts but a continuous
entrenchment.
Amongst those which were occupied in the Bronze Age or before
may be mentioned Badbury Rings in Dorsetshire;[523] the stone
fort on Whit-Tor in Dartmoor[524] and another in the Rhonddha
valley in Glamorganshire;[525] Small Down camp near Evercreech in
Somersetshire;[526] the fort of Carn Brea in Cornwall;[527] the series
of entrenchments which mark the spurs of the hills that command
the valley of the Esk from Guisborough to Whitby;[528] those which
line the western border of Worcestershire;[529] Oldbury, some three
miles east of Sevenoaks;[530] Hollingbury on the Sussex Downs;[531]
Lutcombe Castle on the Berkshire Downs, overlooking the Vale of
White Horse;[532] and the greatest of all--the Maiden Castle, whose
stupendous ramparts are the pride of Dorchester.[533] But it is
probable that the greater number may ultimately be referred to the Age
of Bronze.[534]
The form, construction, and materials of British forts are naturally
diverse. In Cornwall, Devonshire, Wales, and other places they were
of course built largely or wholly of stone, the masonry being always
uncemented: elsewhere they were true earthworks. Leaving out of sight
the question of their date, they may be grouped in three classes.[535]
The first comprises those that were erected on promontories or other
heights which on one or more sides were fortified by precipice,
river, or sea. Such was the fort of Carl’s Wark in Derbyshire, which,
on three sides, rises almost sheer above the swamps of Hathersage
Moor. On the west, where the ground slopes towards the plain, a huge
earthen rampart, faced with dry masonry, afforded secure protection;
and the slopes below the eastern and southern sides are strewn with
great stones which must have fallen from the walls above.[536] The
‘cliff-castles’ on the coasts of Kirkcudbright and of Wales and on
the headlands between the Land’s End and Cape Cornwall belong to the
same group.[537] In the second class the entrenchments, traced upon
commanding sites, which, however, were nowhere so steep as to dispense
with artificial aid, followed the tactical line of defence which the
nature of the hill indicated. Most of the heights on which they stand
are covered with soil so thin that they never could have been thickly
wooded, and if trees had encumbered their sides they would have been
cut down; for the object of the engineers was to leave no ‘dead ground’
on which an assailant could conceal himself. If he felt strong enough
to lead his clansmen to the assault, he knew that they could not avoid
being exposed from the moment when they penetrated within the range of
a bow or a sling. General Pitt-Rivers, who did so much to illuminate
the study of prehistoric fortifications, was never weary of calling
attention to the skill with which they had been designed. Once only,
when he was exploring the camp at Seaford, he thought that he could
detect evidence of neglect. As he stood upon the rampart he noticed
that an advancing force would be able to conceal itself for a while.
Presently, however, it flashed across his mind that time had done its
work upon rampart and ditch; and soon excavation proved that the latter
had lost by silting seven feet of its original depth. The general saw
with delight that the designer had been as vigilant as any of his
contemporaries. The rampart in ancient times must have been at least
five feet higher; and then the garrison who manned it would have been
able instantly to detect the first enemy who ventured within range.
‘How carefully,’ he wrote, ‘the defenders economized their interior
space, drawing their rampart just far enough down the hill to obtain a
command of view, but not one yard further.’[538]
In certain cases, however, the hill was so extensive that if the
tactical line of defence had been slavishly followed, the defenders
would have been too few. Then the chief engineer modified the accepted
principle. Selecting a spot at which he might safely abandon the
natural line, he made his sappers build a cross rampart at right angles
to it straight across the hill-top until it joined the works on the
further side. An example of this device may be seen in the camp of
Puttenham in Surrey.[539]
Among the more famous strongholds of the second class are Cissbury on
the South Downs, which, as we have seen, was almost certainly erected
in the Neolithic Age,[540] Badbury Rings, and the Maiden Castle. This
noble fortress must surely have deserved its modern name. No British
force could ever have taken it: no other country can show its match.
Three lines of ramparts defend the northern and four the southern side:
gaining the summit of the road from Weymouth, you see them outlined
against the sky; and as you mount the hill-side, they rise, one behind
another, like veritable cliffs. Worn by the rains of five-and-twenty
centuries or more, they still stand sixty feet[541] above their
fosses; and their entrances, on the east and the west, are guarded
by overlapping works so intricate that if a column had succeeded
in forcing its way across the abatis, it would have found itself
helplessly winding in and out as through a labyrinth, pounded on either
flank and enfiladed by stones and arrows discharged at point-blank
range.
The strongholds of the third class were erected on lower hills
or on high ground little elevated above the surrounding country,
and therefore depended less for their protection upon natural
features.[542] Those that have been explored belong to the Late Celtic
Period.[543] It may be doubted, however, whether such forts were
generally later than those whose sites were more commanding; for the
inhabitants of every district could only choose the best positions
which they could find.[544] Cherbury camp indeed, about four miles
south-east of Fyfield in Berkshire, was built on a lowland plain.
Some of the Gallic forts which Caesar saw, and of our own, were in his
time inhabited by large industrial communities; but although many of
the British strongholds which belonged to the Bronze Age contain the
foundations of huts and broken pottery,[545] it is doubtful whether
they had more than a few occupants except in time of war.[546]
Every explorer who has tried to imagine the conditions of life in
ancient British forts has noticed that many of them have no apparent
source from which water can be obtained. It has indeed been suggested
that where there was neither a spring nor running water within reach
the garrison had recourse to dew-ponds, which are still used for
watering cattle on the Hampshire downs.[547] But even these reservoirs
were generally lacking. Pitt-Rivers, however, argued that in the chalk
districts many sites which are now remote from water may have possessed
springs. At the village of Woodcuts in Cranborne Chase, after cleaning
out a Roman well, one hundred and eighty-eight feet deep, he found no
water, but the iron-work of a bucket.[548] But even where there was no
spring it is easy to understand how the garrison supplied themselves.
None of these camps was ever subjected to a prolonged siege. No army
can undertake such an operation unless it can ensure a continuous
supply of food; and to do this requires forethought and organization
of which barbarous clans are incapable. Again and again the Gauls
with whom Caesar contended, whose civilization was far more advanced
than that of the Britons of the Bronze Age, were obliged to abandon
movements that might otherwise have succeeded, simply because their
commissariat had been neglected.[549] When ancient Britons were obliged
to take refuge in their stronghold, they knew that the danger would
pass if they could hold out for a little while. Women and children
who failed to reach the entrenchment in time were doubtless slain or
enslaved. But otherwise the worst that was to be dreaded was the loss
of crops or stock and the destruction of dwellings. We may suppose that
while the cattle were being driven into the fort the women carried up
in vessels of skin or earthenware as much water as would suffice for a
few days. Such was the practice of the Maoris at a recent time.[550]
[Sidenote: Primitive metallurgy.]
In spite of war industrial arts were making progress, which
was stimulated by war itself. Copper was abundant in Cornwall,
Cardiganshire and Anglesey, and near Llandudno: tin was to be had near
the surface in Cornwall,[551] and perhaps first attracted attention
where it was associated with gold; native smiths began to copy the
tools which were brought from abroad; and insular forms were gradually
evolved. Among the immigrants there must have been some who were
acquainted with metallurgy; and just as the modern coach-builder finds
himself obliged to manufacture motor-cars, so, we may be sure, the more
enterprising cutlers who had hitherto made stone implements gradually
learned to produce tools of copper or bronze. The metals were of course
not at first procured by mining. Copper would be obtained from boulders
or from lumps of ore on hill-sides, and tin from the gravel beds of
streams. The methods, which have been recorded by modern observers,
of primitive communities are probably much the same as those of the
Britons of the Bronze Age. The original furnaces differed hardly at
all from the fires at which food was cooked. The fire was kindled
within a fire-place of large stones, underneath which was a pit. The
wind, rushing through the crevices of the stones, created a draught,
which may have been forced by some rude bellows. After the embers and
the slag had been raked away the molten metal in the pit was watched
until it was on the point of becoming solid, when the copper cakes were
snatched out and broken into the lumps of which specimens have been
found in bronze-founders’ hoards. For the smelting of tin a method may
have been adopted which was still practised in Germany in the Middle
Ages. A trench was filled with brushwood, above which logs were piled;
and as soon as the fuel was aglow the ore was pitched on to the fire
until a sufficient amount had accumulated. Then the embers were raked
away, and the molten tin ladled out.[552] It is worthy of remark that
all the Scottish bronze implements which had been analysed up to the
year 1880 contained lead;[553] and one may perhaps infer that the tin
which was exported from Cornwall to Scotland was not pure.
[Sidenote: Bronze implements:--celts.]
Many bronze implements were reproductions, more or less modified, of
neolithic models. Stone celts, knives, daggers, spear-heads, awls,
chisels, gouges, sickles, and saws have their successors in bronze.
Gradually, however, new forms were developed or invented. Bronze was
of course at first reserved for weapons; and knives or knife-daggers
probably preceded all others, because the metal was originally too
scarce and expensive to be used for those which required a large
expenditure of material.[554] Flat axes, resembling more or less
closely the polished neolithic celts, were, however, manufactured
early in the Bronze Age. After some time the sides of the narrow part
of the celt, above the cutting edge, were hammered upwards,--probably
in order to steady the blade against a lateral strain; and thus by
insensible gradations the flat was transformed into the flanged celt;
while a projection, commonly called a stop-ridge, was cast on the
narrow part of the blade with the object of preventing it from being
forced too far into its wooden haft. As the flanges became more marked,
they were first confined to the upper part of the tool, and afterwards
developed into wings which were hammered inwards so as to form a kind
of rudimentary socket.[555] Celts of this form are called palstaves,--a
word of Icelandic origin, which denotes a spade. In palstaves of
another kind the part between the wings and above the stop-ridge was
cast thinner than the rest, so that a groove appeared into which the
haft could be securely fitted; and a loop was often added at one side
to enable the attachment to be secured by bands of twine.[556] The
final improvement was to cast the blade with a socket for the reception
of the handle: but palstaves remained in use down to the very end of
the Bronze Age;[557] while in some socketed celts the wings survive as
mere ornaments upon the sides.[558] Like palstaves nearly all socketed
celts are looped on one side, and a few on both.[559] Naturally the
socket was not limited to celts, but applied also to knives,[560]
chisels,[561] gouges,[562] and other tools. Socketed knives, however,
are very rare in Scotland; and on the Continent, except in Northern
France, they are almost unknown.[563] On the other hand the patterns
of our socketed chisels and gouges appear to have been derived from
some foreign source.[564]
[Illustration: FIG. 18. ½]
[Illustration: FIG. 19. ½]
[Illustration: FIG. 20. ½]
[Illustration: FIG. 21. ½]
[Illustration: FIG. 22. ½]
[Illustration: FIG. 23. ½]
The earliest British celts were copied not from stone models but
from foreign ones of bronze;[565] and our winged celts and palstaves
resemble certain French specimens so closely that they too were
probably modelled in the first instance upon the latter.[566] The
socket also was invented by some ingenious foreign cutler;[567] for
palstaves with the wings bent over are rare in this country, whereas
socketed celts with ornamental wings are common.[568] Socketed
celts were apparently never widely diffused in Northern Britain;
and of course even in the south they did not altogether displace
palstaves.[569] Even after they began to be manufactured here the
output was supplemented by importation from Gaul: a certain type, the
blades of which, instead of expanding, are long and narrow, and the
sockets almost square, occurs frequently in North-Western France and
our southern counties, but very seldom in the north.[570]
Bronze celts in general, like those of stone, were doubtless used for
various purposes--as hoes, hatchets, and possibly battle-axes--and
some, which are very narrow or very small, as chisels.[571] Palstaves
were sometimes used, as their name would suggest, in the construction
of earthworks.[572]
[Sidenote: Sickles.]
Sickles probably originated in Southern Europe. The few early specimens
that have been found here have their closest analogies in France and
Denmark; but, for some unknown reason, socketed sickles are almost
peculiar to the British Isles.[573]
[Illustration: FIG. 24. ½]
[Sidenote: The Arreton Down hoard.]
A hoard was found early in the eighteenth century on Arreton Down, near
Newport in the Isle of Wight, which helped to illustrate the evolution
of bronze weapons. Daggers, which differed from knives principally
in size, though they began to be manufactured later, were originally
hafted with rivets; but afterwards they were cast with tangs or shanks,
which were let into the handle, and fastened by a single rivet.[574]
The Arreton Down hoard contained nine tanged blades, which closely
resemble daggers but may have been spear-heads. Many similar blades
have been found since, but hardly any outside the British Isles.[575]
[Sidenote: Halberds.]
From daggers were derived a class of weapons very rare in this
country, called halberds, which in Scandinavia and Northern Germany
have been found mounted as battle-axes. Heavier and broader than their
prototypes, they were often made of nearly pure copper, which rendered
them less brittle and more suitable for dealing heavy blows.[576]
[Sidenote: Shields, swords, spears.]
Swords, shields, and, with certain exceptions, spears and javelins were
not manufactured until the latest period of the Bronze Age. Swords and
spear-heads required great skill in casting: shields were so thin that
they could not be cast at all, but were wrought by the hammer.[577]
Even at the close of the Bronze Age they were probably unobtainable
except by the rich, while the rank and file doubtless still made
shift with bucklers of wicker-work, wood or leather. The shields of
the Bronze Age were invariably circular. Nearly all were ornamented
over their whole surface with concentric rings, of which one example
has as many as thirty, separated by circles of small studs; and this
ornamentation is peculiarly British. One curious shield, found in the
Fen country, is adorned with serpentine lines, which may have been
intended to represent snakes.[578]
[Illustration: FIG. 25. ⅙]
British bronze swords, like those of the Continent, from which they
were copied, are commonly of a type which is called leaf-shaped, the
blade tapering gently inwards from the hilt, then gradually expanding
until, at about one-third of the distance, measured from the point,
it attains its greatest width. They, as well as certain rapier-shaped
swords, were intended for stabbing, not striking. Their length was
generally about two feet, but varied between sixteen and thirty inches.
Their sheaths were as a rule made of wood or leather, which, however,
were often tipped with bronze; and many of these tips or chapes have
been found in the Thames and elsewhere without the scabbards, which had
perished.[579]
[Illustration: FIG. 26. ¼]
The spears of the earlier Bronze Age were identical with neolithic
flint weapons. Probably the earliest bronze spear-heads were some of
the larger blades that have been found in Wiltshire barrows, which are
commonly described as knives or daggers.[580] Others were derived from
the tanged blades of the Arreton Down type, if, indeed, the latter were
not themselves spear-heads. A curious and unique specimen, which was
found in the Thames at Taplow, and is now in the British Museum, is
ornamented with gold studs on the bottom of the blade, which are merely
survivals of the rivets that attached to its haft the dagger from
which it had been evolved.[581] Spear-heads of this kind, which are
invariably provided either with a pair of holes in the blade or a pair
of loops below it, intended to secure its attachment to the shaft,[582]
are extremely rare on the Continent, and appear to have been invented
in Ireland, whence they spread in the course of trade to Britain.[583]
Another form of spear-head, which originated in the British Isles and
has never been found elsewhere, was barbed, and seems to have been used
for hunting rather than in war.[584] The commonest, however, is the
continental leaf-shaped type, some specimens of which have analogies
in Gaul and the Swiss lake-dwellings.[585] The smaller weapons of the
spear-head class were doubtless javelins.[586]
[Illustration: FIG. 27. ½]
[Sidenote: Moulds.]
Many of the moulds in which weapons and implements were cast have been
preserved. Open moulds sufficed for flat axes; but the more difficult
operations of casting palstaves and socketed celts required that
the moulds should be made in halves. All the open ones that remain
were of stone; many others, however, were doubtless formed of more
perishable materials, such as clay or compact sand. Bronze moulds
were also used; but the only specimens which have been found were for
palstaves, socketed celts, and gouges. There is a bronze mould in
the British Museum that was itself cast in a mould of clay, formed
round a model palstave, and attached to it by string, which was of
course reproduced in the metal. Leaden celts have once or twice been
met with, which of course would have been useless as cutting tools;
and it is probable that they were intended simply for making moulds
of clay or sand. Bronze moulds were costly, and would soon wear out.
It has been suggested therefore that, just as a printer uses in his
press not his original wood-block but an electrotype copy, so the
bronze-founder generally reserved his bronze moulds for making leaden
models from which any number of clay moulds could be formed.[587]
Sockets were produced by means of clay cores, which were inserted in
the moulds. Socketed celts have so often been found in hoards with the
cores remaining in them that we may reasonably conclude that they were
bartered by the bronze-founders in this state, and that, as in the
Neolithic Age, the purchasers finished them with their own hands.[588]
The hammers and anvils which were used in the final stage of
manufacture were commonly stone, though a few light bronze hammers have
been unearthed; and the decoration was applied by means of punches.[589]
[Sidenote: Decoration of weapons.]
The patterns with which weapons were decorated are worth noticing even
by those to whom archaeology for its own sake makes no appeal. Daggers
and flat or slightly flanged celts were incised with rectilinear
figures and chevrons only:[590] winged celts, palstaves, socketed
celts, and spear-heads have similar designs in a few instances,[591]
but for the most part they are ornamented with concentric circles. The
significance of these facts will become apparent when we come to deal
with certain chronological questions relating to the Bronze Age.[592]
[Sidenote: Hoards.]
What we know of the metal-work of this period has been learned mainly
from buried hoards which were never recovered by their owners, and of
which more than a hundred have been unearthed in Great Britain from
Cornwall to Sutherland.[593] These hoards were of three kinds.[594]
Some, consisting entirely of newly-made articles, belong to traders.
Others, which comprise damaged or broken goods, and include moulds and
often cakes of copper, represent the stock-in-trade of bronze-founders,
who tramped over the country-side, and were ready to cast implements
or ornaments of the latest fashion and to melt and recast old ones for
anybody who could give them what they wanted in exchange. The tools
in these collections were for the most part broken intentionally to
make them more portable and ready for the crucible.[595] Other hoards
again, which frequently comprise ornaments, alone or associated with
implements, were the property of persons who were not in the trade.
Hoards were of course buried when robbers were about or when some
marauding clan appeared. By far the greater number belong to the latest
period of the Bronze Age,[596] which shows that in earlier times the
craft had not been specialized, or that people who could afford to buy
bronze implements were so few that no travelling dealer could make a
fair profit. Those who then possessed bronze tools must have made them
for themselves unless there happened to be a skilled craftsman near who
could earn a living by working for his neighbours.
The great improvement of tools and weapons would lead us to look for
traces of corresponding progress in every department of material
culture.
[Sidenote: Pasturage.]
Pasturage of course continued to be the mainstay of the mass of the
population; and although there were probably few households which
did not subsist partly upon the chase, the remains of funeral feasts
in barrows and the refuse heaps of dwellings show that game was eaten
much less than the flesh of domestic animals. It has been said that
sheep were not introduced into Britain before the Roman conquest;
but excavation has proved that they were bred by the bronze-using
inhabitants of Dorsetshire.[597] Besides the small cattle that were
common in the Neolithic Age large oxen were reared, at all events on
Cranborne Chase and the Yorkshire Wolds; and, as in the Neolithic Age
and doubtless for the same reason, animals were commonly slaughtered
before they had reached maturity.[598] Although bronze fish-hooks,
almost identical in form with our own hooks of steel, abounded in the
Swiss lake-dwellings, and were present in more than one of the hoards
that have been unearthed in France, only a single specimen has yet
come to light in the British Isles: but it need not be inferred that
the Britons had no taste for fish; for they probably caught trout and
salmon with nets or spears.[599]
The growth of population was indeed making it difficult for men to
provide for their families; and they were constrained to toil harder in
order to avoid starvation. Under [Sidenote: Agriculture.] this pressure
agriculture began to flourish; and wheat was grown at least as far
north as Yorkshire.[600] Armed with bronze axes, the husbandmen were
better able to clear forests and to bring new land under cultivation;
and at harvest time, when they reaped their reward, then, we may be
sure, the clansmen gathered, and sacrificed to their god, and held high
festival.[601] Their labours are attested not only by numerous stone
mullers and by the sickles that have been already mentioned, one of
which was found even in Aberdeenshire, but also, as we have already
seen, by the teeth of the skeletons in the barrows.[602] Oxen were
probably used in ploughing.[603] Horses, which were very small, were
domesticated, and in certain parts of the country eaten,[604] but they
were not common; and, although the rock-carvings of Scandinavia and
the bridle-bits and wooden wheels that have been found on the sites of
Swiss lake-dwellings show that in the Bronze Age men had learned to
ride and drive,[605] similar evidence is wanting in Britain. Looped
bronze plates, however, have been found in a hoard at Abergele, which
are supposed to have been a jingling ornament, attached to harness;
and some small bells, found at Dowris in Ireland, resemble those which
occasionally form a part of modern horse-trappings.[606] Oxen indeed,
if not horses, must have been required for hauling timber even in
neolithic times when clearings had to be made; and the wagons which
conveyed tin to the coast when Pytheas visited Cornwall[607] had
probably been in use long before his time.
[Sidenote: Signs of amelioration in the conditions of life.]
Certain facts seem to indicate that the conditions of life in the
Bronze Age were becoming more favourable to longevity, and in
particular that women were better off than before. Famines indeed must
still have occurred; for of course there were bad harvests from time to
time, and cattle then, as now, were liable to disease, and doubtless
often perished in hard winters. But the disparity in stature between
men and women was far less than it had been in the Neolithic Age;[608]
and Thurnam estimated the average age of the people of the round
barrows whose skeletons he had examined at fifty-five, eight years more
than that of the aboriginals.[609] It has been affirmed that even the
primitive Aryans often put old people to death;[610] but skeletons have
been exhumed in Britain which showed signs of extreme age.[611]
[Sidenote: Dwellings.]
One might be inclined to suppose that this amelioration was partly
due to improved housing; but such evidence as exists tends to show
that the habitations of the Bronze Age, although, owing to improved
tools, they may have been better built, were designed on much the same
lines as those of the preceding epoch. Pit-dwellings, like those which
have been already described,[612] were still constructed in districts
where stone was not obtainable. Very few, as we have seen, can be even
approximately dated; but some which have been excavated at Hitcham in
Buckinghamshire and in the fort of Eggardun on the Dorsetshire downs
contained pottery which made it safe to assign them to the Bronze
Age.[613] It may be that some of the Scottish subterranean dwellings
which are known as weems belong to the same period, for a bronze sword
was found in one at Monzie in Perthshire;[614] and perhaps a few of the
so-called Picts’ houses and of the beehive huts in Cornwall and North
Britain, which will be described hereafter, were built before iron was
there used.
[Sidenote: Lake-dwellings.]
It is, as we have seen,[615] very doubtful whether any of the
lake-dwellings of Britain were older than the Bronze Age; and it
cannot be positively affirmed that any were as old. One at Barton
Mere in Suffolk, if it really was a lake-dwelling,[616] probably
belonged to that time, although the only implement found in it was
a spear-head;[617] but the evidence for the date assigned to the
well-known settlement at Holderness is considerably stronger. It has
been argued that since both stone and bronze implements were found
there, the site must have been occupied before the Iron Age, because,
although in a time of transition the old material may persist by the
side of the new, implements of two earlier periods would hardly survive
into a third.[618]
[Sidenote: Hut-circles.]
There is, however, one class of dwellings numerous examples of which
have been proved to have existed in the Bronze Age, if not before.
The best-known groups of hut-circles are those of Anglesey, Dartmoor,
Cornwall, and Northumberland. Sportsmen who have shot snipe in Anglesey
must have noticed low mounds dotting the rough wastes which are common
in the island. Buried beneath these hillocks lie the foundations of
huts which were built in prehistoric times. Most of them are clustered
in tiny hamlets of five or six; but at Ty Mawr on the southern
slopes of the Holyhead Mountain, sheltered from the cold winds by
a precipitous cliff and fortified against attack from below, was a
considerable village, comprising more than fifty huts. On a clear day
the villagers could discern the Wicklow Mountains; and the triple head
of Snowdon, haunted, as they surely believed, by some divinity, closed
their southward view. The lower walls of the huts, which alone remain,
are about three feet thick, and enclose spaces of from fifteen to
twenty feet in diameter, partitioned in one instance by upright stones.
The entrance, defined by two pillars, invariably faces the south-west.
Stones, blackened by fire and doubtless used for cooking, were found
within, and also mullers for grinding corn, and the broken shells
of the limpets and periwinkles on which the occupants partly lived.
Some of the huts, however, appear to have been simply workshops. They
were littered with broken quartz from a neighbouring copper lode: the
fire-places, of which each contained two, one having a chimney in the
thickness of the wall, were strewn with slag; and mortars and mullers
abounded, which had been used not for grinding corn but for breaking
stone.[619] Possibly the huts may have been roofed with converging
stones, laid one above another in the beehive fashion; but some in
Northumberland and Devonshire contain central cavities, like those of
neolithic pit-dwellings, in which poles for supporting a roof of boughs
thatched with turf were apparently fixed.[620] Hut-circles everywhere
present the same general features; but of course there are numerous
varieties of size and construction. Nearly all the huts were round; but
a few in East Cornwall are oval;[621] and while most of the hamlets
were enclosed by walls, some apparently did not need protection,[622]
or were situated near a fort in which the villagers could take
refuge. Grimspound on Dartmoor, the typical example of a fortified
village, was apparently the stronghold of the people whose huts were
scattered on the slopes hard by; and the dwellings which it enclosed
may have been occupied in time of peace only by caretakers.[623] Some
hamlets were encircled by non-defensive walls, which appear to be
the remains of cattle-pens; while in others each pen was connected
with its own hut, the walls forming a complex whole.[624] Many huts
contain cooking-holes, lined with stones, in some of which traces of
charcoal are found:[625] others had cooking-stones but no holes:[626]
occasionally the kitchen was in the open air outside the dwelling;[627]
and in a circle on Whit-Tor, where no provision for cooking was
discernible, there seemed to be evidence that the hut had been simply
the workshop of a flint implement maker.[628] Many of the dwellings
on Dartmoor apparently consisted of only one room; while others, like
the single specimen on Ty Mawr, contained partitions.[629] Some huts
were paved, while others had no visible means of excluding damp.[630]
The large size of many of the Dartmoor circles has led antiquaries to
believe that they could not have carried roofs sufficiently strong
to withstand the snows and storms of winter, and were only occupied
in the summer by herdsmen;[631] but in most parts of England huts
must have been inhabited throughout the winter, whose roofs were
constructed of nothing more substantial than woodwork overlaid with
sods or bracken. It is remarkable that not a single bronze implement,
weapon, or ornament has ever been found in a hut-circle on Dartmoor,
although sufficient pottery of the Bronze Age type remained to attest
their age.[632] Probably, like the people who dwelt on the Yorkshire
Wolds, the inhabitants were poor and backward; for the extreme scarcity
of spindle-whorls and the abundance of the flint scrapers used for
leather-dressing that lay scattered in their abodes seem to show that
they were commonly clad in skins.[633]
[Sidenote: Inhabited camps.]
On the borders of Wiltshire and Dorsetshire, and doubtless also in
other parts of Britain, small communities erected earthworks for
permanent occupation, which differed in size, situation, and mode
of construction from the great hill-forts, but were nevertheless
adapted to some extent for defence. A considerable number of small
entrenchments, approximately square in outline, are scattered over
the downs in these two counties; and three of them--Martin Down
Camp, South Lodge Camp, and Handley Hill Camp--have been thoroughly
excavated. The results left it doubtful whether the last-named had
not been constructed in Roman times;[634] but the other two belonged
unmistakably to the Bronze Age. Martin Down Camp covered about two
acres; and South Lodge Camp only three-quarters of an acre. The
ramparts, which were very low, were probably strengthened by stockades.
Both camps were situated not on the summits of hills but in sheltered
nooks, and were probably used as enclosures for cattle; but an
abundance of broken pottery, animal bones, and burnt cooking flints
proved that they had also been inhabited by man.[635]
But the evidence for describing the domestic life of our Bronze Age is
insignificant in comparison with that which is afforded by the Swiss
lake-dwellings. The most remarkable British habitation of that time,
indeed almost the only one which can rival those of Switzerland in the
richness of its remains, is not a hut, not even an artificial shelter
of the poorest kind. In 1859 some quarrymen were removing limestone
from a ravine formed by the Stanhope Burn, a tributary of the Wear,
when they discovered the now [Sidenote: The Heathery Burn Cave.]
far-famed Heathery Burn Cave. Antiquaries hurried to the spot; and when
a layer of stalagmite had been removed relics began to be found. During
thirteen years exploration went on; and finally, besides the bones of
the family who had occupied the cave, those of the animals on which
they had fed, and the shells of mussels, cockles, and limpets, a vast
number of tools, weapons, utensils, and ornaments were collected, which
belonged to the closing period of the Bronze Age. A pair of bronze
tongs, unique in Britain, and one-half of a mould for casting socketed
celts showed that they had been independent of bronze founders; and
their outfit comprised two swords, seven spear-heads, nineteen socketed
axes, two chisels, three gouges, two socketed knives, a tanged knife,
a razor, two implements of deer’s horn, three bone knives, a stone
spindle-whorl and some flint flakes, fifteen bronze and four bone
pins, a bronze cauldron, a gold bracelet, numerous penannular bronze
bracelets, including one which was so small that it must have been worn
by a little girl, eight large bronze bangles evidently intended to be
worn on the upper arm, six bronze disks, whetstones, buttons, and other
articles too numerous to mention. Indeed the only bronze objects of any
importance which are not represented in the collection are daggers,
hammers, sickles, and shields.[636] The cauldron, which is shaped like
a truncated cone with the broad end uppermost, belongs to a class of
vessels which were not made before the close of the Bronze Age, and are
exceedingly rare in England, but not uncommon in Scotland and Ireland.
It closely resembles one which was dredged up from the bed of the
Thames near Battersea, and which may be seen in the British Museum; and
perhaps it may have come in the course of trade from Etruria, where the
type originated.[637] It had been used for cooking, and was associated
with numerous fragments of earthenware. The domestic pottery of the
Bronze Age, like the sepulchral vessels, was made by hand,[638] and,
unlike them, was fitted to endure rough usage; but while the collection
obtained from the cave and nearly all the other examples that have
been found are unornamented, the table ware of Dartmoor hardly differs
from that which came from the barrows of the same district and is as
elaborately decorated.[639] It is also remarkable that many kinds of
household utensils--bowls and jars, pans and pannikins, cooking pots,
pots for boiling water or meal, pipkins, cups, and strainers--have
been discovered in barrows. Some, which were entire, had apparently
been deposited instead of regular sepulchral vessels; but many were in
fragments, and may have been used in funeral feasts.[640]
The exploration of the Heathery Burn Cave not only illustrates the life
of the Bronze Age; it also shows that even in districts far remote from
the Continent the use of bronze was not confined to a conquering people
but spread to the descendants of the older population. The skeletons
in the cave were wholly different from the types which are associated
with the round barrows, and closely resembled those which have been
recovered from the beds of rivers in England and Ireland.[641]
But what is most remarkable is the contrast between the wealth of these
cave-dwellers and the discomfort in which they lived. Here was a family
well armed, equipped with the best tools of the time, owning flocks
and herds, possessing land which they cultivated, and rich enough
to load their women with ornaments, yet content to live in a dark
damp cavern traversed by a stream, which one night rose in flood and
drowned them in their sleep. It has been suggested that they had huts
in the neighbourhood, and only resorted to the cave on extraordinary
occasions.[642] What could have induced them to live in it even for
a day is difficult to conceive; but that they inhabited it, if not
permanently, at least for long periods, is proved by the abundance of
pottery as well as by the heaps of refuse which represented the remains
of a long succession of meals.[643]
[Illustration: FIG. 28.]
[Sidenote: Dress.]
The spindle-whorls of stone, bone, and baked clay which have been
found in this cave, in barrows,[644] hut-circles, and elsewhere, and
hardly differ from those which, a few years ago, were commonly used
in Scottish villages and in many parts of the Continent,[645] are
not the only relics that bear witness to the development of dress
during the Bronze Age. The deer-horn implements which belonged to the
cave-dwellers and exactly resemble others that were obtained from the
sites of Swiss lake-dwellings, were probably used in weaving.[646] Bone
tweezers from barrows in Wiltshire and Dorsetshire and bronze tweezers
from Anglesey were perhaps designed for drawing thread through holes in
leather: but they may also have been used for extracting superfluous
hairs;[647] and the numerous razors[648] that have come to light, some
of which have no parallel in any foreign country, show that Britons,
even in the furthest north, shaved their beards many centuries before
Caesar noticed the custom.[649] Leathern garments, as we have seen,
were largely worn:[650] indeed the remains of a stitched leathern
dress have been recovered from a barrow in Northumberland;[651] but
more interesting are pieces of the woollen and linen clothes in which
the dead were sometimes buried.[652] Nor was the apparel of the Bronze
Age devoid of ornament, or fastened merely with thorns, like that of
the Germans of a far later period [Sidenote: Pins and buttons.] whom
Tacitus[653] described. Pins of bone or bronze, some certainly worn
with dresses, others perhaps in the hair, were not uncommon; and we
have seen how large a store was possessed by a single family.[654]
Even the indigent people of the Yorkshire Wolds wore buttons not only
of stone, bone, and wood, but of jet, some of which were beautifully
ornamented with the pattern of a Maltese cross.[655] During the
earlier part of the Bronze Age buttons were pierced on the under side
with V-shaped holes, which enabled them to be sewn on to the dress--a
device which, on the Continent, was inherited from the Stone Age;
and, as far as can be judged from the skeletons with which they are
associated, they were used only by men. At a later time the perforation
was apparently superseded by a raised loop, which is found on buttons
of bronze.[656] In Wiltshire and Norfolk chiefs actually adorned their
tunics with buttons of gold.[657] Ivory buttons and ivory pins have
been unearthed in Wiltshire; and amber buttons were among the ornaments
not only of that rich district but of Norfolk and even of Yorkshire
and Dorsetshire.[658] Nor were these costly materials used only for
personal adornment. A [Sidenote: Weapons mounted with gold or amber.]
bronze dagger with an ivory handle has been obtained from a barrow
near Bere Regis in Dorsetshire:[659] an archer’s wrist-guard or bracer
of bone, found at Kellythorpe in the East Riding, was decorated with
bronze studs, plated with gold:[660] a barrow on Hammeldon Down in
Devonshire has yielded a dagger hilt of red amber inlaid with pins
of gold;[661] and from a barrow near Normanton in South Wiltshire
Hoare obtained a dagger with a wooden handle exquisitely inlaid in a
chevron pattern with thousands of golden rivets, each smaller than the
smallest pin. ‘It could not,’ he wrote, ‘be surpassed (if, indeed,
equalled) by the most able workman of modern times.’[662] With such
a weapon hanging at his side and his dress glittering with gold or
amber studs, a British chieftain must have made a splendid show. But
some were not content with such display. Early in the last century a
cairn was opened at Mold in Flintshire, which was said by the peasants
of the country-side to be haunted by a ghost in golden armour. Three
hundred loads of stones were carted away; and then appeared a skeleton,
accompanied by three hundred amber beads that had once formed a
necklace, and a golden peytrel, mounted on a copper plate, with which
the owner had decorated his horse’s breast.[663] This interment indeed
belonged to the very latest period of the Bronze Age; but much earlier
was the barrow of Upton Lovel in South Wiltshire, which contained
along with personal ornaments [Sidenote: Ornaments.] of gold an amber
necklace of a thousand beads that had been worn not by a woman but by a
man.[664]
[Illustration: FIG. 29. ½]
[Illustration: FIG. 30. ⅓]
But although necklets and bracelets and other ornaments were commonly
worn by knights and Druids in Gaul, their use in this country seems
to have been generally restricted to women; and, whatever the reason
may have been, the women of Britain, then as now, wore less jewellery
than those of foreign countries.[665] Still, many specimens, most of
which belonged to late periods, are to be seen in the museums which
illustrate the culture of the Bronze Age; but for the most part they
were either imported or fashioned after foreign designs.[666] Bronze
ornaments are comparatively rare[667] although, as we have seen, the
family who lived in the Heathery Burn Cave possessed many, and their
armlets are absolutely unique.[668] In Scotland as well as in the
wealthier parts of England women displayed gold torques of various
patterns, some plain, others penannular, which resembled large bangles,
others again funicular, of twisted ribbon-like form, or wrought with
a pattern like the thread of a screw;[669] while gold bracelets in
equal variety clasped their wrists; and an ivory armlet has been
found in a Wiltshire barrow.[670] In 1863 a ploughman, guiding his
team at Mountfield in Sussex, turned up a hoard of gold ornaments
weighing eleven pounds.[671] A hoard buried in Elginshire contained
no less than three dozen gold armlets, belonging to the latest period
of the Scottish Bronze Age; and an armlet of twisted wires, made
to encircle the arm in four coils, which was considered the finest
specimen of the goldsmith’s art of this period ever found in Scotland,
was cut up and melted down by an Edinburgh jeweller.[672] The most
interesting, however, of all the Scottish gold ornaments are the
crescent-shaped lunettes, worn round the neck, which were of Irish
origin, and of which only four English specimens are known.[673] They
would seem to be of early date; for two were found in association
with a flat celt.[674] Rings were extremely rare;[675] and ear-rings
have only been met with in Derbyshire, the East Riding of Yorkshire,
and the north of Scotland.[676] A pair which was found in a grave in
Morayshire can only be described as hideous. They were made of gold,
in shape like an open shell or pod, five inches and a half long,
and suspended at right angles to the hook.[677] Perhaps the most
beautiful and characteristic ornaments of the Bronze Age were the jet
necklaces, which were very common in Scotland and comparatively rare in
Southern Britain, though they were worn in Northumberland, Derbyshire,
Staffordshire, and on the Yorkshire Wolds. They generally consisted
of flat plates, adorned with chevron or lozenge patterns, and strung
together by bugle-shaped beads.[678] A similar necklace of quadrangular
amber tablets, connected by beads of the same material, formed part of
the treasures of a chieftain’s wife in Wiltshire, and was deposited
in one of the barrows at Lake, near Stonehenge.[679] Amber was indeed
the most fashionable of all ornaments in this region, where it was
worn sometimes alone, sometimes in combination with jet and with blue
or green glass beads. In full dress, with one of these necklaces
hanging over her bosom, gold bracelets on her arms, a pair of gold
disks, bearing devices like a Greek cross, on her dress, and pins of
bronze, which shone like gold, in her hair, a Wiltshire dame must have
surpassed even her husband in splendour.[680]
[Illustration: FIG. 31. ½]
Those who could not afford such costly ornaments were not always
obliged to content themselves with perforated boars’ teeth or bone
beads; for, incredible as it may appear, sham jewellery was in vogue
even in the Bronze Age. Not many years ago three penannular rings,
picked up by a ploughman near Forfar, were found to consist of bronze
coated with gold leaf.[681]
[Sidenote: Distribution of wealth: sources of gold, ivory, and amber.]
While these things help us to realize the circumstances of the people
who wore them, they also throw light upon the distribution of wealth,
and supplement the information which we have already obtained from
implements and weapons about internal trade and foreign commerce.
Possibly some difference of burial customs may account for the
comparative abundance of gold ornaments in Scotland and the almost
entire absence of trinkets of any kind in Cornwall; but the evidence
is generally accepted which seems to point to the conclusion that the
inhabitants of Wiltshire--especially of Salisbury Plain--were richer
than those of any other part of Southern Britain. The most expensive
ornaments--amber, gold, ivory, and glass--have been found there in
considerable numbers; and all of them must have been imported, directly
or indirectly, in some cases from abroad. The glass beads, which,
strictly speaking, were made of vitreous paste, perhaps came from the
Mediterranean; and a blue one of real glass with yellow spirals, taken
from a Ross-shire barrow, had its counterparts in the cemetery of
Hallstatt.[682] Where the ivory was procured is doubtful: objects of
this material, apparently made from the fossilized tusks of a mammoth,
lay among the relics in the Paviland Cave in Glamorganshire;[683]
but most of the mammoth tusks in this country are too decomposed to
be susceptible of manufacture.[684] Gold has been obtained from most
of the alluvial gravels in the West of England that have been worked
for tin;[685] but many of the English and perhaps all the Scottish
gold ornaments were made of gold that had been won in Ireland, which
has been justly called the El Dorado of the ancient world. Many gold
ornaments in Denmark are of Irish origin; and the leading archaeologist
of Scandinavia affirms that the metal-workers of his own country and of
France imported Irish gold.[686] Amber has been washed ashore at Deal
and on other parts of the east coast; and the necklaces of Wiltshire
may perhaps have been generally of British material as well as of
British workmanship:[687] but those of Ireland were probably made from
amber that had come from Scandinavia,[688] and may have been taken in
exchange for gold. In the time of Augustus amber was one of the British
imports;[689] and, although at least one necklace found its way even
to Orkney,[690] its rarity in Scotland and in the northern counties
of England suggests that it was imported even in the Bronze Age.[691]
Indeed, since amber was so much commoner in Wiltshire than elsewhere,
it would seem probable that it came generally from abroad.[692]
[Sidenote: Why was Wiltshire exceptionally rich in ornaments?]
But why was it so abundant in Wiltshire? Why are gold, amber, and
ivory rare even in the other southern counties, and wholly absent in
Derbyshire, where round barrows are so numerous?[693] Why was the
wealth of Wiltshire, so far as it can be estimated from the evidence of
the graves, almost entirely concentrated in the south, and especially
in the district round Stonehenge?[694] The modern population of South
Wiltshire is very scanty: Salisbury Plain is barren; and the only soil
at all fertile is in the valleys of the Wiley and the Avon.[695] One
would have expected to find that the wealthiest part of Britain was
the south-east; and that in the prehistoric period, as in the time of
Caesar, the richest of all was Kent. Yet Kent has yielded very few
glass beads or gold ornaments of the Bronze Age, and not one of amber
or ivory. Doubtless there were once many barrows in the south-eastern
counties which have been rifled or ploughed down; but jewellery was
not deposited only in barrows; and so many bronze tools and weapons
have been found in this region that the scarcity of barrows will not
account for the rarity of ornaments. No explanation, so far as I know,
has ever been offered; and I offer one with diffidence. First, it is
not certain, and indeed improbable, that more than a small proportion
of the riches that have been unearthed from the sepulchres of South
Wiltshire belonged to families who had lived in the neighbourhood.
The prodigious abundance of barrows around Stonehenge can only be
explained by supposing that the bodies of chieftains, of their wives
and children, were brought from distant parts to be buried there, as
to a hallowed spot. Secondly, it is conceivable that the clans which,
early in the Bronze Age, settled in South Wiltshire were numerically
stronger, better organized, or better armed than their neighbours, and
that much of their wealth may have been obtained by plunder.
[Sidenote: British trade and the spiral.]
Another indication of ancient British trade appears in the geographical
distribution of the spiral. This form of decoration, which was common
in Egyptian and Aegean art, travelled along the route of the amber
trade by the Danube valley and Hungary to Scandinavia, and ultimately
reached the British Isles, where, however, it occurs only on stone
balls,[696] the stones of cists, and megalithic monuments, of which
the most conspicuous example is New Grange in the county Meath. The
spiral is not found on objects of the Bronze Age in Spain, nor in
France except on the dolmen of Gavr’ Inis in Brittany and in a grave
in the department of the Aube: in the British Isles it is confined to
Scotland, Cumberland, Lancashire, and Northumberland, the north of
Ireland,[697] and Merionethshire (which may have owed its solitary
specimen to Irish influence); and, moreover, in the British Isles and
Scandinavia spirals are connected by the same device.[698] Scandinavia
therefore was undoubtedly the source from which the spiral reached
Britain.[699]
[Sidenote: Comparative backwardness of culture in Britain.]
Yet while the reader who has been accustomed to suppose that the
Britons even of Caesar’s time were mere savages may be astonished to
learn that already in the Bronze Age there was commercial intercourse
between Britain and the Continent, he must beware of assuming that
his forefathers were on a level with the inhabitants of Central and
Southern Europe. Our country has long been the geographical centre
of the civilized world: in ancient times it was outside the pale.
Regular trade did not exist except with Northern Gaul and, probably
towards the end of the age, with Massilia and Phoenician Spain:[700]
such articles of commerce as found their way to Britain from Central
Europe were flotsam and jetsam. Long after swords had come into use
abroad the Briton’s chief weapon was still a stout dagger: bronze was
used here for centuries after iron had been adopted in more fortunate
lands; and the glass beads of which the women of Wiltshire were so
proud would have been scorned by foreign ladies who compared them
with their own.[701] Moreover, even in bronze our workmanship never
reached the pitch of excellence which the artificers of the north, in
their prolonged Bronze Age, were able to attain. Just as the neolithic
cutlers of Britain were inferior to those of Denmark, so there is
nothing in our museums which can vie with the astonishing splendour of
the decorated palstaves and shields, the trumpets and vessels of the
Scandinavian region.
[Sidenote: The information obtainable from graves.]
But we shall be better able to understand the relations that existed
between our country and the Continent in the Bronze Age when we have
studied the graves, the objects other than weapons, implements,
and ornaments that have been found within them, and the rude stone
monuments with which they were often associated.
[Sidenote: Round barrows, cairns, and sepulchral circles.]
We have seen that round barrows were already being erected before the
Bronze Age began, and that they were used not only by the round-headed
invaders but also by the older population.[702] After the close of the
Neolithic Age no more long barrows were constructed,[703] although
some of those which existed were still used even under the Roman
occupation;[704] nor were the dead buried, except perhaps in certain
Cornish cairns,[705] in chambers which were intended to be opened from
time to time. Thenceforward the graves were cists, commonly made of
four stones set on edge, which were closed by a fifth once for all
after the corpse or burnt bones had been laid within them;[706] or,
where no stones could be obtained, holes scooped in the chalk,[707]
and sometimes even hollowed trunks of trees or real coffins.[708]
Occasionally, however, the body, burnt or unburnt, was laid upon
the ground without anything to protect it from the superincumbent
mass.[709] When a tumulus was erected, whether it was an earthen barrow
or a cairn, its form was usually round and occasionally oval. The
change involved degeneration.[710] Galleries were no longer required.
The chambered cairns of the north gave way to structureless heaps of
stone: the chambered long barrows of England with their portals,
entrance-passages, and graceful exterior curves were succeeded by mere
mounds.[711]
What would first impress an ordinary wayfarer is the vast number of
the round barrows compared with the rarity of those of the older form.
The mounds clustered in the immediate neighbourhood of Stonehenge many
times outnumber all the long barrows in Britain. Three hundred still
exist in an area of twelve square miles; and from one spot hard by the
great stones Stukeley counted a hundred and twenty-eight.[712] Again,
while the long barrows almost always stand on conspicuous hills, round
barrows are sometimes placed on low ground.[713] In certain maritime
districts, for instance Cornwall and Brittany, it has been noticed that
the monuments of the dead are most thickly strewn in the extreme west,
as if the builders had desired that the spirits of those who had gone
before them might look upon the setting sun.[714]
The material, it need hardly be said, varied according to the resources
of the district. In Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall cairns are almost
universal, some being of gigantic size. In 1876 a cairn in Fifeshire
was opened; and after more than a thousand cartloads of stones had
been removed, a solitary cist appeared, containing one interment.[715]
Sometimes, however, mounds of various kinds coexist in the same region:
thus in Devonshire we find round barrows, cairns, and small central
cairns covered by round barrows.[716] In other counties again barrows
made of earth, of chalk, and of earth and chalk mixed may be seen
close together.[717] Curiously enough many barrows on the Yorkshire
Wolds were constructed of clay which had been fetched from distant
places.[718]
Round barrows range in diameter from twenty to one hundred and fifty
feet; and while some are even now twenty-four feet high, others barely
rise above the level of the surrounding ground.[719] Those of the
oldest form, which, however, continued to be erected contemporaneously
with others of later types, have some resemblance to a shallow
inverted bowl. More than three-fourths of the Wiltshire barrows belong
to this variety, which is also prevalent in Yorkshire and almost
invariable in Derbyshire, Dorsetshire, Somersetshire and the Orkney
Islands.[720] These mounds are occasionally surrounded by shallow
ditches, in which cases they represent a transition to the form which
is called bell-shaped.[721] Barrows of the latter kind, which stand on
a flat area surrounded by a ditch, but not by a bank, and are larger,
steeper, and more conical than those of the primitive form, are far
more numerous in Wiltshire, and especially round Stonehenge, than
elsewhere; although a few exist in other parts of Southern England,
and some of the so-called bowl barrows in the East Riding can hardly
be distinguished from them.[722] Latest of all were the disk-shaped
barrows,--small mounds standing alone, in pairs, or in groups of
three, within a circle defined by a ditch, which is fenced on its
outer side by a bank. Occasionally the enclosure contains no mound at
all, but only a grave dug out of the chalk; on the other hand, in one
instance the whole area within the ditch is covered by a low mound.
Disk barrows are commonest near Stonehenge, and outside Wiltshire they
are hardly to be found except in the adjoining corner of Dorsetshire,
on the Cotswold Hills, in Sussex, and, though rarely, in Derbyshire.
As they contained ornaments more frequently than the other kinds, it
has been supposed that they were specially devoted to the interment of
women;[723] but we may accept the explanation that, like the barrows,
the ornaments for the most part were comparatively late.
The significance of the ditches and banks has puzzled many antiquaries.
There are barrows close to one another, some of which are surrounded by
ditches, while others have none; while in districts in which stone is
abundant there are barrows enclosed by or enclosing small circles of
stones, and others which have neither one nor the other.[724] Perhaps
the barrows enclosed by circles are comparatively late, and the stones
may sometimes have been intended, wholly or in part, to give form
and symmetry to the mound; for in Derbyshire, where the barrows of
the Bronze Age are really cairns, a structural improvement was made
by building up the whole mound of concentric rings of stones.[725]
Again in Wiltshire ditches and banks are invariably complete;[726]
whereas on the Yorkshire Wolds banks and ditches or circles of stones
are generally incomplete; and this characteristic, which belonged, as
we have seen, to certain long barrows,[727] is repeated not only in
megalithic circles in the British Isles and in India, but also in rings
which are carved on rocks and on the covering stones of cists.[728] It
has been suggested that the banks and stone circles were intended to
bar the exit of the dreaded spirits of the dead;[729] but if this was
the purpose of the builders, why did they leave the barrier imperfect?
It is possible that their motive was not superstitious but utilitarian:
the break may simply have been a causeway intended to give access to
the barrow.[730]
Round barrows and cairns, like long barrows, are commonly supposed to
have been erected only as memorials of chiefs, their relatives, and
perhaps their honoured retainers;[731] for, it is said, no humble
family would have had the needful command of labour: but considering
that in Wiltshire, where there are more long barrows than in all the
rest of Britain, round barrows are thirty-four times as numerous,[732]
it is difficult to accept this opinion. Many of the round barrows are
small; and it is surely probable that the poorer clansmen sometimes
voluntarily gave their services to provide respected members of their
own class with a distinctive monument. Barrows and cairns, however,
are not the only sepulchres in which interments of the Bronze Age have
been discovered. A cave at Gop, near Rhyl, which had been used as a
dwelling, contained a sepulchral vault;[733] and Rains Cave in the
same county was used alternately as a dwelling and a cemetery.[734]
Many graves also exist over which no mound was erected.[735] Thus
on Handley Down in Dorsetshire no less than fifty-two interments of
cremated bones were found in holes dug out of the chalk on the western
side of a barrow. They were evidently later than the funeral in the
barrow itself, and were doubtless the remains of the descendants or
connexions of the chief who had been buried there.[736] In Scotland
numerous cemeteries, most of which were on knolls or sandhills, were
unmarked by any external sign;[737] and at Elton, near Beverley, in
the East Riding, more than seventy bodies were interred without a
barrow.[738] It has been supposed that such graves belonged to the
poor and lowly; and doubtless where they occur in large numbers and
are almost or entirely devoid of accompanying relics the assumption is
justified.[739] In certain cases also, where one or two large barrows
are associated with groups of tiny mounds, the latter were devoted to
the humbler members of the tribe. Two of the Scottish cemeteries,
however, contained gold armlets, others beautifully ornamented bronze
blades;[740] and three of the only four graves in which Pitt-Rivers
found the sepulchral vessels which are known as drinking-cups lacked
any memorial.[741] These may have been the graves of men of rank;
and so may the simple stone cists, in which relics have been found
that would seem to have belonged to persons of some wealth;[742] for
while every cist that has been observed in Devonshire either is or was
once covered by a mound,[743] there are many in Northumberland, as in
Scotland, which were left without any monument.[744]
Perhaps the most curious of all the burial grounds of the Bronze Age
is one which has been lately explored at Bleasdale in Lancashire, and
which may be compared with the wooden chamber in the neolithic Wor
Barrow on Cranborne Chase.[745] Here, on a moorland knoll surrounded by
an amphitheatre of hills, is a circle made not of stones but of wooden
logs closely planted in a trench, and containing a smaller circle,
which consists of a bank with a ditch on its inner side. Within this
ditch is a low mound, concealing another circle of logs, in the centre
of which were found two sepulchral urns. The ditch is floored with
poles, which may perhaps have been trodden by worshippers who walked
in ceremonial procession around the grave; for the bottom of a ditch
surrounding a barrow near Blandford, which was opened towards the end
of the last century, was worn into a smooth track by human feet.[746]
Hardly less remarkable is a circle near Port Erin in the Isle of Man,
formed of eighteen cists, in six separate sets, each composed of three
arranged in the shape of the letter T, two being placed end to end
along the circumference, while the third extended outwards at right
angles.[747]
In Britain, as in other countries, cenotaphs were erected in honour of
the dead whose remains could not be found. Barrows have been opened
within which, after the most careful scrutiny, not the faintest
indication could be detected of any burial, although in one there was
an empty urn and in another a small stone pavement, enclosed by a
miniature stone circle and resting upon burnt earth, which suggested
that an ideal cremation had been performed.[748] It seems possible that
Silbury Hill was a monument of this sort. This stupendous earthwork,
which commands the Bath road, six miles west of Marlborough, is one
hundred and thirty-five feet high and covers about five acres. The
cost of its erection at the present day would be not less than twenty
thousand pounds.[749] In 1777 a shaft was sunk from the top to the
bottom; and in 1849 a tunnel was driven from the side to the centre.
No trace of burial was found:[750] but even primary interments were
not always made at the centre of a barrow; and the labour of proving,
if it could be proved, that Silbury Hill was not erected over a grave
would be out of all proportion with the result. At all events its
purpose was connected with sepulchral usage. Recent excavations in the
meadow west and north of the hill are believed to have shown that it
was originally surrounded by a trench, which was filled with water;
and a local antiquary has suggested that the mound was an artificial
stronghold![751] But what clan would have undertaken this herculean
labour in a district where every hill was suitable for defence, and of
what use would the mound have been for such a purpose?
[Sidenote: Chronology of the barrows.]
The chronology of the barrows is somewhat perplexing. There is hardly a
single absolutely certain instance in which a socketed celt, a sword,
or a socketed spear-head has been found in a barrow, associated with
an interment;[752] and most antiquaries infer that the round barrows
generally belong to the earliest period of the Bronze Age.[753] It
would follow that during not less than four or five centuries the
practice of raising mounds over graves was discontinued, and one could
only wonder how it came to be revived at the beginning of the Iron
Age. It has indeed been argued that the absence of swords is no proof
that they were not used when barrows were being erected, but merely
shows that it was not customary to bury costly weapons which were not
habitually worn.[754] It seems difficult, however, to explain why a
distinction should have been drawn between swords and socketed celts,
on the one hand, and knives, daggers, and awls, which were often
buried, on the other.[755] Some may accept the suggestion that in the
later period of the Bronze Age, when cremation had presumably become
general, the practice of burying weapons or ornaments had ceased;[756]
but in the Early Iron Age it was not uncommon.[757] It would seem,
moreover, that in one or two instances socketed weapons were laid
with the dead;[758] and Dr. Arthur Evans, pointing out that an amber
necklace, found in one of the barrows near Stonehenge, is identical
in form and arrangement with the amber necklaces of Hallstatt, boldly
affirms that the disk-shaped barrows of Wiltshire belong to the end
of the Bronze Age.[759] Be this, however, as it may, it is morally
certain that some of the glass beads which abounded in the graves
of South Wiltshire were contemporary with socketed weapons; and a
competent antiquary, who has diligently examined their associations,
concludes that they belonged to the eighth and seventh centuries before
the Christian era.[760] Moreover, an earthenware vessel of the kind
which are called incense-cups, found in a barrow at Bulford, near
Amesbury, was ornamented with concentric circles;[761] and, as we have
seen,[762] this form of decoration, which is common on the covering
stones of cists in Scotland and in the north of England,[763] is also
characteristic of socketed celts and unknown on implements of earlier
date. The number of celts which have been found in barrows is so small
that it would be premature to lay stress upon the fact that only one
belonged to the socketed type;[764] and there may have been some
reason, of which we are ignorant, for the absence of spear-heads and
swords. In Gaul, at all events, relics belonging to every phase of the
bronze culture have been exhumed from burial mounds.[765]
[Sidenote: Cremation and inhumation.]
In the Bronze Age, as in the period of the long barrows, both cremation
and inhumation were practised in Britain. In Cleveland and on the coast
between Scarborough and Whitby cremation was almost invariable:[766]
in Northumberland nearly twice as common as inhumation.[767] In
Derbyshire,[768] on the other hand, inhumation interments are slightly
commoner than those by cremation; and on the Yorkshire Wolds more than
three times as numerous.[769] In Wiltshire and Dorsetshire inhumation
is as rare as cremation on the Wolds; and in Gloucestershire,
Devonshire, Cornwall, Merioneth, Carnarvon, and Denbigh cremation is
practically universal.[770] In Devonshire interments by inhumation have
been found, but never in barrows.[771] In Scotland the numbers are
about equal.[772]
Archaeologists generally hold that cremation was not practised in the
Bronze Age until a comparatively late date,--probably not before 1000
B.C.; and this view seems at first sight to be supported by the facts
that it was unknown in Scandinavia in the earlier period;[773] that
cinerary urns were not the earliest of the sepulchral vessels; and that
drinking-cups, which were in use before any of the others, although
they continued to be used after cinerary urns had been introduced,[774]
are generally found with unburnt skeletons, and have never been found
with the cremation interments in Cleveland.[775] On the other hand, in
Brittany in the centuries which immediately followed the introduction
of metallurgy cremation was almost invariable;[776] burnt bones, as
we shall presently see, were often buried without urns; and since
cremation was not uncommon in the Neolithic Age, the custom probably
persisted into the Bronze Age independently of its introduction by
immigrants who possessed weapons of bronze. Indeed, unless cremation
existed from the very beginning of the Round Barrow period, it seems
impossible to account for the fact that in the sepulchres of certain
districts not a single instance of inhumation has ever been observed.
Before the inhabitants of Bute emerged from their Stone Age they
practised both cremation and inhumation; and there is no evidence that
the latter was earlier than the former.[777] Not infrequently both
in Scotland and in many parts of England skeletons and burnt bones
reposed under the same cairn, in the same barrow, within the same stone
circle, even in the same cist; and in some cases they were buried at
the same time.[778] A cairn has been opened at Greenhill in Fifeshire,
in which four different modes of sepulture had been practised: cremated
remains had been laid in the earth, and beneath a stone slab; an
unburnt body had been buried in a cist, and another lowered into a
pit.[779] In some barrows one unburnt body has been found accompanied
by several deposits of burnt bones; and it has been inferred that, even
after cremation had become general, the bodies of chieftains were very
rarely burned, although those of their wives and retainers were.[780]
It is possible that this distinction may sometimes and in some places
have been maintained; but obviously it was very unusual. For otherwise
we should be compelled to suppose that in Cleveland and in those
western districts in which cremation was universal no chiefs were
buried in barrows at all, although it is universally admitted that it
was in their honour that barrows were erected. And if the presence of
an unburnt body surrounded by urns is a sign that wife and dependents
were sacrificed in honour of the dead chief, what conclusion is to be
based upon the association of nine skeletons with a single cremated
interment?[781] On the Yorkshire Wolds the question as to which
method should be adopted had nothing to do either with rank or sex or
age;[782] and one may reasonably suppose that it was often settled
simply by individual preference. Moreover, the expense of cremation was
far greater than that of inhumation;[783] and it is not improbable that
long after the former had become prevalent among the wealthy the poor
were generally obliged to content themselves with the latter.
Inhumation was accompanied by many varieties of usage. Most of
the Wiltshire barrows contained only one interment, though in a
few--evidently family tombs--there were two or even more.[784] Those
of the Yorkshire Wolds, on the other hand, generally contained
several, two or three having sometimes been laid in one grave; and
where one only was found the barrow was of the conical kind which is
common in Wiltshire.[785] In the Scottish cists also, single burial
is the rule, though occasionally husband and wife were interred
together, and sometimes a father with his child.[786] The same
variety has been noticed in connexion with cremation: a group of
eight barrows in Lincolnshire contained one urn each, while inside a
barrow in Dorsetshire was found a cairn which covered nearly fifty
interments.[787] When a mound was erected, the primary interment was
generally made in the centre.[788] The body was almost always laid
in the crouched position. In Wiltshire this custom was absolutely,
and on the Yorkshire Wolds almost, universal: the same posture indeed
was commonly adopted there even when the body was cremated.[789] In
Dorsetshire, on the other hand, the extended position appears to have
been occasionally met with.[790] When secondary interments have been
found, they were generally on the surface of the barrow or just outside
it, and were covered with fresh material.[791] There is a barrow on
Lord’s Down in Dorsetshire, formed of alternate layers of mould and
chalk, which represent no less than five successive interments, each of
which was covered by a new tumulus.[792] Almost invariably on the Wolds
secondary interments were made on the southern or eastern side of the
mound, doubtless in order that the dead might face the sun; and this
fancy underlies the prejudice, which still exists, against burying on
the northern side of a churchyard.[793] Probably the same purpose is
discernible in the orientation of the skeletons. Generally in Wiltshire
they were laid with their heads towards the north so that they looked
southwards;[794] and although in Yorkshire and elsewhere the head has
been found directed to almost every point of the compass, yet, as a
general rule, it was so laid as to face the sun: thus when it pointed
westward or to the north or south of west, the body was commonly laid
upon its right side; when to the east or the adjacent points, upon the
left.[795]
It is probable that bodies were generally interred either in the
clothes which had been worn in life or in a winding-sheet; for at
Kelleythorpe in the East Riding a linen cloth was underlying a
skeleton: bones have been found in divers parts of Britain with
fragments of woollen or leathern fabrics clinging to them; and buttons
in their natural positions on the breast-bone.[796] In one instance
Hoare found a skeleton in a disk-barrow near Amesbury, lying on the
ground, without cist, grave, or coffin, beneath a heap of stones,
and quaintly suggested that the dead man had suffered the doom of
Achan.[797] Occasionally, however, corpses were not buried entire;
but, as in the Stone Age, the bones were disjointed and interred
separately.[798]
When the dead were cremated the customs which governed the disposal
of primary and secondary interments remained the same: indeed in the
Lord’s Down barrow the latter comprised both skeletons and burnt
bones. The mound was sometimes raised over the funeral pile; but more
commonly the ashes were brought to the place of interment.[799]
Although they were often enclosed in urns, this custom was by no means
universal. In the disk-shaped barrows of Wiltshire, in which cremation
was almost invariable, urns were very rare: the remains had generally
been wrapped in a skin or a linen cloth.[800] In Dorsetshire, on the
other hand, except in the north-eastern corner, the customs of which
closely resembled those of Wiltshire, urns were used three times out
of four;[801] while some barrows have been opened which contained
both urns enclosing burnt bones and burnt bones without any urn.[802]
Occasionally an urn has been found which, instead of containing the
bones, was surrounded by them.[803] Sometimes the urn was placed
upright; but much oftener, at least in Wiltshire, it was inverted;[804]
and occasionally one urn was inverted as a cover over another.[805] In
more than one instance a custom described by Homer had found its way
to Britain: the urn which contained the ashes of Patroclus was wrapped
in a cloth;[806] and in a barrow in Cambridgeshire, as well as in six
of those which Hoare opened, the same ritual was observed.[807] In
several Scottish graves tiny urns, containing the remains of infants,
were placed inside vessels of ordinary size;[808] and it is remarkable
that in a few instances empty cinerary urns have been found in
association with unburnt bodies.[809] Why urns were sometimes broken
into fragments before they were placed in the grave it would be vain to
guess.[810]
[Sidenote: Sepulchral pottery.]
The urns and drinking-cups which have been so often mentioned were not
the only kinds of sepulchral pottery. Besides them were bowls which
have been called food-vessels and incense-cups. The custom of placing
vessels in graves was not, however, universal: both in Wiltshire and in
Yorkshire the majority of interments were without them.[811] All four
kinds are worth studying, not only as illustrative of funeral customs,
but also because they throw light upon the origin of the round-headed
invaders and upon the intercourse which subsisted in the Bronze Age
between Britain and other lands.[812]
Like the domestic pottery of the same period and of the modern
inhabitants of the Hebrides, they were generally made by women: the
markings, produced by the impression of finger-tips and finger-nails,
with which they were often ornamented, were the work of small
hands.[813] The potter’s wheel, which, more than two thousand years
before the Christian era, was used in Hissarlik, the town on whose site
Troy was afterwards built, was as yet hardly known in Britain,[814] and
the British pottery of the Bronze Age was baked at open fires.[815]
[Illustration: FIG. 32. ½]
Although they all comprise numerous varieties, the four groups are so
distinct that an observant eye, after an hour spent in a well-stored
museum, or even after studying the illustrations alone, would be able,
in almost every instance, to assign this or that specimen to its proper
class. Drinking-cups are generally about seven or eight inches high,
and fall under three principal types. That which is apparently the
earliest and, in Southern Britain, by far the commonest, is globular
in its lower part, and rises from the waist into a high brim with
straight sides. In cups of the second class an oval body passes into
a brim which curves outward. The third kind, almost all the examples
of which belong to Northumberland and Scotland, and which, from its
accompaniments, would seem to have been the latest, is also somewhat
oval in the lower part, and has a very low and more or less straight
brim. A few high-brimmed cups have handles, and are not unlike modern
tankards. Drinking-cups in general are the handsomest and the most
skilfully baked of all the British sepulchral vessels; but in course
of time their forms gradually deteriorated, for each generation had
inferior models to copy.[816]
[Illustration: FIG. 33. ½]
Food-vessels, which range between three and eight inches in height,
are very diversified in form, and, unlike drinking-cups, vary greatly
in quality. They commonly resemble a large cup or bowl with a narrow
bottom, and sometimes they are slightly contracted towards the mouth.
Many of them have knobs round the neck, which are sometimes perforated,
so that they might have been suspended by a cord; and those which have
no perforations are doubtless mere survivals.[817]
[Illustration: FIG. 34. ½]
Cinerary urns, which were certainly introduced later than food-vessels
or drinking-cups, are as a rule much larger, although one or two have
been found which were as small as the smallest incense-cup. Many of
them are more than two feet high. The commonest form resembles a
double truncated cone with the base in the centre, the upper being much
the smaller of the two; but some urns are cylindrical, barrel-shaped,
or even like flower-pots; while a few, which are peculiar to central
Dorsetshire, are nearly globular, and, except for the scantiness of
their ornament, not unlike certain drinking-cups.[818]
[Illustration: FIG. 35. ½]
Incense-cups are the smallest, perhaps the latest of all sepulchral
vessels, and the most various in form. Some contract from the centre
towards the top and the bottom; others expand, others again contract
from the bottom to the top. A few resemble saucers in shape; and many
are perforated with oval, lozenge-shaped, or vertical holes, one
example having as many as twenty-seven.[819]
Drinking-cups have been found on the Continent not only in Germany,
Gelderland, and Denmark, from which countries, it should seem, they
were introduced into Britain, but also in Spain, Portugal, Brittany,
and the Channel Islands.[820] On the Continent they all belong to the
Neolithic Age; and this fact alone is sufficient to show that the
people who brought them into Britain had no bronze implements.[821]
Moreover, although they continued in use in this country during a
considerable part of the Bronze Age, they have rarely been found with
bronze.[822] Only two specimens have been obtained in Ireland,[823]
an additional indication of the erroneousness of the theory which
identifies the earliest round-headed invaders who introduced
drinking-cups into Britain with the Goidelic Celts. Like food-vessels,
drinking-cups were receptacles for solid food or perhaps some kind of
porridge; for remains which have been proved by analysis to be animal
or vegetable have been found in both.[824]
Food-vessels are unknown outside the British Isles, and are frequent
in Ireland,[825] while hardly a single specimen has been found in
any of the numerous barrows of Wiltshire or Dorsetshire.[826] Like
drinking-cups, they accompany skeletons far more frequently than burnt
bones;[827] and they were obviously invented after drinking-cups had
been some time in use, though, as it would seem, while incense-cups
were still unknown.[828]
Incense-cups, like food-vessels, are common in Ireland as well as in
Britain: a few have been found in the Channel Islands; but on the
Continent they do not exist. They, too, are rare in Dorsetshire and
the western counties,[829] although cremation was even more prevalent
there than in Wiltshire, where they are numerous, and although they
have hardly ever been found except with cremated remains.[830] It is
remarkable that they were often deposited inside the urn and among the
burnt bones.[831] The purpose for which they were designed has been a
subject of much controversy. It is difficult to believe that they were
really censers, for incense was probably not obtainable in Britain,
though amber, which has occasionally been used as incense, may possibly
have been burned in them. The numerous holes with which so many of them
are pierced, and which would have stimulated combustion, might suggest
that they were intended to carry the sacred fire from which the funeral
pile was to be lighted; but as many specimens contain no holes it is
impossible to acquiesce in this explanation.[832]
All these vessels were ornamented with the geometrical decoration
characteristic of the Bronze Age, which consists for the most part
of combinations of straight lines, arranged in almost infinite
variety--chevrons, zigzags, lozenges, and the herring-bone pattern--as
well as dots and what have been called oblong punch marks, and, in
a few cases, crosses, curves, and even circles. The patterns were
impressed upon the clay while it was still wet by a pointed implement
of bone or wood, by cords, and occasionally, as we have seen, by
finger-nails or finger-tips. Some of them may have been imitated from
basket-work or from the plaited straw or grass with which the fragile
vessels were protected; for Pitt-Rivers found on his estate a fragment
of fine basket-work over which clay had been plastered on both sides.
As a general rule drinking-cups and food-vessels are far more profusely
ornamented than the other kinds, both being in many cases covered with
decoration.[833] Except perhaps in the case of drinking-cups, it is
doubtful whether any useful conclusion can be drawn from the patterns;
for, although the oblong punch marks are apparently peculiar to the
British Isles,[834] chevrons of divers kinds have been found in nearly
every country of Europe, as well as Africa, Madagascar, Siberia,
Ceylon, the Philippine Islands, and North Australia.[835] Indeed one
form of chevron ornament--the so-called diaper pattern--appears not
only on French neolithic pottery and on urns from a chambered cairn in
Orkney, but also on a palaeolithic implement from Brassempouy;[836] and
the rude hand-made bowls out of which the modern Hebrideans eat their
porridge are still ornamented, as they were three thousand years ago,
with straight lines made with a pointed stick or with impressions of a
thumb-nail.[837] On the other hand, as chevron patterns characterized
the Bronze Age throughout Europe, although they occurred both earlier
and later, further research may ultimately show that they had a common
origin.[838] The supposition that concentric circles--a form of
ornament which, as we have seen, is also characteristic of the shields
of the Bronze Age--were generally symbolical of sun-worship,[839] is
hardly likely to be proved. Probably in some cases they had this or
some other religious meaning: but in others they may have been purely
decorative; and they are to be seen on the _churingas_ or sacred stones
of the Aruntas of Central Australia,[840] who, it need hardly be said,
do not worship the sun. More interesting are the few vessels which
bear incised designs inlaid with white earth, and resemble, though
in a ruder style, pottery from the lake-dwellings of Switzerland and
Austria and from Hissarlik.[841] It is conceivable that this kind of
decoration may have arisen independently in the different lands in
which it has been observed: but the most sceptical would hardly deny
the evidence of indirect connexion with the Aegean which has been
furnished by the famous chalk [Sidenote: The ‘drums’ of Folkton Wold
and their significance.] ‘drums’ of Folkton Wold. Associated with the
body of a child in a trench which partially surrounded the barrow were
three solid drum-shaped cylinders of chalk, decorated not only with
familiar geometrical designs, but also with concentric circles, which
in one case seemed to be degenerate spirals, figures called ‘double
horse-shoes’, which occur at New Grange and at Gavr’ Inis in Brittany,
and quaint representations of the eyes and eyebrows of the human face,
closely resembling the so-called owl-heads which Schliemann found on
vases at Hissarlik. Similar faces are sculptured on standing stones
and the walls of sepulchral grottoes in the departments of the Marne,
the Gard, and the Tarn, and incised on Spanish pottery of the early
Bronze Age; and probably it was by way of Spain that this Mediterranean
influence found its way to a remote Yorkshire moor.[842]
[Illustration: FIG. 36. ⅔]
[Sidenote: Sepulchral evidence as to religion.]
We have already examined the evidence which the articles deposited
in graves afford as to the wealth and social condition of the people
who were buried there. They also suggest problems connected with
their religious faith. The custom of depositing implements, weapons,
or ornaments with the dead was the exception rather than the rule.
Less than one-fourth of the interments in the Yorkshire Wolds were
associated with any article whatever; and even in South Wiltshire
barely two-thirds. In Derbyshire and Scotland relics were comparatively
frequent, but by no means universal; in Cornwall almost entirely
absent.[843] When we find that daggers were often placed in the hands
of corpses[844] and that nearly all the flint tools on the Wolds were
brand-new,[845] we may be disposed to reject the theory that the motive
of those who deposited them was simple affection or superstitious
dread of using what had belonged to the living; but when, on the other
hand, we remember that so many of the dead were left destitute, we ask
ourselves whether the articles that were placed in graves were really
intended to be used in a future state.[846] But it is a mistake to
expect either uniformity of custom or rigid consistency. Different
tribes and different individuals may well have had different beliefs;
and it is not likely that belief was always translated into action.
Articles that belonged to the living have sometimes been buried
from mere motives of affection or from a wish to get rid of that
which was associated with the idea of death; sometimes from a vague
desire to please or to avoid the displeasure of the dead.[847] Often,
however, as we learn not only from historians, such as Caesar[848]
and Tacitus,[849] but also from the evidence that has been collected
respecting the customs of savage tribes, objects have been deposited
with the dead in the full expectation that their souls would be
of use to the souls of their owners in another life;[850] and when
not inanimate objects only but wives, slaves, and animals have been
sacrificed, it may be safely assumed that this was the motive. Nor is
the belief absolutely extinct even in civilized lands. Less than half
a century ago the widow of an Ulster farmer killed his horse, and,
in reply to a remonstrance, asked, ‘Would you have my man go about
on foot in the next world?’[851] All these motives may have worked
in the Bronze Age. We have seen that offerings of food were placed
in food-vessels and drinking-cups; and they may sometimes have been
laid beside the dead even when no vessels contained them. The bones of
domestic animals, deer, and wild boars which have been found in scores
of barrows, and most of which had been pounded for the extraction of
the marrow, were doubtless in many cases the remains of the food upon
which the survivors had feasted, but perhaps also of food offered
to the dead.[852] It is possible too that the burnt bones which are
sometimes mixed with cremated human bones may be the remains of animals
sacrificed at the funeral, and may represent the custom, described by
Homer[853] and Caesar,[854] of slaying animals of which the dead had
been fond and burning them on the funeral pile;[855] and when we are
told that the skulls of oxen were carefully interred in several barrows
and that a horse was buried near the summit of a barrow in Wiltshire
above a cremated interment,[856] we are tempted to accept a similar
explanation. We can understand why implements and weapons were often
placed inside urns along with the burnt bones;[857] but it would be
vain to ask why a cow’s tooth was frequently placed in juxtaposition
with a corpse;[858] and who would venture to account for the presence
of the burnt bones of a fox inside an urn in a barrow on Ridgeway Hill
in Dorsetshire, of the skeleton of a mole and the bones of mice in
an urn in Glamorganshire, or of the skeleton of a hog in a cist in a
Staffordshire barrow?[859] We can only suppose that these mysterious
deposits had some religious meaning.
But whether animals were sacrificed or not, there can hardly be a
doubt of the prevalence of human sacrifice. It has been pointed out
that several bodies were frequently interred in one barrow at the same
time; that in some cases a man and a woman were laid in one grave or
in adjoining graves of the same date; and that in a barrow overlooking
the valley of the Derwent a woman was buried with a man whose head
her hands clasped, while his legs were above hers and his right hand
upon her hip; and of these facts one finds it difficult to suggest any
explanation save that of sacrifice or of suicide.[860] The innumerable
potsherds which lay scattered in many barrows when they were first
opened, and the minute flint chips with which cinerary urns were
sometimes crammed[861] remind one of the words in _Hamlet_:--
For charitable prayers
Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her,
though we should be mistaken if we supposed that in the Bronze Age such
offerings were made in the spirit which animated the ‘churlish priest’
who grudged decent burial to Ophelia.[862]
A distinguished archaeologist has argued that not only in Greece and
the Eastern Mediterranean but also in Gaul and Britain inhumation and
cremation were associated with different conceptions of a future life;
the ghost of the body which was interred being regarded as tenanting
the grave, whereas, when cremation was practised, the soul was supposed
to take flight to Hades or to some far land, though it could not enter
the confines until the body which it had quitted was duly burned.[863]
But whatever the Mycenaeans and the Greeks may have believed, there
is no reason to suppose that in the West cremation was attended with
any such doctrinal change. We have seen that both in the Neolithic Age
and after, cremation and inhumation were practised contemporaneously
and sometimes even in the same grave;[864] and recent excavations have
shown that in the caves of Mentone, even in the Old Stone Age, the two
modes of sepulture were in use.[865] If the Celts of the Early Iron
Age believed that ‘on the burning of the body the soul departed to a
distant region’, there is no proof that their belief was different
when they laid the body in the grave; and who will maintain that the
religious ideas of the Gauls were revolutionized when in the second
century before Christ cremation once more became the rule, or that
among the Britons of Caesar’s time cremation and inhumation, which had
each their votaries, were the outward signs of religious beliefs that
were utterly unlike?[866]
[Sidenote: Engraved stones.]
We may perhaps hope to find other clues to the religious ideas of the
Bronze Age in megalithic monuments and in the engraved stones which
have been already mentioned.[867] There are certain designs upon the
latter of which the meaning is evident. The figure of an axe graven
on a cist at Kilmartin in Argyllshire has many analogues on dolmens
in the Morbihan and on the walls of artificial sepulchral grottoes
in the department of the Marne; and, as the axe in the Mycenaean Age
was a symbol of Zeus, we may suppose that such engravings represented
a widespread cult of one of the most fruitful of human inventions,
which originated in neolithic times, and survived in the manufacture
of miniature celts to serve as pendants and, still later, in the use
of stone celts as amulets.[868] The most common devices, however,
are small circular depressions, called cup-markings, and concentric
circles; while occasionally groups of concentric circles are united by
grooves. Cup and ring markings are found on the stones of cists, on
standing stones, on boulders, and on rocks in most parts of Scotland,
in Carnarvonshire and Merionethshire, in Northumberland, Cumberland,
Westmorland, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Man, Derbyshire, Staffordshire,
Dorsetshire, and Cornwall, and likewise in Ireland, France, Germany,
Switzerland, Portugal, Scandinavia, Asia, Africa, and America.[869]
Natural cup-markings have been noticed on the covering-stones of
certain dolmens;[870] and it may be that such stones were deemed lucky
and that, when they could not be obtained, they were imitated; but of
those which are artificial the significance remains unknown.[871] The
rings may perhaps in some instances be symbolical of sun-worship, for
on the cairn of Lough Crew in Ireland and in Scandinavia a few have
rays;[872] and since we find them on the covering-stones of cists,
while in Australia similar designs, drawn on rocks, are magical or
sacred,[873] it would seem probable that they had some religious
meaning.[874] Sun-worship undoubtedly prevailed in certain parts
of the British Isles. A few years ago there was found in Zeeland a
gold-plated bronze disk, engraved with concentric circles and mounted
on a miniature car with the model of a horse attached, which was
recognized by all archaeologists as a votive object, connected with the
worship of the sun. Similar disks, two of which are ornamented with
a cruciform pattern--a well-known solar symbol--have been exhumed in
Ireland, and a fragment of one in a barrow near Bath.[875] Besides the
spirals which have been already mentioned, the most remarkable of all
the rock-carvings is a swastika on a rock near Ilkley, identical with
one which has been discovered in Sweden, not far north of Gothenburg:
the oldest known examples of this mystical figure come from the second
city that was built upon the site of Troy.[876]
[Sidenote: Stone circles and other megalithic monuments.]
We have seen that many barrows and cairns were immediately surrounded
by, or enclosed, rings of standing stones which were part of the
sepulchral structure. It is now time to consider the larger stone
circles and other megalithic monuments which have occasioned
voluminous controversies. They were not invented in the Bronze Age;
for, as we have seen,[877] some of the long barrows were surrounded
by peristaliths: the famous circle of Callernish in the island of
Lewis contains a chambered cairn, from which it is structurally
distinct;[878] and some of our circles which are apparently
non-sepulchral may have been set up in transitional times. But the
development of the circle, which can be traced most clearly in
Scotland, was gradual. In the chambered cairns and chambered long
barrows the peristalith as a rule was merely an adjunct: in many
unchambered cairns and round barrows the stone setting is still a
subordinate part of the whole; but, gradually separating itself, it
became the leading feature of the monument, while the central cairn or
barrow frequently disappeared, and was replaced by a simple cist.[879]
By similar stages the encircling trenches and banks in Wiltshire and
Oxfordshire became distinct from the small disk barrows which they
contained.[880]
Stone circles are to be seen in the northern counties of England, in
Derbyshire and Staffordshire, Shropshire and Cheshire, Oxfordshire,
Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, Devonshire, Somersetshire,
and Cornwall; and also in Glamorganshire, Orkney, the islands of Arran
and Lewis, Argyllshire, Perthshire, Inverness-shire, Banffshire,
Aberdeenshire, and Kincardineshire.[881] Menhirs, or isolated standing
stones, and stone rows are found in this island only on Dartmoor, in
Cornwall, Northumberland, Scotland, and Wales.[882]
In form as well as in size British stone circles present numerous
varieties.[883] It would, however, be useless, at all events until
circles of every kind had been excavated, to attempt to account for
their distinctive features; and it is significant that, although
various districts have types of their own, there are examples of divers
kinds in close proximity.[884] Many were simple rings. Some consisted
of concentric rings; and here and there small circles, each of which
was outside the others, were enclosed within a greater. Sometimes the
stones were set up in close proximity; sometimes in open order.[885]
Among circles of the latter kind Stonehenge, Avebury, and Callernish
were approached by stone avenues,[886] the existence of which has been
tentatively explained by the supposition that originally the spaces
between the stones of the circle were filled by walls intended to keep
out beasts.[887] A few circles are surrounded by ditches, which were
spanned by causeways; others by both ditches and banks; and it is
noteworthy that at Avebury the ditch lies within the bank, while at
Stonehenge in the same county it surrounds it.[888] In many circles of
Banffshire, Kincardineshire, and Aberdeenshire, there is a recumbent
stone, placed intentionally in that position,--a feature which appears
to be elsewhere unknown:[889] a few in Aberdeenshire have a solitary
pillar in the centre;[890] while Stonehenge, the Rollright Stones in
the Cotswold Hills, and some Scottish circles are distinguished by a
similar stone which stands outside.[891]
The imaginative Stukeley, whose teaching is still echoed in many
handbooks, regarded stone circles as Druidical temples; and although
nearly every modern antiquary feels bound to ridicule this theory, none
can prove that it does not contain a kernel of truth. Druids presided
at all religious ceremonies;[892] and it would be rash to deny that
in stone circles religion had any part. The foremost archaeologist of
France has virtually sanctioned the discredited theory;[893] and if
there is any truth in the view, which still has respectable advocates,
that some circles were solar temples, Druids may well have directed the
worshippers. It has been contended that many circles were orientated
to the place of the midsummer sunrise, and that the presence of the
solitary outlying stones would be inexplicable unless they were set
up as pointers. These monoliths, however, are very rare: some are in
positions which cannot be reconciled with any theory of sun-worship;
and when they are absent and there is no avenue, it is clearly
impossible to prove that the circle was orientated at all.[894] It
is true that the existence of an interment within a circle no more
proves that it was not a temple than the graves in Poets’ Corner prove
that Westminster Abbey is not a church: but the most enthusiastic
advocates are forced to admit that many circles show no trace of
orientation, and the evidence upon which they rely is sometimes of
the flimsiest kind.[895] The one statement which can be positively
made about the object of stone circles is that very many of them were
erected in honour of the dead. Many enclose cairns or barrows: many
others contained human remains, almost always cremated, in cists.[896]
Stone circles are associated with sepulchres not only in Britain but
in Scandinavia, Northern Germany, France, Spain, Italy, North Africa,
Syria, and India, indeed in every country in which they exist.[897]
It is true that in many English circles evidence of such association
is lacking;[898] but we may doubt whether in any case its absence
has been absolutely proved; and if the excavations had been directed
by an antiquary as wealthy and as diligent as Pitt-Rivers, it might
have been forthcoming.[899] But supposing that there are circles in
which no burial ever took place, it does not follow that they were
unconnected with sepulchral usage: like the empty barrows which, as we
have seen, are cenotaphs, they may have been erected in honour of brave
men who had fallen in battle or of some chief whose body could not be
recovered. Nor are circles the only megalithic monuments the object
of which was sepulchral. The menhirs of France are often grouped with
dolmens and burial mounds;[900] and there is not a single stone row or
avenue on Dartmoor which is not associated with cairns, barrows, or
cists.[901] One, which is more than two miles long--longer than any
in Brittany--links a circle to a cairn, and was perhaps designed to
perpetuate the memory of two ancestors who had done great deeds.[902]
Perhaps among the many superstitions about these monuments which have
survived into modern times there are some that recall the purpose for
which they were designed. When Camden wrote, the Rollright Stones were
still regarded as petrified men; and it has been suggested that the
belief pointed to a time when popular imagination ‘transferred to the
stone that marked the resting-place of the departed something of his
very material being’.[903]
[Sidenote: Stonehenge.]
But of all the megalithic circles of our island one only is familiar,
even by name, to us all. Stonehenge is the most famous and in its
artlessness the most artistic of all rude stone monuments. Even those
who have never visited it are acquainted with its form; and the
imagination of Turner has caught the spirit of the scene. The grandeur
of Stonehenge does not depend upon size: in its best days it bore much
the same relation to Avebury as the Sainte Chapelle to the cathedral of
Notre Dame; but, weather-worn and mutilated, with many of its stones
fallen and others gone, it impresses all who are sensitive to nobility
of design as the creation of a master mind. When the work was finished,
if indeed it was not left incomplete, the outer circle probably formed
a continuous architrave, all the stones supporting imposts, whose
ends were wrought into bosses that rested in hollows prepared for
their reception. Within was an incomplete circle of smaller stones,
which in their turn surrounded five great trilithons, disposed in the
form of a horse-shoe, of which two only remain. They have analogues
in Tripoli and in Syria; but in this island they are unique.[904] On
their inner side was a similar group of lesser stones; and within this
choir lies a vast block, which is known as the Altar Stone.[905] From
the north-eastern point of the trench that surrounds the rampart an
avenue, flanked on either side by a bank and a shallow ditch, may still
be traced for some four hundred yards; and on it stands the huge pillar
called the Friar’s Heel.
A portion of the area of Stonehenge has recently been excavated;
and more than a hundred of the rude tools have been recovered with
which the stones were dressed. It was proved that the great sandstone
boulders, commonly called sarsens, had been roughly trimmed where
they were found on Salisbury Plain; for the fragments that were found
by the excavators were very few.[906] After they had been carried to
the place where they now stand[907] they were dressed with a skill
which shows how far superior the masons were to those who had set up
the rough blocks of Avebury. Each pillar was gradually uplifted by
levers until it could slide down the sloping rim of the pit which the
workers with their deer-horn picks had excavated, and of which the
other three walls were vertical: then it was hoisted by ropes till it
stood upright, and finally secured by a packing of smaller stones which
supported it below. It is thus that megaliths are commonly erected in
Japan to this day.[908] How the huge imposts were elevated is somewhat
doubtful. The Khasis shove theirs up an earthen bank.[909] In Japan
the stone is raised at one end by wooden levers, logs being inserted
beneath it: the other end is raised by the same means; and thus by
slow degrees the proper level is attained, when the stone is forced
on to its supports.[910] Once it was thought that the ‘blue-stones’
of which the inner circle is composed had been fetched from Cornwall
or Dartmoor,[911] or oversea from Ireland; but the geologist who was
consulted after the excavation inferred from the vast number of angular
chips which were discovered within the small area of operations that
the stones had been not only dressed but also chipped into shape by
the site of Stonehenge; and one can hardly believe that if it had been
necessary to carry them from afar, the builders would not have reduced
their weight by rough-hewing them where they were found.[912]
Stonehenge has a literature of its own which comprises nearly a
thousand works. It has been assigned to the Neolithic Age, to the
Bronze Age, to the era of Roman dominion, and to a time when the Saxons
had been long settled in Wessex. Many years ago Pitt-Rivers pointed
out the only way in which these controversies could be closed; but
unfortunately the recent excavation was confined to a small area. It
only proved that the use of copper was not unknown in Wiltshire when
the stones were set up; for on one of the sarsens, seven feet below
the surface, was found a stain produced by contact either with copper
or bronze. Deer-horn picks were commonly used in the Bronze Age,
and bronze tools are useless for working stone; therefore the stone
implements which the excavations brought to light leave the question
of date unsettled. The absence of bronze implements is of course
no proof that the monument belonged to the Stone Age; not a single
article of bronze was found in twenty-four barrows of Rushmore in South
Wiltshire, every one of which was erected when bronze was common.[913]
Moreover, with hardly an exception, every primary interment that has
been found within a megalithic circle in Britain was made in the Age
of Bronze.[914] All antiquaries agree that of all the British circles
Stonehenge was the most elaborate; and the natural conclusion is that
it was one of the latest of them all. Two barrows are encroached upon
and partially surrounded by the rampart, which must therefore be of
later date; and chippings of both sarsens and blue-stones were found by
Hoare in one of the surrounding barrows along with a bronze dagger and
a bronze pin. On the other hand this discovery proves that Stonehenge
existed before the period of the barrows, not one of which is later
than the Bronze Age, came to an end.
Nevertheless a distinguished astronomer, who has been a President of
the British Association, recently assigned a date to Stonehenge with
which these facts are irreconcilable; and although his theory was
demolished by a brother astronomer, he has not hesitated to republish
it. Stonehenge, he insists, was originally built a thousand years
before the trilithons were added; and the trilithons represent a
reconstruction and a re-dedication, which took place about sixteen
hundred and eighty years before the birth of Christ. His chronological
argument rests upon the assumption that Stonehenge was a temple,
consecrated, at its hypothetical second dedication, to the cult of
the solstitial sun. Remarking that the avenue extends in the general
direction of the sunrise at the summer solstice, he attempted to
determine its azimuth. Unhappily the bearing was not everywhere the
same. He took the mean, and found that it nearly coincided with a
line drawn from the principal bench mark of the Ordnance Survey on
Sidbury Hill, the site of an ancient fort, to the centre of Stonehenge.
Although there was no evidence that the erection of Stonehenge had
the remotest connexion with Sidbury Hill, although the hill itself is
not visible from Stonehenge, he found it convenient to discard his
own calculation of the azimuth of the avenue and to adopt instead the
bearing of the bench mark. Then, making the further assumption that
the sun-worshippers adopted as the moment of sunrise the time when the
upper tip of the sun first appeared above Sidbury Hill--a phenomenon
which is very rare--he ascertained from the rate of change in the
obliquity of the ecliptic that it would have been there visible about
sixteen hundred and eighty years before the Christian era; or perhaps
two centuries earlier or later. Nor did his assumptions end here.
Although the Alexandrian astronomer who constructed the Julian calendar
miscalculated the date of the summer solstice, he assumed that sixteen
centuries earlier the barbarous inhabitants of a northern island
could tell it exactly; and he assumed that, in order to observe the
sunrise, they stood at the exact point within the circle at which it
was convenient to him to place them.[915]
But such laborious puerilities will not trouble the unlearned wayfarer
who feels the enchantment of the past. For him it is enough that
Stonehenge was the work of men who felt the majesty of death, and
for whom no toil was too great that could do honour to the dead.
Chronology has little interest for him: whether Stonehenge was built
to hallow the vast necropolis in which it stands, or the dead were
brought from afar to lie beneath its shadow, he knows that the three
hundred barrows and the great monument are indissolubly connected. The
moment when he descried the grey weather-beaten stones on the lonely
Wiltshire upland will not fade from his mind. Above the south horizon
appeared the slender spire of Salisbury; and the work of the Middle
Age and of the Age of Bronze awakened emotions of the same kind: for
both were erected in obedience to the thought that man cannot live
by bread alone. It may be that those who set up the circle thought
differently from the believers who thronged it in later times: the cult
of ancestors, the worship of the sun, the adoration of the Celtic deity
who was the counterpart of Zeus may have called successive generations
of pilgrims to the holy place. Passing beneath the trilithons and among
the prostrate stones, one thinks of all that has been done and suffered
since mason and digger worked side by side to execute the nameless
architect’s design. Time-honoured even when the Roman first landed on
our shore, Stonehenge was standing in all its glory when the Greek
explorer came who first made known our island to the civilized world.
[Sidenote: The voyage of Pytheas.]
It was about the time when the conquests of Alexander the Great were
revealing the far east to the eager curiosity of the Greeks that
Pytheas set forth from Massilia on the peaceful voyage which was to
bring Northern Europe within their ken. Such knowledge of Gaul and
Britain as had already reached the Mediterranean was of the vaguest
kind.[916] It has indeed been argued that the Greek word for tin,
_cassiteros_, which occurs in Homer, was of Celtic origin, and was
learned by the Greeks from traders who as early as the ninth century
before the Christian era procured tin from Cornwall.[917] If this
conjecture were accepted, it would suggest that the existence of an
island somewhere in the far northern ocean was at that time known to
a few dwellers in the south. It has also been supposed that the lines
in the _Odyssey_ which describe the country of the Laestrygones,
where the summer nights were short, were founded upon stories told by
sailors who had seen the British Isles;[918] but the passage seems
more applicable to Scandinavia, which, owing to the amber trade, was
from an early period of the Bronze Age connected with South-Eastern
Europe. The knowledge that tin was to be got from Cornwall must,
however, have reached the Mediterranean at a remote epoch through
the ties that connected Britain with Gaul. Himilco, the Carthaginian
admiral who, more than a century before the birth of Pytheas, sailed
into the English Channel, perhaps undertook his voyage for the purpose
of opening up trade with Cornwall at a time when the tin mines of
Galicia were nearly exhausted; but it is unlikely that his report, upon
which the poem of Festus Avienus was ultimately based, was originally
known except to his own government.[919] In the time of Pytheas,
however, there was a regular overland trade in tin between Cornwall and
Massilia, and doubtless also a seaborne trade between Cornwall and the
Carthaginian port of Cadiz.[920]
Pytheas was a great man. As an explorer he was the forerunner of
Columbus; and it is not easy for us, who live in an age when hardly
any part of the earth’s surface, except the polar regions, remains
untrodden, to conceive the animation with which his narrative was
discussed by his Greek contemporaries and by the geographers of a
later time.[921] His scientific eminence is attested by the use which
was made of his writings by Eratosthenes, the Alexandrian geographer
and poet, and by Hipparchus, the greatest astronomer of the ancient
world.[922] With a gnomon which he erected in his native town he
obtained an estimate of its latitude which erred by no more than a few
seconds;[923] the observations which he made in the Atlantic enabled
him to announce that the height of the tides had a definite relation to
the moon’s age;[924] he determined with some approach to accuracy the
configuration both of Gaul and Britain;[925] and at four stations in
or near our island he took observations of the altitude of the sun at
noon, from which Hipparchus calculated their respective latitudes.[926]
Unfortunately the work ‘On the Ocean’, which he based on the diary of
his voyage,[927] has perished. All that we know of it is contained in
a few fragments, quoted with more or less accuracy by the astronomer
Geminus, who was contemporary with Caesar, by Strabo, Diodorus Siculus,
Pliny, and other writers.[928] Strabo, influenced by the unimaginative
mind of Polybius, was bitterly hostile;[929] and his treatise on
geography taught many generations of readers to regard Pytheas as a
romancer.
It has been supposed that the Government of Massilia, jealous of the
commercial predominance of the Carthaginians, and hoping to wrest from
them a share of the trade in tin, employed Pytheas as their agent.
But the Massiliots already received a constant supply of tin directly
from the British mines; and it is hardly credible that they could have
expected to profit by importing it oversea round Spain instead of
overland.[930] Nor indeed could they have expected the Carthaginians,
who were all-powerful at sea, to allow their vessels to penetrate
into waters which they jealously policed. Polybius, who was affluent,
sneeringly remarked that a private individual, in poor circumstances,
could not have travelled such distances as Pytheas claimed to have
done.[931] It is no longer necessary to prove that Pytheas’s travels
were real; but, supposing that he could not afford to pay his own
expenses, we can only conclude that the Massilian Government, or
perhaps a syndicate of merchants, were sufficiently public-spirited to
spend money on scientific aims. For although it would seem probable
from his having extended his voyage to the amber districts that his
object was partly commercial, the fact that he sailed far away from
the trade routes, and spent a large part of his time in collecting
ethnographical information and making astronomical and geographical
observations shows that his own purpose was the advancement of
science. It is unnecessary to refute the quaint suggestion that
poverty compelled him to work his passage on board a Carthaginian
merchantman:[932] Carthaginian ship-owners would hardly have permitted
a captain to circumnavigate Britain in order to gratify the whim of
an alien scientist in the forecastle. If anything that relates to the
voyage of Pytheas is certain, it is that he was free to direct the
movements of the vessel as he pleased.[933]
The outward voyage, even before he first saw the British coast, was
full of interest. After passing Cape Finisterre, he steered eastward
along the northern coast of Spain, and found that, owing to the set of
the current and the prevailing westerly winds, the rate of sailing was
much more rapid than along the southern side of the Peninsula.[934] He
touched at Corbilo, a port on the estuary of the Loire, where British
tin was unshipped; noted the great bend which the Breton coast makes
towards the north-west; and found in the peninsula the same tribe
of Osismii whom Caesar encountered nearly three centuries later in
his campaign against the Veneti. Having visited Uxisama, the modern
Ushant, he struck thence along the course followed by the Phoenicians,
and in twenty-four hours crossed the western arm of the Channel and
landed near Belerium, the Land’s End.[935] He conversed freely with
the inhabitants, doubtless through the medium of an interpreter, and
found them friendly and comparatively civilized. They told him that the
tin was cast into ingots, shaped like ankle-bones, two of which would
form a suitable load for a pack-horse, and conveyed to an island off
the Cornish coast, called Ictis, which was accessible at low tide to
their wagons. There [Sidenote: Ictis.] it was shipped and carried to
Corbilo; and thence it was transported on horseback to the mouth of
the Rhone. The whereabouts of Ictis has long been a subject of dispute.
It has been identified with St. Michael’s Mount, with the Isle of
Wight, and even with the Isle of Thanet. This guess has, however, been
discarded,[936] and no longer needs refutation. It has recently been
shown that a natural causeway, formed by a limestone reef, connected in
prehistoric times the coast off Lymington with Yarmouth. But this does
not prove that Ictis was the Isle of Wight; nor does the fact, on which
much stress has been laid, that coins of a certain type are common
to Brittany, the Channel Islands, and the south-western districts of
Britain. Doubtless much traffic passed by way of the Channel Islands,
but not necessarily that which Pytheas described; and the Dumnonii, who
produced the tin, never struck coins at all.[937] We are told that in
those days St. Michael’s Mount was an isolated rock begirt by a swampy
wood; and that the voyage from Cornwall to the mouth of the Loire would
have been too long and dangerous for ancient seamen to attempt. The
former argument, in so far as it leans upon tradition, was demolished
forty years ago; the legend that St. Michael’s Mount was ‘The Hoar
Rock in the Wood’ was based upon a mediaeval story which confounded
St. Michael’s Mount with Mont St. Michel. It is true that the eminent
geologist who has proved the former existence of a causeway between the
Isle of Wight and the mainland has attempted to reinforce tradition by
science; but his calculations, which assume that alluvium was dispersed
by marine action at a constant rate, seem hardly less liable to error
than the discredited estimates of the antiquity of man which were
based upon assumptions regarding the rate of deposition of stalagmite
in caves.[938] Nor would any one who knows that long before the time
of Pytheas men were not afraid to sail from Norway to Ireland, that
the distance between Rome and Sardinia is greater than the greatest
breadth of the English Channel, and that before the invention of the
compass Irish monks made the voyage to Iceland, believe that the
Phoenicians or the Veneti in their stout ships were too timid to cross
from Cornwall to the Loire. It is not credible that shrewd merchants
would have submitted to pay the heavy additional price which would have
been exacted if the tin had been conveyed two hundred miles by land
before it was shipped, and then to saddle themselves with the cost of
conveying it by sea from the Isle of Wight to the Loire,--a voyage much
longer and not less dangerous than the direct route from Cornwall.
St. Michael’s Mount is the one island off the south coast of Britain
between the Land’s End and the Isle of Wight which corresponds with
Diodorus’s description; it is opposite the only part of the Cornish
coast where wagons could have descended to the shore; and Pengelly,
Lyell, and Ussher testify that its main features have persisted
unchanged for more than two thousand years.[939]
As far as the Land’s End the route of Pytheas is evident: thenceforward
all becomes obscure. We know that he circumnavigated Britain; for he
mentioned the South Foreland and alluded to the northern extremity
of Scotland, and he attempted to estimate the circumference of the
island.[940] We know that he explored the amber coast, and some
conjecture that he sailed to ‘far-off Thule’; but it is safe to
prophesy that on the details of his itinerary agreement will never
be reached. He accurately indicated the position of Ireland, which
Eratosthenes, guided by his observations, placed west of Britain, but
which, Strabo notwithstanding insisted, was the most northerly of all
inhabited lands.[941] It would seem that he landed more than once;
for he had much to tell of the manners and customs of the Britons. He
was especially struck by the gloominess of the climate; the corn,
he remarked, was not threshed on open threshing-floors on account of
the heavy rains and the lack of sunshine, but the ears were cut off,
carried into barns, and there ground; and he learned that the grain
was not merely used for food, but also for brewing a kind of beer.
In the far northern districts he observed that domestic animals were
few, that the fruits of more favoured lands were not to be seen,
and that the only cereal was oats.[942] According to Pliny,[943] he
stated that the tide rose in one place to the prodigious height of
eighty cubits, or about one hundred and twenty feet. It has been
supposed that this passage refers to the race of the current through
the Pentland Firth;[944] but more probably Pytheas had seen the tidal
wave in the Bristol Channel, which actually rises sixty feet;[945] and
it must remain doubtful whether he exaggerated its volume or Pliny
misrepresented his meaning.
[Sidenote: ‘Ultima Thule.’]
The voyage which Pytheas made to the amber coast has no place in the
history of Britain; but we cannot but be interested in his account of
Thule, which he called the most northerly of the British Isles.[946] It
is doubtful, however, whether he even saw it.[947] He says that it was
six days’ sail from Britain;[948] but this statement may have been made
upon the authority of natives[949] who had conversed with Scandinavian
mariners on their way to or from Ireland. His description of the
manners and customs of the northern peoples, of their agriculture,
their domestic animals, and their food is reproduced by Strabo in a
paragraph so vague that one cannot be sure whether it was intended to
refer only to Britain, or to Thule as well.[950] Strabo, if he had
any clear notion on the subject, must have applied it to Britain, for
Thule was in his eyes a mythical land;[951] but if Pytheas was thinking
of Thule, his account may have been based upon hearsay. He described
it as situated on or near the Arctic Circle,[952] and since he called
it an island, his description, if he sailed thither himself, can only
refer to Iceland: but Iceland, when the Northmen took possession of
it, was found uninhabited except by a few monks;[953] and it may be
that he simply drew his own conclusions from the reports of Britons
who told him that in Thule there was one night every year on which
the sun never set.[954] Again, when he said that Thule was near the
frozen ocean,[955] he may only have reported what he had heard; though
it is unlikely that the natives of North Britain would have made a
statement so misleading about any of the Shetlands, which were within
a few hours’ sail of their own land. But perhaps we may find a clue
in a well-known passage in Geminus’s _Elements of Astronomy_.[956]
‘The natives,’ said Pytheas, according to this extract, ‘pointed out
to us the sleeping-place of the sun; for in these parts the nights
were very short, in some only two, in others three hours long, so that
the sun re-appeared soon after it had set.’ Even in the Shetlands
the duration of the shortest night is about five hours; but Cosmas
Indicopleustes,[957] a traveller and geographer of the sixth century,
affirms that the natives explained ‘the sleeping-place of the sun’ as
the place where for twenty-four hours there was unbroken darkness.
We may well conceive how Pytheas stood talking to Shetlanders or to
people who lived near Cape Wrath, while they pointed in the direction
of Norway, in the remoter parts of which, as they had learned from
Norwegian sailors, was to be seen the midnight sun, and at midwinter
there was for twenty-four hours continuous night. But Pytheas would not
have told this tale if he had himself watched the sun above the horizon
throughout the midsummer night; nor would he have placed Thule on the
Arctic Circle if he had not believed that such a spectacle was there
to be seen. For the Romans of the Empire Thule, as the northernmost
of the British Isles, was Mainland, which Agricola visited.[958] But
on the whole it seems most probable that Pytheas described it from
hearsay;[959] that he was misled into believing it to be in the British
archipelago; and that the Thule to which his informants pointed was the
Scandinavian peninsula.[960]
[Sidenote: Pytheas and the ethnology of Britain.]
But, apart from the deeds of Pytheas himself, perhaps the most
interesting information which we owe to the fragmentary record of his
voyage relates to the ethnology of Britain. He learned that it was
called the Pretanic Island. Before his time the Gauls for the most part
had come to change the original sound _qu_ into _p_; whereas certain
tribes of Western Gaul[961] as well as all those Celtic-speaking
inhabitants of the British Isles from whose dialect Gaelic, Irish,
and Manx have been evolved retained it, though the latter afterwards
modified it into _c_. On the other hand, wherever the Indo-European
tongue from which Celtic was an offshoot had the sound of _p_, most
of the Celtic-speaking tribes both of Britain and Gaul had let it
disappear. The word _Pretanic_ therefore implied the existence of an
earlier word _Qrtanic_; and supposing that Pytheas, as some believe,
heard _Pretanic_ only in Gaul, it might be argued that _Qrtanic_ was
still the British pronunciation. If so, none of the tribes who had
changed _qu_ into _p_, from whose dialect Welsh, Cornish, and Breton
descended, and who are commonly called Brythons, had yet invaded
Britain. But if, as seems much more probable, Pytheas derived his
information from Britons, the Brythons were already predominant at
all events in those parts of Britain in which he conversed with them.
Indeed, as we shall afterwards see,[962] it is morally certain that
Brythonic tribes had been settled here at least half a century before
he came.
The subject of the ethnology of the Celtic-speaking tribes of Britain
is extremely difficult; and on nearly every important point Celtic
philologists differ widely among themselves. It is almost an article
of faith that the earlier Celtic invaders were Goidels, or tribes who
had not changed _qu_ into _p_; but there are some who maintain that
neither in the time of Pytheas nor even in that of Caesar were there
any Goidels in Britain; and that those who were settled in Wales in the
third century of our era were all of Irish origin. No direct evidence
indeed can be adduced for the common view; but it is hard to conceive
that the earliest Celtic immigrants, unless they set out from Spain
or from North-Western Gaul, should have passed by Britain in order to
settle in Ireland. Even those who admit the priority of the Goidels in
Britain are not of one mind. While the foremost Celtic scholar of this
country maintains that when Celts first reached Britain the distinction
between the Goidelic and Brythonic dialects already existed, the
foremost Celtic scholar of France insists that at that time the Celtic
language was everywhere the same: according to him none of the Celts
had then changed _qu_ into _p_: that change was made later by Celtic
conquerors of Gaul, some of whose descendants afterwards colonized
Britain; and the people with whom Pytheas conversed were not, strictly
speaking, Goidels, but simply Celts who spoke a language from which the
Goidelic dialects--Gaelic, Manx, and Irish--were subsequently evolved.
On its chronological no less than on its ethnological side the Celtic
question is involved in obscurity. History, archaeology, and physical
anthropology can give the philologists little aid. The slender
historical evidence does not warrant us in assigning the earliest
Celtic invasion of Britain to a period more than six or seven centuries
before the Christian era. Philologists who, a few years ago, acquiesced
in this date, now put it back three centuries or more without troubling
themselves to give a reason. The Hallstatt period of culture, which,
in its earlier stage, coincided on the Continent with the transition
from the use of bronze to that of iron, is believed to have lasted
in Gaul from about 800 to about 400 B.C. As it is all but entirely
unrepresented in this country by iron weapons, one might perhaps argue
that Celts invaded Britain before iron implements of Hallstatt type
began to be common in Gaul; but this date gives us no help, for it
certainly was not earlier than the sixth century before Christ.[963]
Assuming that Goidelic and Brythonic were distinct dialects before the
Celts invaded Britain, there is no evidence that the Goidelic invaders
(if they existed) were physically different from their Brythonic
kinsmen; and if they were, the fact would throw no light upon the
Goidelic invasion. For, as we have seen, even if the period of the
round barrows lasted to the end of the Bronze Age, cremation, which
destroys evidence of physical type, was then in vogue. Therefore we
must rest satisfied with the probability that at some time after the
earlier period of the British Bronze Age tribes began to invade Britain
who spoke a language from which the Gaelic that we know was descended;
and with the certainty that when Pytheas landed on our shore he found
Brythons already in possession.[964]
[Sidenote: The passing of the Bronze Age.]
The coming of Pytheas marks the beginning of a new era. Bronze and even
stone implements were still used in the north and probably even in the
greater part of Southern Britain.[965] But the Bronze Age, properly so
called, had passed away: the Early Iron Age had begun.
CHAPTER V
THE EARLY IRON AGE
[Sidenote: Iron probably introduced into Britain by Gallic invaders.]
Iron-working was of course familiar to the people of the Mediterranean
and even to the continental Celts long before it was introduced into
Britain;[966] but, it need scarcely be said, everywhere until the
Middle Ages, the metal was not cast, but only wrought. Not far from
Hallstatt, the only place in Europe where the gradual transition from
the use of bronze to that of iron can be traced, were the iron mines
of Noreia, which were certainly worked at a very early period, and
from which, some archaeologists still insist, the use of iron spread
to all European lands.[967] Since iron tools and weapons of the later
Hallstatt type, ranging from about the beginning of the sixth to the
end of the fifth century before the Christian era, are almost entirely
wanting in Britain, the earliest products of our Iron Age can hardly be
older than the later of these dates. Were they introduced by immigrants
or in the ordinary course of trade? Among the round barrows on the
Yorkshire Wolds are two, situated in the parish of Cowlam, each of
which contained the skeleton of a woman. The appearance of these mounds
was not different from that of many others, most of which belonged
to the Bronze Age and a few perhaps to that of stone: the skeletons
were interred in the contracted position which had been common for
many centuries; and the pottery exactly resembled the domestic pottery
which is associated with bronze. The practised explorer who opened the
barrows confessed that but for the presence of a brooch and certain
ornaments of the Iron Age he would unhesitatingly have assigned them
to the older period; and he accordingly concluded that no new people
had come in with iron.[968] But the conclusion is not warranted except
perhaps for the particular district to which these graves belong.
The use of iron might have spread by barter to Yorkshire after it
had been introduced by new-comers into lands nearer Gaul; and the
prevalent opinion is that it was introduced about the beginning of the
fourth century before Christ by Gallic invaders who spoke a Brythonic
dialect.[969]
[Sidenote: The Belgae preceded by other Brythons, who began to arrive
about 400 B.C.]
Caesar knew nothing of any Gallic invaders of Britain except the
Belgae, who, as he gathered, inhabited the maritime districts,
evidently of the south-east and south: the people of the interior,
according to his informants, were aborigines. This statement, however,
made no distinction between the real aborigines and the round-headed
immigrants who found them in possession. It is impossible to say
certainly which of the tribes in Caesar’s time were Belgic, except the
Belgae, the Catuvellauni, and the Atrebates, none of whom possessed
territory north of the basin of the Thames;[970] but the names of
tribes and of places mentioned by Ptolemy and other late writers show
that the greater part of England and Wales and at least a considerable
part of Southern Scotland were in the first century of the Roman
occupation inhabited by Brythons; and it is morally certain that they
did not arrive after Caesar’s departure. Evidently, therefore, the
Belgae had been preceded by other Brythons. But when did the first
Belgic invaders appear? Those who are not content to take on trust
the widely different dates which have been assigned by archaeologists
will find that it is impossible to achieve any definite result. Dr.
Arthur Evans has at different times conjectured that the invasion
began about two hundred,[971] about one hundred and fifty,[972] and
about three hundred years before the birth of Christ.[973] It would
appear, however, from the time that must have been required for the
gradual evolution of the successive types of British coins which will
be noticed hereafter, that the prototype was introduced not less than
a century and a half, possibly two centuries, before the Christian
era; but it is impossible to prove, though it is generally assumed,
that money was coined by the first Belgic invaders. The date of the
commencement of the earlier Brythonic invasion is equally uncertain. It
is now provisionally fixed about 400 B.C.[974]
[Sidenote: Ethnology of the invaders.]
Classical writers are practically unanimous in describing Celts as a
tall stalwart people with fair or red hair; and physical anthropology
confirms the general accuracy of their statements. But this science
shows that the Celts, Goidelic and Brythonic, who successively invaded
Gaul were mixed themselves, and that the population whom they found
there were composed of two intermingled elements--a small dark people
who resembled the older neolithic inhabitants of our own islands,
and a short sturdy people, also dark but round-skulled, who began to
enter Gaul in the Neolithic Age. Doubtless the Belgae as well as the
earlier Brythonic invaders of Britain were an amalgam of all these
elements, the tall red Celts whose ancestors had introduced the Celtic
language into Gaul being the most conspicuous. But it is remarkable
that although Strabo emphasizes the great stature of the Britons, such
sepulchral evidence as we possess does not bear out his description.
The skeletons of the Early Iron Age that have been exhumed in Britain
are mainly those of small or middle-sized men, who to an untrained
eye seem hardly distinguishable from the neolithic race, but whose
skulls, although they too are long and narrow, generally differ from
theirs in the sight of an expert. Even the skeletons that have been
found interred with war-chariots are unlike those of the cemeteries of
North-Eastern Gaul. Unfortunately the chariot-burials of Britain are
very few: many of the later British interments of the Early Iron Age
were made by cremation; and it can only be concluded that the evidence
which might have enabled us to recognize the Celtic conquerors of the
classical type has perished or has not yet come to light.[975]
[Sidenote: The order in which the various tribes arrived unknown.]
Attempts, based upon the geographical positions of the various
Brythonic tribes, as they were defined by Caesar, Ptolemy, and other
ancient writers, have been made to determine the order in which they
arrived. Thus it has been supposed that the Britanni, coming from the
country near the mouth of the Somme, crossed the Straits and took
possession of Kent; that the Atrebates sailed up Southampton Water and
pushed inland till they reached those parts of Hampshire and Berkshire
in which they were afterwards found; that the Trinovantes, who in
Caesar’s time occupied Essex, steered for the mouth of the Thames;
that the Catuvellauni, arriving a little later, were obliged to move
higher up the valley and content themselves with parts of Middlesex,
Hertfordshire, and Oxfordshire; that the Eceni, whose settlements
were in East Anglia, came later still; and after them the Coritani,
who dwelled beyond the Wash, the Parisi, who seized the region of the
Humber, and the Brigantes, who held the greater part of Yorkshire and
Durham. The Cornavii of Cheshire and Derbyshire, whose name seems to
mean the inhabitants of the horn or peninsula, are accordingly assumed
to have landed between the Mersey and the Dee. Last of all, we are
told, came the Votadini, who took to themselves the tract between the
Tyne and the Firth of Forth.[976]
It would be surprising if these conjectures did not attain some measure
of truth; but those who will not accept guesses even from the highest
authority without testing them will perceive that they bristle with
difficulties. It is not certain that the obscure Britanni, who are
known to history only as a Gaulish tribe and are not even mentioned by
Caesar, ever invaded Britain at all: the same writer who tells us that
they were the first comers tells us also that they were Belgic, and
that the Belgae were preceded by other Brythons;[977] and the Belgae,
although they were last in the field, were not forced to seek distant
abodes, but conquered the best parts of the country which were nearest
to the Continent. We know nothing and can learn nothing of the history
of the Belgic or the earlier Brythonic settlements.
[Sidenote: ‘Late Celtic’ art.]
The Brythonic invaders introduced the first beginnings of the so-called
Late Celtic art, which, remotely connected with that of Central and
Southern Europe, attained its highest development in the British Isles.
It was partly an outgrowth of the culture which on the Continent is
called after the Helvetian settlement of La Tène, a village built on
piles in a bay of the lake of Neuchâtel. This culture, which owed much
to that of Hallstatt, has also been traced to classical and even to
Oriental sources; but in the century which preceded the Roman conquest
of Britain, while the Continent was dominated by the influence of Rome,
its offspring asserted its own individuality.[978] The Belgic conquest,
which brought Britain into closer connexion with the Continent, gave
a powerful impetus to the spread of Late Celtic art. The study of
its details and of the evolution of its various types belongs to
archaeology; but a general knowledge of its main features is essential
to the understanding of British history.
Late Celtic works of art are in general as easily recognized as
those of the Bronze Age, although only an expert could assign a
given specimen to its proper period; but they are far more difficult
to describe. While the chevron is the characteristic feature of
the older culture, that of the younger is the curve. Rectilinear
patterns, inherited from the Bronze Age, appear on many Late
Celtic objects, but generally combined with those of curvilinear
form.[979] Anthropomorphic and zoomorphic designs occasionally
occur; and although the examples which best illustrate this
tendency--two bronze-mounted buckets found at Marlborough[980] and
Aylesford[981]--were imported from Gaul, a bronze shield, dredged up
from the river Witham, which is decorated with the figure of a boar,
was undoubtedly of British workmanship.[982] Geometrical designs are
associated with representations of natural forms; and in certain cases
one may see the latter becoming so conventionalized that they are
tending to pass into the former. The scroll-like curves which hang from
the mouths of the pair of confronted animals on the Marlborough bucket
represent twigs on which they are supposed to have been browsing:
certain scabbards are embellished with undulating curves, of which the
original motive was an attempt to depict foliage; and everywhere the
effect of successive copying was to transmute forms suggested by nature
into sinuous lines, the origin of which is veiled by their very beauty.
The ultimate result was a system of decoration which has been likened
to the _flamboyant_,--the flame-like tracery of decadent French Gothic
architecture.[983]
[Sidenote: Coral and enamel.]
The Late Celtic artist was not content with merely devising graceful
lines on metal, wood, or earthenware: he often adorned his creations
with coral and enamel. Coral, which was imported from the islands
of Hyères, was no longer used in Gaul after the middle of the third
century before our era; but in this country it remained in vogue
until a much later period.[984] The art of enamelling, which had been
practised long before in the Caucasus, was already known in Gaul before
coral fell into disuse. The centre of the industry was the Aeduan
town of Bibracte, on Mont Beuvray near Autun, where the crucibles,
moulds, and polishing-stones of the workers have been discovered; but
the enamellers of Britain elaborated the art to a far higher pitch of
perfection. Enamels of many colours were produced at a late stage,
but in pre-Roman times only red.[985] Originally, as on a bronze
helmet found in the Thames by Waterloo Bridge, the enamel was let into
parallel or crossed grooves scored on the surface of the metal;[986]
but afterwards, by the _champlevé_ process, a bed was scooped out for
the reception of the fused material, and thus, by the covering of
larger surfaces, the brilliancy of the effect was enhanced. The earlier
British enamels, which show no vestiges of Roman influence, are found
principally upon bridle-bits and harness-rings.[987]
[Sidenote: Swords and scabbards.]
But Late Celtic art may be studied on many other objects besides
those which have been already mentioned. Though British swords of
the Early Iron Age are rare, and belong for the most part to dates
subsequent to the Belgic invasion, a beautiful specimen of La Tène
type was found in its bronze sheath in the village-stronghold of
Hunsbury near Northampton;[988] and several have been recovered from
the Thames, the scabbard of one being ornamented with a basket-pattern
and open-work and an S-shaped scroll, another with transverse bars like
examples from La Tène and Somme Bionne.[989] Late Celtic swords, which
invariably had bronze handles,[990] were not, like those of the Bronze
Age, leaf-shaped: their edges were nearly straight, and only tapered
slightly near the point. Some late specimens, more than three feet
long and with blunt points, intended not for thrusting but cutting,
correspond to the description of Tacitus;[991] but others are much
shorter. A dagger-sheath, found in Oxfordshire, is noticeable for its
unusual decoration,--minute punched ornament between two pairs of ribs,
which follow the outline of the edge, and not a single curve;[992]
while a scabbard from the Thames at Wandsworth is adorned with mock
spirals and lozenges enclosed between parallel ribs.[993]
[Illustration: FIG. 37. ½]
[Sidenote: Mirrors.]
The reader who has been taught to regard his British forefathers as
savages would not expect to find that they used mirrors; but although
some of those whose pre-Roman age is certain are quite plain, a
beautiful specimen which was found at Trelan Bahow in Cornwall, where
to the last Roman influence was hardly felt, is probably representative
of many which were made in the century before the Roman conquest, even
though its own date may be later than the time of Claudius. Unlike the
primitive mirrors, which were of iron mounted with bronze, it is made
entirely of the brighter metal, and ornamented on the back with three
circles, which enclose patterns of engraved scroll-work, filled with
cross-hatching.[994]
[Illustration: FIG. 38. ½]
[Sidenote: Brooches and pins.]
The _fibula_ or brooch--the prototype of the modern safety-pin--which
had come into use on the Continent in the earliest period of the
Hallstatt culture, was not known in our island before the Iron
Age. Brooches of the successive La Tène types, in all of which the
pin was straight and the body curved like a bow, have been found
in considerable numbers; one of the earliest, from Water Eaton in
Oxfordshire, being engraved with scrolls and the familiar ring-and-dot
pattern, while another, from Avebury, was set with coral.[995] Some
brooches discovered in the stronghold of Hod Hill, near Blandford, had
been modelled upon an Italian pattern of much earlier date.[996] Pins,
however, were still used for fastening the dress. Plain ones, which
may be as old as the fourth century before Christ, have been found at
Hagbourne Hill in Berkshire, and on the site of a pile-dwelling at
Hammersmith, and others, which are hardly distinguishable in shape from
a modern scarf-pin and belong to the period immediately preceding the
coming of the Romans, in various parts of Scotland;[997] but one which
lay among the relics in a grave near Driffield was far more elaborately
designed, its head being a miniature chariot-wheel with four spokes,
curiously inlaid with shell.[998]
[Sidenote: Ornaments.]
Of our Late Celtic ornaments many are undatable; and while the torques
and richly decorated collars which are familiar to all antiquarians
are common in early Gaulish graves, those of this country which are
most characteristic of Late Celtic art appear to belong to the Roman
period:[999] but bronze bracelets set with paste were worn even in
Yorkshire; and a penannular bracelet with small tooth-like projections,
which closely resembles far earlier specimens from Hallstatt, belongs
to the same district.[1000] Of less costly trinkets lathe-turned
bangles of Kimmeridge shale,[1001] glass armlets,[1002] and glass
beads[1003] can hardly perhaps be classified as works of art; but it is
noteworthy that the beads, yellow, green, and blue, with their zigzag
patterns and wavy white lines, which have been found at Glastonbury and
in Yorkshire barrows, are utterly different from those of the Bronze
Age, and belong mainly to a late period of the La Tène culture, though
some had analogues in the cemetery of Hallstatt. As Glastonbury has
also yielded pieces of glass slag and of crucibles, the beads were
probably manufactured on the spot.[1004] For some reason which has not
been explained gold ornaments were apparently far rarer both in this
country and in Gaul than in the preceding period.[1005]
[Sidenote: Woodwork.]
Among the finest examples of woodwork are bronze-mounted tankards which
have been found in Suffolk[1006] and Merionethshire,[1007] the former
being ornamented with circles enclosed between bronze bands, and each
containing the mystic three-limbed figure, called the _triskele_, which
seems to have been akin to the swastika; while the handle of the latter
is notable for its flamboyant tracery. Specimens of a different kind
include a beautiful bowl from Glastonbury, the sweeping curves incised
on its surface expanding into circles and trumpet-like projections
which enclose diagonal cross-hatching, and a rectangular object from
the same site, which has no curves but is engraved with a step-like
pattern shaded with cross-hatching of double diagonals.[1008]
[Illustration: FIG. 39. ⅓]
[Sidenote: Pottery.]
[Illustration: FIG. 40. ⅛]
Not less interesting is the Late Celtic pottery, which is generally
very different from that of the Bronze Age, and the distinctive forms
of which were first classified a few years ago by the explorer of
the cemetery at Aylesford. Since then numerous examples of the same
types have been found in other parts of Kent and in Essex; but the
influence was felt as far north as Northamptonshire, and as far west
as Dorsetshire. These vessels were turned upon the wheel and were much
finer in quality than those of the Bronze Age. The most characteristic
of the cinerary urns, which in outline may be likened to a truncated
pear, stand upon narrow pedestals and are generally divided into zones
by ridges and corresponding grooves; while a few are incised on the
bottom with concentric circles. They closely resemble urns found in
Belgic cemeteries near St. Valéry-sur-Somme and in the lower valley of
the Seine, which are nearly contemporary with them, belonging to the
latest period of Gallic independence; but vases of the same form had
been deposited three centuries earlier in the cemetery of Somme-Bionne,
where the bodies had all been simply interred, whereas the urns of
Aylesford were filled with cremated bones. The type, however, was
not indigenous in Gaul. Its descent has been traced to vessels of
earthenware found in North Italian graves of the fifth and fourth
centuries before Christ, which were in their turn derived from bronze
vases common on both shores of the Northern Adriatic. The cordons on
the bronze vessels were simply survivals of wooden rings that compacted
a frame of staves to which metal plates had been riveted.[1009]
[Illustration: FIG. 41.]
Pedestalled vases were not the only pottery found at Aylesford and
the analogous sites. There were others, bowl-shaped or with low
globular bodies, some of which were also cordoned, while a few had the
triangular decoration characteristic of the Bronze Age.
Domestic vessels of wholly different forms have also been recovered,
some with handles on either side, and perforated bases, which were
perhaps used for draining honey-combs, and others which are more easily
recognized as Late Celtic by their flamboyant decoration. A fragment
of this ware was taken from the same cavern near Torquay which had
been used as a dwelling-place in palaeolithic times. Household pottery
was still commonly made by hand; and while some specimens were without
any ornament, others had rectilinear patterns of such a kind that, but
for the associations in which they were found, they would have been
referred unhesitatingly to the Age of Bronze.[1010]
[Sidenote: The noblest creation of Late Celtic art.]
If archaeologists were invited to name the noblest creation of Late
Celtic art, I think that with one consent they would point to the
bronze shield which was lost in the Thames, and found after it had
lain there some nineteen hundred years. Oblong with rounded ends and
gently contracted in the middle, the outline forming an endless curve,
it is adorned with three successive circles of _repoussé_ work, a
large central one and two smaller, connected by sinuous lines, within
which lesser circles are contained. The central piece of each greater
circle is a boss enclosing enamelled swastika designs and surrounded
by curves, S-shaped and C-shaped, which begin and end with the same
mysterious device. Yet, though the beauty of form remains, the glory
of colouring is gone; and one can only now imagine how, when the
shield hung upon the forgotten warrior’s arm, gleaming bronze and
raised curves and red enamel combined to produce their due effect.
Like Stonehenge this was the work of a master: not one detail could be
altered, or removed, or added without impairing its perfection.[1011]
[Illustration: FIG. 42. ⅕]
[Sidenote: Imported objects of art.]
Among the products of Late Celtic art that have been found in Britain
are some of foreign manufacture, which testify to the increased
commercial activity that followed the Belgic invasion. Besides the
bronze-mounted bucket, already mentioned, the Aylesford cemetery
yielded a bronze flagon, which had been made in Northern Italy:[1012]
an elegant Graeco-Italian two-handled cup of black glazed earthenware
with white foliated ornament encircling its inner margin was discovered
in the rick-yard of the Manor Farm at Dorchester in Oxfordshire;[1013]
while the Marlborough bucket is adorned with figures of sea-horses
which are common on Gallic coins of the neighbourhood of Rennes, and
which warrant the conjecture that it was imported from North-Western
Gaul,[1014] perhaps in one of the vessels that plied between the Loire
and Ictis. What else besides tin the Britons in the days of their
independence exported in return for such articles we do not know; but
in a later chapter we shall see that a long list of their exports and
imports was compiled by Strabo.[1015] The carrying-trade was for the
most part in the hands of Gallic ship-owners; but some cargoes were
perhaps loaded in British bottoms. The British envoys who presented
themselves in Caesar’s camp in 55 B.C. may indeed have crossed the
Channel in a Gallic merchantman, and so may the hostages who were
sent to him after his first invasion of Britain; but it is unlikely
that the maritime Belgic tribes, who must have set out from Gaul in
ships of their own, built none after they had settled in Britain, or
that the numerous British adventurers who reinforced Caesar’s Gallic
enemies depended for their transport upon the latter. The only British
vessels, however, which are expressly mentioned by our authorities were
light coracles of lath covered with hides, which Caesar observed when
he was in Kent and afterwards copied when he was fighting in Spain
against Pompey’s lieutenants,[1016] and which are still used by Irish
fishermen off the coast of Connaught.[1017] These boats were doubtless
employed in coastal navigation and on inland waterways; but much of
the intertribal traffic must have been carried on along trackways,
[Sidenote: Trackways.] which are still traceable, and the prehistoric
antiquity of which is proved by their association with hill-forts. Most
of them, like the Pilgrim’s Way, which is known to all who have tramped
the high grounds of Surrey and Kent, ran along ridges or the slopes of
downs which were generally unencumbered by forest or morass. If their
origin could be traced, we should find that they were formed by the
earliest settlers who felt the need of communication, along the lines
of least resistance which nomadic hunters had followed when they passed
from one temporary settlement to another;[1018] and doubtless attempts
were made to render them more suitable for wheeled traction when the
Cornish miners began to convey their tin in wagons to the coast, and
the invaders of the Iron Age brought their chariots from Gaul. Even
then, however, wheel-less vehicles, like those which Sir Arthur
Mitchell noticed a few years ago in Strathglass and Kintail, must have
been used for carting timber down steep hills or over heaths where no
wheeled carriage could have moved.[1019]
[Sidenote: Coinage.]
Foreign commerce as well as domestic trade were greatly stimulated by
the introduction of coinage and by the development of a ruder form of
currency. Towards the end of the fourth century before the Christian
era the Greeks of Massilia had introduced into Gaul gold coins of
Philip of Macedon, which bore on the obverse a representation of the
head of Apollo wreathed in laurel, and on the reverse a charioteer
driving a pair of horses with the name _Philippos_ stamped underneath.
On these coins the Gallic coinage was modelled, and the British coinage
was derived mainly from that of Gaul or through Gaul from a Macedonian
stater; for certain peculiarities are noticeable on our earliest
coins which distinguish them from those of Gaul.[1020] Evidently a
considerable time must have elapsed before the new art travelled from
Southern to Northern Gaul, and again before it crossed the Channel;
and it is only natural to find that the oldest and heaviest British
coins weigh no more than a hundred and twenty grains, or thirteen
grains lighter than the Philippus, although, on the other hand, they
are heavier than Gallic coins which belong to the latter half of the
second century before Christ.[1021] Until about a quarter of a century
after Caesar’s invasion the British coins were uninscribed: indeed
uninscribed coins were still current during the earlier years of
the Roman occupation.[1022] Their weight gradually diminished; and
gradually, owing to successive copying, the head of Apollo and his
wreath, the charioteer, the chariot, and the horses became more and
more conventionalized and degraded, the head in certain cases passing
ultimately into a cruciform pattern or even into a four-leaved flower,
the charioteer being evolved into pellets, and the pair of horses
becoming first one, then more and more grotesque until it lost all
resemblance to a quadruped. Die-sinkers (who were doubtless few) would
use the same dies or follow the same general type during their working
career; and new types appeared when their successors came to engrave
new dies. By estimating the time which would have been required for
these successive alterations, it has been calculated that the earliest
British coins must have been struck about a hundred and fifty or
perhaps two hundred years before the birth of Christ.[1023]
For many years the only coins of Britain were gold of two values, the
smaller being a quarter of the weight of the larger;[1024] and it may
be gathered from the testimony of Strabo[1025] and Tacitus[1026] that
they were made, at all events in part, from metal extracted from the
alluvial deposits of the Cornish peninsula. Coins of silver, bronze,
and even tin were afterwards circulated, but probably not before the
era of redoubled commercial activity which began when the British
islands became more closely connected with the Continent in consequence
of Caesar’s invasion: indeed many of the silver coins are little
earlier than the time of Claudius.[1027] Specimens of all these metals
are much scarcer than those of gold. Only two British tin coins are
known to exist; and in the western counties no bronze coin has ever
been found.[1028]
Specimens of the prototype of British gold coins have been found more
frequently in Kent than in any other county; and it may be inferred
that, as might have been expected, they were first struck in the more
civilized district which was nearest to the Continent.[1029] For a
long period indeed the gold currency was confined to the southern and
eastern districts: before Caesar’s time there is no evidence that any
tribes coined money except those whose territories lay south of a
line drawn from the Wash to the Bristol Channel; and even from these
the peoples of Gloucestershire, Northern Somersetshire, and Northern
Wiltshire must probably be excluded.[1030] Uninscribed coins have
indeed occurred as far north as Yorkshire,[1031] and as far west
as Cornwall;[1032] but they had found their way thither from other
tribes.[1033]
Many coins of British origin which have been discovered in France,
especially in the Belgic territory,[1034] and many Gallic coins in
South-Eastern Britain, bear further witness to the development of
international trade.[1035]
[Sidenote: Iron currency bars.]
But coins were not the only medium of exchange. Caesar, in his
description of the manners and customs of the Britons, remarked that
some of them made use of iron bars of specified weights as a substitute
for coins.[1036] Until a very recent period antiquaries were waiting
for some lucky find which might corroborate the accuracy of Caesar’s
statement, not knowing that the evidence was before their eyes and
only needed interpretation. Within the last eighty years a large
number of iron bars have been unearthed in Berkshire, Northamptonshire,
Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, Somersetshire, Dorsetshire, Hampshire,
and the Isle of Wight. Many of them were found on well-known sites of
the Early Iron Age, such as the lake-village of Glastonbury, and the
forts of Hod Hill and Spettisbury; and some of the hoards comprised
very numerous specimens--amounting in two cases to about one hundred
and fifty, and in a third to three hundred and ninety-four--which had
been buried deep in the ground. A tiro might take them for swords;
but to the experts who compare them with the known swords of the Late
Celtic Period it is evident that they contain too much metal; and,
moreover, they may be arranged, according to their weight, in three
groups, the heaviest being twice as valuable as the intermediate, and
four times as valuable as the lightest. Not a single specimen has come
to light in the eastern and south-eastern counties, in which coins are
most abundant.[1037]
[Sidenote: Mining.]
The British iron-mines of which Caesar speaks were situated in the
Wealden Forest; and although they were not finally abandoned before the
nineteenth century, it is probable that some of the pits which mark
the site of the works were excavated by British miners.[1038] But the
iron from which some of the currency-bars were wrought was obtained, in
the opinion of an eminent metallurgist, from the Forest of Dean,[1039]
and, as we shall presently see,[1040] those which were found in
Northamptonshire may have been manufactured on the spot. Mining indeed
was one of the principal industries of Britain. Tin was still exported,
if not in [Sidenote: About 100 B.C.] Caesar’s time, at least as late as
that of Posidonius;[1041] copper was still needed for bronze ornaments,
horse-trappings, sword-sheaths, and other objects, and indeed in
certain districts for cutting-tools;[1042] and although the numerous
‘pigs’ of lead which have been found in Staffordshire and Cheshire
belong to the time of the Empire, the discovery of leaden celts and
sword-pommels of the Bronze Age[1043] raises the presumption that the
mines of those districts, of the Mendip Hills, Flintshire, and the
neighbourhood of Matlock may have been worked even by the Britons.[1044]
Looking at all these tokens of industrial enterprise, one is
prepared to find evidences of increased comfort and more [Sidenote:
Agriculture.] settled conditions of life. Since the Bronze Age
agriculture had undoubtedly made a notable advance. It is impossible to
tell whether the Britons, like the Gauls, recognized private property
in land;[1045] but archaeology has furnished abundant evidence, which
confirms Caesar’s statement, that at all events in the south-eastern
districts corn was grown in plenty. When he made his first expedition
to Britain, his army, numbering at least twelve thousand men, reaped
enough wheat in the near neighbourhood of Walmer to supply its wants
for a fortnight or more; while in the following year he requisitioned
from the people of Essex grain for four legions with their auxiliaries
and seventeen hundred cavalry, which was delivered within a few
days.[1046] An iron sickle and a ploughshare found in Bigbury camp
near Canterbury;[1047] traces of terrace cultivation on the Sussex
downs;[1048] grain of several kinds stored in Worlebury Fort, in the
Glastonbury lake-village, and in Hunsbury, where also were found
fragments of stone querns in such profusion that every family may
well have possessed its own, bear witness to the industry of the
British farmers.[1049] So also perhaps do the famous dene-holes of
Kent, Essex, and Norfolk, whose purpose has been a theme of voluminous
controversy, but of which the most satisfactory explanation seems to
be that they were for the most part subterranean granaries, which
may have been used as refuges in time of danger, and that the chalk
extracted in the process of excavation was used, as Pliny says, for
manuring fields.[1050] Under the necessity of cultivating fresh land
considerable progress must have been made in clearing the forests; and
axes, saws, and bill-hooks, with which the woodmen worked, are still
to be seen.[1051] It is true that even in the more civilized south
the great Wealden Forest, in which swine, guarded by fierce dogs, fed
secure among wolves and foxes, badgers, and deer, still extended beyond
the chalk downs from the neighbourhood of West Hythe to the eastern
border of Hampshire, reached northward as far as Sevenoaks, and skirted
the Surrey Hills; while great parts of Essex were overgrown with wood;
another forest overshadowed the valley of the Kennet from Hungerford
to Windsor; and the Isle of Ely was surrounded by broad meres, swelled
by the heavier rains which fell in those days.[1052] But even in Essex
much timber must have been removed to make room for the cornfields from
which the Trinovantes supplied Caesar’s legions, and in Kent to form
the denes in which cattle grazed; while of those myriad homesteads
which Caesar passed on his devastating march not a few must have been
built upon reclaimed land.
[Sidenote: Dwellings of the rich.]
The researches of the eminent scholar who has so greatly enlarged
our knowledge of Roman Britain have led him to suggest that among
these homesteads there may have been, besides the round Celtic huts,
dwellings, belonging to the rich, which might almost be described
as country houses. Under Roman administration the rural parts of
Britain, as of Northern Gaul, were parcelled into estates, the owners
of which let out the greater part to cultivators who were in a state
of semi-serfdom, while their demesne lands were tilled by slaves.
The houses belong to two types, known as the Corridor type and the
Courtyard type, neither of which exists anywhere save in Britain and
the north of Gaul. The corridor house consisted of a row of rooms
with a passage running along them: the other of three such rows,
which formed three sides of a quadrangle. Since there is little
resemblance between either of these types and those of Italy, it may be
assumed that the extant examples of both, although they had been made
luxurious by Roman mosaics and hypocausts and baths, were but modified
representatives of the chieftains’ houses which Caesar saw.[1053]
[Sidenote: Towns.]
Nor were petty hamlets and isolated cottages the only places of abode.
Town-life was beginning to emerge. The Britons, like the Gauls,
had large fortified villages, which afterwards gave place to the
flourishing Romano-British towns whose secrets are being revealed by
pick and shovel. Camulodunum, or Colchester, the chief town of the
Trinovantes, and Verulamium, hard by St. Albans, the chief town of the
Catuvellauni, each of which had its mint before the Roman conquest,
were doubtless tribal centres before Caesar came.[1054] So too,
probably, was Corinium, the capital of the Dobuni, which stood upon the
site of Cirencester;[1055] and Calleva, now Silchester, the excavation
of which has been pursued for many years with illuminating results,
was surrounded by a rampart which had evidently defended the capital
of the Atrebates in pre-Roman times.[1056] London, which, if we may
trust Ptolemy,[1057] was in the territory of the Cantii, was probably
not less ancient; for _Augusta_, the name which Roman officialism
endeavoured to impose upon it, was unable to resist the vitality of
the Celtic appellation.[1058] Imaginative historians have pictured
British London in the midst of a vast lagoon;[1059] but although the
site of Westminster Abbey was an island surrounded by a marsh, and
the Walbrook, where it flowed into the Thames, was little less than
a hundred yards in width, it was proved during the construction of a
sewer in London Wall that the land on the north side of the city had in
Roman times been as dry as it is to-day.[1060]
[Sidenote: Hill-forts.]
The tribal capitals were of course fortified; but the old hill
strongholds of the Neolithic Age and the Bronze Age had not been
abandoned; and new ones were doubtless constructed as occasion
required. Among those that have yielded remains of the Late Celtic
Period the most famous are Worlebury, which crowns a headland just
north of Weston-super-mare; Hod Hill, which rises sheer above the
valley of the Stour, four miles north-west of Blandford; Bigbury
Camp, through which runs the Pilgrim’s Way; and Winkelbury Camp in
South Wiltshire, Mount Caburn, overhanging Lewes, and Cissbury Camp,
already mentioned for its neolithic factory, which have been excavated
by General Pitt-Rivers. Worlebury is the most remarkable of the few
stone forts in the west of England. Unlike the great earthworks it
has no ditch, because it needed none; and on its northern side a
limestone precipice rendered fortification superfluous. The rampart
is a vast wall, compacted with rubble and faced on either side with
dry masonry; and, to prevent an enemy from demolishing it, the outer
face was buttressed by heaps of loose stones. Many of the modern walls
in the neighbourhood of the fortress are indistinguishable from it in
structure.[1061] At Winkelbury large openings were left in that part
of the rampart which is contiguous to the plain, probably to enable
cattle to be driven in rapidly when marauders were near; while another
rampart, which bisects the camp, may have been designed to separate
the cattle-pound from the quarters of the garrison.[1062] Cissbury,
the principal fort on the Sussex Downs, was one of the few British
strongholds which appear to have had access to a permanent supply of
water: about a mile and a half off, at a place called Broadwater,
is a spring, abundant enough for an army, which is connected by a
trackway with the southern entrance.[1063] The most characteristic
feature of Mount Caburn is the number of pits which, as at Worlebury,
are contained within its area. In both camps these pits are so small
that they could not have been ordinarily inhabited, although, during
a siege, they might have afforded shelter: probably they were used
as store-rooms, for some of them contained corn.[1064] Dwellings,
however, were connected with them; for the remains of a clay wall were
discovered on Mount Caburn, impressed with marks of wattle-work; and
it may be inferred that many such huts, which have left no trace,
once existed within the ramparts.[1065] Bigbury was probably one of
the entrenchments of which Caesar was thinking when he said that ‘the
Britons apply the term fortress to woods difficult of access and
fortified with rampart and trench in which they are in the habit of
taking refuge from a hostile raid’.[1066] The familiar sentence was a
stumbling-block to Pitt-Rivers; for, as we have seen, the British forts
were as a rule constructed upon treeless heights, and the presence of
trees upon the slopes would have been incompatible with the designs of
the engineers: but Caesar’s observations must of course be accepted;
and we can only suppose that the entrenchments which he described
were exceptional even in the region which was the theatre of his
campaign.[1067] May we conjecture that they had been erected in the
Iron Age by Celtic immigrants, and that their lack of finish was due to
the lazy shrinking from the hard labour of fortification which Caesar
regarded as characteristic of the Gauls?[1068]
The fort of Pen-y-Gaer, which overlooks the valley of the Conway,
is remarkable as an almost unique specimen of ancient military
engineering. A storming-party which had succeeded in passing the two
outer ditches would have fallen, in attempting the next, under the
missiles that showered from the rampart, on to _chevaux de frise_ of
pointed stones.[1069]
[Sidenote: Some permanently inhabited.]
The relics that have been collected from the hill-forts of the Iron
Age prove that the forts themselves, like those of Gaul, were not
merely places of refuge but permanent abodes. Those that were situated
on heights extremely difficult of access or remote from water were
of course very sparsely inhabited in time of peace; but others were
analogous to the Gallic fortresses which Caesar called _oppida_, and
which were evidently distinct from the refuges, such as Aduatuca,
which he designated as _castella_.[1070] Pottery, it is true, would
have been indispensable even during a few days’ siege; and the stone
lamp, resembling that of Grimes’s Graves,[1071] and blackened by
use, which was recovered from Castle Law in Perthshire,[1072] might
well have been needed at such a time. But when we find bill-hooks,
ploughshares, bridle-bits, and fragments of querns among the objects
that had been left in the forts which have been mentioned, it is clear
that they were occupied by an industrial population: iron slag, which
lay among the deposits on Hod Hill, was evidence of metallurgy; while
the loom-weights which were collected on the same spot, the bone
weaving-combs of Cissbury and Mount Caburn, and the spindle-whorls
which abounded not only in these comparatively civilized settlements
but also in a stone fortress on far St. David’s Head show that among
the inhabitants were women who pursued their ordinary domestic
avocations.[1073] This Welsh stronghold was almost identical in
construction with Carn Brea,[1074] and the hut-circles which the two
contain are exactly alike; yet the time which had elapsed since the
Cornish ramparts were thrown up was as long as that which separates us
from Alfred the Great.[1075]
Although many of the Scottish forts can be referred to the Early Iron
Age, it would perhaps be impossible to prove that the relics found in
any of them were earlier than the time of Caesar’s invasion;[1076]
but two have an interest of their own as being the only examples that
have yet been observed in Britain of fortifications constructed, like
the Gallic walls which he described,[1077] conjointly of timber and
stone. In one of them, situated at Burghead near Elgin, wooden logs
were actually discovered in the stone walls;[1078] while at Castle Law,
which stands upon a hill commanding a view over the Tay, as it winds
through the carse on the west and loses itself in its eastern estuary,
the outer face of the wall contained rectangular openings, which had
manifestly been designed for the reception of beams.[1079]
[Sidenote: Hunsbury.]
While the hill-forts were probably only inhabited permanently by
comparatively small numbers, and, like Gergovia, the mountain-city
of Auvergne, where Vercingetorix defeated Caesar, may have sheltered
thousands of fugitives in time of need, one stronghold at least of the
other group was a town in the strictest sense of the word. Hunsbury,
the most celebrated representative of this class, which stands upon
high ground about two miles south-west of Northampton, might never have
surrendered its precious relics if the iron ore which was known to
underlie the site had not attracted the prospector. About thirty years
ago a company was formed to win the iron; and navvies accidentally
did the work which would have been better performed under scientific
direction. Hunsbury is so small that it could hardly have been a tribal
centre: the entrenchment encloses only four acres,--less than the
twelfth part of the area of Hod Hill. Not the faintest trace of Roman
influence could be detected among the remains, which are now arranged
in the Northampton Museum; and the experts who examined them concluded
that they belonged to the time of Caesar’s invasion. They were found
in pits, resembling those of Mount Caburn, about three hundred of
which had been dug inside the rampart; and here too there was evidence
that the dwellings had been huts of wattle-work. The townspeople were
well armed: they kept horses and chariots, wove their own cloth, sawed
their own timber, made their own earthenware, and grew their own corn;
and heaps of slag showed that they had smelted the ore, which lay
thenceforward undisturbed for nineteen hundred years.[1080] One of
several skulls which were found just outside the town was perforated
with three holes, which suggest that the British Celts, like the Gauls
and their neolithic predecessors, made amulets out of the remains of
their own dead.[1081]
[Sidenote: Inhabited caves; pit-dwellings; ‘Picts’ houses’; beehive
houses; and brochs.]
But perhaps not many British settlements were of this comparatively
advanced type. In the Late Celtic Period, and indeed long after its
close, caves were still inhabited, as throughout the prehistoric
ages, in some cases by outlaws, who made a precarious livelihood by
robbing wealthy travellers.[1082] Pit-dwellings in small groups,
which apparently differed little from those of the Neolithic Age,
have been found stored with Late Celtic relics;[1083] and doubtless
it was from habitations of this class that the thatched huts of mud
and wattle-work which Strabo[1084] describes, and the remains of which
have been already noticed, were evolved. Such cottages, as Caesar[1085]
testifies, were much the same in Gaul and Britain. Posidonius was made
welcome in them when he travelled in Gaul. He tells us how his hosts,
seated on straw round low tables, took their meat in their fingers and
tore it like lions or chopped it in pieces with their pocket-knives,
and washed it down with draughts of beer from earthenware or silver
beakers; how the meal was sometimes interrupted by a quarrel, when the
disputants sprang to their feet and fought till one was slain.[1086]
In the far north and in the Cornish peninsula men lived in underground
dwellings, commonly called ‘Picts’ houses’, which generally consisted
of a paved trench lined with dry masonry, roofed over with slabs,
and terminating in a round chamber; while in some Scottish examples
rooms were grouped on both sides of the gallery.[1087] Related to
these structures are the Scottish mound-dwellings or bee-hive houses,
specimens of which in the island of Lewis were still inhabited in
the nineteenth century. They may be looked for in places such as
the Hebrides, where branches large enough to form roofs like those
of pit-dwellings were not to be had. In some a central chamber was
connected with others which opened out of it: a hole, which could be
closed at will, was left in the roof for the escape of smoke; the
chinks between the stones were stuffed with grass or moss; and the
roof was covered with turf, which adhered to the interstices and made
the structure compact. It is impossible to assign a precise date to
these huts. Some of them contained querns and were certainly occupied
in the time of the Romans; but probably many had been built before,
while others are comparatively modern.[1088] The most elaborate
buildings of this type were the brochs, whose range extends from the
Orkney and Shetland Isles, which contain nearly a hundred and fifty,
to Berwickshire, but which do not exist outside the Scottish area.
These buildings, which were really small forts, represent the art of
dry-walling at its zenith. They were round towers about sixty feet high
and fifty feet in diameter. If an enemy succeeded in forcing a way
in, he found himself in an inner court open to the sky and enclosed
by a commanding wall, pierced by numerous apertures, which formed the
windows of encircling galleries, from behind which the defenders were
prepared to shoot.[1089] The relics which have been found in them
belong for the most part to the close of the Roman occupation and
even later; but some which have been excavated in Caithness contained
painted pebbles like those of the late palaeolithic cavern of Mas
d’Azil; and it is possible that they may have existed in pre-Roman
times.[1090]
[Sidenote: The Glastonbury marsh-village.]
The most interesting, however, of all the Late Celtic settlements
is the far-famed marsh-village of Glastonbury. Besides those of
Holderness, which have been already mentioned, there are several
lake-dwellings in Great Britain which belonged to the Early Iron Age;
but almost all seem to have been built after the commencement of
the Christian era.[1091] Glastonbury, on the other hand, was first
inhabited more than two centuries before the Roman conquest. The
peat-moor on which it stands was then surrounded by a shallow mere, and
is now covered by low circular mounds which mark the positions of the
former huts. Timber and brushwood, surmounted by layers of clay and
stones, were laid upon the peat to serve as foundations, and retained
in place by piles fixed round their margins. The huts were then built
of wood, filled in with wattle and daub; and the entire village was
protected by a palisade. The foundations were, however, so unstable
that they gradually sank; and in order to keep the floors dry, fresh
timber and clay were periodically added. When this was done, the old
hearth-stones were left undisturbed; and their presence attests the
construction of the successive floors. Among the numerous relics which
excavation has revealed, and which prove that skilled agriculturists,
potters, weavers, wood-carvers, and coopers lived in the village, there
is hardly a single weapon: the sling-bullets evidently served only for
killing game. Dozens of coloured pebbles, similar to others which have
been found on Hod Hill, were perhaps used in some indoor game;[1092]
and the spur of a cock may suggest to those who remember that the
Britons thought it impious to eat poultry that the pastime for which,
as Caesar says, the birds were reared was cockfighting.[1093] It is
hardly necessary to mention the weaving-combs, the spindle-whorls, the
querns, the harness-buckles, and the other objects which are common in
Late Celtic settlements, though it is curious that the bridle-bits were
made of deer-horn; but the explorers were astonished to find a bronze
mirror, tweezers, rouge, and other exotic objects, which showed that
continental luxury had invaded this remote region.[1094]
[Sidenote: Dress.]
The arts of the toilet had indeed been elaborated not only in the more
civilized south but even in places which, like the Yorkshire Wolds,
had no direct communication with foreign lands.[1095] The tunics,
the cloaks which men and women alike wore, fastened on the right
shoulder with a brooch, the breeches which were common to Brythonic
Celts in Britain and Gaul, and the use of which seems to have been
borrowed by the Continental Celts from the Scythians,[1096] the kilts
which, as we may perhaps infer from stone monuments,[1097] were the
national garb of the Goidels, were made, like the modern tartan, of
many-coloured cloths; while the men whom Caesar encountered, although,
like the Gauls, they wore their hair long, and cultivated moustaches,
carefully shaved the rest of their faces and even their bodies.[1098]
The chieftain driving his chariot, his brilliant cloak clasped by a
coral-studded brooch, his sword clanking in its decorated scabbard, his
bronze shield gleaming like gold and adorned with enamel, his horses’
bridle-bits showing enamelled cheek-pieces, and their harness jingling
with open-work bronze ornaments,[1099] was perhaps only a splendid
barbarian; but his weapons and his trappings were not mere products of
a factory:--they were true works of art.
[Illustration: FIG. 43. ½]
[Sidenote: Reading and writing.]
Nor indeed are indications wanting that Britons of the upper class--not
Druids only--had some tincture of letters. The Druids of Gaul, and
presumably also of Britain, used Greek characters in official documents
and private correspondence.[1100] Diodorus[1101] affirms that it was
common among the Gauls to throw letters, addressed to the dead, on to
the funeral pile. The Romans, after they had defeated the Helvetii,
found in their encampment a schedule, on which were recorded in Greek
characters the numbers of the armed men, the women, and the children
who had migrated into Gaul.[1102] A few years later, when Caesar was
marching through the territory of a Belgic tribe to relieve a besieged
camp commanded by Quintus Cicero, he wrote him a letter in Greek
characters--possibly in Greek[1103]--which he entrusted to a Gallic
trooper. Unless he made his interpreter write the letter in Celtic, he
evidently had reason to fear that, if it were intercepted, some of the
Belgae would be able to read the Latin; in any case that some of them
knew how to read. Is it not reasonable to infer that a British Belgian
here and there was as good a scholar as his kinsmen over the water? At
all events the British inscribed coins, the earlier of which at least
must have been the work of native die-sinkers, are evidence that before
the birth of Christ there were Britons who had mastered the art of
writing, and had even acquired some slight knowledge of Latin.[1104]
But the origins of Celtic literature, sacred and profane, were of
course purely oral. Bards, who were apparently Druids of an inferior
grade, sat at the tables of the great; accompanied them with their
harps to festivals; sang their praises and satirized their enemies;
and recited poems in honour of valiant warriors who had fallen in
battle.[1105]
[Sidenote: Inequalities in culture.]
It must not, however, be supposed that the same level of culture had
been attained in every part of the island. The Scottish specimens of
Late Celtic workmanship are for the most part later than the Claudian
conquest;[1106] and it is probable that in outlying districts even of
England and Wales iron tools in pre-Roman times were rare or unknown.
No objects of the Early Iron Age which are regarded as purely British
have been found in Lancashire;[1107] and even on Cranborne Chase,
where one might have expected that continental improvements would
have been adopted at least as early as in the far western settlement
at Glastonbury, the searching exploration of Pitt-Rivers could detect
no signs of any interval between the Bronze Age and the period of
the Roman occupation.[1108] Indeed the association of late bronze
implements and weapons with iron harness-rings and bridle-bits at
Hagbourne Hill[1109] suggests that some of the deposits which are
assigned to the Bronze Age may have belonged either to a period of
transition or even to the time when, in South-Eastern Britain, the use
of iron was universal.[1110] Readers of the _Commentaries_ would see
nothing surprising in this. Caesar was told that the people of the
interior for the most part did not grow corn, but lived on milk and
flesh-meat and clothed themselves in skins.[1111] This information
was somewhat misleading; for remains of four different kinds of corn
were counted at Hunsbury; and since cloth and linen were worn in
Yorkshire by the well-to-do even in the Bronze Age,[1112] it is not to
be supposed that their successors had lost the arts of spinning and
weaving. Still, Caesar’s statement points to an ascertained truth.
It has been well observed that the western and northern uplands held
out far longer against the Roman conquest than the central, eastern,
and southern lowlands, and that they were never really Romanized at
all.[1113] From the earliest times their inhabitants had been less
open to continental and civilizing influences; and one of the gifts
which Nature had bestowed upon Britain was that the regions more
accessible from over sea were also more fitted to sustain an industrial
population.[1114] Later on, however, we shall find reason, in the
juxtaposition of old and new sepulchral rites, to believe that even
in Kent such influences had not prevented the survival of the earlier
culture.[1115]
[Sidenote: Intertribal war and political development.]
Moreover, notwithstanding the progress in material civilization,
intertribal fighting was of course still frequent even in the south,
and even after the Belgic tribes had settled down in the territories
which their swords had won, and established themselves as the dominant
people of Britain. Both Caesar[1116] and Tacitus[1117] spoke of these
wars; but if they had been silent, the numerous strongholds which were
still occupied, permanently, or as occasion required, the weapons
that have been found in them, the beach-rolled pebbles, the round
chipped flints, and the bullets of baked clay which lie heaped in and
near them would tell the same tale;[1118] nor indeed is it necessary
to insist upon a fact which is universal in the stage of culture in
which the Britons then were. What is worthy of remark is that war was
probably entered upon from motives other than those which had caused
the struggles of earlier ages. Raids were no doubt still undertaken,
especially in the poorer and less settled districts, by mere plunderers
and cattle-lifters. But clans were tending to become welded, not only
by the voluntary combination which was necessary for defence, but
also perhaps by the sword of the ambitious captain, into the larger
communities which Caesar called _civitates_[1119]; and successful
chiefs were assuming the state of petty kings. As trade increased, and
with it wealth, the king of a tribe which was fortunately situated
would seize opportunities of acquiring dominion or overlordship over
others. Though forest or mountain or fen might enable even small tribes
to hold their own, and though the success of a strong king might not
endure, it is possible, as we shall see, to discern in Caesar’s memoirs
signs that attempts were already being made to achieve such sovereignty
as might eventually lead towards political union, and we may suppose
that in Britain also there were astute princes who, like the Aeduan
Dumnorix, saw that they could strengthen their position by diplomacy or
marriage.[1120]
[Sidenote: Instances of female sovereignty: the condition of women.]
We all learned in childhood that the Britons admitted the sovereignty
of women. In the middle of the first century Cartismandua was queen of
the Brigantes;[1121] and a few years later, when the Iceni revolted
against Rome, their general was Boudicca, who is better known by the
barbarous misnomer of Boadicea.[1122] The Gauls may have had the same
institution; and perhaps it would hardly be worth noticing if it
were not apparently inconsistent with what Caesar tells us about the
status of Gallic wives. They were indeed permitted to own property.
The bride brought a dowry to her husband; but he was obliged to add
an equivalent from his own estate and to administer the whole as a
joint possession, which, with its accumulated increments, went to the
survivor.[1123] On the other hand, the husband had the power of life
and death over his wife[1124] as well as his children; and when a man
of rank died his relations, if they had any suspicion of foul play,
examined his wife, like a slave, by torture, and, if they found her
guilty, condemned her to perish in the flames of the funeral pyre.[1125]
[Sidenote: Political and social conditions of Britain and Gaul
compared.]
When we try to form an idea of the political and the social conditions
of Britain in the later days of its independence, we naturally turn to
Caesar’s account of Gaul in the hope of supplementing the scanty and
scattered scraps of information which he has left about the country
which was less known to him. We must, however, bear in mind that
Britain had not yet come under the two currents of influence, German
and Roman, which had profoundly affected Gaul, and in some measure
prepared it to accept Roman dominion; and also that even the south-east
was in a more rudimentary stage than the neighbouring country, though
perhaps not more than the backward parts of Belgic Gaul.
When Caesar came to Gaul, revolutionary forces were at work to which
there are analogies in the earlier history of Greece and Rome. Many
of the states had expelled their kings, whose authority had passed in
some cases into the hands of annually elected magistrates, while in
others perhaps the council of elders kept the government to itself.
But these oligarchies were never long secure. The magistrates were
fettered by rules, jealously framed, which weakened their executive
power. Like the Tarquins, the banished kings or their descendants
looked out for opportunities, which Caesar’s policy offered to them, of
regaining their position; while eloquent nobles who had contrived to
amass wealth summoned their retainers, hired mercenaries, surrounded
themselves with desperadoes or with the discontented poor, whose
grievances they promised to redress, and occasionally succeeded, like
Pisistratus of Athens, in making themselves tyrants. Celtillus, the
father of the great Vercingetorix, had acquired a kind of supremacy
over the whole of Celtican Gaul; but he was dogged by the jealousy of
his brother nobles, who put him to death on the charge of plotting to
revive the kingship. Monarchy and oligarchy had each their partisans:
everywhere there were adventurers who hoped to make their way to
fortune by Roman aid, while others, eager to oust their rivals, were
ready to welcome German invaders; and thus every state, every clan,
every hamlet, nay, every household was riven by faction.[1126] But
in Britain there is no sign that either oligarchy or tyranny had yet
anywhere supplanted monarchy. Still, there were doubtless many points
of resemblance. We may suppose that in Britain, as in Gaul, the tribal
king was assisted by a council of elders; that the British, like the
Gallic nobles, had their devoted retainers and perhaps also dependents
who had fallen into their debt;[1127] that only those who became their
dependents could expect protection, and that only those lords who were
strong enough to protect could count upon obedience. In Britain too we
may be sure that the masses were in the state of semi-serfdom which
Caesar regarded as the condition of the Gallic populace; and that
political power was monopolized by the nobles and the Druids.
[Sidenote: Religion.]
But, besides improved communication, developed commerce, and constant
intercourse with their Continental kinsmen, there were other forces
making slowly and feebly for unity,--common religious ideas and, to
some extent, common ecclesiastical organization. On the other hand we
may suppose that the religious union which existed together with much
diversity was an effect as well as a cause of political association:
when clans found it expedient to combine, the similar deities of
each, which the others had before regarded with hatred and jealousy,
would tend to become fused, while those which were peculiar would
be worshipped still.[1128] Old superstitions of course continued to
flourish side by side with those which the Celtic invaders had brought
with them. The spirits of springs, of lakes, of rivers, of mountains,
and of woods--of every weird and awesome dell, or cavern, or rock--were
worshipped in the Iron Age as they had been for centuries before, and
as they continued to be after what was called Christianity had become
the official creed.[1129] The _Dea Arduinna_ who hovered over the
forest of the Ardennes and Abnoba, the goddess of the Black Forest,
had their counterparts in Britain. These deities, however, may have
been comparatively recent; for the conception of a god whose realm
was a forest was of course later than that of the spirit of a single
tree.[1130] Even the terror that impelled the pristine savage to
propitiate demons was not yet dead: near Newcastle-on-Tyne was erected
by some Roman or Romanized Briton an inscription _Lamiis tribus_--‘to
the Witches three’--who, it has been truly said, ‘were doubtless as
British as the witches in _Macbeth_’.[1131] But the cult of wood and
water and the dread of devils are common to all primitive peoples and
to the ignorant among many who are called civilized;[1132] and such
survivals in Celtic Britain may well have been common to the pre-Celtic
population and to the Celts who conquered them. Moreover, it is likely
enough that the greater gods whom the Celts worshipped and who,
variously imagined and with various names, were the common heritage of
the Aryan-speaking peoples, were in part descended from deities who
were not Aryan, and were adored in Britain in a somewhat different
spirit before the first Celt landed on the Kentish shore.[1133]
What do we know about those gods? The Celts were the first inhabitants
of Britain about whose religious views definite information has been
handed down to us, as distinct from what we may infer from sepulchral
discoveries and from ethnography; but it is hardly an exaggeration to
say that of the spirit of their religion we know little more than of
that of the people who built the chambered tombs. Some five-and-twenty
writers, from Timaeus, who wrote three centuries before the birth of
Christ, to Ammianus Marcellinus, who was contemporary with Julian and
Valens, have contributed to our knowledge; but most of them have left
only a few sentences derived from hearsay or from nameless authorities
of whose credibility we know nothing. They wrote of Celts who lived in
widely distant countries, among various populations, and at different
epochs; and very few of them referred to the Celts of Britain.[1134]
Supposing that official Christianity were to become extinct, what
could the historian of the fifth millennium learn of the manifold
doctrines preached by English clergymen if he were obliged to extract
his materials from passages referring to mediaeval Catholicism,
Calvinism, Methodism, or the orthodox faith which thinly disguises the
Shamanism of Russia, and scattered in the works of writers who began
with à Kempis and ended with Spurgeon? Coins, Gallic and British, in
so far as they are not merely imitative, appear to be fraught with
religious symbolism; but the ingenuity which has spent itself in the
effort to explain the symbols has yielded little certain result.[1135]
Geographical names testify to the cult of various gods without telling
us anything of their attributes; and sometimes we may fancy that we
can detect the presence of divinity when we have only to do with
the name of a Roman _gens_.[1136] Inscriptions and altars supply
names of deities which are names and nothing more, or bewilder us
by coupling as surnames with the name of a Roman god a multiplicity
of Celtic gods. Anonymous statues are attributed to divers deities
by divers archaeologists, though some of them may not be deities at
all. Inscriptions, altars, and statues alike belong to the period of
the Roman Empire, when the introduction of Roman gods and goddesses
had thrown the Celtic pantheon into wellnigh inextricable confusion;
and the monuments of Britain, for the most part, were apparently the
outcome of the devotion either of Romans or of Gallic, Batavian,
Dacian, and other officers of auxiliaries. Nor can we tell how far
British religious ideas had become estranged from those of Gaul by
contact with aboriginal cults, or how far the religion of the British
Goidels (if indeed they existed) differed from that of the Brythons. If
we turn to the _Mabinogion_, to the _Triads_, or to Irish mythology, we
are checked by the reflection, which our foremost Celticist was forced
to make even while he was fascinated by the quest, that ‘the gulf of
ages’ separates ‘the literature of the Celtic nations of the present
day from the narrative of the writers of antiquity and the testimony of
the stones’.[1137]
Cannot then Caesar help us? His evidence is of course valuable; but he
did not write for the modern student of religion. Disregarding minor
and local deities, perhaps ignorant of their existence, he recorded
the names and summarized the attributes of the five principal Gallic
gods; but,--the names are Roman. Mercury--the inventor of all arts,
the pioneer of communication, the patron of commerce--was the most
reverenced of all:[1138] then follow the names of Apollo, Mars,
Jupiter, and Minerva.[1139]
Now we do not know from whom Caesar derived his information; but
assume that it came from the best authority, his friend and political
agent, the Aeduan Druid, Diviciacus, who was also an honoured guest of
Cicero.[1140] Then Caesar was in the position not of Lafcadio Hearn,
who made his home in Japan, gave his life to the study of all things
Japanese, and at last confessed that the more he tried to learn the
more he realized his ignorance; not of Sir Alfred Lyall, who, prepared
by discriminative reading, devoted all the time that he could command
to the observation of Oriental creeds; but of some Anglo-Indian
administrator who, in his scanty leisure, should jot down the heads of
a conversation with a Brahmin, and offer them as an outline of Hindu
religion. Only the Anglo-Indian could speak Hindustani; and Caesar was
obliged to employ an interpreter. One of the most learned and sane of
modern Celtic scholars has related that when the musician, Félicien
David, was invited at Cairo by the viceroy to instruct his wives,
etiquette compelled him to give the lessons to a eunuch, who passed
them on as best he could.[1141] Caesar, he remarks, was in the position
of the eunuch. And if we could certainly identify the five great Roman
gods with their Gallic counterparts, how much more of Celtic religion
should we know?
But let us learn what we can. Celtic religion, in so far as it
was descended from the religion of the undivided Aryan stock, was
fundamentally one with the religions of Italy and Greece; and we
might expect that it would resemble most closely the religion of
the Italians, to whose tongue Celtic was most nearly akin. But our
imperfect knowledge of the classical religions hardly helps us more
to understand the religion of the Celts than the remark of Caesar,
that about their deities ‘they have much the same notions as the rest
of mankind’.[1142] For the religion of Rome had been deeply tinged by
contact with the Etruscans and the Greeks, just as the religion of the
Celts had been affected by their fusion with the aboriginal peoples
of Central Europe, Gaul, Spain, and Britain; and the Celts were in a
less advanced state of civilization than the Romans. What is certain
is that, like every other polytheistic religion, that of the Celts,
except perhaps in so far as it was moulded by Druidical doctrine,
had no definite theology, but was an ever-expanding, ever-shifting,
formless chaos,--the same in its main developments in Britain, Gaul,
and Spain, yet differing in every tribe and household, and in every
age;[1143] that, on its practical side, it was a performance of
traditional rites; that its aim was not the salvation of souls, but
the safety of the state; and that it concerned the individual most as
a member of a family, a community, or a tribe.[1144] Like all other
polytheists too the Celts were ready to believe in gods who were not
theirs: in the reign of Tiberius the boatmen of Paris set up an altar
on which, side by side with their own Esus and Tarvos Trigaranus, were
figured Jupiter and Vulcan.[1145] The theory, which has been defended
with vast if somewhat uncritical erudition, that the king was regarded
as an incarnation of the sky-god, may possibly be true both of the
Celts and of other Indo-European peoples.[1146] Perhaps the Celts,
like the Romans, gave more thought to the ritual by which their gods
might be persuaded to grant them their hearts’ desire than to the
persons of the gods themselves.[1147] Doubtless to the Celt, as to
the Roman, however little his religion may have fostered nobility of
life or contrition for sin, dread of the mysterious was a salutary
discipline.[1148] But what we want to apprehend is this,--wherein the
spirit of Celtic religion differed from that of the religion of ancient
Latium, of Greece, of the Semitic tribes; and if the effort is not
wholly vain, we may only hope to attain a distant and hazy view. He who
desires to understand the subject will work at it for himself. All that
I can hope to do is to put him on the road and to set up a sign-post
here and there. The reader who has absorbed what is valuable in the
teaching of Tylor, Boissier, Lyall, Frazer, Robertson Smith, Reinach,
and Camille Jullian will be best able to discern what is suggested by
the texts and monuments that preserve a few fragments of Celtic faith.
Why was the god whom Caesar equated with Mercury honoured above all
others by the Continental Celts? Did the Britons share their devotion?
And is Caesar’s statement confirmed? Some centuries earlier, when
the Celts were a host of warriors, the war-god had been the most
conspicuous figure in their Olympus; and his subsequent inferiority
to Mercury is regarded, perhaps justly, as an indication of the
progress which they had made meantime in the arts of peace.[1149]
Possibly Lug, the Irish representative of the Gaulish Lugos, whose
name appears in Lugudunum, or Lyons, in Luguvallum, or Carlisle, and
in Lugotorix, a Kentish chieftain,[1150] and who in an Irish legend
figures as a carpenter, a smith, a harpist, a poet, and a musician,
may have been the British Mercury;[1151] but we cannot tell whether he
ranked higher than Mars. Assuming that votive stones in some measure
reflect the faith of the native Celts, Mars was deeply reverenced
in Britain. He appears with various epithets, the names of Celtic
deities, one of which, _Camulus_, meaning ‘the god of heaven’,[1152]
was commemorated in Camulodunum, and perhaps bears witness to his
former greatness. It is remarkable, in view of Caesar’s statement, that
in British inscriptions the name of Mercury is far less common than
that of Mars;[1153] but if the discrepancy is at all connected with
the comparative backwardness of British civilization, it must also
be remembered that the organization of Britain under Roman rule was
military.[1154] One religious custom indeed, of which Caesar himself
witnessed examples, proves that Mars, however inferior he may have
been to Mercury, had still many fervent worshippers in Gaul. When the
warriors of a Gallic tribe had made a successful raid, they used to
sacrifice to Mars a portion of the cattle which they had captured;
the rest of their booty they erected in piles on consecrated ground.
It rarely happened that any one dared to keep back part of the spoil;
and the wretch who defrauded the god was punished, like Achan, by a
terrible death.[1155] Another British epithet of Mars, Toutates,[1156]
appears with Esus and Taranis in a famous passage of Lucan,[1157] where
they stand out as representative deities, in whose honour dreadful
rites were performed. None of the three, save Esus,[1158] is mentioned
in Gallic inscriptions, whereas Epona, the goddess of equitation, a
minor deity, whose statues, representing a woman riding upon a mare, or
seated between foals, have been found both in France and Britain,[1159]
appears ten times; and accordingly a distinguished French archaeologist
concludes that they were insignificant objects of local worship.[1160]
But it is not credible that the devotee who composed his inscription
to Toutates should have unwittingly ascribed to a mere local god the
qualities of Mars. Again, if Taranis was not one of the greater gods,
it is surprising to find in Britain an inscription in honour of Jupiter
Tanarus,[1161]--Jove the Thunderer. Nor is it likely that Lucan should
have learned the names of the trinity whom he made famous unless their
worship had been national.[1162] But it does not follow that Tanarus
was the Jupiter of the independent Celts. Tanarus, being the Thunderer,
was assimilated to the Roman Jupiter; and perhaps the Jupiter Tanarus
whose inscription was found at Chester may have been an outcome of the
Roman Jupiter and of a Gallic divinity who is known as the god of the
wheel.[1163] Statues have been discovered in France, representing a
god with a wheel on his shoulder, in his hand, or at his feet; and
this god was assimilated in imperial times to Jupiter. Altars on which
wheels are represented have also been found in the north of England;
and miniature wheels of gold, silver, bronze, and lead--alone, or
forming parts of ornaments or helmets, or stamped on coins--have been
met with in scores both in France and England. Probably they had a
religious meaning; and it has been supposed that they are symbolical
of sun-worship, and that the god with the wheel was the god of the
sun.[1164] Traces of sun-worship are still discernible in the May and
midsummer festivals which are kept up in our own island and in many
European lands.[1165]
Of the other great deities Minerva appears in Irish legend under the
name of Brigit[1166], possibly the same goddess as Brigantia, in whose
honour several inscriptions were erected in Britain,[1167] although in
Gaul, unless perhaps in the name of the town Brigantium, there is no
trace of her worship;[1168] while Apollo was assimilated by Roman or
Romano-British devotees sometimes to Maponus, whose name survives in
the familiar Welsh Mabon[1169], sometimes to Grannos, in whose honour
an inscription was set up near Edinburgh.[1170] There are also vestiges
of the cult of a god who resembled Neptune. At Lydney, on the western
bank of the Severn, in the country of the Silures, a temple was built
in Roman times to Nodons, whose name reappears in Welsh legend as
_Lludd_ and again in our Ludgate Hill. The marine scenes which are
depicted in mosaic on the floor seem to show that he was a god of the
sea;[1171] while the structure of his temple may justify the conjecture
that he was likewise a Jupiter, even as the Italian Jupiter was god
of sea as well as of storm and sky.[1172] In Gaul he was unknown; and
an eminent Celticist has assumed that he was peculiar to the Goidelic
Celts.[1173] On the other hand, Toutates, Taranis, Epona, and Belisama
were apparently unknown on Goidelic soil.[1174] But it profits little
to dispute about names. It does not follow that the Goidels did not
recognize somewhat similar deities akin to these; and Belisama was
simply the goddess who in Roman Gaul was identified with Minerva.[1175]
Caesar, in a familiar passage,[1176] tells us that the Gauls regarded
themselves as descendants of Dis Pater, who was conspicuous in the old
Latin pantheon as the god of the dead, although in Caesar’s time he had
been dethroned by the Pluto who was imported from Greece.[1177] Several
Gallo-Roman images, the best known of which is on an altar discovered
at Sarrebourg,[1178] represent a god with a hammer: a bronze statue
of the same deity has been found in England;[1179] and eminent French
archaeologists believe that this was no other than Dis Pater.[1180]
But we must not imagine that these gods had always been distinct,
or even that in Caesar’s time their physiognomies were sharply
outlined. When we see that the Germans whom he encountered worshipped
Sun, Moon, and Fire,[1181] and that those whom Tacitus described
had their Mars and Mercury,[1182] we may be inclined to suspect
that Celtic ideas, under classical influence, had undergone a like
transformation.[1183] In polytheism divers attributes of deity tend
to become separate deities.[1184] Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus were,
it would seem, only specialized forms of the same god;[1185] and
some of the Celtic epithets which are attached to Minerva, Mars, and
the rest may mean that they were assimilated by this or that tribe
to topical divinities.[1186] Dis Pater was certainly near of kin to
Saturn,--that old Italian chthonian divinity;[1187] and Dis Pater
and Toutates, ‘the god of the people,’ who was perhaps primarily
conceived as a kind of Saturn,[1188] may once have been one; indeed
there seem to be indications that from one point of view Dis Pater was
Jupiter,--a Jupiter of the nether world.[1189] Again, if Toutates in
Britain remained Mars, while in Gaul the Romanized Celts seem to have
hesitated whether to identify him with Mars or Mercury, one is tempted
to conjecture that he may have been the common ancestor of both.[1190]
No deities were nearer to the hearts of Celtic peasants than those who
were known as _deae matres_,--the mother goddesses. Once they were
thought to belong to Germans and Celts alone;[1191] but their statues
have been found in numbers at Capua; and, slightly modified, they
survived into the Middle Age. Generally figured in groups of three--a
mystic number[1192]--their aspect was that of gentle serious motherly
women, holding new-born infants in their hands, or bearing fruits and
flowers in their laps; and many offerings were made to them by country
folk in gratitude for their care of farm and flock and home.[1193]
Besides the gods whose cult was common to all the Celtic peoples
or to one or the other of the two great stocks were local deities
innumerable. We know that the Gallic cities, Bibracte[1194] and
Lugudunum,[1195] had their divine patrons; and it is probable that
every British town had its eponymous hero.[1196] The deities, however,
from whom towns derived their names were doubtless often worshipped
near the site long before the first foundations were laid: the
goddess Bibracte was originally the spirit of a spring reverenced by
the peasants of the mountain upon which the famous Aeduan town was
built.[1197] Perhaps we shall not err if we also suppose that the heads
of his slain enemies, which the Celtic brave religiously treasured and
fastened upon the walls of his cottage, were offered to his household
gods or to the spirits of his ancestors.[1198]
The worship of animals, to those who have not felt the fascination of
anthropology, appears merely unintelligible and absurd. Animals were
worshipped because they were formidable or wonderful; because men
fancied that they were incarnations of deity; because they might be
tenanted by the souls of heroic forefathers;[1199] and animal-worship,
or a relic of animal-worship, which may perhaps, in some cases, have
been a survival of totemism, has left vestiges in Celtic art. The boar
was especially sacred. Bronze figures of boars have been found alone
and on the crests of helmets: the Witham shield, as we have seen, was
decorated with the figure of a boar; and so are numerous coins, both
Gallic and British.[1200] Like the Romans, the Gauls and doubtless
also the Britons had military standards: like the Romans also, they
carried not a flag but the figure of an animal, and with them this
animal was always the boar.[1201] A reminiscence of animal-worship is
probably also discernible in the horned head of Cernunnos, a god who
is figured on one of the well-known altars of Paris, and in Tarvos
Trigaranus--‘the bull with the three cranes’--which fills the back of
another.[1202]
But votive altars, statues, and temples, although they embodied older
beliefs, belong, as we have seen, to the period when the Celts had
fallen under the dominion of Rome. The Cisalpine Gauls, if Livy[1203]
and Polybius[1204] are to be believed, worshipped in temples: but
the holy places of the Western Celts were groves,[1205] and perhaps
stone circles which they inherited from the people of the Bronze
Age. Such simplicity was of course not peculiar to the Celts and the
Germans.[1206] The Pelasgian Zeus had no temple: the oldest sanctuary
of Jupiter on the Alban Mount was a grove of oaks.[1207] Not a single
statue of pre-Roman date has ever been found in Britain; not one in
Gaul later than the close of the Palaeolithic Age. Caesar indeed says
that the Gallic Mercury was represented by numerous _simulacra_; but
if these were statues, it is inexplicable that none of them has ever
come to light; and perhaps we may accept the suggestion that Caesar
was thinking of menhirs, which had been erected long before the first
Celt set foot in Gaul,[1208] but which, like the formless stones that
the Greeks venerated as figures of Hermes,[1209] were, he supposed,
regarded as possessed by the spirit of the great national deity. On
the menhir of Kernuz in Finistère a rude Mercury was sculptured in
Roman times.[1210] The conjecture may be well founded that the Druids,
like the priests of Israel, were opposed to anthropomorphism;[1211]
but it is not needed to explain the lack of native statues of Celtic
gods.[1212] The Romans, according to Varro, had for many years no
sacred images:[1213] like the Celts, like the Germans, who also, even
in the time of Tacitus,[1214] deemed it derogatory to the majesty of
the gods to ascribe to them human form, they were content to recognize
manifestations of divine will; and even when their temples were being
crowded with the works of Greek art, their ancient Vesta remained
shrouded in awful mystery.[1215] But, while the Druids may have been as
hostile as Israel to Gentile abominations, the Celts in general were as
receptive as the Romans, and readily accepted the services of foreign
sculptors.
[Sidenote: Sepulchral usages.]
The evidence of interments, from which we tried to glean some
information as to the religion of the Bronze Age, remains much the
same during the later period; and the noticeable changes do not seem
to have much significance. British customs differed somewhat from
those of Gaul. Inhumation, which had almost entirely ceased in that
country in the second century before Christ, continued everywhere
in Britain except in the territory of the Belgae; and even there
cremation was not universal.[1216] In the more southern districts
nearly all the interments which have been explored were unmarked
by any tumulus; while in the cemetery of Aylesford the urns which
contained the cremated remains were placed in small cylindrical pits
set in what has been described as a family circle.[1217] When barrows
were erected their form was still circular: but they were generally
much smaller than those of the Bronze Age: they were grouped in much
greater numbers;[1218] and they were never more than structureless
heaps of earth or stone.[1219] Although the contracted position was
still common, skeletons have been found extended in this country,
as generally in Gaul;[1220] and, as in Wiltshire in the Bronze Age,
the head generally pointed towards the north.[1221] On the other
hand, ornaments and weapons were placed in graves more frequently
than before:[1222] animals were still occasionally interred;[1223]
and flint chips and stones were still sometimes deposited in or along
with urns.[1224] But rites which in the Bronze Age could only be
inferred are attested in the Iron Age by eye-witnesses. We learn from
Caesar[1225] that it was a custom of the Gauls to immolate the dead
man’s cherished possessions, even his favourite animals, on the funeral
pyre; and that not long before the time of his oldest contemporaries
slaves and retainers had been sacrificed.
[Illustration: FIG. 44.]
The most remarkable perhaps of the sepulchral discoveries that
illustrate this period appears to show that old persisted along with
new. Hard by the family circles of the Aylesford cemetery, Dr. Arthur
Evans opened three cists, each containing a contracted skeleton, the
upper slab of one being pierced with a hole which may perhaps have been
intended to let the ghost escape;[1226] while almost side by side with
elegant Late Celtic vases he picked up fragments of the old-fashioned
finger-dented ware, including a drinking-cup and a cinerary urn.[1227]
[Sidenote: The Druids.]
It would be interesting to learn whether any Celtic prophet, like the
great preachers of India and Palestine, taught that mercy is better
than sacrifice. If we may trust Diogenes Laertius,[1228] the Druids
bade their disciples not only to fear the gods, but to do no wrong and
to quit themselves like men. At all events the study of Celtic religion
is inseparable from that of Druidism.
Where did Druidism originate? Caesar, in a well-known passage,
remarks that it was believed to have arisen in Britain and to have
been imported thence into Gaul;[1229] and some scholars accept
this tradition as literally true. The earliest extant mention of
Druids[1230] was made about the commencement of the second century
before Christ,--not long after the Belgic conquest of Britain began;
and it has been supposed that the conquerors found Druidism flourishing
there, and made it known in the land from which they had set out. But
the Belgae were not the first Celtic conquerors of Britain; and it is
reasonable to suppose that if Druidism was of British origin, it would
have been imported into Gaul long before. The common view is that on
both sides of the Channel it originated among the neolithic population;
and Caesar’s words are sometimes explained in the sense that in his
time it was more vigorous in Britain than in Gaul, and that Gallic
Druids therefore travelled to Britain in order to be initiated into its
mysteries. At all events it is not unreasonable to believe that the
Celts learned it from some non-Aryan people; for there is nothing to
show that the Gauls whom the Romans first encountered had ever heard of
it. The Germans, with whom the Celts were long in contact in Central
Europe and to whom they were ethnically akin, had no Druids;[1231]
and although it may be true that the intense devotion to religious
observances which Caesar remarked among the mixed population of
Gaul[1232] did not exceed that of other barbarians,[1233] it appeared
to him to contrast sharply with the temper of the peoples beyond the
Rhine.[1234] This spirit led them to connect religion with every act of
life: in the chase,[1235] in all the operations of war, after victory
or defeat, before undertaking an expedition, in selecting the site of a
town, the gods were regularly invoked:[1236] there was no distinction
between the sacred and the profane; or rather, nothing was profane. The
contrast which Caesar observed supports the theory of the non-Aryan
origin of Druidism.
But was Druidism in Britain universal? The leading Celtic scholar
of this country insists that there is no evidence that Druidism was
ever the religion of any Brythonic people;[1237] and since he assigns
almost the whole of Britain south of the firths of Forth and Clyde to
the Brythons, he appears to restrict the area of Druidism to a narrow
western fringe. This hardly accords with Caesar’s statement that
Britain was the stronghold of Druidism. Moreover, when Caesar tells us
that the Druids were the religious aristocracy of the Gauls, he plainly
gives us to understand that Druidism was common to all the peoples who
lived between the Seine and the Garonne; and it is certain that among
many if not most of these peoples the Gallo-Brythonic element was
predominant. Indeed, although it is commonly assumed that the Belgae
had no Druids, there is absolutely no ground for the assumption. Caesar
often used the word _Galli_ in a wider sense, including the Belgae;
and it is not improbable that when he was describing the manners and
customs of the Gauls and Druidism, which was their most remarkable
institution, he intended his description to apply to the Belgae as
well.[1238] Moreover, the very writer who denies that the Brythons
had Druids tells us that Druidism was the religion of the British
aborigines and was borrowed from them by the British Goidels; and it is
certain that both the aborigines and the Goidels (if they had already
reached Britain) survived in considerable numbers in the territory
which the Brythons conquered.[1239] It is clear therefore that Druidism
persisted within the Brythonic area; and that the Brythons held aloof
from it is a groundless guess.[1240]
But concerning Druidism as it existed in Britain we have no special
information, except the passage in which Tacitus[1241] speaks of the
cruel rites practised by the Druids of Anglesey. Caesar described
Druidism once for all;[1242] and since he says that British Druidism
was the model and the standard of the Gallic Druids, we can only infer
that his description applied in many respects to Britain as well as
to Gaul. There the Druids formed a corporation, admission to which
was eagerly sought: they jealously guarded the secrecy of their lore;
and full membership was only obtainable after a long novitiate. They
were ruled by a pope, who held office for life; and sometimes the
succession to this dignity was disputed by force of arms. They were
exempt from taxation and from service in war. They had, as the priests
of a rude society always have, a monopoly of learning. The ignorance
and superstition of the populace, their own organization and submission
to one head, gave them a tremendous power. The doctrine which they
most strenuously inculcated (if Caesar was not misinformed) was the
transmigration of souls. ‘This doctrine,’ he said, ‘they regard as the
most potent incentive to valour, because it inspires a contempt for
death.’[1243] They claimed the right of deciding questions of peace
and war. Among the Aedui, if not among other peoples, at all events
in certain circumstances, they exercised the right of appointing the
chief magistrate.[1244] They laid hands on criminals and, in their
default, even on the innocent, imprisoned them in monstrous idols of
wickerwork, and burned them alive as an offering to the gods. They
immolated captives in order to discover the divine will in the flow
of their blood or their palpitating entrails;[1245] they lent their
ministrations to men prostrated by sickness or going forth to battle,
who trusted that heaven would spare their lives if human victims were
offered in their stead; and one form of human sacrifice which they
appear to have countenanced--the slaughter of a child at the foundation
of a monument, a fortress, or a bridge--has left many traces in
European folk-lore and been practised in Africa, Asia, and Polynesia
in modern times.[1246] They practically monopolized both the civil
and the criminal jurisdiction;[1247] and if this jurisdiction was
irregular, if they had no legal power of enforcing their judgements,
they were none the less obeyed. Primitive states did not originally
take cognizance of offences committed against individuals, which were
avenged by their kin; and when they began to intervene they did so at
the request of the injured party or his surviving relatives. What was
peculiar to the Celts was that this intervention was exercised by the
priests;[1248] and doubtless the outlaws who, as Caesar says,[1249]
abounded in Gaul were criminals whom they had banished. Every year they
met to dispense civil justice in the great plain above which now soar
the spires of Chartres cathedral.[1250] Those who disregarded their
decrees were excommunicated; and excommunication meant exclusion from
the civil community as well as from communion in religious rites.
Did the Druids owe their conception of immortality, as Diodorus
Siculus[1251] and Timagenes[1252] imply, to the influence of
Pythagoras? The testimony of these writers has been contemptuously
rejected:[1253] but it seems not improbable that Druidism may have
absorbed tenets of Pythagorean origin through the medium of the
Greeks of Massilia;[1254] and this conjecture gains some support
from numismatic evidence. A British uninscribed gold coin, found
at Reculver, bears on its reverse side the figure, formed by five
interlacing lines, which is known as the pentagram and was a
well-known Pythagorean symbol.[1255] It would seem, however, that if
metempsychosis was really a Druidical doctrine, it had no firm hold
upon the Celts in general; and their sepulchral customs were not
consistent with it. Their notion of a future life, like that of the
Bronze Age, was a form of the ‘Continuance Theory’, which has had so
many adherents both in primitive and modern tribes.[1256] They believed
that there was an Elysium somewhere in the west, where they were to
live again, feasting, carousing, and duelling, a life like that which
they had lived before, but free from care.[1257] If the Druids, as
Caesar said, taught that souls passed ‘from one person to another’,
they meant perhaps that after death the soul entered a new body,--the
ethereal counterpart of that which it had left behind. The immortality
of the soul was an idea, more or less vague, common to many peoples:
for the Celts the Druids made it an article of faith. Nor indeed are
we precluded from supposing that some of them may have conceived or
borrowed from a classic source the doctrine of future retribution. But
what that theory was which, as Caesar says[1258], the Druids inculcated
in regard to the origin of the universe and the nature and motion of
the heavenly bodies, it is useless to inquire[1259]. We only know
that, as they traced the descent of the Gauls back to Dis Pater, they
regarded night as older than day, and reckoned time by nights; and
that, in common with all the peoples of antiquity, they computed their
years by the revolutions of the moon[1260]. The statements of Caesar
and Pliny are supplemented by a calendar, engraved on bronze, which
was discovered towards the end of the last century at Coligny in the
department of the Ain[1261]. It has its lucky and unlucky days; certain
days would be regarded as suitable for sacrifices as well as for other
functions[1262]; and the regulation of these important matters would
certainly have been retained by the Druids. It has been said, perhaps
in reliance upon a mistranslation of the word _dryas_ or _druias_,
that Druidesses taught side by side with Druids[1263]: at all events
Boadicea sought to divine the issue of her campaign by observing the
movements of a hare, besought the gods to bless her enterprise, and
after her success offered female captives to Andate, the goddess of
victory;[1264] and her joint exercise of royal and priestly functions
seems to give colour to the suggestion that in primitive times Celtic
kings may also have been priests.[1265] Cicero[1266] indeed relates
that the Galatian King, Deiotarus, was the most skilful augur of his
country. But the facts of historical import which stand out as certain
are these. Like the Brahmans, who, so long as their authority is
acknowledged, recognize, but regulate, the Protean manifestations of
Hindu religious fancy,[1267] the Druids kept control over the manifold
forms of aboriginal and Celtic worship. Being a sacerdotal caste, not,
like the priests of Rome, popularly elected, but self-constituted and
self-contained, they were naturally opposed to all innovation. It has
been said that ancient writers regarded as peculiar to the Druids
beliefs and practices which were common to them and other priests of
antiquity. Certainly human sacrifice was not peculiar to the Celts:
the ceremony of cutting the mysterious mistletoe was German as well
as Druidical;[1268] and as the Druid sacrificed white bulls before he
ascended the sacred oak,[1269] so did the Latin priest in the grove
which was the holy place of Jupiter.[1270] But while every ancient
people had its priests, the Druids alone were a veritable clergy.[1271]
Celtic religion, in so far as it had the same ancestry as that of Rome,
would easily harmonize with it; but Druidism, with its more definite
theology, might be expected to counteract this tendency, and would
therefore be a danger to Roman dominion.[1272] And it was British
Druidism that supported and renovated the Druidism of Gaul, and formed
one of the bonds of union between the two Celtic lands.[1273]
[Sidenote: Ties between Britons and Gauls.]
For, if their material culture was somewhat less advanced, the Britons,
at least those of the south-eastern districts, naturally remained
connected by the closest ties with the Gauls, and particularly with
the Belgae. The Britons of Kent were little less civilized than the
Gauls;[1274] and Belgic kings, like William the Conqueror and his
descendants, ruled on both sides of the Channel.[1275] Not many
years before the period of the Gallic wars, Diviciacus, king of the
Suessiones, who governed directly the country round Soissons, had
established supremacy not only over a large part of the surrounding
Belgic territory but also over Britain;[1276] and during a period which
may have coincided with his reign gold coins of certain types were
used indifferently in the Belgic districts of Britain and of Gaul, and
were doubtless struck for rulers who had possessions in both.[1277]
But the power of Diviciacus had ended with him;[1278] and when Caesar
came to Gaul, the tribes of South-Eastern Britain were divided into
antagonistic groups, headed respectively by the Catuvellauni and the
Trinovantes. Cassivellaunus, the king of the Catuvellauni, was the
ablest and most aggressive of the British princes of his time; but his
opponents were supported, it would seem, by the influence of Commius, a
chieftain of the Belgic Atrebates, whose territory comprised adjacent
districts of the departments of Pas-de-Calais and Nord, and who were
connected with the British tribe of the same name.
[Sidenote: How the Britons were affected by Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul.]
But, if anything could induce the Britons to forget their differences,
it was the news which reached them of Caesar’s movements in Gaul. The
events of the first year of his proconsulship--the overthrow of the
Helvetii, who had migrated into Gaul from Switzerland, and the defeat
of the German invader, Ariovistus--might not affect their interests:
but in the following year, when the Belgae banded together against
the Roman conqueror, it was time for them to be on the alert. British
adventurers crossed the Straits to assist their kinsmen; and when
Caesar shattered the forces of the coalition, the leaders of at least
one Belgic tribe fled over sea to escape his vengeance. Late in the
autumn of that year or early in the following spring rumours reached
the ports of the Channel that Caesar purposed to invade Britain.
CHAPTER VI
CAESAR’S FIRST INVASION OF BRITAIN
[Sidenote: Caesar obliged to secure his rear before invading Britain.]
Before Caesar could venture to undertake so difficult an enterprise
as the invasion of Britain, it was necessary for him to secure the
country in his rear. His first two campaigns had been directed against
enemies who were as dangerous to Gaul as to Rome. Cavalry levied from
friendly Gallic tribes fought side by side with the Roman legions
against the Helvetii and against Ariovistus: after the defeat of the
Helvetii envoys came from all the tribes of Central and Eastern Gaul to
congratulate the victor; and after the defeat of Ariovistus the legions
took up their quarters for the winter in Gallic territory without
resistance. There was probably not a single tribe in which Caesar had
not opponents: but the prestige of Rome and of his own victories,
the factious spirit and the intertribal jealousies of the Gauls, and
above all the sagacity with which he played off party against party,
and selected the chiefs who, for their own purposes, were able and
willing to serve him, prevented open opposition. Thus, although the
seeds of future troubles were even then germinating, he could safely
use Celtican Gaul as his base of operations when he crossed the Marne
in the following year to encounter the Belgae. The series of victories
which he gained in this campaign intimidated his opponents for the
time and increased his renown, but had little effect upon the remote
maritime tribe of the Morini, on whose coast was the harbour from which
he must sail.
[Sidenote: He contemplated invasion as early as 56 B.C.]
Caesar’s first mention of Britain occurs in the chapter that follows
his narrative of the operations by which he destroyed the invading
hordes of the Usipetes and Tencteri, crossed the Rhine, and chastised
the tribe which had given an asylum to their fugitives:--‘Only a
small part of the summer remained; and in these parts, the whole of
Gaul having a northerly trend, winter sets in early: nevertheless
Caesar made active preparations for an expedition to Britain; for he
knew that in almost all the operations in Gaul our enemies had been
reinforced from that country.’[1279] But even if we had not Strabo’s
explicit statement, it would be unnecessary to argue that Caesar could
not have undertaken so momentous an enterprise upon the spur of the
moment. Strabo says that the Veneti, who in 56 B.C. formed a coalition
of the maritime tribes of North-Western and Northern Gaul against
Caesar, made war upon him because they were determined to prevent him
from invading Britain, the trade with which was in their hands.[1280]
The statement is intrinsically probable, and is supported by facts
for which we have the authority of Caesar himself. The alliance which
the Veneti headed included almost all the maritime tribes between
the Loire and the Rhine; and auxiliaries actually came from Britain
to join them. It is not credible that the Britons would have crossed
the widest part of the Channel, or that the Morini, whose country lay
between the Somme and the Scheldt, and the Menapii, whose seaboard
reached the Rhine, would have supported the remote Veneti, if they had
not had reason to believe that their own interests were imperilled.
Moreover, Caesar tells us that among the ships which he assembled for
the invasion of Britain were galleys which he had used in the naval
action with the Veneti. This action took place off the coast of the
Morbihan, the nearest harbour to which was in the estuary of the
Loire;[1281] and it is needless to argue that the galleys were not
there when Caesar sent for them. If only ‘a small part of the summer’
remained when he began to prepare for the invasion, there was no time
for his messengers to travel from the neighbourhood of Coblenz, where
he had crossed and recrossed the Rhine, to the mouth of the Loire, or
for the galleys to make the voyage of six hundred miles from the Loire
to the north-eastern coast of Gaul. When Caesar’s messengers set out,
the galleys must have been within a short distance of the port from
which he set sail,--probably in the mouth [Sidenote: Campaign against
the Veneti necessary in order to secure command of the Channel.] of
the Seine or of the Somme. The war which he waged against the Veneti
was a necessary prelude to the invasion of Britain. For he could not
safely embark his army unless he had command of the Channel; and at
the time when he planned the invasion the masters of the Channel were
the Veneti. They had a powerful fleet of large vessels, the model of
which had, we may suppose, been originally borrowed from that of the
merchantmen of the Carthaginians, whose commerce in the Atlantic and
in British waters they had inherited. This fleet enabled them to close
the ports not only of their own territory in Western Brittany, but
also of the western seaboard at least of Northern Gaul; and no one was
permitted to use those ports except on condition of paying them toll.
[Sidenote: 57 B.C.]
But Caesar attempted to gain his object without fighting. After his
campaign against the Belgae he sent the 7th legion under Publius
Crassus, the younger son of the wealthy triumvir, to winter in the
valley of the lower Loire; and all the tribes of Brittany submitted
to him and gave him hostages. It was probably about this time that
Crassus made his celebrated voyage to the tin-producing districts
of Cornwall;[1282] and it seems not unreasonable to conjecture that
it was the news of his mission which gave the alarm to the Veneti.
They arrested two officers whom he had sent to make a requisition of
corn: the other maritime tribes of Brittany and Normandy threw in
their lot with them; and an embassy was sent to Crassus to demand the
restoration of the hostages. Messengers were promptly dispatched to
inform Caesar, who had gone to Illyricum. He sent orders to Crassus to
have a fleet of war-galleys built in the estuary [Sidenote: 56 B.C.]
of the Loire, to summon oarsmen from the Roman Province of Southern
Gaul, and to impress seamen and pilots. Meanwhile the Veneti were
engaging fresh allies, and reinforcements were hastening from Britain
to join them. The allied fleet was speedily assembled on the coast of
the Morbihan. Caesar hurried back to join his army, and on his arrival
made all the necessary dispositions for preventing the spread of the
insurrectionary movement. Crassus was dispatched southward into the
country of the Aquitani, from whom, it is true, little danger was to
be expected: another general, Titurius Sabinus, was sent northward
into the peninsula of the Cotentin, to prevent the tribes of Northern
Brittany and Western Normandy from joining the Veneti; and Labienus,
Caesar’s most capable lieutenant, marched eastward through the heart of
Gaul to the neighbourhood of Treves, with orders to watch the Belgae
and repel the German tribes, who were believed to be in communication
with the Gauls, in case they attempted to cross the Rhine. Labienus
appears to have had little trouble; but Crassus and Sabinus encountered
and defeated their respective enemies. Caesar himself invaded Venetia,
and entrusted Decimus Brutus with the command of his fleet. During a
great part of the summer Brutus was detained in the mouth of the Loire
by stormy weather; and Caesar spent the time in endeavouring to reduce
the strongholds on the Venetian coast. These operations were fruitless;
but on the first fine day the struggle was brought to an issue. The
decisive battle was fought in Quiberon Bay.[1283] The allied fleet
numbered two hundred and twenty sail, while the Roman galleys were
reinforced by ships lent by friendly tribes who inhabited the maritime
districts south of the Loire. The ships of the Veneti and their allies
were so heavy and so stoutly built that it would have been useless for
the galleys to attempt to ram them; and they stood so high out of the
water that the legionaries were unable to throw missiles with effect.
But the Roman engineers came to the rescue as they had done in the
First Punic War. Long poles had been prepared, armed at one end with
sharp-edged hooks. The galleys swifter and more mobile than the Gallic
ships, which had no oars.[1284] When the fleets approached each
other, two or more galleys ran alongside one of the enemy’s ships; and
the halyards were seized by the hooks. Instantly the rowers pulled
away: the halyards snapped, and yards and sails fell down, leaving the
helpless hulk to be boarded by the legionaries. ‘Thenceforward,’ wrote
Caesar, ‘the fight turned upon valour, in which our soldiers easily
had the advantage.’[1285] When several ships had been captured, the
Veneti abandoned the fight and made haste to escape. But their ships
had hardly been put before the wind when they were becalmed; and the
galleys, running swiftly in and out among them, captured them one after
another, all but a few which contrived to reach land when darkness fell.
[Illustration: SOUTH EASTERN BRITAIN
_See note on page XVI._]
The Veneti surrendered unconditionally. Caesar was determined to teach
the Gauls that ‘the rights of envoys’[1286] must be respected in
future. The Venetian senate were put to death; and all the tribesmen
who failed to escape were sold into slavery.
[Sidenote: Campaign against the Morini.]
It remained only to subdue the Morini, who had never yet acknowledged
the supremacy of Rome. Caesar marched against them: but the season was
too far advanced; and he found it impossible to strike a decisive blow.
The Morini would not risk a battle, and took refuge in their forests.
Caesar allowed himself to be surprised on the outskirts and lost a few
men, though he succeeded in punishing his assailants; and after the
legions had spent some days in cutting down trees, capturing baggage,
and driving off cattle, stormy weather set in, and rain fell so heavily
and continuously that they could no longer live safely in tents,
[Sidenote: Its failure leaves Caesar’s base not quite secure.] and were
forced to abandon the campaign. Owing to this failure, which Caesar
hardly atoned for by ravaging the cultivated lands as he retreated,
the base of operations for the expedition which was to take place in
the following year was still insecure. On the other hand, the maritime
tribes between the Somme and the Pyrenees were effectually subdued;
and Caesar was absolute master of the sea.
[Sidenote: 55 B.C. Caesar determines to sail from the Portus Itius
(Boulogne.)]
When the campaign of the following year against the Germans was over,
Caesar marched westward into the country of the Morini, ‘because,’
as he tells us, ‘the shortest passage to Britain was from their
coast.’[1287] Probably he had already ascertained what was the best
port to sail from; but any competent cavalry officer could have
procured the information in a couple of days. Between the Scheldt
and the Somme there was only one harbour which would satisfy all his
requirements. Calais did not then exist: Sangatte, on the east of Cape
Blancnez, was at best a mere roadstead; and the sandy waste between
Cape Blancnez and Cape Grisnez, from which the village of Wissant
derives its name, though it possessed two tiny creeks formed by
rivulets, offered no shelter for a fleet and no facilities for building
or repairing ships, or for provisioning an army. The Canche, the
Authie, and the Somme, if at that time they were used as harbours, were
too far from Britain. But the estuary of the Liane, on whose right bank
stood Gesoriacum, the village whose site is now covered by Boulogne,
combined every advantage. Caesar, Latinizing its Celtic name--the
port of Icht, or ‘the Channel harbour’--called it the Portus Itius.
Gallic merchants sailed from it to the ports of Kent: from the time of
Augustus it was the Roman port of embarkation for Britain, and at a
later period the naval station of the Roman Channel Fleet. The estuary,
longer, wider, and deeper than it is now, was protected from every gale
by the bold bluff of land which on the west throws out the promontory
of Alprech, and which then projected northward considerably beyond its
present limit.[1288] Vessels of light draught could enter the harbour
at low tide. Shipyards lined its banks. Roads connected it with the
interior; and timber in abundance could be floated down the river from
the forest of Boulogne. The heights that look down from the east upon
the harbour, about half a mile south of the column which commemorates
the assemblage of Napoleon’s ‘Grand Army’, offered an excellent site
for the encampment of the force that was destined to protect the
communications; and perhaps a detachment may have been posted on the
opposite bank of the river.[1289] If the distance in a straight line
to Britain was a little longer than from the creeks of Wissant, the
passage, owing to the set of the tidal streams and the prevalence
of south-westerly winds, was more convenient. Caesar therefore gave
orders that vessels should be collected from the adjacent coasts, and
assemble, along with the galleys which had been docked after the war
with the Veneti, in the Portus Itius.
[Sidenote: He attempts to obtain information about Britain from Gallic
traders.]
The summer was now far advanced; and Caesar saw his first expedition
must be a mere reconnaissance: but, as he tells us, ‘he thought that
it would be well worth his while merely to visit the island, see what
the people were like, and make himself acquainted with the features of
the country, the harbours, and the landing-places.’[1290] Though on a
clear day he could see beyond the straits those ‘astonishing masses of
cliff’ which haunted the imagination of Cicero,[1291] he was about to
venture into an unknown land. The Italians of that time knew hardly
anything of the island which they vaguely regarded as the end of the
inhabited world, except that it produced tin, some of which found its
way to the markets of the Mediterranean.[1292] Perhaps Cicero and
other cultivated men had read extracts from the journal of Pytheas:
but Pytheas was a discredited writer; and, after all, his description
of the Britons who lived in the time of Alexander the Great would have
been little more useful to Caesar than Bernier’s account of the empire
of Aurangzeb would be to a traveller who intended to spend a winter in
India. Caesar sent for traders from all parts of North-Eastern Gaul,
and questioned them about the island:--How large was it? What tribes
inhabited it? What were their methods of fighting, their manners and
customs? What ports were capable of accommodating a large fleet? He
failed to obtain the information which he required. Many commentators
have insisted that the traders could have told him all that he wanted
to know; and certainly it seems difficult to understand how they could
have professed ignorance of the harbours without manifest contumacy:
but at least as regards the other questions, the reason which Caesar
assigns for their silence is sufficient:--‘even they know nothing of
Britain except the coast and the parts opposite the various regions
of Gaul.’[1293] Moreover, it must be remembered that Caesar asked
them what harbours could shelter a large fleet; and as they were only
acquainted with the harbours of Kent, none of which would fulfil this
requirement, it is quite intelligible that even on this point they
should have been unable to enlighten him. Still, they could have given
valuable information about the Kentish coast; and the passage in which
Strabo accounts for the hostility of the Veneti suggests that they kept
silence from interested motives.[1294] They could not foresee that
Caesar’s expeditions would powerfully stimulate British trade.
[Sidenote: Gaius Volusenus sent to reconnoitre the opposite coast.]
Thrown back upon his own resources, Caesar sent a military tribune,
named Gaius Volusenus, in a galley to reconnoitre the opposite coast.
Volusenus had distinguished himself in a campaign, conducted by one
of Caesar’s generals, against the mountaineers of the upper Rhône: he
possessed, as his later history proved, not merely a keen eye for the
features of a country, but daring of that kind which characterized the
sons of Zeruiah; and how highly Caesar thought of him is evident from
the fact that he was the only military tribune whose name is mentioned
with honour in the _Commentaries_.[1295]
[Sidenote: Envoys from British tribes sent to Caesar to promise
submission.]
All this time trade was going on as usual between Gaul and Britain;
and Gallic merchants had informed their clients in Kent that the
long-expected invasion was about to take place. While Volusenus was
cruising in the Straits of Dover a ship with envoys from various
British tribes on board sailed into the Liane. Presenting themselves in
Caesar’s camp, they announced that their principals were prepared to
submit to the Roman People and to give hostages. Caesar received them
courteously, exhorted them to adhere to their resolve, and dismissed
them. But they were not to return alone. Two years before, during the
campaign against the Belgae, Caesar had gained over Commius, whose
connexion with Britain[1296] he had perhaps already ascertained, and,
in accordance with the policy which he often followed, had established
him as king over the Atrebates. He had doubtless learned much from him
about British politics, and had concluded that, just as in Gaul he had
taken advantage of tribal disputes and had found it politic to support
the Aedui and the Remi against their rivals, so in Britain his best
course would be to side with the Trinovantes against the aggressive
Catuvellauni. He had formed a high opinion of the energy and judgement
of Commius, and believed him [Sidenote: He commissions Commius to
return with them and gain over tribes.] to be thoroughly loyal.
Accordingly he charged him to approach all the British chieftains with
whom he had any influence, engage them on the side of Rome, and give
them notice that he himself would shortly visit the island. Commius
took with him a troop of cavalry, composed of thirty of his retainers.
[Sidenote: Volusenus’s voyage of reconnaissance.]
Meanwhile Volusenus had been carrying out Caesar’s instructions. His
galley, manned by trained oarsmen, not only made him comparatively
independent of wind and tide, but, owing to her superior speed,
would enable him to keep clear of any ships which Gauls or Britons
might send against him. We do not know what part of the coast he
reconnoitred first: but it is probable that his coasting voyage did
not extend beyond Lympne, or, at the furthest, Rye on one side and
the North Foreland on the other; for within those limits the port and
the alternative landing-place of which he was in search were to be
found. The port was indeed too small for such a vast armada as would
be required to transport the grand army with which Caesar purposed
eventually to invade Britain, but not for the comparatively small
fleet that had been collected for the preliminary expedition: if
Volusenus had sailed westward in quest of the great harbour which he
could not have found until he had reached the coast of Sussex,[1297]
he would have turned back when he saw the inhospitable forest of the
Weald, or the Fairlight Down; and, moreover, he knew that Caesar
intended to cross the Channel in its narrowest part. While he was still
some miles from the British coast he could see the low but precipitous
chalk cliffs, backed by a commanding range of heights, that hem in
the rock-strewn shore of East Wear Bay: the inlet of Folkestone was
plainly too small to accommodate the Roman fleet; and the first sight
of the hills that guarded the coast from Folkestone to Hythe and of
the wooded uplands that overlooked the tide-washed flat which is now
Romney Marsh,[1298] must have warned him not to advise the great
captain whom he served to land beneath them. It was a maxim of ancient
warfare, never disregarded without urgent necessity, to avoid engaging
an enemy who had the advantage of higher ground; and there was not a
foot of land in the whole extent of coast between Shakespeare’s Cliff
and Lympne which a Roman soldier would not have described as a most
unfavourable position. The hills behind Hythe were, indeed, pierced by
three valleys: but it was evident that they ascended to high, broken,
and wooded ground, where cavalry would be useless, and an invading
army would be encompassed by manifold perils;[1299] and for such
disadvantages the narrow pool harbour which extended opposite Hythe,
between the hills and the long bank of shingle, through a gap in which
it might be entered at high tide,[1300] promised no compensation.
Eastward of Shakespeare’s Cliff Volusenus saw that he must look for
the place of disembarkation. There, sheltered in the valley between
the cliffs, was old Dover harbour, in which we may suppose that
Gallic merchants used to discharge their freight.[1301] But even this
haven would be useless if the landing were to be opposed; and it was
necessary to look for some broad expanse of open beach which would
give easy access to the interior. None such was yet visible. The
galley ran on under the Castle Cliff, round the Foreland and past the
coomb within which lies St. Margaret’s Bay, past the cliffs, still
precipitous but diminishing in height, which end at Kingsdown. About
a hundred yards further on the ground was seen rising again; and the
tribune observed a low rampart of cliff extending and gradually sinking
towards the north till it finally terminated just south of the spot
where Walmer Castle rises amid embowering trees. Stretching northward
for several miles from this spot he saw the open beach for which he had
been looking. Not a sign of high ground was visible. Once the legions
had succeeded in forcing their way on to dry land, they would find
no difficulty in following up their advantage; and the cavalry would
be able to ride down the beaten enemy. The slope upon which Walmer
Church now stands would afford a suitable site for the camp. But it
was of course impossible to see far inland; and, as Volusenus could
not venture to disembark and run the risk of falling into the hands of
the natives, he was unable to find out all that he wished to know. The
nature of the inner country, the comparative density of the population,
the water-supply,--of all these things he remained ignorant. But
Caesar had chosen him because he was the fittest man that he could
find; and we may assume that he did not neglect precautions which any
competent officer would have taken, and that he did not overlook what
no observant man could have failed to perceive. He spent three entire
days in British waters; and his time must have been fully occupied.
We may be sure that he bore in mind that the beach was of shingle;
that he took soundings all along the coast between Walmer and Deal
as close inshore as he could venture to go, and tested the character
of the anchorage; and that he noted the phenomena which twice daily
obtruded themselves upon his attention,--the rise and fall of the tide,
and the movement up and down the Channel of the tidal stream. Perhaps
indeed he went as far north as Sandwich, and concluded that a landing
might still more advantageously be effected between that point and
Sandown, where, even in those days, the beach must have shelved more
gently than at Walmer or Deal.[1302] One other feature, if it then
existed, cannot have escaped his scrutiny,--the Goodwin Sands, perhaps
only half-formed, or the long low bank of London Clay, which, as some
geologists believe, may then have occupied their place.[1303] On the
fourth day following that of his departure he returned to the Portus
Itius, and presented his report to Caesar.
[Sidenote: Kentishmen prepare for resistance.]
The Kentishmen, on their part, knew what they had to expect. The
Roman galley had of course been watched; and though Caesar was coming
professedly to receive them under the protection of Rome, his visit
would portend the loss of their independence. If they chose to resist,
they would not be embarrassed by having a long line of coast to defend.
The movements of the galley indicated where the fleet of which she was
the forerunner would probably arrive; and, moreover, those who lived by
the sea were aware that the invaders could not attempt to land except
at a few points within a strictly limited range. War-chariots would be
helpful in checking them when they attempted to advance through the
surf: accordingly the horses were exercised on the beach until they
became accustomed to enter the waves.
[Sidenote: Certain clans of the Morini spontaneously promise to submit.]
The Portus Itius was thronged with shipping, and the preparations for
the expedition were nearly complete; but the base of operations was
still insecure. The Morini had hardly felt the weight of Caesar’s
hand, and might give trouble to the garrison which he intended to
leave for the protection of his communications: but the end of August
was approaching; he was anxious to set sail; and he had no time to
reduce the tribe to submission. Fortune, however, as usual, befriended
him. The various communities of the Morini were accustomed to act
independently. Envoys from some of them appeared in Caesar’s camp, and
excused themselves for having resisted the Romans in the two previous
years. He of course accepted their excuses, and ordered them to give
him a large number of hostages, who were promptly brought to the
camp.
[Illustration: East Kent]
[Sidenote: 55 B.C. Caesar’s expeditionary force.]
And now all was ready. The expeditionary force consisted of two
legions--the 10th, which had gained renown on many fields and was
regarded by Caesar with special favour, and the 7th, which had played
a conspicuous part in the famous battle with the Nervii--besides about
five hundred cavalry, raised from various tribes of Gaul, slingers
from the Balearic Isles, and Numidian and Cretan archers. The entire
army numbered about ten thousand men. A small squadron of galleys and
about eighty transports were assembled in the harbour; and on the 25th
of August[1304] the legionaries embarked on the transports, while the
galleys were assigned to the archers, slingers, and artillerymen.
The catapults which they carried would be worked, in case they were
required, under the protection of movable turrets, which could be
erected, at short notice, on their decks.[1305] Caesar omitted to
mention the class of ‘long ships’ to which they belonged: but his
narrative shows that they were shallow; and it may be doubted whether
any of them had more than one bank of oars.[1306] The transports had of
course been carefully selected, and were all excellent sea-boats: but
they had not been designed for disembarking troops on an enemy’s coast;
and in case it should prove necessary to land on an open beach, the
troops whom they carried would find themselves, on entering the water,
almost out of their depth. They were probably sailed by their native
crews; and the galleys, which were severally placed under the command
of the quaestor, the two generals who commanded the legions, and the
auxiliary officers, were doubtless handled by the seamen and Provincial
oarsmen who had manned them in the preceding year. The fleet included
some small fast-sailing vessels of light draught, which were commonly
used for reconnoitring, and would now be called scouts. Eighteen other
transports were lying in the little harbour of Ambleteuse, between five
and six miles to the north,[1307] having been prevented by contrary
winds from reaching the Liane; and, as the wind was now favourable
for the voyage to Britain, and Caesar could not afford to wait, he
sent his cavalry by road with orders to embark on these vessels and
follow him. As the expedition was to be of such short duration, no
heavy baggage was taken, and only sufficient supplies to last for a
few days. A general named Sulpicius Rufus remained with an adequate
force to guard the camp and the harbour; [Sidenote: Sabinus and Cotta
sent to punish the recalcitrant Morini and the Menapii.] while Titurius
Sabinus, who had commanded a division in the war of the previous year,
and Aurunculeius Cotta, who had served with distinction in the campaign
against the Belgae, were directed to march with the remaining legions
against those clans of the Morini which had not submitted, and their
neighbours, the Menapii.
[Sidenote: Caesar’s voyage.]
It was just five days before the full moon;[1308] and high tide that
evening was about six o’clock. About midnight the moon set, and we may
suppose that, like the ships of William when he sailed to encounter
Harold, each vessel carried a lantern.[1309] Soon afterwards the
signal was given to weigh anchor,[1310] and the ships stood out to
sea and steered against the ebb tide, which, however, was moving at
less than one knot an hour,[1311] for Dover harbour.[1312] As they
passed Ambleteuse, there was no sign that the cavalry transports had
[Sidenote: His cavalry transports fail to put to sea in time.] yet
got under way. About half an hour before sunrise the stream turned
eastward; and by that time Cape Grisnez had been left behind. But at
some period of the voyage the wind must have shifted to an unfavourable
quarter,[1313] for [Sidenote: Aug. 26.] it was not until the fourth
hour of the day, or about nine o’clock in the morning,[1314] that the
galleys approached the Dover cliffs; and at that time the transports,
which were slower sailers and had no oars, were far behind. Above
the white precipices, ranged on the undulating downs behind, Caesar
descried an armed host of the enemy. ‘The formation of the ground,’ he
observed, ‘was peculiar, the sea being so closely walled in by abrupt
heights that it was possible to throw a missile from the ground above
on to the shore.’[1315] To attempt a landing in the harbour or below
the cliffs on either side of it was of course out of the question;
and [Sidenote: He anchors off the Dover cliffs.] Caesar determined
to remain at anchor until the rest of the fleet should arrive. The
reader who is familiar with the _Commentaries_, and can comprehend
their implied meaning, will perceive that the vessels must have been
grouped in the bay somewhere between the Castle Cliff and the South
Foreland, the one on the extreme right being about a mile westward of
the latter.[1316] Caesar summoned his generals and tribunes to come
on board, communicated to them the substance of the report which he
had received from Volusenus, and instructed them how to handle their
ships and troops when the landing-place should be reached, warning them
above all to bear in mind that rapid and irregular movements were of
the essence of seamanship, and to be prepared to obey orders on the
instant. When he was satisfied that all understood what was required of
them, he sent them back to their ships. Between three and four in the
afternoon the infantry transports arrived; and although Caesar does not
expressly say so, it seems reasonable to assume that he communicated
with their officers as well.[1317] Between four and five the stream,
which, for about six hours, had been running down the Channel, turned
towards the east, and, as the wind was now blowing from a favourable
quarter, Caesar gave the signal to weigh anchor.[1318] A few minutes
later galleys, transports, and smaller craft, with all sail set,
[Sidenote: Late in the afternoon he sails on to Walmer--Deal.] were
running in an extended line past the Foreland, while the British
chariots and cavalry, followed by their infantry, were hurrying across
country to intercept them. In about an hour the armada was off the
coast between Walmer and Deal, heading straight for the shore; and,
while the galleys were held ready for emergencies, the transports were
run aground.
[Sidenote: The landing vigorously resisted.]
Caesar now saw crowding upon him the troubles that were due to his
lack of preparation. All along the beach a multitude of painted
warriors,[1319] with long moustaches and hair streaming over their
shoulders, were drawn up ready for action. The transports were
immovable in water so deep that the men, crowding in the bows, shrank
from plunging in; and when some of them overcame their hesitation, they
found themselves staggering and slipping, over-weighted by their armour
and encumbered by the shields on their left arms and the javelins which
they grasped in their right hands; while the Britons, standing securely
on the beach, and the charioteers, driving their trained horses into
the sea, harassed them with missiles to which they could not reply.
Old soldiers as they were, they felt unnerved by difficulties which
they had never encountered before. Caesar promptly sent the galleys to
the rescue. Driven through the water at their utmost speed, they were
ranged on the right flank of the enemy, who, alarmed by the long low
rakish hulls, the like of which they had never seen, and distracted by
the measured stroke of the oars, suddenly found themselves assailed by
slingers and archers, and enfiladed by strange artillery. Unable to use
their shields unless they changed front, they ceased to press their
attack, stood still, and presently began to give ground. But few of the
legionaries had yet ventured to enter the water; and the rest still
hesitated to take advantage of the respite. Then the standard-bearer of
the 10th legion, calling upon the gods for aid, turned to his comrades,
and cried, ‘Leap down, men, unless you wish to abandon the eagle to
the enemy. I, at all events, shall have done my duty to my country
and my general.’ Springing overboard, he advanced alone, holding the
eagle above his head. The men plucked up courage, and, calling upon
one another not to bring the legion to shame, leaped all together from
the bows. Encouraged by their example, the men in the nearest vessels
followed, and the fight became general.
But the advantage was still with the defenders. The galleys could not
be everywhere at once. The Romans, though they could not get firm
foothold, tried hard to keep their ranks and follow their respective
standard-bearers; but they soon lost all formation. As men entered the
sea from one ship or another, they attached themselves in bewilderment
to any standard they came across; and the enemy on the shore, whenever
they saw a few legionaries dropping one by one into the water, drove
their horses in, and surrounded and attacked them before they could
join their comrades; while others planted themselves on the exposed
flank of a disordered unsupported group,[1320] and showered missiles
into their midst. Jarring with the shouts of the disciplined soldiers,
resounded the harsh Celtic yell,[1321] the clangour of the Celtic
trumpet,[1322] and invocations uttered in strange language to strange
gods.[1323] Caesar now manned his scouts and the boats belonging to the
galleys, and sent them in different directions to assist all who were
overmatched. Gradually the foremost bodies of legionaries fought their
way on to the beach: the rest followed quickly [Sidenote: Caesar’s
victory indecisive owing to want of cavalry.] in support; and now,
closing their ranks and drawing their swords, they charged the enemy
with exultant cries, and put them to flight. Want of cavalry, however,
made it impossible to complete the victory.
[Sidenote: The Romans encamp.]
It was now near sunset. The site which Volusenus had noted for the camp
was close to the sea; and while fatigue-parties were sent out to cut
wood and the outposts took up their appointed places, the rest of the
troops fell to work with pick and shovel along the lines which had been
marked out for them. The galleys were hauled up on the beach; but the
transports were necessarily left at anchor. Until the cavalry should
arrive it would not be prudent to venture into the interior; and we
may suppose that a galley was sent back to the port of Ambleteuse, to
inform their captains about the landing-place for which they were to
steer.
[Sidenote: British chiefs sue for peace.]
It would seem that the resistance which the Britons had opposed to
the disembarkation was purely local, and that no defensive league had
been organized. The men of East Kent were disheartened by failure, and
on the next day sent envoys to sue for peace. Some days before, when
Commius had just landed and was formally communicating Caesar’s mandate
to the chiefs, he had been arrested and imprisoned. The envoys, who
brought him with them, begged Caesar to pardon this outrage, for which,
they said, the ignorant rabble were responsible. He replied that their
countrymen had made an unprovoked attack upon his army although they
had spontaneously sent an embassy to Gaul to proffer submission; but he
promised to accept their excuses on condition of their giving hostages.
Part of the required number were handed over there and then, the envoys
promising that the rest, who would have to be fetched from considerable
distances, should be brought within a few days. The Britons who had
fought at Walmer were ordered by their leaders to return home; and
within the next few days tribal chiefs arrived from various districts,
and formally surrendered.
[Sidenote: The cavalry transports dispersed by a gale.]
On the morning of the 30th of August the long-looked-for cavalry
transports were descried in the offing. They had sailed from Ambleteuse
with a light breeze; but as they were approaching the British coast a
sudden gale prevented them from keeping on their course. ‘Some,’ wrote
Caesar, ‘were carried back to the point from which they had started,
while the others were swept down in great peril to the lower and more
westerly part of the island. They anchored notwithstanding; but, as
they were becoming waterlogged, they were forced to stand out to sea
in the face of night, and make for the Continent.’[1324] The brief
sentences tell a tale which cannot be mistaken. The ships which were
swept down past the Foreland and the Dover cliffs scudded before the
north-easterly gale;[1325] and, although they were evidently in no
danger of being driven ashore, they were in great peril because only
the most watchful steering could prevent them from broaching to: if a
heavy sea struck the stern, it might swing the vessel round, and in a
moment she would be overset and founder. The ships which were carried
back to the point from which they had started were of course handled
differently. A sailing-vessel, caught by a gale, must either run before
the wind or lie to. With these vessels the latter course was adopted.
Carrying only just enough sail to keep them steady, they were laid to
on the port tack; and once they had drifted past Cape Grisnez into
comparatively sheltered water, they were able to stand in for the shore
and make the port of Ambleteuse.[1326] Not one of the eighteen vessels,
not a single man among their crews, was lost; and this fact, which
Caesar was careful to record, bears witness to the skilful seamanship
of the Gauls.
[Sidenote: Caesar’s fleet partially wrecked.]
But on the shores of East Kent the gale was still raging; and the moon
that shone out that night through the fleeting clouds was at the full.
Caesar’s officers and, it would seem, Caesar himself were ignorant of
the connexion between tide and moon; but if he had ever had leisure to
study the writings of Pytheas or of Posidonius,[1327] he would have
known what he might expect. His Gallic pilots indeed could certainly
have enlightened him; and there will always remain a doubt whether he
did not know more than he chose to admit. It was high water about an
hour before midnight; and the seas that came rushing over the shingle
before the north-east wind rose as high as a spring tide. The galleys
which had been hauled up, as Caesar supposed, above high-water mark,
were swept by the waves; the transports were driven ashore. Soldiers
and crews could only look helplessly on. Several vessels were totally
wrecked; and the rest lost their anchors, cables, and other tackle. No
provision had been made against the chance of such a disaster; and the
tools and materials that were needed for repairs were on the other side
of the Channel. The whole army was seized with panic. Men asked one
another how they were to subsist when they had no grain, and how they
were to get back to Gaul when there were no ships to carry them.
[Sidenote: The British chiefs prepare to renew hostilities.]
The British chiefs who were still in the camp saw their opportunity.
The coincidence of the shipwreck with the full moon was a good
omen.[1328] They knew that Caesar had no supplies; and although they
did not know exactly the strength of his force, they saw that his camp
was very small, and concluded that his troops were correspondingly
few. Besides, his want of cavalry would place him at a disadvantage.
Accordingly, they determined to recall their tribesmen, to prevent
the Romans from getting supplies, and to harass them by an irregular
warfare, in the hope that they would be able to starve them out,
or at any rate prevent them from re-embarking until wintry weather
should have set in. One by one they moved away from the camp without
attracting observation.
[Sidenote: Caesar labours to retrieve the disaster.]
Meanwhile Caesar was doing his best to retrieve the disaster; and,
although the chiefs managed to keep their plans secret, he suspected
that they meant mischief. Moreover, the hostages who were still due did
not arrive. The crops were ripe; and troops were detailed every day to
get corn. A galley was sent back to Gaul to fetch everything that was
required for repairing the ships. Twelve of them were so badly damaged
that it was impossible to patch them up even for one voyage; but their
timbers and bronze were utilized for the repair of the rest. All the
legionaries who had any knowledge of carpentry or metal-working were
employed as shipwrights, and worked with such good will that within a
few days the fleet had been made tolerably seaworthy.
[Sidenote: The 7th legion surprised and attacked while cutting corn.]
All this time natives were daily passing in and out of the camp; and
no one in the Roman army suspected that trouble was brewing. At a
considerable distance from Walmer there was a wood, close to which was
a field of standing corn. Everywhere else the crops had been already
cut; and to this spot the 7th legion was dispatched. The officer
who commanded it neglected to send out scouts; and the troops laid
aside their arms, and went to work securely with their reaping hooks.
It is true that the only cavalry were Commius’s thirty retainers;
but they might have done good service. It would seem that even the
ordinary precaution of keeping some of the cohorts under arms was
neglected.[1329] Suddenly the enemy’s chariots and cavalry emerged
from the wood, and swept down upon the unarmed and scattered reapers.
The chariots careered at full gallop all over the field, the warriors
who stood beside the drivers hurling javelins[1330] or slinging stones
at the legionaries as they were running to seize their arms, and
intimidating them, as Caesar said, ‘by the mere terror inspired by
their horses and the clatter of the wheels:’ presently the drivers
passed into the intervals between the troops of their supporting
cavalry; horsemen and charioteers charged together;[1331] and while the
warriors leaped from their chariots and fought as infantry, the drivers
moved off to a safe distance, ready to receive them in case they were
hard pressed. Meanwhile two cohorts were on guard as usual outside
the gates of the camp;[1332] and some of their number reported to
Caesar that an unusual amount of dust was rising in the direction in
which the 7th had gone. His suspicions were aroused; and, ordering the
two cohorts[1333] to accompany him, two others to take their places,
and the remaining cohorts of the 10th legion to leave their work,
arm, and follow him immediately, he marched towards the corn-field.
He had advanced some little distance before he came in sight of the
legionaries, who were evidently unable to hold their own. Huddled
together in a small space, with ranks disordered, they were surrounded
by cavalry and charioteers, missiles flying into them from every side.
Caesar was just in time. When the enemy saw reinforcements approaching
they suspended their attack, and the 7th recovered from their panic.
But if the enemy had no mind to renew the combat, Caesar did not feel
able, without cavalry and with only two legions, one of which had just
been so roughly handled, to strike an effective blow. ‘The moment,’ he
afterwards explained, ‘was not favourable for challenging the enemy
and forcing on a battle.’[1334] Accordingly he contented himself with
maintaining his ground, and, after a short interval, withdrew both
legions into camp.
[Sidenote: Military operations suspended owing to bad weather.]
The tribesmen who had not yet rejoined their chiefs were on the way:
but during the next few days stormy weather prevented the Romans from
going out of camp and the enemy from attacking them. Such was Caesar’s
statement; and it is not difficult to fathom his meaning. He would
not attack a mobile enemy whom it was difficult to bring to action,
but preferred to wait until they should attack him on his own ground,
before his impregnable camp: on the other hand, the ground was so miry
that for the time their chariots could not act. The Kentish chiefs,
however, were not idle. Messengers scoured the country, assured all
who still remained passive that the Roman army was contemptible, and
urged them to seize the opportunity of plundering their camp and
securing their own independence for ever. A large body of horse and
foot speedily assembled, and advanced towards the coast. If they had
been commanded by one skilful leader, and had adhered to the simple
plan of harassing the Romans when they were endeavouring to embark,
they might have achieved something. But they were a mere aggregate of
tribal levies under tribal chiefs; and greed and impatience worked
their ruin. The one thought that troubled Caesar was that their speed
would enable them to escape the consequences of defeat. They [Sidenote:
The Britons, attempting to rush Caesar’s camp, are defeated with heavy
loss.] made a wild attack upon the camp, and the legions, which were
drawn up outside, of course scattered them. Commius’s horse were of
some slight service in the pursuit; and the legionaries, who exerted
themselves to the utmost, killed many of the fugitives, and burned all
the buildings which they had time to reach.
[Sidenote: Caesar compelled by the approach of the equinox to return to
Gaul.]
This success came just in time to enable Caesar to leave Britain with
some show of credit. His departure could not be postponed. It was
about the middle of September: the dreaded equinox was near; and, with
his unsound ships, he would need a fine night for the voyage. He must
therefore have been relieved when, on the very day of their defeat,
the chiefs sent envoys to sue for peace. He ordered them to find twice
as many hostages as he had demanded before; and, as he could not wait
for them, the chiefs were to send them in their own or the merchants’
vessels to Gaul. Before he embarked he may have personally reconnoitred
the coast north of Walmer: anyhow he decided that, when he returned in
the following year, his best landing-place would be the sandy flats
between Sandown and Sandwich, where, as we have seen, the seaward
slope was gentler than [Sidenote: Causes of his partial failure.]
that of the Walmer shingle.[1335] But otherwise the objects for which
he had undertaken the expedition had not been attained. The time for
preparation had been too short. Owing to the excessive draught of
the transports, the disembarkation had entailed unnecessary loss: by
neglecting to bring over supplies Caesar had exposed the 7th legion
to the risk of a defeat which would have been calamitous; while the
unfortunate absence of the cavalry had made it impossible to obtain
any information about the nature of the country, and had weakened
the effect of the final victory. The troops were embarked without
opposition, and, taking advantage of a fair breeze, Caesar set sail
just after midnight. The [Sidenote: Two transports fail to make the
Portus Itius: the troops whom they carried attacked by the Morini.]
fleet reached the opposite coast safely; but two of the transports,
which perhaps were in worse condition than the rest, kept a little too
far out to sea, and, failing to make the mouth of the Liane, drifted
a few miles further down the coast and reached land somewhere north
of the mouth of Canche. The soldiers who had disembarked from them,
numbering about three hundred, were marching northward to join their
comrades when they were intercepted and attacked by a band of the
Morini, who belonged to one of the clans which had submitted a few
weeks before. As the Romans were considerably outnumbered, they were
obliged to form in a square; and, hearing the shouts of the combatants,
large numbers flocked to join in the attack. The three hundred defended
themselves with vigour; and four hours later, when Caesar’s cavalry
came to the rescue, they were still unbeaten. The assailants speedily
dispersed; [Sidenote: Punishment of the Morini and Menapii.] but next
day Labienus marched against them with the two legions which had just
returned from Britain, and almost all were taken prisoners. Titurius
and Cotta, with the other legions, had been punishing the Menapii.
Finding that they had taken refuge in their forests, they mercilessly
ravaged the open country, cutting the corn and burning the hamlets.
Thus, when the legions went into winter-quarters in the country of
the Belgae, Caesar might feel that in the ensuing summer his base of
operations would be secure. ‘Thither,’ he wrote dryly, ‘two British
tribes and no more sent hostages: the rest neglected to do so.’[1336]
[Sidenote: 55 B.C.]
When Caesar’s dispatches reached the Senate, they ordered [Sidenote:
Thanksgiving service at Rome for Caesar’s success.] a thanksgiving
service of twenty days to be held in honour his exploits. No one who is
versed in Roman literature and gifted with historical imagination will
regard the decree as ironical. For Caesar’s countrymen may well have
felt that he had opened the way for the conquest of a new world.
CHAPTER VII
CAESAR’S SECOND INVASION OF BRITAIN
[Sidenote: 55 B.C.]
Caesar had learned the lessons which failure had taught [Sidenote:
Caesar builds a fleet for a second expedition.] him. In the winter he
was obliged, as usual, to go to Cisalpine Gaul, partly in order to
discharge judicial and administrative business, partly to safeguard his
own political interests in Italy. Before he left Belgium he ordered his
generals to employ the legions in repairing the old ships and building
a new fleet for the second expedition. He drew up minute instructions
for their guidance. Two thousand cavalry horses, besides transport
cattle, were to be conveyed across the Channel; and, as the campaign
would probably be protracted, it would be impossible to leave all
the heavy baggage behind, and imprudent to trust again for supplies
to the resources of the country.[1337] The ships were to be somewhat
shallower than those which were commonly used in the Mediterranean,
in order to facilitate the work of loading and to enable them to be
hauled up on the shore: on the other hand, to make room for troops
and freight, they were to be rather broader in the beam. Their low
freeboard would admit of their being constructed for rowing as well
as sailing;[1338] and Caesar, who had noticed that the waves in the
Channel were comparatively small, thought that it would involve no
danger. But this shallowness, combined with unusual breadth, entailed
a disadvantage which he had perhaps not foreseen: it would cause the
vessels, unless the wind were right aft or on the quarter, to make a
great deal of leeway.[1339] It was of course impossible to build such a
large flotilla in one port. Some of the ships were to be constructed
in the mouth of the Seine: others doubtless in the Portus Itius itself;
others probably in the Canche, the Authie, and the Somme, possibly even
on the Marne, far from the sea-coast.[1340] The legionaries were ill
provided with appliances for ship-building: but they might be trusted
to do their best; and the tackle necessary for rigging and equipping
the fleet was to be imported from Spain. The cost of the expedition
would be very heavy: but Caesar was amassing wealth for himself and his
lieutenants by plundering Gaul; and he certainly hoped to do more in
Britain than recover his expenses.[1341]
News of these preparations must of course have flown swiftly across the
Channel; but it is hardly surprising that the British chieftains did
not take advantage of the time that was given them to mature a scheme
of defence. Cassivellaunus was still intent on self-aggrandisement;
and in the struggle with his neighbours, the Trinovantes, he slew
[Sidenote: Mandubracius flees from Britain and takes refuge with
Caesar.] their king, whose son, Mandubracius, contrived to escape, took
ship for Gaul, and presented himself--the first of a series of British
exiles who invited Roman interference--in Caesar’s camp. The exact date
of his flight cannot be given: it is sufficient to know that he was
with Caesar when the time arrived for the Roman army to embark.
[Sidenote: Caesar winters in Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum.]
Caesar did not start for Italy until the middle of November,[1342] and
after he had fulfilled the civil duties which awaited him in Cisalpine
Gaul he was obliged to travel to the further shore of the Adriatic in
order to punish a tribe which had been making devastating raids upon
Illyricum. In the early spring he was again in Cisalpine Gaul, clearing
off arrears of [Sidenote: His correspondence with Cicero.] work, and
preparing to recross the Alps. Cicero for whom he had an unfeigned
admiration, and whom he was always endeavouring to conciliate, was
now upon the best of terms with him; and his correspondence throws a
ray of light upon the hopes which had been awakened in Italy by the
preparations for a fresh expedition to Britain. Caesar was of course
beset with letters of recommendation written by public men on behalf
of friends who hoped to acquire riches in Gaul or Britain; and Cicero
wrote one, as he alone knew how to write, begging him to do something
for a young lawyer, named Trebatius, who was destined to achieve
distinction as a jurist. Caesar, however pressed with business he might
be, received all such applications, when they came from men whom he
cared to conciliate, with good humour. ‘Just as I was speaking,’ wrote
Cicero, ‘to our friend Balbus at my house, a letter from you was handed
to me, at the end of which you say: “Rufus, whom you recommend to me, I
will make King of Gaul.... Send me some one else to provide for!” ...
I therefore send you Trebatius.’[1343] The confiding lawyer wanted to
make a fortune without having to work for it: but Cicero banteringly
told him to moderate his expectations. ‘I hear,’ he wrote, ‘there is no
gold or silver in Britain. If so, I advise you to capture a war-chariot
and come back in it as soon as you can.’[1344] He ended his letter by
telling Trebatius that if he wished to cultivate Caesar’s friendship,
he must take the trouble to make himself useful. Caesar bestowed upon
him the rank of tribune, exempting him from military duty, for which
he was manifestly unfit; but, after a short experience of camp life,
he made up his mind that the expedition would involve more hardship
than profit, and preferred to remain in Gaul. But Caesar had gained
another adherent who turned out a real soldier. Quintus Cicero, the
orator’s younger brother, had consented to serve on his staff as a
_legatus_, or general of division;[1345] and a few words from a letter
in which this consent is alluded to illustrate the gracious tact which
helped Caesar to gain adherents. ‘Caesar,’ writes Marcus Cicero to
his brother, ‘has written to Balbus that the little bundle of letters
in which mine and Balbus’s were packed was so saturated with rain
when it was delivered to him that he was not even aware that there
was one from me. However, he had made out a few words of Balbus’s,
to which he replied as follows:--“I see you have written something
about [Quintus] Cicero, which I have not deciphered: but as far as
I could guess, it was of a kind that I might wish, but hardly hope
to be true.”’[1346] On the 30th of April Quintus was with [Sidenote:
Cicero’s hopes and fears about the second British expedition.] Caesar
at Blandeno, a small town near Placentia. Marcus knew of course that
Quintus was to accompany the expedition to Britain; and he indulged
the fancy that Caesar’s exploits would furnish him with a theme for a
heroic poem. ‘Only give me Britain,’ he wrote to Quintus, ‘to paint in
colours supplied by you, but with my own brush.’[1347] But he must have
soon received discouraging news; for early in June[1348] he wrote to
Atticus:--‘The result of the British expedition is a source of anxiety.
For it is notorious that the approaches to the island are ramparted by
astonishing masses of cliff; and, besides, it is now known that there
isn’t a pennyweight of silver in the island, nor any hope of loot
except from slaves; and I don’t suppose you expect any of them to be a
scholar or a musician.’[1349]
[Sidenote: Caesar returns to Gaul.]
By this time Caesar and his new lieutenant, having posted across Gaul
at the rate of fifty miles a day or more,[1350] must have reached the
country of the Belgae; and there is no more conclusive proof of the
hold which he had already obtained upon the Gallic tribes than the
fact that he was able to count, as securely as in Italy, upon finding
horses ready for each successive stage. He immediately proceeded to
inspect the various shipyards, near which the troops were encamped,
and was well satisfied with the manner in which his instructions had
been executed. ‘Thanks,’ he wrote, ‘to the extraordinary energy of the
troops, and in spite of the extreme deficiency of resources, about six
hundred vessels of the class specified and twenty-eight ships of war
had been built, and would probably be ready for launching in a few
days.’[1351] Caesar, who knew the stimulating power of discriminative
praise, bestowed hearty commendation upon officers and men, and gave
orders that the ships, as soon as they were ready for sea, should all
assemble in the Portus Itius. For this purpose he detached an adequate
[Sidenote: He is obliged to march to the country of the Treveri.]
number of troops. Meanwhile his presence was urgently required in
the country of the Treveri, a powerful tribe who inhabited parts of
Luxembourg and Rhenish Prussia, and whose name survives in that of
the modern Trèves. A squadron of cavalry furnished by this people had
served on his side in the battle with the Nervii, and had deserted in
a body at a moment when it seemed that he was doomed to defeat. Since
that day the Treveri had refused to send representatives to attend the
councils of Gallic magnates which he periodically convened; and he was
now informed that they were making overtures to the Germans. Unless he
recalled them to obedience, it was more than probable that while he
was absent in Britain, Gauls and Germans would raise a rebellion in
his rear. Accordingly, he marched against the malcontents with four
lightly equipped legions and eight hundred cavalry. Fortunately for him
the Treveri were not unanimous. Two rival leaders, Indutiomarus and
Cingetorix, were struggling for supremacy. Cingetorix at once threw
in his lot with Caesar, and gave him full information of all that was
going on. Indutiomarus began to raise levies, and prepared to resist;
but, finding that most of his fellow chieftains were going over to the
stronger side, he sent envoys to Caesar, and endeavoured to explain
away his conduct. Unwilling to lose time, Caesar feigned to accept
his excuses, and contented himself with taking hostages for his good
behaviour.
[Sidenote: Returning to the Portus Itius, he finds fleet and army
assembled.]
It was near the middle of June when he returned to the camp on the
Liane. More than eight hundred vessels of all sorts were in the
harbour, including numerous small craft, constructed by rich officers
who desired to make the voyage in comfort, by merchants who had
dealings with the troops, or by adventurers who, we may suppose, had
been attracted by stories of the wealth of Britain;[1352] but sixty
of Caesar’s ships had encountered contrary winds, and failed to
arrive.[1353] The entire Roman army, comprising eight legions, perhaps
about thirty-five thousand men, besides slingers, archers, and four
thousand Gallic cavalry, were assembled on the spot. The notables
from all the tribes had also repaired [Sidenote: He resolves to take
Gallic chiefs of doubtful fidelity as hostages to Britain.] thither
in obedience to Caesar’s summons. He was aware that there was much
smouldering discontent among them, and he intended to take all but the
few on whose fidelity he could depend, as hostages across the Channel.
Among these was one whose name, as written by Caesar, was Dumnorix,
and whose coins, bearing the legend DUBNOREIX,[1354] still testify to
the authority which he exercised. He was the most powerful chieftain
of the Aedui, the most powerful Gallic tribe, whose territories,
corresponding with the Nivernais and Western Burgundy, gave access
to all parts of Northern and Western Gaul; who, from the time when
the legions first entered Transalpine Gaul, had borne the honorary
title of ‘Friends and Allies of the Roman People’; and whom it had
been Caesar’s constant policy to treat with special favour. Dumnorix
was the leader of the anti-Roman faction which existed in this as in
almost every other Gallic tribe. He was a man of boundless ambition,
the vehemence of whose character was out of all proportion with his
judgement: he had amassed great wealth, which enabled him to maintain
an army of retainers; and he had great influence not only with the
lower orders in his own country but also with the Gauls of every tribe
who wished to rid themselves of the Roman dominion. For the last four
years his intrigues had caused anxiety to Caesar. He had been secretly
in league with the Helvetian invaders at the time when Caesar marched
to encounter them; and in the early part of the campaign his own
brother, the famous Druid, Diviciacus, as well as the chief magistrate
of his own tribe, had advised Caesar to beware of him. At that time
Caesar had not felt sufficiently secure in his new position to punish
him; he had simply given him a severe reprimand and a stern warning,
but had ever since employed spies to watch his movements. It was now
reported that Dumnorix had announced in the Aeduan tribal council that
Caesar intended to make him king, and that the announcement had been
received with alarm and indignation. There are writers who believe
that Caesar had really offered him the throne in order to purchase
his support: but it is hardly credible that he would have made such
a gross miscalculation; and there is more reason in concluding that
Dumnorix had spread a false report in order to estrange the loyal
Aeduans from Caesar’s side. At all events he was irreconcilable;
[Sidenote: Dumnorix resolves not to go.] and he determined that to
Britain he would not go. He began by imploring Caesar to allow him to
remain behind, pleading that he was not accustomed to the sea, and
dreaded it, and insisting that he was debarred by religious obligations
from leaving the Continent. Finding Caesar obdurate, he approached
his brother chieftains, and adjured them to join him in refusing to
go, assuring them that Caesar only wanted to get them out of Gaul in
order that he might safely put them to death. Caesar did his utmost
to keep him quiet, at the same time informing himself through his
agents of all [Sidenote: The fleet weatherbound.] that he said and
did. Meanwhile the fleet was lying idle in the harbour. All the
preparations were complete: but continuous north-westerly winds made
it impossible to sail; and we may safely presume that the troops, who
might be required to row the transports, were employed in learning to
use their oars. The two Ciceros were in constant correspondence; and
the elder brother was impatiently waiting for the announcement that the
campaign had begun. On the 2nd of July he wrote to Atticus, ‘Judging
from my brother Quintus’s letter, I imagine that by this time he is in
Britain. I am anxiously waiting for news of his movements.’[1355] The
fleet had been weatherbound then for about three weeks; and the chief
of Caesar’s commissariat, who succeeded in feeding forty thousand men
for so long a period in an unfriendly country, must have possessed rare
powers of organization. At length the wind shifted; and infantry and
cavalry began to embark. Suddenly, while every man in the force had
his thoughts concentrated on the work in hand, Caesar received news
that Dumnorix and his Aeduan troopers had gone. Instantly he stopped
the embarkation; and a strong detachment of cavalry was soon riding
in pursuit with orders to bring Dumnorix back, or, if he resisted,
to kill him on the spot: for, as Caesar afterwards said, ‘he thought
that a man who disregarded his authority when he was present would
not behave rationally in his absence.’[1356] [Sidenote: The fate of
Dumnorix.] Adjuring his retainers to be true to him, Dumnorix resisted
desperately; but he was surrounded and slain, passionately crying with
his last breath that he was a free man and a citizen of a free country.
[Sidenote: Caesar sets sail, leaving Labienus in charge of Gaul.]
It was about the 6th of July, probably the day after this episode, when
the embarkation took place.[1357] Commius, still friendly to Rome, was
to accompany the expedition, as well as Mandubracius, the Trinovantian
prince who had placed himself under Caesar’s protection. The slaughter
of Dumnorix, following the temporary submission of Indutiomarus, had
relieved Caesar from imminent danger: but he knew that to keep a hold
on the half-subdued and restless peoples whom he was leaving behind
would require all the ability of his ablest lieutenant; and there
are indications in his narrative that he hoped, if all went well,
to winter in Britain, and thus to find time not merely to deter the
Britons from combining with the Gauls, but to conquer the south-eastern
part of the country.[1358] Labienus therefore remained in charge of
the camp and port with three legions and two thousand cavalry. He was
to keep the expeditionary force supplied with corn, ascertain all
that was passing in Gaul, and act on his own discretion according to
circumstances. Among the divisional commanders that accompanied Caesar
was Gaius Trebonius, an intimate friend of Marcus Cicero,[1359] who,
two years before, had proposed, in the interests of the triumvirate,
the law by which the province of Syria was assigned to Crassus, and
the two provinces of Spain to Pompey. Late in the afternoon all was
ready for the start, the flotilla lying moored in the harbour with five
legions and two thousand cavalry on board. The ebb stream was running
slowly down the coast. Towards sunset the hawsers were cast off,[1360]
and the ships steered north by west before a light south-westerly wind.
The moon was invisible,[1361] but at that time of the year there is
no real night in these latitudes; and perhaps, as in the preceding
year, each vessel hoisted a lantern when the twilight waned. About
ten o’clock the stream began to run up the Channel, and for a time
the vessels made good progress. By midnight the leading division was
not far off the South Foreland, and somewhere near what is now the
southern end of the Goodwin Sands; but it is probable that in steering,
sufficient allowance had not been made for the current, and that the
shallow flat-bottomed vessels had already drifted to leeward away from
their true course. And now the wind, which had been gradually dying
down, almost entirely dropped, only retaining [Sidenote: The fleet
drifts north-eastward out of its course.] just sufficient force to
give steerage way. Borne along by a rapid flood, the armada drifted
into the North Sea; and about a quarter past three, when day broke,
Caesar descried the white cliffs of Kingsdown and the South Foreland
receding on the port quarter. Right opposite, but hardly discernible,
was the low coast on which he had landed in the previous year. We
may assume that when he saw where he was drifting he anchored for a
time. Presently the stream ceased to run up the Channel, and, after
a few minutes’ slack water, the ebb set in.[1362] The Romans had a
system of naval signalling,[1363] and either by this means or by oral
instructions conveyed from vessel to vessel, the order was given to go
about and run down Channel with the stream. The soldiers on board the
transports got out their oars. For some time their work was easy; but
when, not far from the spot where the South Sand Head Light Vessel is
now moored, the ships’ heads were turned in the direction of Sandwich,
they encountered a cross current setting towards the south-west.[1364]
Although the transports were heavily laden, they toiled with an energy
which earned Caesar’s warm admiration, and actually [Sidenote: The
landing-place, between Sandown Castle and Sandwich, reached by rowing.]
succeeded in keeping up with the galleys. About noon the whole fleet
had reached the landing-place; but no enemy was to be seen, and in
the course of the day a galley was speeding back across the Channel
with one of Caesar’s couriers on board, who carried, besides other
dispatches, a letter in which Quintus Cicero informed his brother that
all was well.[1365]
[Sidenote: Leaving the fleet at anchor in charge of a brigade, Caesar
marches against the Britons,]
While the troops and baggage were being disembarked, Caesar chose a
site for his camp, perhaps on the slight eminence near the village
of Worth. Some prisoners were soon brought in by the cavalry and
questioned. They stated that their countrymen had assembled in large
numbers to oppose the landing, but that, on observing the huge size of
the the armada, they had abandoned the shore and retreated to higher
ground inland. Caesar determined to march against them that very night,
and accordingly accepted the risk of not hauling his ships up on shore,
an operation which would have consumed valuable time. He had not
forgotten the disaster of the previous year; but, as the shore where he
now left the ships at anchor was not only perfectly open but sloped
very gently seaward, he felt little anxiety for their safety.[1366]
He mentioned this fact in his memoirs[1367] with an emphasis which
suggests that he wished to deprecate professional criticism. Moreover,
the storm which had wrought such havoc before had occurred on the night
of a full moon: the moon was now new; and it may be doubted whether
Caesar had studied the writings of the Greek astronomers, or consulted
the pilots, from whom he would have learned that the tides at new and
at full moon are virtually identical. Ten cohorts selected from the
various legions, or about four thousand men, and three hundred cavalry
were left, under the command of an officer named Quintus Atrius, to
protect the fleet. Soon after midnight Caesar set out against the
enemy. We may presume that he had sent a troop of cavalry in the
afternoon to reconnoitre; but he must have trusted to his prisoners for
information as to the whereabouts of the British force. It was posted
on high ground overlooking Durovernum, the village which stood upon the
site of Canterbury, and which the Romans afterwards linked by a system
of roads with their settlements at London, Reculver, Richborough,
Dover, and Stutfall near West Hythe. The general direction of Caesar’s
march is indicated by the road which runs across the gently undulating
and somewhat featureless country between Sandwich and Canterbury. He
had advanced about eleven miles when, in the early morning, he descried
the enemy’s cavalry and charioteers descending from high ground towards
the left bank of the Stour. The spot where he encountered them must
have been somewhere between Sturry on the east of Canterbury, and
Thanington on the west; and military experts who know the country
will probably conclude that it was near the latter.[1368] The enemy
had doubtless attempted to occupy the whole range of low hills which
closes the valley of the Stour between these two points, prepared to
oppose the legions wherever they might attempt to cross. It would seem,
however, that their resistance was comparatively feeble, perhaps
because they were surprised, and, having needlessly strung out their
forces, were unable to concentrate in time. Caesar [Sidenote: forces
the passage of the Stour near Canterbury,] may have sent a detachment
to turn their position: anyhow they were driven from the banks after a
combat which he recorded in a single sentence. Retreating to the higher
ground, they took up their position in a stronghold situated in the
midst of woods,--probably the earthwork, about a mile and a half west
of Canterbury, through which runs the Pilgrims’ Way, and within which,
as we have seen, have been discovered iron implements and weapons
of pre-Roman age.[1369] The legions, pressing after them, found the
entrances blocked by _abatis_; and when they attempted to force their
way in, the Britons, issuing from the woods in small groups, assailed
them with showers of missiles. It would appear from Caesar’s narrative
that the rampart, or at least a part of it, extended along the edge of
the wood. The 7th legion was selected for the assault. Advancing in a
dense column, with shields close-locked over their heads, they shot
earth or fascines into the ditch so as to form a causeway flush with
the top of the rampart; and it may be conjectured that the work was
performed by men who advanced between the files under the protection of
their comrades’ uplifted shields.[1370] [Sidenote: and storms a fort,
to which they had retreated.] In this way the entrenchment, which,
like all the British forts that Caesar saw, was weaker than the great
strongholds of Western Britain, was speedily captured with small loss;
and the Britons were expelled from the woods. The legionaries followed
up their success, but Caesar soon stopped the pursuit. He was afraid to
run the risk of letting his troops get entangled in a wooded country,
of the intricacies of which he was ignorant; and, as it was late in the
afternoon, he was obliged to utilize the remaining hours of daylight
for the construction of his camp.
[Sidenote: Next morning he sends three columns in pursuit,]
Early next morning he dispatched his cavalry in three columns, each
supported by a strong body of infantry, to hunt down the fugitives.
The pursuers had advanced a considerable distance from the camp, the
rearguard being still in sight,[1371] when some troopers rode up to
Caesar with a note from Atrius. A storm had arisen on the previous
night: the ships had parted from their anchors, collided with one
another, and almost all been dashed ashore and damaged. [Sidenote:
but is forced to recall them by news that many of his ships had been
wrecked.] Caesar sent gallopers to recall the pursuing columns, and
order them to march back to the coast, defending themselves, if
necessary, against a counter-attack, and started in person for the
scene of the wreck.[1372] When he arrived, he found that Atrius’s
report was accurate: about forty ships were totally destroyed; but,
after inspecting the rest, he saw that it would be possible to repair
them. In the course of the day the legions arrived. The men who had
enlisted as skilled craftsmen were segregated and set to work; and
galleys were sent to Labienus with a letter in which he was ordered
to dispatch gangs of shipwrights from his three legions, and to
employ the rest of the men in building new [Sidenote: He beaches the
ships, constructs a naval camp, and repairs damage.] vessels. Caesar
reluctantly concluded that the only way of preventing another disaster
was to have all the ships hauled up on land out of reach of the highest
spring tides. They were doubtless moved in the usual way, by capstans
over greased logs, which the Romans called _phalangae_;[1373] and then,
in order to secure them against attack, an earthwork was thrown up
round them, and connected with the existing camp. The amount of labour
which these operations entailed was enormous: but there were some
twenty thousand willing workers; and by employing them in relays all
day and all night, Caesar was able to complete the task in about ten
days. The repairs of course required a longer time.
[Sidenote: Results of the disaster.]
This second shipwreck was a calamity of which the mere loss in ships
formed the smallest part. It changed the course of the campaign. Why
had not Caesar restrained his eagerness to close with the enemy, and
employed every available man in beaching the vessels which he had
constructed with that very aim? Granted that it might not have been
possible to complete even the mere work of dragging them all out of
reach of the waves before the storm began, he would still have done
right in not presuming upon the favour of fortune. Nobody knew better
how necessary it is, especially in making war upon a half-civilized
enemy, to complete all preparations, even at the cost of delay, before
opening the campaign, so as to lose not a moment in following up an
initial success, and to give fugitives no time to recover from their
demoralization. Less than two days after he set foot in Britain he had
dealt the enemy a succession of heavy blows, and the game was in his
hands,--when all that he had done was undone by his own carelessness.
Britons saw Romans in full retreat, and concluded that they were not
invincible.
[Sidenote: Caesar again marches towards Canterbury. Cassivellaunus
elected commander-in-chief of the Britons.]
By the time when the naval camp was finished the season was far
advanced. It was near the end of the third week in July when Caesar
was able to renew his campaign. The Britons had made good use of
their respite. The tribes had suspended their feuds: Cassivellaunus
had been called upon by a general assembly of notables[1374] to
undertake the chief command with full powers; and a large force,
composed of contingents from all, or almost all, the cantons of the
south-eastern district, had marched to join the men of East Kent. We
may doubt whether the Trinovantes had not held aloof; but if they had
been forced to join the league, they were half-hearted. It is certain
that, before Caesar had been long in the island, they sent envoys,
promising submission and begging him to send Mandubracius back to them
as their ruler and to protect him against Cassivellaunus. He allowed
Mandubracius to depart, only stipulating that the Trinovantes should
give him forty hostages and provide grain for his army; and readers
who can interpret the _Commentaries_ will conclude that the embassy
was dispatched before he had advanced far into the interior, and
doubtless as soon as he had proved his superiority. He left the same
force as before--ten cohorts and three hundred cavalry--to protect
the camp, and marched once more in the direction of Canterbury. As
he was approaching the valley of the Stour, the enemy’s cavalry and
charioteers commenced a fierce running fight with his Gallic cavalry;
but they were beaten back at all points and driven to take refuge on
the [Sidenote: The Romans harassed by British charioteers.] wooded
heights near the river. The Gallic cavalry, however, over-eager to
pursue, and getting entangled in ground which was unknown to them,
suffered considerable loss; and soon afterwards, while the legionaries,
careless of danger, were engaged in entrenching their camp, the enemy
suddenly swooped down upon the cohort on guard and began to overpower
it. Caesar had not yet learned due respect for his enemy; otherwise he
would have kept a much more powerful force, as he had done on a similar
occasion in Gaul, to protect the working-parties. He sent two cohorts,
however, to support the struggling guard and cut off the retreat of the
assailants. These reinforcements were separated from one another by
a narrow interval: the men who composed them, and who had not served
in the preceding year, were unnerved by the novel tactics of the
charioteers; and the enemy boldly rushed through the interval, and got
back to the main body unhurt. Several additional cohorts, accompanied
by cavalry, were sent to retrieve the situation. The combat was clearly
visible from the camp; and Caesar saw that his troops, who had so often
routed their continental enemies, were at a serious disadvantage. The
Britons fought not in close order but in small groups, separated by
wide intervals; and when these were tired, their places were taken
by reserves. Whenever a group was hard pressed by the legionaries,
the men who composed it ran away: the Romans, weighted by their heavy
armour, were ineffective in pursuit; and, besides, accustomed as they
were to fight in compact masses, they and their officers naturally
failed to adapt themselves to new conditions. Again, when the Gallic
cavalry charged the charioteers, the latter drove rapidly away; and,
as soon as they had withdrawn their assailants from the support of the
legions, the warriors leaped to the ground, and, supported by their
own cavalry, fought as infantry, with the odds in their favour.[1375]
A tribune named Quintus Laberius Durus was killed; but at length the
reinforcements which Caesar sent up succeeded in beating back the
Britons, or at all events deterring them for the moment from renewing
their attack.
All this time Caesar was doubtless fighting to gain the line of the
road or trackway by which he would have to march westward into the
interior of Britain and assail the dominions of Cassivellaunus. But
it was of course out of the question to begin his march until he had
inflicted a crushing defeat upon the allies; and, as he saw now, their
game was to avoid a general action. On the following day, however, a
chance presented itself. In the morning the enemy, who had taken up a
position on the heights at some distance from the Roman camp, moved
down, as before, in scattered groups, and began to assail the cavalry
outposts, but with somewhat diminished vigour. The outposts fell back;
and presently the whole of the cavalry were sent out, along with three
of the legions, under Gaius Trebonius, on a foraging expedition. Part
of the force proceeded to cut grass, while the rest remained drawn
up in support. Suddenly the enemy rushed down from all points on the
foragers, and, made reckless by success, ‘did not even hesitate,’ as
Caesar wrote, ‘to attack the ordered ranks of the legions.’[1376]
[Sidenote: Trebonius routs the Britons.] The Romans charged them
fiercely, and took ample revenge for the previous day. The Britons
were driven from the field, hotly pursued by Trebonius and his men,
until the Gallic cavalry, relying upon the support of the legions,
which still followed as closely as they could, hunted them in headlong
rout, cutting them down in numbers, and never giving them a chance of
rallying. Not even the charioteers could get a moment’s respite, or
dared to dismount and turn [Sidenote: The British infantry disperse.]
upon their pursuers. This defeat was decisive. The tribal levies of
foot at once dispersed to their homes; and ‘from that time’, wrote
Caesar, ‘the enemy never encountered us in a general action.’[1377]
[Sidenote: War-chariots _versus_ Roman troops.]
Cassivellaunus had learned a lesson which his kinsmen on the other
side of the Channel were already taking to heart. His undisciplined
foot were evidently powerless to contend against the legions on a
fair field, and, except behind works, in a strong position, or in
attacking small bodies which had been carelessly isolated, they were
of little use. The Celtic infantry of the more warlike tribes were not
indeed to be despised. The Helvetii with their allies made a stubborn
fight against Caesar: the Parisian confederation under the veteran
Camulogenus tested the mettle of Labienus; and the issue of the battle
with the Nervii remained long doubtful. But in all these combats the
Celts had a great numerical advantage; and in all they were beaten
to the verge of annihilation. Cassivellaunus saw that his object was
not to be attained by regular warfare. Moreover, it is certain that,
during a prolonged campaign, he would have been unable to feed a large
army. But he still had four thousand charioteers with the cavalry
who supported them;[1378] and on them he determined to rely. The
success with which he had already used them makes us wonder why the
Continental Celts had abandoned the arm which their insular kinsmen
wielded with such effect. Less than a century before Caesar crossed the
Alps chariots had been generally employed in Eastern and in Central
Gaul.[1379] Chariots have been found in scores in the great sepulchres
of the Iron Age which have been opened in Burgundy and Champagne,
while in the British barrows their remains are extremely rare.[1380]
It is evident to every reader of the _Commentaries_ that Caesar was at
his wits’ end to know how to adapt his organization to this strange
form of resistance; and it is equally evident that on his own side
of the Channel he never encountered it at all. The most satisfactory
explanation is to be found in a passage of the _Commentaries_ from
which we learn that the Gauls spent large sums in buying well-bred
horses.[1381] Evidently they discarded chariots for cavalry when they
began to import from Southern Europe horses which were powerful enough
to carry big men and charge with effect.[1382] The German cavalry,
it is true, had only small underbred cattle; but they were virtually
mounted infantry.[1383] The British may have been well or ill mounted;
but for the most part British horses were no bigger than ponies,[1384]
able to draw a light car but not to gallop fast with heavy riders.
Still, whoever calls to mind how in the last Samnite War the Gallic
chariots routed the Roman cavalry,[1385] will perhaps doubt whether
the Gauls did well to abandon chariots altogether in favour of mounted
troops.
Nevertheless the reader who trusts to his first impressions of
Caesar’s narrative is prone to exaggerate the successes of the British
charioteers. Their object was to break up the formation of their
opponents; and this they could only do when carelessness gave them
an opening. The punishment which they inflicted upon the 7th legion
was invited by the almost incredible negligence of its commander: the
check which Caesar himself suffered in the following year befell an
outpost of inadequate strength. In irregular warfare chariots could
cause serious trouble; but the difficulty which Caesar found in dealing
with them was partly due to the fact that his army, like all Roman
armies, was weak in cavalry,--and in cavalry of the right kind. If he
could have taken to Britain one of those German squadrons with their
attendant light infantry which so effectively supported him in the war
with Vercingetorix, he would have had less trouble in his encounters
with the British charioteers.
[Sidenote: Caesar marches for the country of Cassivellaunus,]
Caesar now marched for the country of Cassivellaunus, who, as he
divined, intended thenceforth to wage a guerrilla warfare. The troops
must have carried in their wallets rations for several days, drawn
from the magazine in the naval camp; for they could not count upon
getting supplies from the farms till they reached the territory of
the Trinovantes; and we may be sure that Caesar, venturing into an
unexplored country and against so troublesome an enemy, dispensed
as far as possible with transport. What route he followed is an
interesting but perhaps insoluble question. He dismisses the story
of the march, which must have occupied nearly a week, in a single
sentence, which contains no clue. We know only that he started from
the neighbourhood of Canterbury, and that he crossed the Thames at or
not far from Brentford.[1386] It is, however, morally certain that he
marched either by the trackway on the line of which the Romans of a
later period made the great road called Watling Street, which crosses
the Medway between Rochester and Strood, or along the southern slope of
the chalk escarpment, and across the Medway at Aylesford or Halling.
All the antiquities of Roman or pre-Roman age that have been discovered
in Kent, west of the maritime tract which is bounded by a line drawn
from Reculver through Canterbury and Lympne to Romney, have come from
sites clustering alongside these routes.[1387] That Caesar makes no
mention of the Medway has no significance. He must have crossed it
somewhere; and it is certain that he crossed many rivers to which he
never alluded unless the passage had some tactical or strategical
importance. His narrative shows that his object was to inflict the
greatest damage possible upon the enemy’s homesteads and farms; and we
may reasonably suppose that he followed the route, leading through a
fertile and populous country, which his successors selected, diverged
from it somewhere near Rochester, and thence advanced by way of
Bromley. But the matter is of no great consequence. Caesar demands
from his readers not only attention and intelligence, but also expert
knowledge; but from those who possess these qualifications he rarely
withholds necessary information: when he baffles their curiosity, his
silence does not prevent them from understanding what is essential.
[Sidenote: whose chariots harass his cavalry.]
During a great part of the march Cassivellaunus dogged the Roman
column. Caesars object was to strike terror; and despoil the
inhabitants of their chief source of wealth,--their flocks and herds.
But Cassivellaunus soon taught him a lesson of caution. He succeeded
in ascertaining what route the Romans intended to pursue, and sent
messengers to warn the inhabitants to drive their cattle into the
woods and to fly for refuge thither themselves. Knowing every inch of
the country, and having the advantage of superior mobility, he would
conceal his force in some wooded spot, and when he saw the Roman
horsemen diverge from the column and ride forth to plunder, swoop down
upon them and inflict heavy loss. Caesar was compelled to keep his
cavalry, who were terrorized by these unforeseen attacks, in constant
touch with the infantry; while the legions, whose powers of endurance
were taxed to the uttermost, moved off the road from time to time, and
burned and ravaged whatever they could reach.[1388]
[Sidenote: Caesar crosses the Thames.]
Caesar had ascertained that the Thames, in that part of its course
which formed the southern boundary of the territory of Cassivellaunus,
was only fordable at one spot; and since the time of Camden it has
generally been supposed that this was close to Halliford,--the only
place, it is said, between Hurleyford, about two miles west of Great
Marlow, and the sea, whose name preserves the memory of an ancient
ford.[1389] Evidence, however, has lately been adduced which makes it
more probable that Caesar was describing Brentford; for, though the
name may only have denoted a ford over the Brent, in this part only
of the lower Thames have piles been discovered in dredging operations
which could reasonably be identified with the obstacles that threatened
the passage of the Roman army.[1390] When the column descended into
the valley, Caesar found that Cassivellaunus had anticipated him. The
further bank was fenced by a row of sharp stakes, behind which were
massed Cassivellaunus’s tribesmen; and Caesar learned from prisoners
and deserters that similar stakes, concealed by the water, were planted
in the bed of the river. He sent his cavalry behind cover to swim the
stream close by; and at the right moment the column of infantry plunged
into the water, and advanced to the attack. Caesar had calculated that
the British levies would be distracted by the onset of the cavalry
upon their flanks and rear; but the infantry were determined to have
the credit for themselves. We may suppose that, while they were
removing the stakes, the slingers and archers harassed the enemy.[1391]
‘The infantry,’ wrote Caesar, ‘advanced with such swiftness and dash,
though they had only their heads above water, that the enemy, unable
to withstand the combined onset of cavalry and infantry, abandoned the
bank and fled.’[1392]
[Sidenote: Cassivellaunus orders the kings of Kent to attack the naval
camp.]
But Cassivellaunus did not despair. Before Caesar crossed the Thames,
he had sent mounted messengers to order the four petty kings of Kent to
raise all their tribesmen instantly and make a sudden attack upon the
naval camp.[1393]
Meanwhile Caesar was moving eastward into the country of the
Trinovantes. Cassivellaunus haunted his line of march as before, and
pursued the same harassing tactics; but the legionaries succeeded in
doing considerable damage. [Sidenote: Caesar enters the country of
the Trinovantes, who furnish hostages and grain.] When, however, they
crossed the frontier of the Trinovantes, Caesar was careful to restrain
them from committing any act of violence. The Trinovantes punctually
handed over the hostages and delivered the grain which Caesar had
required from them; and several other tribes which had joined the
defensive league, seeing that they had been rewarded for their
[Sidenote: Five of the confederate tribes submit.] submission, sent
envoys to announce their surrender. These tribes were the Cenimagni,
the Segontiaci, the Ancalites, the Bibroci, and the Cassi. The last
three do not reappear in history: they were evidently dependent tribes,
and nothing is known about their geographical position except that they
lived somewhere in the basin of the Thames, on the west or possibly on
the north of the Trinovantian territory in Essex.[1394] The territory
of the Segontiaci, judging by coins, may have been conterminous with,
and was probably north of that of the Atrebates,[1395] who occupied
parts of Hampshire and Berkshire.[1396] The Cenimagni may have been
the people who dwelt in Suffolk and Norfolk,[1397] and who, under
the name of Eceni or Iceni, rose in revolt under Boadicea, a century
later, against the Romans. The envoys told Caesar that the stronghold
of Cassivellaunus was not far off, and that a large number of the
inhabitants with their flocks and herds had taken refuge in it.
Possibly it was Verulamium, near St. Albans,[1398] which was in later
times the capital of the son and successor of Cassivellaunus, though
Caesar seems to imply that there was no permanent settlement within
the fortress: at any rate it was not far west of the river Lea, which
formed the boundary of the Trinovantes. When Caesar arrived, he found
that the stronghold was protected by woods and marshes, and fortified
with a rampart and trench: but the legions, advancing on two sides,
speedily carried the place by assault: many of the Britons, as they
were endeavouring to escape, were caught and killed; and all their
cattle were taken.
[Sidenote: Attack on the naval camp repulsed.]
Meanwhile the counter-attack which Cassivellaunus had ordered had
been delivered. The extent of the naval camp, enclosing as it did
several hundred vessels, might appear disproportionate to the slender
force to which Caesar had entrusted its defence; but he had made no
miscalculation. Probably the entrenchment was protected at intervals
by towers like those which he used to strengthen his lines at Alesia,
and from which artillery could play upon the flanks of the assailants.
A chieftain named Lugotorix was chosen to lead the assault; but the
garrison made a sortie, beat off the Britons with considerable loss,
and captured their commander.
[Sidenote: Caesar’s hurried journey to the coast and its significance.]
It was perhaps just after this event that Caesar, accompanied by a
flying column, made a journey to the coast, of which he omits all
mention in the _Commentaries_. His silence, which can hardly have been
unintentional, certainly suggests that the news of the attack--perhaps
the information that it was about to be delivered--caused him serious
anxiety. On the 5th of August (the 1st of September of the unreformed
calendar) he wrote a letter from the naval camp to Marcus Cicero. A
service of dispatch vessels had been organized, which plied from time
to time between the Kentish coast and the Portus Itius. Caesar had
found time to write at least once before; and the younger Cicero had
sent a long series of letters to his brother, whose allusions to them
reveal something of the inner history of the campaign. In the first
week of August he replied to the one which had described the safe
arrival of the armada:--‘How I rejoiced at your letter from Britain.
I was nervous about the sea and the coast of that island. I don’t
underrate what you have still to do; but there is more ground for
hope than fear.’[1399] On the 1st of September he dispatched a long
letter, written in instalments, in which he acknowledged the receipt
of four successive letters:--‘I gather from yours,’ he said, ‘that we
have no occasion either for fear or exultation.’[1400] The letter to
which he here alludes--the first of the series--was written before the
16th of July, that is to say, while the construction of the naval camp
was still going on. Caesar’s first letter was written in a spirit so
friendly that it gave him the keenest pleasure, mingled with pain; for
he knew that Caesar could not long remain in ignorance of the death of
his daughter, Julia, the wife of Pompey. Towards the end of the letter
of September 1 he says, ‘Caesar wrote me a letter on the 5th of August,
which reached me on the 31st, satisfactory enough as regards affairs
in Britain, in which, to prevent my wondering at not getting one
from you, he tells me that you were not with him when he reached the
coast.’[1401] Caesar did not, it would seem, write again until the 29th
of August, after which about a fortnight elapsed before he quitted the
island; and it is hardly credible that he should have spent more than
five weeks inactive at the sea. The only conclusion is that he had some
urgent motive for leaving the main body of his army and undertaking
a journey of seventy miles, and that this journey was connected with
the attack upon the camp. Perhaps he desired to see for himself that
the defences were secure against any future attempt, to reinforce the
garrison, and to ascertain what progress had been made in the repair of
the fleet.[1402]
[Sidenote: Cassivellaunus sues for peace.]
But Cassivellaunus had by this time begun to lose heart. His country
had been harried without mercy; his people had been dragged off by
hundreds to be sold as slaves; and--what he valued most of all--his
cattle had been taken away from him. Discredited by reverses, he had
not been able to hold his ill-assorted confederates together; their
defection left him powerless to retrieve his fortunes; and his last
great stroke had failed. He therefore sent envoys to the Roman camp to
propose surrender, and requested Commius to negotiate for him.[1403]
Caesar, on his part, was glad to be able to leave the island with a
semblance of success. He had originally intended to winter in Britain
and renew the war in the following spring. But Labienus had just
warned him that the outlook in Gaul was threatening: the season for
campaigning was nearly at an end; and he was aware that Cassivellaunus
could still maintain a guerrilla warfare. He was obliged therefore to
content himself with demanding hostages, fixing a sum which the tribes
that had belonged to the league were to pay annually as tribute to
Rome, and admonishing Cassivellaunus to leave the Trinovantes and their
king unmolested.
[Sidenote: Caesar and his army return to Gaul.]
The hostages were handed over without delay; and Caesar, with his
army and his train of captives, marched back to the coast. He found
all the ships which it had been possible to repair ready for sea: but
the number of those which had been condemned was not inconsiderable;
and, as the prisoners were very numerous, he determined to effect the
transport in two successive trips. With the first convoy went one of
his couriers, bearing letters from him and Quintus to the elder Cicero.
Their purport is preserved in one of Cicero’s letters to Atticus:--‘On
the 26th of September I received letters from my brother Quintus and
from Caesar, dated from the nearest coasts of Britain on the 29th of
August. They had settled affairs in Britain, received hostages, and
imposed tribute, though they had got no booty, and were on the point
of bringing the army back.’[1404] Caesar expected that when the empty
transports returned, they would be accompanied by sixty ships, which
had just been launched by Labienus; but only a few either of the old or
the new vessels arrived, the rest having been driven back by contrary
winds. Day after day Caesar waited for them with increasing anxiety;
for the equinoctial gales might soon be expected. At length he made up
his mind that he could wait no longer. The few available vessels were
inconveniently crowded: but the sea was perfectly smooth, and, leaving
the Kentish coast between [Sidenote: About Sept. 15.] nine and ten
at night, the fleet rowed into the harbour at break of day. In spite
of all the perils to which they had been exposed in their numerous
voyages, not a man had been lost at sea, not a ship had foundered in
either year.
While Caesar was still in Britain he had begun to collect materials
for a description of the island and of the manners [Sidenote:
Caesar’s description of Britain.] and customs of its inhabitants.
Partly, indeed, it may have been based upon the account of the Greek
historian, Timaeus, who had himself derived material from the journal
of Pytheas;[1405] but certain sentences embodied the results of his
own observation. What specially struck him as he marched through the
country was the density of the population and the superiority in
material civilization of the people of Kent. ‘The population,’ he
wrote, ‘is immense: homesteads, closely resembling those of the Gauls,
are met with at every turn; and cattle are very numerous.’[1406] His
curiosity was excited by the statement, which he had seen in one of his
Greek authorities, and the origin of which we have already endeavoured
to trace,[1407] that in some of the islands off the mainland there
was continuous night for a month about the winter solstice. ‘Our
inquiries,’ he tells us, ‘could elicit no information on the subject;
but by accurate measurements with a water-clock we ascertained that the
nights were shorter than on the Continent.’[1408] It would be useless
to guess from what authority he derived the puzzling statement that
groups of ten or twelve men had wives in common, brothers sharing with
one another and fathers with their sons;[1409] in other words, that one
of the British customs was polyandry. Thoughtless commentators have
condemned the passage as simply untrue: it has been explained as the
outcome of a misunderstanding; and an eminent scholar, with a theory
that needed every support, has insisted that it was merely a blundering
description of the primitive institution of matriarchy, which he
believed to have survived among the Picts of a later time.[1410] We
can only be sure that neither matriarchy nor polyandry existed among
the dominant Celts; but it is permissible to suppose that certain
primitive communities in remote districts had some usage which gave
colour to Caesar’s statement. But perhaps the most remarkable feature
in his description was the approximate accuracy of his estimate of the
size of the island. He was told that its circumference was two thousand
miles; and this information was certainly not derived either directly
or indirectly from Pytheas, whose estimate, if Strabo has reported
it correctly, was monstrously exaggerated.[1411] On the other hand,
Caesar, although, like Pytheas, he placed Ireland in its true position,
imagined, in common with other geographers who derided Pytheas’s
teaching, that the Gallic coast, from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, was
roughly parallel with Southern Britain.[1412]
[Sidenote: Review of Caesar’s invasions of Britain.]
The story of these invasions is not without interest for students
of military history. In Britain Caesar was confronted by tactical
problems of an entirely strange kind; and he did not dissemble the
difficulty which he had experienced in attempting to solve them. The
Roman soldiers had been trained to encounter an enemy who fought in
close order; if ever, in the stress of unforeseen circumstances,
such as those which beset the foragers of the 7th legion, they found
themselves cut off from the standards which they were accustomed to
rally round, they felt that they were but the units of a mob.[1413] It
was not perhaps that they lacked the intelligence which enabled the
German soldier in 1870 to adapt himself to new conditions. The coolness
with which, in the fearful combat with the Nervii, each legionary shook
off the effects of his surprise, and, disentangling himself from the
press, ‘fell in by the standard he first caught sight of,’[1414] and
fought as steadily as under his own centurion, shows that in Caesar’s
soldiers no moral, as no physical, military qualification was wanting.
But encompassed by those rushing chariots, assailed by those nimble
groups of skirmishers who would not come to sword’s point with them,
they found themselves helpless. And when they advanced with ranks
closed--for the enemy never succeeded in breaking their formation--the
charioteers could easily keep out of the way and concentrate the whole
weight of their attack upon the cavalry, which they had lured away
from their support. Cassivellaunus handled his levies with commendable
skill; and if he did not deserve from Caesar the admiration that
makes itself felt in the terse chapters which mirror the tremendous
personality of Vercingetorix, he was a leader of no ordinary capacity,
raised to his high place by merit alone. For the mistake which gave
Trebonius the opportunity of dealing him that staggering blow near the
banks of the Stour--the rush of his tribesmen, intoxicated by success,
upon the ranks of the legions--not his lack of judgement but their
lack of discipline was responsible. And if, instead of disbanding his
infantry and following Caesar’s march with his chariots, he had then
had the hardihood to let Caesar go his way, and, leaving his cattle,
his homesteads, and his granaries to their fate, had hurled his entire
force, combined with the levies of the Kentish kings, against the
little garrison which held the naval camp, it might have gone hardly
with Caesar. For, like the weak cohorts with which Galba strove to hold
his camp in the Valais against a host of mountaineers, the garrison
would have been compelled to defend themselves without respite against
assailants whose numbers enabled them to fight and rest by turns; and
if, like Galba’s men, they had attempted to disperse their enemies
by a sortie, they would have been attacked in flank and rear by the
charioteers and cavalry. Perhaps, indeed, Cassivellaunus saw what to
do, but was not sufficiently master of his countrymen to do it. He
who can keep in hand an aggregate of levies, shattered by defeat in
a regular combat which they should never have fought, must needs be
a king of men. Caesar understood the weaknesses of half-civilized
tribes, and knew what risks he might fairly run. Just as Vercingetorix
was compelled by his tribesmen to let go his hold upon the country of
the Bituriges, where he barred Caesar’s advance, and to leave the way
open to him by returning to succour their farms, so Cassivellaunus, we
may be sure, would not have been able to withstand the clamours that
would have bidden him go to the rescue of the threatened dominions
of the Catuvellauni and their allies, even if, by sacrificing them,
he could have cut the invaders’ communications, and detained him a
prisoner in Britain. One may be allowed perhaps to speculate whether
Caesar, if he had himself had much experience of British tactics in
his first expedition, would have been able, without sacrificing the
advantage of discipline, to train his troops in the intervening winter
to adapt their formation to the methods of attack which they had to
expect; or whether it would have been possible for him then, as it
was two years later, to enlist the invaluable aid of German cavalry:
but in his second campaign he speedily corrected the mistakes which
his sanguine temperament had led him to make; and in his mode of
conducting the war he conformed so closely to the maxims which the
foremost British soldier of our time, himself an enthusiastic admirer
of the _Commentaries_, has laid down for generals who have to command
against uncivilized enemies,[1415] that one might almost suppose those
maxims to have been derived from a study of the campaign. By marching
in the night to seek out his enemy after his disembarkation, he gained
the advantage which is the reward of a secretly-planned, sudden, and
swift movement against an undisciplined foe. Instantly following up his
success, he taught the fugitives that the strongholds which kept their
own countrymen at bay were of little avail against Roman soldiers. As
soon as he was free to advance into the interior, he demoralized his
enemies by rapidity of movement and incessant energy; and by ruthlessly
destroying their crops, seizing the stores upon which they depended for
subsistence, and driving off the cattle, which were their most valued
possession, he succeeded, within a few weeks, in bringing the campaign,
which fortune would not permit him to continue, to a successful
conclusion.
CHAPTER VIII
THE RESULTS OF CAESAR’S INVASIONS OF BRITAIN
[Sidenote: 54 B.C.--A.D. 43.]
Caesar’s contemporaries and the Roman writers of succeeding [Sidenote:
The importance of Caesar’s British expeditions under estimated by his
contemporaries and by historians.] generations did not over-estimate
the results of his British campaigns. The well-known line of Lucan--
_Territa quaesitis ostendit terga Britannis_[1416]--
is only worth quoting as an instance of the poet’s animosity; but
the impression left by the various passages which refer to Caesar’s
expeditions is, that public expectation, having been wrought up to a
high pitch, had suffered disappointment.[1417] Everybody knew that
Caesar had not incurred the vast expense of his second expedition
merely for plunder or to deter the Britons from aiding the Gauls: they
gathered from his own book that he had aimed at conquest; and they
could see no more than that he had failed. Tacitus came nearest to the
truth when he said that ‘Julius, though by a successful engagement
he struck terror into the inhabitants and gained possession of the
coast, must be regarded as having indicated rather than transmitted the
acquisition to posterity’.[1418] But even this judgement was based upon
imperfect knowledge; and the tendency of modern historians, including
the greatest scholar of them all, has been to underrate the importance
of what Caesar had achieved.
For although Caesar had failed to achieve his aim, he had opened a new
world to his countrymen; had proved the facility with which it could
be conquered; and had done all that opportunity permitted to pave
the way for the conquest. He directed the course of British history
into a new channel. He forced the most civilized peoples of the island
to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome, and made it clear to those of
them who could read the signs of the times that the enforcement of
that supremacy would not be long delayed. He impressed upon them such
respect for the Roman power that the avowed object with which he had
invaded the country was effectually gained:--the Britons ceased to
abet the resistance of their kinsmen on the other side of the Channel.
He showed that the key to the conquest was to take advantage of the
jealousy between the family of Cassivellaunus and their rivals. In
the presence of these facts, the question whether the tribute which
he imposed was ever actually paid is merely academical; but the great
scholar who required us to believe that ‘it is certain that the
stipulated tribute was never paid’[1419] made an assertion which is not
only improbable but is opposed to such evidence as we possess. Mommsen
did not fully appreciate the severity of the punishment which had been
inflicted upon Cassivellaunus, or the hold over him which Caesar could
exert through his hostages. It is probable indeed that Diodorus,[1420]
when he said that Caesar forced the Britons to pay tribute, was only
putting his own construction upon Caesar’s words: but what is certain
is that the Britons, although in the reign of Augustus they were not
required to pay tribute, were obliged to pay duties at the Gallic
harbours upon the goods which they exported to and imported from Gaul;
and it is not unreasonable to conjecture that these charges may have
been imposed as an equivalent for a tribute which could no longer have
been collected except by an irresistible army.[1421] But the influence
which Caesar exercised upon the destinies of Britain was communicated
chiefly through Gaul. In the three years which followed his departure
the Britons saw the conquest of Gaul completed: while the civil war
ran its course they saw that Gaul made no effort to throw off the
Roman yoke; and as time passed and the provinces settled down in the
grasp of Augustus, they saw that Gaul was incorporated in the Roman
Empire. Meanwhile in Britain the history of Gaul was being enacted over
again. In the earlier half of the first century before our era Roman
traders, settled in Gallic towns, had prepared the way for the legions
of Julius: in the later half Roman or Romanized traders who found it
profitable to deal with Britain prepared the way for the legions of
Claudius.
[Sidenote: Development of British commerce.]
In Strabo’s time the Britons still imported ornaments of various kinds
from the Continent, vases of amber and glass, gold necklets, and ivory
for the decoration of horse trappings. Among their exports were slaves,
which shows that intertribal warfare was still rife, and, if Strabo’s
statement is to be taken literally, corn, cattle, and iron.[1422]
Representations of horned cattle, sheep, and pigs are found so often
upon British coins[1423] that we can easily understand how the graziers
should have been able to spare of their abundance; but, although ears
of corn are figured on some of Cunobeline’s coins,[1424] it requires
more faith to believe that the population by whose density Caesar was
amazed grew enough corn to satisfy not only their own requirements,
but those of their continental neighbours, and that the Gauls, whose
resources were sufficient to enable them to feed Caesar’s army, were
obliged to import grain. One would have supposed too that the output of
the Gallic iron mines, which Caesar mentions, would not have required
to be supplemented from Britain; and that the iron-workers of the Weald
had enough to do in supplying the wants of their own countrymen. But,
though Britain was not as opulent as Gaul, it would seem that some of
the chiefs in the southern and eastern districts amassed a considerable
amount of wealth. Tacitus[1425] tells us that Prasutagus, who was king
of the Iceni about 60 A.D., was renowned for his riches; and, like
Dumnorix the Aeduan, he may have acquired them in part from tolls.
It has been maintained that the tin trade, which had once been so
flourishing, and which certainly flourished during the later period of
the Roman occupation, ceased about the beginning of the Christian era,
and was suspended for the next two hundred years: but the mere absence
of ingots of tin bearing the Roman stamp is hardly sufficient to
establish a theory which, intrinsically, is so improbable; and it seems
more reasonable to conclude that the mines were continuously worked,
but not until the third century under Roman control.[1426]
[Sidenote: The British inscribed coinage and its historical value.]
But the notices of Britain which appear in the writings of Strabo
and Diodorus are the least important sources of our knowledge. More
valuable is the systematic classification of British coins which has
been accomplished during the last fifty years. They show how thoroughly
Roman ideas had permeated British civilization before the legions
returned to the island, and enable us to trace in outline the course
of British political history during the century that elapsed between
the departure of Julius and the invasion of Claudius Caesar. Soon
after the former event the numismatic art of Britain entered upon
its second period. Coins of silver, copper, bronze, and tin were now
coming into use;[1427] and the need that was beginning to be felt for
small change testifies to an advance in material civilization. On the
site of Verulamium have been found gold coins of two values, silver
of one, and bronze of three.[1428] Perhaps we must also regard as a
sign of progress increased ingenuity in fraud: at all events besides
the authorized mints there were forgers, who made a living by passing
coins of base metal thinly plated with gold.[1429] Uninscribed coins
were still struck, especially in the remoter districts,[1430] and
remained in circulation in the time of Claudius;[1431] but from about
30 B.C. the greater number of new coins bore the name either of the
prince or of the tribe in whose territories they were minted, and in
some cases also the name of the town in which the mint was situated.
This evidence shows that Verulamium and Camulodunum were the chief
political centres of Southern Britain;[1432] and it is remarkable that
the name of Londinium, although it may even then have been the chief
commercial town, as it certainly was from the very beginning of the
Roman occupation,[1433] does not appear upon any British coin which has
yet come to light.[1434] The earliest of the inscribed coins naturally
belonged to the south-eastern parts of the country:[1435] the northern
tribe of the Brigantes were the last to adopt them;[1436] and not
a single specimen has been discovered which can be assigned to the
Durotriges.[1437] Of the course of events in the northern and western
regions history tells us nothing, and coins but little: indeed there is
no evidence that the tribes of Scotland, Wales, Northumberland, Durham,
Cumberland, Westmorland, Shropshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall even now
had coins at all;[1438] and it was not until some time after Caesar’s
departure that the inhabitants of Gloucestershire, northern Wiltshire,
and Somersetshire began to use them.[1439] Probably the iron bars which
have been already described were still current[1440] in the midlands
and the west; and Solinus affirmed that in his time the people of the
Scilly Islands refused money and traded by barter.[1441] Coins bearing
the simple inscription, CATTI, which has been assumed to be that of a
tribe, have been found in Worcestershire, Monmouthshire, Somersetshire,
Devonshire, and Cornwall;[1442] and it has been hastily concluded
that some of the remoter British tribes, like many of those of Gaul,
had expelled their kings.[1443] But our most experienced numismatist
thinks that the inscription represents the name of the prince by whom
the coins were minted;[1444] and one would be inclined to believe
that the more backward north and west were then, as they were sixteen
centuries later, the strongholds of conservatism.[1445] The evidence
which relates to Southern Britain is less flimsy; and it points to the
conclusion that the course of events in that part of the country was
leading inevitably to the Roman conquest.
[Sidenote: The dynasties of Cassivellaunus and Commius.]
The history of Southern Britain in this period, if we disregard
Dorsetshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall, is the history of two
dynasties,--that of Caesar’s old antagonist, Cassivellaunus, and that
of his old ally, Commius. Of the later life of Cassivellaunus nothing
is known; but it would seem probable that the recollection of the
punishment which the legions had inflicted upon him and the knowledge
that his hostages were in Caesar’s power were sufficient to induce
him to obey Caesar’s last injunction and to leave the Trinovantes
[Sidenote: Tasciovanus.] and their king, Mandubracius, unmolested.
About 30 B.C., or perhaps a few years earlier, he was succeeded by his
son, Tasciovanus.[1446] The earlier coins of this prince were purely
British in character; but those of later date are adorned with the
figures of Pegasus and centaurs, while one of them is imitated from a
coin of Augustus, which was first struck in 13 B.C.;[1447] and their
number and variety are so great that the reign of Tasciovanus must
have extended over a long period,--not improbably until about A.D.
5.[1448] His dominions, which were perhaps originally confined to the
country of the Catuvellauni, in whose capital, Verulamium, most of
his coins were struck, ultimately included, it should seem, not only
those of the Trinovantes, but also of the [Sidenote: Epaticcus and
Cunobeline.] Segontiaci and parts of Northamptonshire.[1449] He left
several sons, among whom were Epaticcus and Cunobeline. The coins
of the former, which bear the abbreviated Latin inscription TASC.
FIL.--‘son of Tasciovanus’--have all been found either in the western
part of Surrey or the east of Wiltshire; and it has been inferred that
he either succeeded to the western portion of his father’s dominions
or conquered territory which had never been subject to him.[1450]
Epaticcus was, however, completely overshadowed by his brother, who,
under the name of Cymbeline, has been immortalized by Shakespeare.
There may perhaps be a kernel of truth in the statement of Geoffrey of
Monmouth, that he was [Sidenote: Cunobeline’s coins prove growth of
Roman influence in Britain.] educated by Augustus:[1451] at all events
his silver and copper coins bear witness to the growing influence of
Roman culture; and many of them must have been designed either by
Romans or by artists who had received Roman training. One of his silver
coins, in the opinion of the highest authority, is characterized by
exquisite workmanship, ‘worthy of a Greek artist;’[1452] and some of
them suggest that not long after the commencement of the Christian era
the worship of Hercules had been introduced into Britain.[1453] Not
one of the coins bearing his name which have so far been discovered
was struck at the mint of Verulamium, from which, as we have seen,
those of his father had mainly issued: the name of Camulodunum appears
upon them all; and the conclusion seems warranted that he inherited
the eastern part of his [Sidenote: His conquests.] father’s dominions,
and extended them by subduing the Trinovantes,--the hereditary enemies
of his family.[1454] It is not improbable that he had begun to reign
about 5 B.C., while his father was still alive; and that he conquered
the Trinovantes before his father died.[1455] The area which was under
his immediate rule when he was at the height of his power included
perhaps, besides their country and that of the Catuvellauni, a part of
that of the Dobuni, who inhabited what is now Gloucestershire;[1456]
but it would seem that he also exercised a general supremacy over
the whole of the south-eastern part of the island.[1457] Suetonius
was so impressed by the fame of his power that he described him as
_Britannorum rex_,--‘King of the Britons.’[1458]
[Sidenote: Flight of Dubnovellaunus and Tincommius(?), the son of
Commius, to Rome.]
Cunobeline’s conquest of the Trinovantes appears to have been
one of the causes which led to the flight, briefly chronicled by
Augustus on the monument of Ancyra,[1459] of two British princes
who sought for Roman aid. Their names, as recorded on the stone,
were DVMNOBELLAV[_nus_], and, if we are to accept the testimony of
Chishull,[1460] an antiquary of a past generation, TIM.... The name
of the former, as it is spelled on British coins, was Dubnovellaunos.
Those of his coins which appear to have been circulated earliest have
been found only in Kent, which he probably at one time ruled.[1461]
His later coins tend to show that he afterwards annexed the territory
of the Trinovantes, from which he was in his turn expelled by
Cunobeline.[1462] But who was the prince who with him undertook the
long journey to Rome? The letters TIM, if indeed M was really graven
upon the monument, were of course only the first three of another name;
and it is possible that Chishull may have mistaken one or perhaps
two broken letters for M, or, since M and N were often confused,
that the engraver may have been misled by his copy.[1463] Be this
as it may, there is only one known name with which TIM ... can be
identified,--that of Tincommius, who called himself on some of his
coins TINCOM[_mios_] COMMI FILI[_us_] REX[1464]--‘King Tincommius, son
of Commius.’ In order to understand the history of Tincommius, we must
trace the later career of the Commius who was, beyond all reasonable
doubt, his father,[1465]--the king of the Atrebates who had accompanied
Caesar to Britain.
[Sidenote: The later adventures of Commius.]
Commius had of course been liberally rewarded for his services:
but in the great Gallic insurrection of 52 B.C. he had thrown in
his lot with Vercingetorix; and he was one of the four generals to
whose joint direction was entrusted the command of the Pan-Gallic
host which marched to relieve the latter when he was beleaguered in
Alesia. ‘Caesar,’ we read in the seventh _Commentary_, ‘had found
Commius a loyal and serviceable agent in former years in Britain;
and, in acknowledgement of these services, he had granted his tribe
immunity from forced contributions, restored to it its rights and
laws, and placed the Morini under his authority. Yet so intense was
the unanimous determination of the entire Gallic people to vindicate
their liberty and recover their ancient military renown, that no
favours, no recollection of former friendship, had any influence with
them, but all devoted their energies and resources to the prosecution
of the war.’[1466] Patriotism, however, was not the only motive of
Commius: he had a reason for the bitterness of his hostility, which
Caesar does not mention, but which we learn from Caesar’s friend, Aulus
Hirtius, who wrote the last of the _Commentaries on the Gallic War_. In
the winter of 53-52 B.C., while Caesar was absent in Cisalpine Gaul,
Commius took an active part in forming the nucleus of the coalition
of which Vercingetorix was destined to be the leader; and Labienus,
who found out his designs, commissioned the tribune Volusenus to
assassinate him. Commius escaped with a severe wound; and in the year
which followed the overthrow of Vercingetorix he formed, in conjunction
with a chief of the Bellovaci, a fresh coalition against Caesar, who
was obliged to exert all his strength in order to subdue it. For
some time Commius led the life of a brigand chief, and succeeded in
capturing several convoys which were on their way to Caesar’s winter
camp in the country of the Atrebates. He made himself so formidable
that Mark Antony sent Volusenus to make a second attempt to kill him;
and although he again escaped, he ultimately surrendered on the express
condition that he should never again be brought face to face with any
Roman.
[Sidenote: His conquests in Britain.]
When and why Commius took up his abode in Britain is not known; but
some probability may be claimed for the conjecture that his motive was
to check the encroachments of the Catuvellauni.[1467] No coins have
been found which can with absolute certainty be ascribed to him:[1468]
but it is admitted that he issued coins before Tasciovanus, who, as
we have seen, began to reign at least as early as 30 B.C.;[1469]
and before his death he became overlord of the maritime tribes of
South-Eastern Britain on the right bank of the Thames.[1470] He
[Sidenote: Tincommius, Verica, and Eppillus.] left three sons,
Tincommius, Verica, and Eppillus; and almost all their coins have been
found in Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and Hampshire.[1471] Each of these
sons described himself on his coins as REX, and each of them appears
to have had a kingdom of his own, Tincommius ruling the Regni, who
inhabited Sussex, Eppillus the Cantii, and Verica the Atrebates.[1472]
The dominions of Verica cannot, however, be certainly defined. There
is some reason to suppose that he held sway over the Atrebates of
Belgium as well as over those of Britain; for certain coins found in
the north of France, and closely resembling others that are common in
the south-eastern counties of England, are inscribed with a monogram
which appears to denote the abbreviation VE.[1473] It should seem that
Eppillus, at some time, was king of the Atrebates, for some of his
coins have the legend CALLEV,--an abbreviated form of Calleva, the
chief town of that tribe.[1474] Certain coins, however, exist which
apparently bear the names of all the three brothers, a fact which
can only be explained on the theory that at one time they exercised
a joint sovereignty over the dominions which had belonged to their
father;[1475] while others are inscribed with the names of Verica
and Eppillus only.[1476] It has been assumed that these coins were
not struck until after the death of Tincommius;[1477] but another
explanation seems possible. Why did Tincommius, alone of the three
brothers, solicit the protection of Augustus, and why did he undertake
the journey to Rome in conjunction with Dubnovellaunus? Numismatic
evidence has led to the belief that Dubnovellaunus had once ruled over
the Cantii;[1478] and if so, Eppillus, who afterwards acquired dominion
over the same tribe, probably dispossessed him. Dubnovellaunus, as we
have already seen, appears to have once ruled over the Trinovantes as
well, and to have been expelled from their country by Cunobeline. These
successive reverses may have been the motive for the journey which
he undertook to Rome; and when we consider that certain coins bear
the names of Eppillus and Verica, without that of Tincommius, which
on others appears side by side with theirs, it seems possible that
Tincommius, finding that his brothers were leagued together against
him, threw in his lot with another prince who had been as unfortunate
as himself. This conjecture is perhaps somewhat strengthened by the
fact that one of the coins of Tincommius bears, along with TIN--the
abbreviated form of his name--the inscription DV,[1479] which has
baffled the acumen of numismatists, but which, on the analogy of
TC--one of the abbreviations of TINCOMMIOS[1480]--may possibly stand
for DUBNOVELLAUNOS.[1481]
How the fugitives were received we are not told; but it is certain
that Augustus did not grant them armed assistance; nor is there
any evidence that they ever recovered power. [Sidenote: Augustus
contemplates an invasion of Britain.] As early as 34 B.C. Augustus
had marched into Gaul with the intention, as was generally believed,
of invading Britain; but, owing to an insurrection in Dalmatia,
he was compelled to abandon his resolve.[1482] For several years,
however, it was expected that he would sooner or later complete the
work which his adoptive father had begun; and this expectation was
voiced in the poetry of the time. About the year 30 B.C. Vergil[1483]
prayed that ‘far off Thule’ might obey Augustus; and Horace, in odes
which seem to have been officially inspired, called upon Fortune
to preserve him in his expedition against the Britons, ‘remotest
inhabitants of the world,’[1484] and foretold that when they and the
Parthians were brought under the imperial sway he would be hailed a
god upon earth.[1485] In 27 and again in 26 B.C. Augustus marched
into Gaul with the ostensible purpose of invading Britain, but again
without result.[1486] But the latest of these dates was earlier
than the flight of Tincommius and Dubnovellaunus; and thenceforward
Augustus abandoned all thought of [Sidenote: Why he abandoned his
intention.] invading Britain.[1487] The cause of his inaction is
discernible in two passages of Strabo’s _Geography_,[1488] which
give the official explanation of the imperial policy. The conquest of
Britain would be very costly; and it was unlikely that the revenue
would be more than sufficient to defray the expense of the garrison
and the administration: the duties levied at the Gallic harbours on
goods imported from and exported to Britain were more productive than
any tribute; besides, Britain was too weak to be dangerous, and its
conquest was therefore unnecessary. Possibly we may gather from the
prominence which is given in the monument of Ancyra to the petition of
Tincommius and Dubnovellaunus that it was officially interpreted as a
sign of the virtual submission of the Britons.
[Sidenote: Continued growth of Roman influence in Britain.]
This confidence indeed is not difficult to understand. The conjecture
that at the courts of Commius, of Tasciovanus, and of Cunobeline
Latin was the official speech[1489] may perhaps be somewhat rash:
but at all events Latin was the language of the mint; and perhaps it
is not unreasonable to suppose that, as some Pannonian Celts were
versed in Latin literature,[1490] a Briton here and there was equally
accomplished. Roman silver coins were already eagerly accepted, on
account of their purity, in Southern Britain.[1491] And if Rufina, the
young British wife of a Roman, whose praises Martial sang,[1492] could
hold her own in Italian society, we may realize that before the Roman
conquest Britain had begun to be Romanized.
[Sidenote: Cessation of British coinage in certain districts which had
belonged to the sons of Commius.]
With the sons of Commius the British coinage in the districts which
they had ruled, with the sole exception of Kent, came to an end.[1493]
It may be that the inhabitants had begun, like the Gauls with whom they
traded, to use only Roman money; but, as the coinage of Kent continued,
the more probable explanation would seem to be that they were no
longer able to make head against the King of the Catuvellauni.[1494]
Tincommius and Dubnovellaunus were not the only British [Sidenote:
Relations of Cunobeline with Rome.] princes who paid their respects to
the emperor. ‘In our time,’ says Strabo, ‘various British chieftains
gained the friendship of Augustus Caesar by sending embassies and
performing services; placed votive offerings in the Capitol; and
made almost the whole island familiar to the Romans.’[1495] Among
them, we can hardly doubt, was Cunobeline, whose coins, like those of
his father, testify that Roman mythology had already taken root on
British soil,[1496] and who, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth,[1497]
voluntarily paid tribute to Rome. If there is any truth in Geoffrey’s
statement, the tribute must have been the price paid for moral support.
During the reign of Tiberius, who adhered to the conservative and
moderate policy of his stepfather, the relations of Cunobeline and of
Britain with Rome apparently remained unchanged: history only relates
that some soldiers of Germanicus, who had been shipwrecked on the
British coast, were sent back by British princes.[1498] It can hardly
be doubted, however, that the conquest of Britain was contemplated by
Roman statesmen as inevitable: to leave independent the Celtic island
which was so near the conquered Celtic mainland [Sidenote: His exiled
son, Adminius, takes refuge with Caligula.] was unnatural, and could
not be permanently safe.[1499] The latter part of Cunobeline’s reign
was clouded by domestic quarrels; and in A.D. 40, when he was an old
man, his son Adminius,[1500] whom he had driven into exile, threw
himself on the mercy of Caligula, who was at the time in Gaul, and
offered to surrender his father’s kingdom. The feather-pated emperor
sent messengers to Rome, who were charged to announce to the Senate in
the temple of Mars the submission of the whole island;[1501] but the
magniloquent and mendacious message testifies not only to his vanity
but to the fame of Cunobeline.
[Sidenote: Death of Cunobeline.]
Within the next three years the great king died, leaving, besides
Adminius, three other sons who still remained in Britain,--Caratacus,
Togodumnus, and, as we may conjecture, one Bericus, who fled over
sea. Caratacus, whose name is more familiar under the erroneous form
Caractacus, was the prince who in later years opposed a desperate
resistance to the Roman conquest of Western Britain. After Cunobeline’s
death he and Togodumnus assumed royal power, and perhaps combined
to exclude Bericus from any share in the [Sidenote: Unpopularity of
his dynasty intensified on the accession of his sons, Caratacus and
Togodumnus.] inheritance of their father’s dominions.[1502] It is
possible that Bericus had some influence with the Iceni, who were
bitterly hostile to the dynasty of Cassivellaunus and his successors,
and were prepared to join the Romans if they should invade the island.
But another explanation has been proposed. There are late coins of the
Iceni which bear the name of a prince named Antedrigus, who later still
issued coins which have been found in the territory of the Dobuni.
It has been suggested that, like the Treveran Indutiomarus and his
enemy Cingetorix,[1503] Antedrigus and Bericus were the leaders of
rival factions of the Iceni; that Antedrigus prevailed; that Bericus
thereupon determined to seek Roman aid; and that Antedrigus, when the
Iceni joined the Romans, sought an asylum among the Dobuni.[1504]
Anyhow Bericus fled to Rome.[1505] It would seem that Caratacus and
Togodumnus took offence when he and Adminius were not sent back, and
even committed, or threatened to commit, some act of violence against
the Roman power;[1506] and it may be that their attitude, combined with
the information which Bericus gave about the internal politics of his
country, was [Sidenote: Invasion of Britain by Aulus Plautius.] among
the motives that induced Claudius to dispatch the force which, under
Aulus Plautius, was to begin the Roman conquest of Britain.[1507]
[Sidenote: Review of British history from 54 B.C. to A.D. 43.]
Amid many uncertainties the facts of British history which stand
out prominently are these. The invasions of Caesar, supported by
his conquest of Gaul, stimulated trade between the Britons and the
Romanized Gauls, and thereby brought Britain within the sphere of Roman
influence; encouraged those British princes who needed protection or
support to turn to Rome, and made them all look up to the Emperor as
a patron, who might eventually be their sovereign lord. In the island
itself Commius and his sons made themselves supreme in the eastern
districts south of the Thames; but their power was overmatched and
perhaps finally absorbed by that of the family of Cassivellaunus, who
steadily augmented their dominion by conquest until under Cunobeline
it extended from the coast of Essex to the estuary of the Severn,
and from the Midlands to the English Channel. [Sidenote: The Roman
conquest and its results.] But the jealousy and the fear which this
ambitious dynasty aroused led directly to the Roman invasion, by which
the influences that had already begun were so developed that the upper
classes and the townspeople of Britain learned to speak Latin[1508]
and to adopt Roman customs, and in the end came, like their Gallic
neighbours, to regard themselves as Romans; that the Late Celtic art
which had flourished for centuries gave way to that of Rome, and even
in cottages and remote hamlets Samian pottery and rude hypocausts
were to be found;[1509] that by the fourth century a British church
had been fully developed, which continued to flourish after the Roman
administration had ceased, while even in the sixth century the forsaken
Britons gloried in the name of _Romani_;[1510] and that, in a word,
Britain, becoming completely Romanized, received an impress which has
not yet wholly faded away.[1511]
[Sidenote: Permanence in English history of prehistoric and Celtic
elements.]
But when the Roman had gone, when the Saxon, the Dane, and the Norman
had come, the descendants of neolithic aboriginals, of bronze-using
immigrants, and of Celts still lived on; and their composite influence
has ever since been helping to form the British character and to
determine the course of British history. The roads on which we travel,
the flocks and herds that feed us, the corn that grows in our fields,
the implements which we use,--all our industrial arts are inseparably
connected with theirs. Not only do their beliefs still survive, tinging
the faith which their successors have been taught, but their spirit has
lived again in the men who have done the deeds of which our nation may
be proud.
And perhaps the story which this book has told may lead a few to
become less self-complacent and to think more of those primitive
ancestors. In some things we have sunk below their level: in what have
we risen? Riches, luxury, the security that tends to make self-reliance
weak, the softening of manners, rapidity of communication, the
development of engines of destruction, medicine, and surgery--all that
appertains to material civilization--herein we have made giant strides.
But such improvements hardly enable men to bear up under burdens which
are ever increasing. The tourist in a Pulman car is not happier than
those who travelled in stage-coach or wagon, and speed deprives him
of as much as it bestows; machinery has but substituted fresh evils
for those which it destroyed. New superstitions, less gross but not
less false, have been engrafted upon the old; but ‘pure religion and
undefiled,’--how far has it strengthened its hold upon the hearts of
men? We have professed indeed to teach inferior races the gospel of
love; but in Australasia our mission has been not so much to evangelize
as to exterminate. Apart from the extirpation of the coarser forms
of inhumanity and from those other civilizing influences which may
operate even in a decadent society, the progress of which we may not
unreasonably boast has been in knowledge, which to the vast majority is
unattainable, and, in this island, unheeded or contemptuously rejected
by most of the few who have it within reach.
THE ETHNOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN
I. INTRODUCTION
The ethnology of ancient Britain has been studied from many points
of view. Writers of a past generation relied simply upon the notices
which are to be found in the works of Caesar, Strabo, Tacitus, and
other ancient writers. In the last century the science, if it may now
be so called, of physical anthropology came into being. The barrows
in which our prehistoric ancestors had buried their dead were opened;
and the skeletons which had been left in them by earlier explorers
were systematically measured. The physical characters of the living
population were noted as far as possible in the hope that they might
help to solve the problems of the past. Archaeologists collected
the pottery, the tools, the weapons, and the ornaments which were
found beneath the soil, in the beds of rivers, in barrows, cairns,
caves, earthworks, and elsewhere, described them, classified them,
and compared them with those of other countries. Philologists studied
the forms of the Celtic dialects, and endeavoured to discover in
them traces of dialects older still. Finally, folk-lorists formed an
association, and joined the army of inquirers. The united efforts
of all these seekers after truth have stored up a huge mass of
information; and those who may read this article will, I believe, agree
with me that there is no reason to expect that any additional facts
which may be ascertained will throw much new light upon the questions
which we are about to consider:[1512] but no serious attempt has yet
been made to co-ordinate the materials which exist. To do this is the
aim of the present article. If the problems of British ethnology can be
solved, history, physical anthropology, archaeology, and philology must
combine.
II. THE METHODS OF ANTHROPOLOGY
A lay reader who takes up a treatise on ethnology ought to understand
the methods by which anthropologists differentiate the various human
types. I may be allowed to reproduce a paragraph which I wrote a few
years ago in another volume, and to which I shall have something to add.
‘Anthropologists are obliged to make use of technical terms, more or
less uncouth; and they are guided in their observations by very precise
and minute rules, framed with the object of eliminating, as far as
possible, the chance of error. But it is unnecessary for my purpose to
trouble the reader with more than a few of these things. What I shall
have to say about stature, complexion, hair and eyes, will need no
explanation; and in regard to the skull I shall, as a rule, only have
to deal with that measurement which fixes the proportion between its
length and its breadth. In this measurement the length is represented
by 100; and the proportion which the breadth bears to the length is
called the cephalic index. Thus, if the breadth is four-fifths of the
length, the index is 80. According to the system formulated by the
great French anthropologist, Paul Broca,[1513] skulls are grouped,
according to the cephalic index, in five classes. Skulls whose index
exceeds 83·33 are brachycephalic; those whose index falls between
83·33 and 80 are sub-brachycephalic; those between 80 and 77·77
mesaticephalic; those between 77·77 and 75 sub-dolichocephalic; and
those below 75 dolichocephalic ... it is necessary to bear in mind
that measurements of living heads invariably yield a higher cephalic
index--the average difference being as much as 2--than those of
skulls[1514] [of the same form]. Another important character of the
skull or head is _gnathism_, that is to say, the degree of projection
of the upper jaw. The word _orthognathous_ denotes that this projection
is comparatively slight; for absolute orthognathism does not exist.
The remaining technical terms which it is necessary for general
readers to understand are those which describe the structure of the
nasal skeleton. _Platyrrhinian_ means that it is wide, _mesorrhinian_
intermediate, and _leptorrhinian_ narrow.’[1515] I should have added
that the orbital index, which is important, denotes the relation of
the breadth of the orbit to its length; and, since we are dealing
with the ethnology of Britain, it will be convenient to adopt for
cephalic indices the notation which is prevalent in this country,
and according to which skulls whose indices exceed 80 are called
brachycephalic, those between 80 and 75 mesaticephalic, and those under
75 dolichocephalic.
The value of the cephalic index was for many years taken for granted in
all ethnological treatises; and many anthropologists still lay great
stress upon it.[1516] But there has lately been a reaction.[1517]
Professor Sergi[1518] scoffs at ‘the old and discredited method of
the cephalic index, which only indicates artificial and conventional
distinctions’, and tells us that ‘it is the forms alone that we
have to take into consideration’,[1519] and that ‘indices may serve
to approximate the most diverse forms and to separate the most
homogeneous’.[1520] This last remark is unquestionably true; as
Huxley said, ‘in nine cases out of ten you may diagnose an Australian
skull [among other dolichocephalic skulls] with certainty.’[1521]
Nevertheless the cephalic index, used with discrimination, retains the
value which Broca, Beddoe, Collignon, Turner, and other anthropologists
ascribe to it; and those who are familiar with Sergi’s writings
will not be surprised to learn that, when it suits his purpose, he
lays great stress upon the distinction between dolichocephalic and
brachycephalic skulls.[1522] He considerably modifies his view when
he affirms the truism that ‘we cannot accept the evidence of the
cephalic index when that evidence is contradicted by other important
facts’;[1523] but if any one who has a taste for ethnology will
spend a few days in walking through the department of Jura or the
mountainous parts of Auvergne, the contrast between the round heads
which he will see everywhere and the totally different type which he
has been accustomed to in his own country will convince him that the
cephalic index has been ‘discredited’ in vain.[1524] Anthropologists
are, however, becoming convinced that the labour which has been spent
upon calculating the averages of tables of widely different indices has
borne little fruit.[1525]
When we consider the cranial forms, apart from measurements, we find
the same lack of unanimity. According to Sergi,[1526] ‘the _norma
verticalis_, or view from above,’ is ‘the most important of all’.
According to Rolleston,[1527] ‘the _norma lateralis_, or profile view
of a skull is the most important.’ The present tendency, however, of
British anthropologists is to follow the Italian professor.
The evidence of skulls will often mislead unless it is used with
caution and discernment, reinforced by collateral knowledge. Certain
British brachycephalic skulls of the Bronze Age closely resemble in
many respects those of the Maoris.[1528] Rolleston, remarking on
the likeness between a dolichocephalic skull of the Bronze Age from
Weaverthorpe and the famous Engis skull, observes that ‘resemblances so
strong ... should, as they are also so widely scattered over the globe,
make us careful not to speak as to the ethnological affinities of any
skulls, until we have a very considerable number of representatives of
both objects of comparison to place alongside of each other; and it
may be added until we have also succeeded in bringing other lines of
evidence to bear upon the question’.[1529]
Besides the various characters of the skull and face, and, when
they can be ascertained, the complexion, and the colour of the hair
and eyes, ethnologists have to take account of stature, because,
although it partly depends upon food and social environment,[1530]
it unquestionably varies in different races. Now the stature of
prehistoric men, when their skeletons are found, can only be estimated
by calculating the relations between the lengths of certain bones and
the actual height of the individual; and since these relations are
obviously variable, the calculation can only lead to approximately
true results. The error would no doubt be insignificant if the average
relations were certain; but various anthropologists have adopted
various methods of calculation, which have led to widely different
results.[1531] The most satisfactory, for our purpose,[1532] appears
to be that of Dr. Beddoe,--‘I take away from the length of the femur
[or thigh-bone] one-quarter of the excess over 13 inches up to 19, and
thereafter only one-eighth, and then multiply by four’.[1533]
III. EOLITHIC MAN(?)
Much controversy was excited in the last decade of the nineteenth
century by the announcement that stone implements, ruder than the
rudest of the Palaeolithic Age, had been discovered on the plateau
between the Medway and Caterham valleys: but even if it were possible
to convince sceptics that some of these flints were wrought by men’s
hands, the proof would not affect the present inquiry; for we should
have no means of ascertaining to what race (supposing that it differed
from that of the earlier palaeolithic hunters) those men belonged.[1534]
IV. PALAEOLITHIC MAN
1. The people who inhabited this island in the Old Stone Age appear
to have been confined to the south; for no palaeolithic implement
has yet been found further north than Lincoln, or, as some maintain,
the East Riding of Yorkshire.[1535] An attempt has indeed been made
to prove that such tools were used in Scotland;[1536] but the best
judges are unanimously of opinion that the contention has not been
established.[1537]
Little direct evidence exists as to the physical type of the
palaeolithic inhabitants of Britain. Only four human skulls have
been found in England which can be referred to that period,--one at
Galley Hill, near Swanscombe,[1538] one at Westley, near Bury St.
Edmunds,[1539] and two in the Cattedown cave near Plymouth:[1540]
but it is not certain that the first was contemporaneous with the
beds which contained it:[1541] of the second only fragments remained
from which it was impossible to determine the contour;[1542] and the
others could not be removed entire. Almost all the older palaeolithic
skulls, however, which have been discovered in Western Europe belong
apparently to the same race,[1543] which may have been represented
among the hunters who entered Britain when it still formed part of
the Continent. Indeed the Galley Hill skull, whether it belonged to
a palaeolithic man or not, has certain characteristics of the most
famous representative of the race,--the Neanderthal skull, which was
discovered about the middle of the last century in the valley of
the Neander in Rhenish Prussia.[1544] The skulls of this type are
extraordinarily dolichocephalic; and the people to whom they belonged
had extremely low and retreating foreheads, heavy and projecting lower
jaws, and amazingly prominent brow ridges, and were short, big-boned,
and muscular.[1545]
But what if the Neanderthal skull was not human? If that poor creature
had but known how famous he, or it, was to become! His broken cranium
has a bibliography of its own. Virchow, who, however, late in life
changed his mind, at one time regarded it as abnormal,--pathological.
Huxley and Broca vigorously defended its respectability; and at the end
of the nineteenth century the most eminent anthropologists of Europe
and America accepted it as the type of the most ancient of the known
races of men. But in 1901 a German anthropologist, Dr. G. Schwalbe,
wrote an article of appalling length,[1546] which disturbed settled
convictions. Huxley had pronounced the Neanderthal to be the most
ape-like of all known human skulls: Schwalbe refused to regard it as
human, in the accepted sense, at all. For him it represents a distinct
species, intermediate between the _Pithecanthropus_ of Java--the famous
‘missing link’, whose remains were discovered a few years ago by Dr.
Dubois--and man himself. In the same class Schwalbe places the skulls
of Spy, which have always been grouped along with that of Neanderthal;
and he insists that all the human palaeolithic skulls of Europe,
however closely they may appear to resemble these, are in reality
different.[1547] ‘In the Neanderthal skull,’ says Dr. Laloy, in a lucid
summary of Schwalbe’s article, which will satisfy all who are not
specialists, ‘the greatest length coincides with the “inio-glabellar”
diameter,’ that is to say, the diameter measured from the space between
the supraciliary, or brow, ridges and the sinus at the back of the
neck: this, he adds, is never the case in man. No, not in man as we
know him. But what sense are we to attach to the word ‘human’? Was
there ever a creature of whom it could be affirmed that he was the
first man?[1548]
Ten or twelve skulls, which, in dolichocephaly and prominence of the
supraciliary ridges, resemble those of the Neanderthal type, but,
unlike them, have high foreheads, and are said to have belonged to
tall men, have lately been found associated with tools of Mousterian
form,[1549] at Krapina in Northern Croatia.[1550] Fourteen skeletons,
which may evidently be assigned to the same group, have been found at
Předmost in Moravia,[1551] and another at its capital, Bruenn.[1552]
But the Palaeolithic Age, in Britain as in other parts of Europe, was
of such immense duration that it would be absurd to assume that it had
no other representatives than men of the Neanderthal type; and the
‘artists’ of the latest period, whose creations have been discovered
in the caves of La Madelaine and Les Eyzies,[1553] belonged to a
different race, represented by skulls discovered at Laugerie-Basse
and Chancelade in the valley of the Lozère. While these skulls are
hardly less dolichocephalic than those of the Neanderthal type, they
are in other respects strikingly different, being much more capacious,
and having high and broad foreheads, and brow ridges which are hardly
perceptible.[1554] Although no skulls of this kind have been found
in our own country, it is not improbable that men of the stock to
which they belonged penetrated into Britain; for in one of the caves
of Creswell Crags in Derbyshire there has been found a bone engraved
with the figure of a horse’s head,[1555] which reminds one of the
spirited designs of the artists of the Dordogne, and was associated
with implements of the kind which have been found in the caves of La
Madelaine and Les Eyzies and others of the Dordogne basin.[1556]
The recent systematic exploration of the Baoussé-Roussé caves near
Mentone is of the highest importance because it has demonstrated an
intimate connexion between palaeolithic and neolithic races in Southern
France. All the interments have been proved to be palaeolithic.[1557]
The newest skeleton in the Grotte des Enfants approximates to the
dolichocephalic type of the Neolithic Age.[1558] Beneath it, 5
metres 15 millimetres lower down, lay a gigantic skeleton, closely
resembling but far older than that of the famous ‘old man’ of
Cro-Magnon, which is commonly assigned to the earliest neolithic
times, but may possibly be as old as the period that in France is
recognized as transitional.[1559] This skeleton has certain negroid
characteristics,[1560] which, however, are more pronounced in the
two most ancient skeletons of the Grotte des Enfants, discovered
70 millimetres lower still and associated with the bones of a
rhinoceros.[1561] M. Verneau argues that the prognathism which appears
in certain skeletons of Western Europe of the early Bronze Age was
connected by atavism with these primitive denizens of the Riviera.[1562]
2. Professor Boyd Dawkins draws a sharp distinction between ‘the
River-drift men’ and ‘the Cave-men’. I must remark that the term
‘Cave-men’ is not happily chosen; for the professor himself assures us
that ‘the Cave-men did not always use caves’, and that ‘the habit of
camping in the open air must have been the rule ... because caverns and
rock-shelters are only met with in very limited areas’;[1563] while
on the other hand he points out that ‘River-drift men’ often lived in
caves.[1564] By ‘the Cave-men’ he means those who made implements of
what he terms ‘the higher types’, that is, the types which are called
after the caves of Le Moustier, Solutré, and La Madelaine. Observing
that there were ‘Cave-men’ not only in our own country and in France,
but also in Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany, he argues that ‘from
this distribution of the implements it is evident that the Cave-man
belongs neither to the southern group of the Pleistocene animals nor
to the temperate which found its way over the mountain barriers into
Spain, Italy, and Greece. On the other hand,’ he continues, ‘the
River-drift man must be considered as a member either of the temperate
or southern fauna of Europe, because his remains are met with in the
regions of the Mediterranean, north [and also south] of those mountain
barriers.’[1565]
Granting that no implements of the higher types have been discovered
in caves south of the ‘mountain barriers’, it is hardly safe to
conclude that the ‘Cave-men’ did not belong either to the southern
or the temperate group of mammals.[1566] The question is whether
the implements to which the professor refers were characteristic of
one palaeolithic race to the exclusion of others. Assuming that such
implements do not exist outside the area in which they have been
found--a very rash assumption--it does not follow that the men who
made them belonged to a race different from their contemporaries
whose tools have been discovered in the drift. Only one interment of
the Late Celtic Period has been found in Scotland, and that quite
recently;[1567] yet there were numerous Celts then in North as well as
in South Britain.
The professor also insists[1568] that ‘the absence of the higher
types of implement in the camping-places of the River-drift men
cannot be accounted for on the ground that they are smaller or ...
more perishable’; for, he says, ‘camping-places of the Cave-men have
been met with in France [for instance at Solutré] ... in which the
implements are associated in the same manner as in the caves’.
I reply, first, that it is begging the question to say that the men
who encamped at Solutré were ‘Cave-men’ as distinct from ‘River-drift
men’; secondly, that implements of Le Moustier type, which were
characteristic of the earliest French ‘Cave-men’,[1569] are common both
in France and Britain in the river-drift;[1570] and thirdly, with due
deference to the professor, that the absence ‘of the higher types of
implement’ from the river-drift is as easily explicable as the absence
of implements of bone or wood:--partly they were more perishable and
would be more difficult to find, and partly they were less likely to
be used in the field.[1571] Besides, is it not possible that none of
the very few palaeolithic ‘camping-places’ that have been found in
this country belonged to the Solutrean period? As we have seen, the
professor himself affirms that ‘the Cave-men’ encamped as a rule not in
caves but in the open air: they, like ‘the River-drift men’ were, as he
himself assures us, hunters: why then have hardly any of their ‘higher
types of implement’ been found in this country in the field? Simply for
the reasons which I have given. And since ‘the Cave-men’, like ‘the
River-drift men’, lived commonly in the open air, how could the latter,
even if they belonged to a different race, have escaped the influence
of the former or have failed to acquire their culture? And how could
the two races have escaped amalgamating?
The ‘Cave-men’, as Professor Boyd Dawkins himself admits,[1572]
undoubtedly used certain implements of river-drift type as well as
‘the higher types’; nor is there any reason to suppose that the
‘River-drift men’ did not use implements of ‘the higher types’ as well
as implements of river-drift type, except the fact, easily accounted
for, that the former are not found in the drift. Professor Boyd
Dawkins himself strenuously maintains that ‘River-drift men’ as well
as ‘Cave-men’ lived in caves.[1573] How then can he prove that the
two sets of occupants were ethnologically different? He insists that
‘the river-drift implements in the Caves of Creswell Crags, of Kent’s
Hole, and of the Grotte de l’Église, are found in the strata below
those with the implements of the Cave-men, and consequently that the
River-drift men lived in Britain and France before the Cave-men.’[1574]
But on his own showing the owners of both sets of implements did
live in caves; and so far nothing is proved except that those who
used one set were more ancient than those who used the other. ‘Some
caves also,’ he adds, ‘were inhabited by River-drift men, who have
left behind their implements without any trace of the higher types
of the Cave-men.’[1575] But here again nothing is proved save that
these particular ‘River-drift men’ had not yet learned to make ‘the
higher types’. The professor might have a good case if he could say,
River-drift implements have been found in the lower strata of caves:
in the upper strata none have been found, but only ‘the higher types’;
consequently the men who used the higher types were quite different
from those of the later Palaeolithic Age whose implements have been
recovered from river-drift. But this he could not truly say; for
implements of river-drift type have been found, although rarely, in the
highest strata of caves.[1576] Lastly, I would ask the professor, who
insists that ‘the Cave-men’ were ‘northern mammals’, and that they did
not enter Europe until long after the appearance of ‘the River-drift
men’, to tell us whence they came.
3. Are we to count the palaeolithic inhabitants of Britain among our
ancestors? ‘I do not consider,’ says Dr. Garson, ‘that there is any
evidence of the existence of the direct descendants of Palaeolithic
man among the osteological remains of Neolithic or subsequent date in
Britain.’[1577] On the other hand, Dr. Beddoe[1578] thinks that the
oldest inhabitants of this country may have left descendants, whom he
is inclined to identify with ‘some Mongoloid race’, traces of which,
he believes, are discernible in the population of the west of England;
while two distinguished French anthropologists, MM. de Quatrefages and
Hamy, affirm that the Neanderthal race ‘has left a permanent imprint
on the population of the three kingdoms’,[1579] and refer to various
skulls of the Neolithic and later periods which resemble more or less
closely that of Neanderthal.[1580] Moreover, it is generally admitted
that even at the present day a few individuals here and there belong
to the same type.[1581] But it does not follow that these persons or
those to whom Dr. Beddoe and M. Hamy refer were descended from men who
lived in Britain in the Palaeolithic Age. That palaeolithic man left
no descendants in any part of the world is of course not maintained
even by the most ardent supporters of the theory of the ‘Hiatus’:
somewhere or other there must have been a link; but Sir John Evans,
as I have observed in the first part of this book,[1582] argues from
the supposed absence of intermediate forms of implements that it did
not exist in this country; and Dr. Keane[1583] thinks that ‘the few
scattered palaeolithic hunters could scarcely have lived through the
last ice-age in a contracted region at one time reduced by subsidence
to a mere cluster of islets’, &c. The answer is, first that there
is no reason to believe that in ‘the last ice-age’ or at any time
between the dawn of the latest palaeolithic period and the arrival
of neolithic man Britain was ‘a mere cluster of islets’;[1584] and
secondly that, as Professor Boyd Dawkins assures us, out of forty-eight
species of mammalian fauna living in Britain in the Palaeolithic,
thirty-one survived in the Neolithic Age.[1585] Professor Boyd Dawkins,
however, insists that ‘the mere contrast between the Palaeolithic
and wild Neolithic faunas implies a zoological break of the first
magnitude’.[1586] I take leave to say that it implies no break at all,
seeing that thirty-one of the older species confessedly lived on: it
implies no more than is implied by the disappearance of the urus, the
wolf, the wild boar, and many other animals which were living in this
island at a time since which it has been continuously inhabited by
man. The professor triumphantly points out that in those caves which
were successively used as dwellings by palaeolithic and neolithic
people ‘the remains of the domestic animals are found _alone_ in the
upper Prehistoric [or neolithic] strata.’[1587] Undoubtedly. But what
then? The fact does not prove that palaeolithic man had become extinct
when neolithic man arrived: it merely proves that the latter had
domestic animals, and that the former had not. Arab horses, Siamese
cats, and many other animals have been introduced into this country
since the Christian era: yet the people who were here before their
introduction did not become extinct. And if ‘in a great many cases
the lower Palaeolithic strata [in caves] are sealed down, and mapped
off from the Neolithic, by a layer of stalagmite’,[1588] that only
proves ‘a break of continuity between the two periods’ as far as those
caves are concerned. The Palaeolithic Age, says the professor, ‘was
continental, the Neolithic insular in North-Western Europe.’[1589] He
means that in the Palaeolithic Age Great Britain was an outlying part
of the Continent, and that the neolithic invaders had to sail across
the Channel.[1590] But why should the formation of the Channel have
extinguished the palaeolithic race? ‘There is obviously,’ continues the
professor, ‘a great gulf fixed between the rude hunter civilisation of
the one and the agricultural and pastoral civilisation of the other.’
Obviously. But the gulf is not more obvious than that which separated
the civilization of the Red Indians from the civilization of the
Pilgrim Fathers. Yet the Red Indians still lived on.
It is true that if the professor has failed to show that the
Palaeolithic Age in Britain was abruptly terminated, he has no
difficulty in disposing of certain arguments which have been adduced
to show that it was not. When, for instance, Mr. Allen Brown points
to the implements of palaeolithic type which were found in the refuse
heaps of the neolithic settlement at Cissbury in Sussex, he replies
that ‘in the vast accumulation of refuse, representing every style in
the chipping, from the rough block of flint ... to the highly finished
axe, broken ... by an unhappy blow, it is obvious that there must
be some which would represent well-known Palaeolithic types.’[1591]
Nevertheless it remains true that not one of the facts which he has
stated is inconsistent with the hypothesis that men may have lived on
in Britain in the palaeolithic stage of culture until the time when the
first neolithic immigrants arrived. What his opponents suggest is that
certain types of palaeolithic implements survived into the Neolithic
Age;[1592] in other words, that implements of those types continued
to be manufactured or used then. That this was the case in Ireland is
certain;[1593] and, since there is no evidence of a Palaeolithic Age in
Ireland, it seems not unreasonable to conjecture that they were made by
descendants of palaeolithic refugees from Britain or Gaul. Mr. Allen
Brown may be wrong in maintaining that implements which he has found
‘at or near the surface’ at East Dean in Sussex are ‘mesolithic’, that
is, belong to a period of transition;[1594] but Sir John Evans himself
says[1595] of some of the implements, usually classed as palaeolithic,
which have been found in the cave earth of the famous Kent’s Cavern in
a position which authorizes us to assume that the people to whom they
belonged were not separated by any ‘hiatus’ from the palaeolithic race
whose remains were found immediately underneath, that ‘so far as form
is concerned, there is little or nothing to distinguish them from the
analogous implements of the Neolithic Period’. Is it not possible that
these and some of the ruder implements which have hitherto been classed
as neolithic may have been fabricated not by neolithic immigrants but,
after their immigration, by descendants of the palaeolithic race?[1596]
Those who deny that mesolithic implements have been found in Britain
deny also that they have been found anywhere else. Granted for the
sake of argument. But if their general absence does not weaken the
certainty that the supposed hiatus was not universal, how can their
absence in Britain prove that there was a hiatus here? In Part I I have
shown that it is impossible to frame any theory which shall account
satisfactorily for the assumed disappearance of British palaeolithic
man. Professor Boyd Dawkins asks us to believe that the ‘Cave-men’
fled in terror before the neolithic invaders and eventually settled
in Greenland, where they became the ancestors of the Eskimos; and in
support of this theory he assures us that ‘Palaeolithic man appeared
in Europe with the arctic mammalia, lived in Europe along with them,
and disappeared with them’; that the gloves of the ‘Cave-men’ were
‘similar to those now used by the Eskimos’; that their implements ‘are
of the same kind as those of the Eskimos’; that, like the Eskimos,
they did not take the trouble to bury their dead; and that ‘the most
astonishing bond of union between the Cave-men and the Eskimos is
the art of representing animals’.[1597] Judging from the specimens
of Eskimo art which the professor gives, I confess that what I find
astonishing is its inferiority to that of the Cave-men;[1598] there
is no evidence that the Cave-men of Britain wore gloves; and if they
did, may not the reason have been, not that there was any connexion
between them and the Eskimos, but that their hands were cold? Is the
professor sure that ‘the River-drift men’ did not also wear gloves? We
do not know whether palaeolithic man appeared in Europe with the arctic
mammalia: he certainly did not accompany them from the north; and it
is an article of faith with French anthropologists that he did not
disappear with them, but became the ancestor of neolithic man. There
is a general resemblance between the palaeolithic drift implements of
all countries; and in the earlier part of this volume many facts have
been noted which show how cautious one should be in inferring identity
of race from similarity in implements, weapons, or ornaments. There is
not the slightest evidence that ‘the Cave-men’ did not bury their dead;
and there is irrefragable evidence, as we have seen, that cave-men
in the Riviera and in Croatia did.[1599] Again, since the professor
differentiates the ‘Cave-men’ from the ‘River-drift men’ of Britain,
can he prove that the latter did bury their dead? If not, what becomes
of his argument? Finally, the theory that the Eskimos are descendants
of ‘the Cave-men’ of Western Europe has been rejected by every recent
inquirer.[1600]
How does Professor Boyd Dawkins account for the disappearance, which
he assumes, of palaeolithic man? ‘Simply,’ he says, ‘by assuming that
at the close of the Pleistocene age, when they came into contact
with Neolithic invaders, there were the same feelings between them
as existed in Hearne’s times between the Eskimos and the Red Indian,
terror and defenceless hatred being, on the one side, met by ruthless
extermination on the other. In this way the Cave-men would be gradually
driven from Europe.’[1601] That men who were ruthlessly exterminated
should have survived to become the ancestors of the Eskimos is
certainly remarkable. But seriously I would ask the professor whether
he has really succeeded in persuading himself that ‘the Cave-men’ were
one and all either exterminated or driven out of Europe. Did none
remain? He assures us that ‘the Cave-men’ migrated eastward; and he
still insists, in defiance of all French craniologists, that ‘neither
of the two races of Palaeolithic man have left behind any marks in the
existing population of Europe’.[1602] How they contrived to make their
slow progress across the Continent without leaving one descendant is
a problem which he does not attempt to solve. And since he himself
admits, or rather affirms, that they ‘came into contact with Neolithic
invaders’, it is difficult to see how he can maintain the existence of
a hiatus.
The professor has asserted that there is ‘no evidence in any part
of the world of a continuity between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic
ages’.[1603] Yet he of course admits that it must have existed
somewhere. Good reasons have been given for believing that it existed
in France.[1604] Why not also in Britain?[1605]
Such are the reasons by which I endeavour to justify myself in refusing
to believe that neolithic man, when he entered Britain, found none to
welcome or to oppose him save the thirty-one species of mammalian fauna
which Professor Boyd Dawkins has spared.
V. THE PYGMIES (?)
British pygmies are the creation of Celtic imagination. The evidence on
which we are required to believe that they existed is this. Professor
Rhys[1606] suggests that the name of the Coritani, a tribe mentioned by
Ptolemy,[1607] who inhabited the country between the Trent and the Nen,
is related to the word _cor_, a dwarf. ‘Then,’ the professor concludes,
‘we should have accordingly to suppose the old race to have survived
so long and in such numbers that the Celtic lords of Southern Britain
called the people of that area by a name meaning dwarfs.’ Afterwards,
referring to various articles by Mr. David MacRitchie, he observes
that in certain parts of Wales and Scotland there are mounds enclosing
cells, which are ‘frequently so small as to prove beyond doubt that
those who inhabited them were of remarkably small stature’;[1608]
and he finds in Welsh, Irish, and Scotch folk-lore traditions which
confirm him in the belief that these cells were inhabited by dwarfs,
whom he calls ‘the Mound Folk’. ‘This strange people,’ he tells us,
‘seems to have exercised on the Celts ... a sort of permanent spell
of mysteriousness and awe stretching to the verge of adoration ...
the Celt’s faculty of exaggeration, combined with his incapacity to
comprehend the weird and uncanny population of the mounds and caves
... has enabled him ... to bequeath to the great literatures of
Western Europe a motley train of dwarfs,’[1609] &c. The professor’s
conclusion[1610] is that the earliest people who inhabited these
islands [apparently after the Palaeolithic Age] were ‘the mound folk,
consisting of the short swarthy people variously caricatured by our
fairy tales’; and that they were conquered by neolithic invaders, who,
he tells us, ‘made slaves and drudges of the mound-haunting race.’
‘These,’ the professor warns us, perhaps superfluously, ‘are
conjectures which I cannot establish; but possibly somebody else may.’
I venture to hint a doubt. Not only is the derivation of _Coritani_
utterly uncertain,[1611] but it is safe to assume that the Celtic
tribe who undoubtedly conquered the country which belonged in
Ptolemy’s time to the Coritani would not have called its population,
themselves included, by a name which described not even the people
whom they found in possession, but the ‘slaves and drudges’ of that
people, or rather of their neolithic predecessors! The professor
indeed argued in _Celtic Folk-Lore_[1612] that the Coritanian dwarfs
‘may be conjectured to have had quiet from invaders from the Continent
because of the inaccessible nature of their fens’. How then did they
themselves and the non-dwarfish invaders of the Bronze Age get there?
It is almost superfluous to remark that in the year before and in the
year after the publication of _Celtic Folk-Lore_ the professor counted
the Coritani among the Brythonic ‘invaders from the Continent’.[1613]
The ‘mound-dwellings’ which Mr. MacRitchie describes[1614] belong to
the class of structures which are popularly known as ‘Picts’ houses’,
‘Earth-houses’, or ‘Weems’, and are immeasurably later than the period
to which Professor Rhys’s theory would compel him to assign them. The
mere fact, indeed, that many of them have been shown by excavation
to have been occupied in Roman times does not prove that they were
not constructed earlier; but I can find no evidence that any of them
belong even to the Neolithic Age. Mr. MacRitchie himself assures us
that one which was opened at Crichton in Mid-Lothian ‘was proved
to have been built not earlier than 80 A.D.’;[1615] and he assigns
the ‘mound-dwellings’ in general not to a pre-neolithic race but to
the Picts of historic times.[1616] He also says that one which was
explored in 1855 contained four chambers, of which the largest was ‘6
feet 2 inches long, 4 feet 6 inches in height, and 2 feet 6 inches
wide’, and, with a fascinating lack of humour, he adds that ‘while
the size of the stones used in its construction is evidence of great
personal strength on the part of the builders, the small and narrow
rooms seem to indicate a diminutive race.’[1617] When the reader is
invited to believe that ‘those who inhabited’ these ‘rooms’, which
were only built by the exertion of ‘great personal strength’, ‘were
of remarkably short stature’, he falls to calculating whether even
a race of Tom Thumbs, each of whom possessed the muscular power of
a Sandow, would not have used their strength to make their rooms
a little more comfortable.[1618] Mr. MacRitchie shows more acumen
when, after remarking that ‘two alleged Fairy Knowes in Shetland’
proved on investigation to be natural hillocks, and that another in
Stirlingshire ‘was only a sepulchral mound’, he concludes that these
instances are ‘sufficient to show the unreliable nature of popular
tradition’.[1619] If it was ‘the Celt’s faculty of exaggeration’ that
‘enabled him to bequeath to the great literatures of Western Europe a
motley train of dwarfs’, why should he not have exercised his faculty
upon the comparatively short neolithic population rather than upon the
imaginary pygmies whom Professor Rhys has appointed as their ‘slaves
and drudges’?[1620] And if the imagination which created ‘a motley
train of dwarfs’ had pygmies for its basis of fact, will the professor
tell us who were the originals of the ‘motley train’ of giants whom
the imaginations of various European peoples associated with the
dwarfs?[1621] I am aware that Professor Kollmann[1622] claims to have
proved that pygmies existed in prehistoric times in France, Germany,
Switzerland, and other European countries; but the fact remains that
no evidence has been produced that a race of pre-neolithic or even
prehistoric pygmies existed in this country save only that which is
furnished by ‘the Celt’s faculty of exaggeration’.
VI. NEOLITHIC MAN
The remains of neolithic man have been discovered in caves, in
cairns, in submerged forests, and in barrows in Essex, Wiltshire,
Gloucestershire, Somersetshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Yorkshire,
Caermarthenshire, Denbighshire, the Isle of Man,[1623] Argyllshire
and the island of Arran, Caithness, and the Orkney Islands.[1624] The
neolithic population, however, it need hardly be said, were scattered
over many other parts of Britain in which their skeletons have not
come to light. Many anthropologists consider that all of them belong
to one race; but at all events the great majority represent men of
medium stature with long skulls; and it is a generally accepted article
of faith that no long barrow has ever yielded any article of metal
in association with a primary interment, and that no skull whose
cephalic index exceeded 79, belonging to a primary interment, has
ever been found in a long barrow since the time when anthropologists
first began to measure skulls in this country.[1625] According to a
table[1626] published by Dr. Beddoe in 1894, the value of which has
been confirmed by later measurements,[1627] the cephalic indices of 87
skulls belonging to the Neolithic Age ranged from 63 to 79; and, as Dr.
Thurnam points out,[1628] some of them are more dolichocephalic than
those of any modern European people.
When we come to examine the stature of the neolithic Britons, we
find that, according to Thurnam’s latest estimate,[1629] the average
height of 25 male skeletons found by him in long barrows was 5 feet
5·4 inches,[1630] or 1 metre 661: but Dr. Beddoe gives good reasons,
to which I have already called attention,[1631] for believing this
estimate to be too low; and his own is 5 feet 6.7 inches, or 1 metre
694.[1632] Recent measurements (although they include those of
individuals under 5 feet) do not invalidate the evidence of these
figures;[1633] and the few Scottish skeletons which undoubtedly belong
to the Neolithic Age have yielded practically the same results.[1634]
Dr. Garson, describing the dolichocephalic Long Barrow skulls, with
which anthropologists agree in associating those that have been found
in the ‘horned cairns’ of Caithness,[1635] in the neolithic cairns
of the isle of Arran,[1636] and in the caves of Oban,[1637] says
that ‘the superciliary ridges and glabella [the surface between the
superciliary ridges] are moderately or even feebly developed ... the
malar [or cheek] bones are never prominent ... there is no tendency
to prognathism ... as a whole the face is oval in form; the jaws
are small and fine ... the facial characters are mild and without
exaggerated development in any direction’.[1638] It may be added that
the Long Barrow skulls, as Thurnam pointed out, are ‘more or less
depressed--platycephalic’,[1639] and that the nose is usually aquiline.
The general truth of the foregoing descriptions will be apparent to
any one who examines the plates in _Crania Britannica_; but we must
take account of exceptions. As Dr. Davis pointed out,[1640] a skull
found in the Long Lowe barrow, near Wetton in Staffordshire, is very
different from another dolichocephalic skull from a chambered long
barrow at Uley in Gloucestershire.[1641] In the latter the brow
ridges are strongly marked, and the chin is comparatively broad and
square.[1642] Of another skull, found in a barrow near Littleton Drew
in North Wiltshire, Thurnam observes that the lower jaw is ‘thick and
heavy’.[1643] A third, taken from a barrow at West Kennet in North
Wiltshire, has an amazingly angular and square lower jaw, which, as
Thurnam truly says, ‘deviates considerably from the normal type.’[1644]
Again, while the average stature of the Long Barrow skeletons which
Thurnam examined was, according to the higher estimate of Dr. Beddoe,
only 5 feet 6·7 inches,[1645] and Rolleston affirmed that he had ‘never
found the stature to exceed 5 feet 6 inches ... in any skeleton from
a barrow which was undoubtedly of the stone and bone period’,[1646] a
skeleton found in the West Kennet barrow had a thigh bone 20 inches
long;[1647] and its possessor would therefore have stood 6 feet high,
or nearly 1 metre 830, on the lowest computation, and, according
to the estimate of Dr. Beddoe, 6 feet 1½ inch or 1 metre 867. Not
less remarkable is a dolichocephalic skeleton of almost identical
dimensions,[1648] described by Dr. Garson, which, although it was found
in a round barrow, undoubtedly belonged to the Neolithic Age.[1649]
It is evident, therefore, that although not one of the people,
so far as we can tell, who buried their dead in long barrows was
brachycephalic in index, yet not only was there a very wide range in
their indices, but some of them were strikingly different, both in form
of skull and feature and in stature, from the normal type. Were they
the result of crossing between individuals of the Long Barrow race and
tall brachycephalic invaders who will be noticed later? Thurnam himself
pointed out that a male skull, whose cephalic index was 79, found in a
primary interment in the long barrow of Charlton Abbot’s in Wiltshire,
was ‘unquestionably brachycephalous’.[1650] The mere fact that its
index was below the conventional limit did not blind him to its true
character.
Let us now see how far those skulls of the Neolithic Age which have
been found in other surroundings resemble the type which is associated
with long barrows.
Putting aside the Scottish skulls which have been already mentioned,
they comprise specimens found in the caves of Perthi-Chwareu in
Denbighshire and Cefn, near St. Asaph; in a chambered cairn at Tyddyn
Bleiddyn, near Cefn; in caves at Rhosdigre and Llandebie, and at
Uphill in Somersetshire;[1651] in the East Ham Marshes, along with two
‘chipped celts’, fifteen feet below the surface;[1652] in the bed of
the Trent at Muskham;[1653] and in a submarine forest, thirty feet
below the level of the sea, near the Land’s End.[1654] Skulls found in
tumuli at Keiss in Caithness,[1655] in a tumulus at Towyn-y-Capel in
Anglesey,[1656] and in ‘what seems to be an alluvial deposit formed by
the river Dove’, near Ledbury Hall in Derbyshire,[1657] may be added
doubtfully to the list;[1658] but, as we shall afterwards see,[1659]
there need be no doubt that certain brachycephalic skulls of the type
which is commonly associated with the round barrows belonged to the
Neolithic Age.
Professor Ripley[1660] holds that the Long Barrow people were ‘quite
similar to’ those whose remains have been found in caves, if ‘somewhat
less extreme in physical type’; and Huxley[1661] thought that all the
dolichocephalic and mesaticephalic British skulls of the Neolithic
Age belonged to the same race. Similarly Dr. Garson[1662] identifies
the river-bed type, represented in Britain by the Muskham skull, with
that of the long barrows; while, according to Professor Boyd Dawkins,
the skulls from the Welsh caves and from Tyddyn Bleiddyn ‘agree in
shape ... with some of those given in Tables i. and ii. of the “Crania
Britannica” as “ancient British”’,[1663] and ‘belong to that type
which Professor Huxley terms the river-bed skull’,[1664] and which,
according to him, was identical ‘in general characters’ with the Long
Barrow type.[1665] Dr. Beddoe,[1666] on the contrary, says that both
they and the Caithness skulls ‘depart considerably from the typical
long-barrow cranium’, and is inclined to regard them as belonging to a
distinct mesaticephalic race.[1667] The cephalic indices of the Welsh
skulls, which range from 74·3 to 80,[1668] are considerably higher than
those of the Long Barrow skulls in general; and (though this may be
unimportant) the average height of the men to whom they belonged was
‘little more than 5 feet’,[1669] or considerably below the average
height of the Long Barrow people. In my opinion neither they nor the
Land’s End skull, which resembles them,[1670] are pure specimens of
the Long Barrow type;[1671] and the same may be said of the East Ham
and Muskham skulls. The one from Towyn-y-Capel, on the other hand,
might be supposed to have come from a long barrow. The cephalic indices
of the Caithness skulls range from 73 to 78. Four of them[1672]
might, I think, pass muster as Long Barrow skulls; but the remaining
two[1673] appear to me different. Of the Ledbury skull, the cephalic
index of which is 77, Huxley himself says that ‘a little flattening
and elongation, with a rather greater development of the supraciliary
ridges would convert this into the nearest likeness to the Neanderthal
skull which has yet been discovered’.[1674] It may be that there was
some infusion of the blood of the Long Barrow race in all the people
to whom these skulls belonged; but I have little doubt that if, with
the few exceptions which I have noted, they were placed on a table
among those of the long barrows, a skilled craniologist could pick out
every one of them. The difference is easily accounted for when it is
remembered that the long barrows were almost certainly erected late in
the Neolithic Age,[1675] and that there were neolithic men in Scotland
when the estuary of the Forth extended 8 or 10 miles west of Stirling,
and when the sea relatively to the west coast was 25 feet higher than
it is now.[1676]
A female skull, belonging apparently to the Neolithic Age, was
discovered about the year 1891 ‘on the Batten promontory, near Plymouth
Sound’.[1677] According to the report of the discovery, it ‘approaches
dolichocephaly’. A photograph of this skull[1678] reminded me of some
of the illustrations of round skulls in _Crania Britannica_. To quote
from the report,[1679] ‘the most striking features of the face are
the great size of the orbits, the strongly marked superciliary ridge,
the lowness of the retreating forehead’; and all these features are
characteristic of some of the most typical Bronze Age skulls.
A few years ago Professor Macalister said that he had not recognized
any skulls of the Long Barrow type in Ireland,[1680] where no such
barrows exist; but several specimens have since been found.[1681]
There is, as we have seen, reason to believe that the neolithic
population of Britain were not homogeneous; but, with the
qualifications that have been already noted, it may be truly said that
the people of the long barrows present a uniform type. Whence did
they come, and what were their affinities? The view which may be said
to hold the field, although it is not universally accepted,[1682] is
that they belonged to the so-called ‘Iberian’ race. Before we discuss
this theory, it may be well to warn the reader that among those who
hold it are writers who have absolutely no knowledge of ‘the Iberian
question’ except on the side of physical anthropology. The word
‘Iberian’, as used by ethnologists, is not always confined to the
Iberians of history, that is, the inhabitants of the Spanish peninsula
and of Southern Gaul between the Pyrenees and the Rhône:[1683] it is
often loosely applied to a people, possessing certain common physical
features, who inhabited various parts of the Mediterranean basin, and,
according to some writers, notably Sergi,[1684] penetrated in late
quaternary and neolithic times into almost every country of Europe. And
when it is applied by ethnologists to the Iberians of history, it is
not applied to all of them, for the Iberians of history were of course
a mixed people: the ethnologists are thinking only of those Iberians
who belonged to the dolichocephalic Mediterranean stock.
The arguments which have been brought forward in favour of the theory
that the Long Barrow race belonged to the Iberian branch of the
Mediterranean stock may be summarized as follows:--First, according
to Tacitus,[1685] the Silures, a British tribe which in his time
inhabited what is now Monmouthshire, Glamorganshire, and Herefordshire,
were dark and had curly hair, from which fact, as well as from their
geographical position, he inferred that Iberians, that is inhabitants
of the Spanish peninsula, had migrated into Britain.[1686] But if the
dolichocephalic Iberians were dark, so were the brachycephalic people
who settled in Gaul in the Neolithic Age: Tacitus’s geographical
argument was based upon the notion, prevalent among the ancient
geographers,[1687] that Spain was ‘opposite’ and near Britain; and it
is of course incredible that people should have sailed in the Neolithic
Age from Spain to our island.
Secondly, much stress has been laid upon the alleged resemblance of
the Long Barrow skulls to those of the Basques, the assumption being
that the latter were Iberians, properly so called. Dr. Garson affirms
that there is ‘a strong similarity between Basque skulls and those of
the Neolithic people of Britain’;[1688] while Thurnam[1689] points
out that the skulls of the Basques are very ‘similar in many respects
to the skulls from chambered long barrows of South-West Britain’, and
that the Long Barrow skulls in general closely resemble ‘sixty Basque
skulls lately added to the collection of the Anthropological Society
of Paris’.[1690] Moreover, Dr. Beddoe[1691] says, ‘Many photographs of
Basques ... are recognized, both by myself and by an observant Welsh
anthropologist to whom I have submitted them, as being in no respect
different from some of the ordinary types of feature in South Wales.’
Now, as I have shown elsewhere,[1692] the investigations which have
been made regarding the cranial characters of the Basques have led to
widely different results; and Dr. Garson does not say to what group
of Basque skulls he refers. Both the Spanish and the French Basques,
according to Dr. Collignon,[1693] differ in certain respects from all
other European peoples; but they also differ from each other, the
former being generally dolichocephalic, while the latter are (according
to Broca’s notation)[1694] sub-brachycephalic, and their cranial
capacity is considerably less than that of their Spanish brethren.
Dr. Collignon is inclined to assimilate the Basques generally to the
Kabyle type.[1695] Assuming that the Long Barrow race resembled the
Spanish Basques in certain respects, the resemblance only tends to
show that the ancestors of the Long Barrow race came from the south.
The ancestors, or rather some of the ancestors of the Basques were
undoubtedly Iberians,--in one sense of the word: but the French
Basque type which Dr. Collignon has described, and which he regards
as original,[1696] is in many respects different from that of the
long barrows, which ethnologists call Iberian; and, as I have shown
elsewhere,[1697] the purest French Basques are generally fair, the
Spanish Basques are less dark than other Spaniards, and the Long Barrow
race were undoubtedly dark. Moreover, many ethnologists overlook the
fact that the language of the so-called Iberian inscriptions, which
have been found scattered over the territory that belonged to the
Iberians, cannot be interpreted by the aid of Basque,[1698] and shows
no trace of kinship with Basque.
Thirdly, Sergi, affirming that the Long Barrow people belonged to the
Iberian branch of the stock which he has taught ethnologists to call
Mediterranean, says,[1699] ‘I have compared the forms of the skulls
from British graves with ancient.... Mediterranean skulls, and have
found those characteristic of Spain, of Portugal ... of Greece, of
Hissarlik, and of East Africa.’ The fact is undeniable; but obviously
it does not tend to prove that the Long Barrow race belonged to the
Iberian rather than to the Ligurian branch, which, according to
Sergi,[1700] ‘extends from the Iberian peninsula as far as Italy,’ or
to any other branch of the Mediterranean stock. Moreover, when Sergi
affirms[1701] that ‘wherever the Mediterranean stock established
itself, it preserved its primitive burial custom of inhumation’,
and that ‘incineration was of absolutely Aryan [that is to say, on
his theory, Asiatic] origin’,[1702] he weakens his argument, for
it is certain that incineration was practised by many of the Long
Barrow people.[1703] Furthermore, Sergi tells us that skeletons of
‘the Mediterranean type’ are characterized by ‘slender and delicate
forms’,[1704] and doubtless most of the skeletons which have been found
in long barrows answer to this description; but thirteen skeletons
found in a chambered long barrow at Rodmarton, Gloucestershire, were
distinguished by ‘powerful and vigorous frames’.[1705]
I conclude that there is not sufficient evidence for referring the Long
Barrow people to the Iberian rather than to some other branch of the
Mediterranean stock.
It is generally admitted that the Long Barrow race closely resembled
in cranial characteristics, and to a lesser degree in stature, the
dolichocephalic neolithic population of Gaul, of whom the people whose
remains have been discovered in the caverns of l’Homme Mort[1706] and
Baumes-Chaudes[1707] were perhaps the most typical representatives;
and this resemblance confirms the truth of the theory that the Long
Barrow people were a branch of the ‘Mediterranean’ stock. But one
argument, upon which Thurnam[1708] laid great stress, should warn us
to be cautious in drawing conclusions from the skeletal characters
of prehistoric peoples of whose other characters we are necessarily
ignorant. About the middle of the nineteenth century several skeletons
were discovered in a neolithic barrow at Fontenay, near Caen. Their
skulls resembled those of the long barrows; and the height of the
tallest, according to Thurnam’s system of measurement, would not have
exceeded 5 feet 1 inch, or 1 metre 550. This, he triumphantly remarks,
confirms the opinion that the peoples who erected the sepulchral
chambers at Fontenay and in the south-west of England belonged to the
same race. But the average height of the Long Barrow people, according
to Thurnam, was 5 feet 5·4 inches,[1709] and the average height of
the brachycephalic Round Barrow people 5 feet 8·4 inches.[1710] This
difference of 3 inches is one of the facts upon which he relies to
prove the distinction--a distinction which is of course as certain as
it is universally admitted--between the Long Barrow people and the
brachycephalic Round Barrow people. Yet he regards the difference of
4·4 inches between the average height of the Long Barrow people and the
tallest of the men who were buried at Fontenay as sufficient to prove
the racial identity of the latter with the former!
Dr. Keane[1711] maintains that the route followed by the people who
introduced the neolithic culture into the British Isles is indicated
by the dolmens which abound in many parts of Northern Africa, and are
scattered along the western side of the Spanish peninsula and over
nearly the whole area of France. This is also the opinion of Professor
Flinders Petrie, who affirms that ‘the dolmens belong to one continuous
series, passing from Syria, along North Africa, and up Spain to
Western Europe’,[1712] of Montelius,[1713] Sophus Müller,[1714] and
Sergi.[1715] Penka, on the other hand (I quote from Mr. J. L. Myres’s
exposition of his views), ‘reads the series the other way,’ because
‘while on the north these monuments go back into the Stone Age, in
France and the south they belong to the Bronze Age’. He observes that
‘the discovery of dolmens in North Africa and Syria ... has proceeded
_pari passu_ with the discovery both of actual survival of a tall
blond dolichocephalic race in the same areas, and of evidence in
Egyptian portraiture of its wider extension in the second millennium
B.C.’ He maintains therefore that the earliest dolmen-builders were
dolichocephalic blonds, speaking an Aryan language, in Southern
Scandinavia and Denmark.[1716]
Now the ethnological problem presented by the distribution of the
dolmens is exceedingly difficult; and it is not certain that either
of the above-mentioned views is right. Dolmens are found not only in
the countries which have been already mentioned, but also in Japan,
India, Persia, Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Moab, Asia Minor, the Crimea,
the Netherlands, Northern Germany, and the Balearic Islands;[1717] and
it is possible that in certain other countries their non-existence
may be due simply to lack of the necessary stones.[1718] In the
territory which corresponds with ancient Gaul there are no dolmens
east of the line formed by the Jura and the Vosges;[1719] while the
departments in which they are most numerous form a band extending
obliquely from Finistère to Gard, that is, from the Channel to the
Mediterranean.[1720] The single department of the Morbihan contains
more megalithic monuments, including menhirs, or single standing
stones, than all the other departments put together; but in the list
of dolmens it ranks below Aveyron and Ardèche.[1721] In the Spanish
peninsula almost all the dolmens are concentrated in Portugal,
the north-eastern corner of Spain, and the southern and eastern
seaboard: in Southern Britain they are found in Cornwall, Devonshire,
Dorsetshire, Somersetshire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Kent,
Derbyshire, Staffordshire, and Northumberland, in Monmouthshire,[1722]
Herefordshire, and Wales;[1723] while in Scotland they are represented
by the horned cairns of Caithness and the chambered cairns of Orkney,
Inverness, Argyllshire, Arran, and other islands.[1724] In Ireland they
are everywhere, but most numerous in the west.[1725]
There is a striking resemblance, which, in certain cases, amounts
to almost complete identity of form, between many of the dolmens of
Western Europe and some even of the Caucasus and India; although, as
might have been expected, local peculiarities exist everywhere.[1726]
Thus the chambered long barrow of West Kennet in Wiltshire is
identical in construction with the Hünebedden, or ‘Giants’ Graves’, of
Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, and Hanover;[1727] and close resemblances
have been noted between certain dolmens in Wales and others in Brittany
and Portugal,[1728] between some in Antrim and others in Denmark,[1729]
and between certain Irish dolmens and the peculiar ship-shaped
monuments of the Balearic Isles.[1730] It is of course true that in
sepulchres of such rude and simple construction general resemblance is
inevitable, and does not necessarily imply community of origin: but
when we find that in the Caucasus, in Syria and India, and in every
European country in which dolmens exist some few have one of their
stones pierced with a hole;[1731] that the covering-stones of certain
dolmens in Portugal, Ireland, Cornwall, Sweden, and elsewhere are
indented with small circular depressions,[1732] and that the sepulchral
customs discernible in the dolmens of widely separated countries are
virtually identical,[1733] it must be admitted that there is ground for
the opinion that the custom of dolmen-building originated with some one
people.[1734] On the other hand, it is easily conceivable that these
coincidences originated in customs and beliefs which may have been
common property before the first dolmen was set up, or which may have
been handed on at a later time from tribe to tribe. De Mortillet argued
that dolmens were not the exclusive creation of any one race because
in France skeletons of widely different races have been found within
them.[1735] But this fact only proves that an intruding race buried
their dead in dolmens built by others, or else adopted the custom
of dolmen-building from their predecessors. It has also been argued
that the differences in detail which are noticeable in the dolmens of
the various countries of Western Europe prove that they were not the
work of one migratory people but of various settled tribes; and that
this conclusion is borne out by the similarity between the culture of
the dolmen-builders of widely separated countries such as France and
Denmark.[1736] What is certain is that if the dolmens had been erected
successively by peoples who migrated westward from Syria or even
North Africa, and whose descendants moved on northward to the British
Isles, we should expect to find that the British dolmens belonged to a
period very much later than those of the Mediterranean. But the oldest
dolmens of North Africa are assigned by General Faidherbe to the very
end of the Neolithic and the commencement of the Bronze Age.[1737]
The arguments of Penka, whatever value they may have in regard to
the origin of dolmen-building, certainly do not prove that the Long
Barrow race were descended from Scandinavian ancestors: for their
skulls are easily distinguishable from those of Scandinavia;[1738]
the neolithic pottery of Britain is utterly different from that of
the north;[1739] and the distribution of the dolmens in the British
Isles, where they are most numerous in Western Britain and in Ireland,
is hardly consistent with the theory that the people who erected them
came from the north-east. Moreover, the remains which have been found
in the oldest Scandinavian dolmens indicate that the culture which they
represent was more advanced than that which is manifested in similar
tombs in Gaul or the British Isles.[1740]
On the question of the origin of dolmens I offer no opinion. But in
regard to those of Western Europe the least improbable theory appears
to be that which was first tentatively propounded by M. Cazalis de
Fondonce,[1741] and developed by Mr. Borlase,[1742] namely, that a
dolichocephalic people who were erecting dolmens in France and the
Spanish peninsula, where these monuments may have been evolved from
sepulchral caves,[1743] were forced westward by the brachycephalic
‘Grenelle’ race who invaded those countries in the Neolithic
Age;[1744] that some of them migrated into the British Isles, and
others into Holland and Northern Germany,[1745] whence the custom of
dolmen-building would have spread to Denmark and Scandinavia; and that
others [perhaps] moved southward into Africa. The earlier neolithic
dolmen-builders of Gaul, like the Long Barrow people of Britain,
belonged to the ‘Mediterranean’ type; and on the theory which I have
stated their ancestors might have migrated into Spain and Gaul from
Africa long before the first African dolmen was erected.
Lastly, linguistic arguments have been adduced to prove the African
origin of the Long Barrow race.[1746] Professor Morris Jones[1747]
endeavours to show that the Celtic language was modified, after it had
been introduced into Britain, by the language or languages which it
encountered;[1748] and he claims to have established the syntactical
similarity of the modern Celtic dialects to Egyptian and to the
Hamitic dialects generally, and to have demonstrated that ‘neo-Celtic
syntax agrees with Hamitic in almost every point where it differs from
Aryan’.[1749] This, he concludes, is ‘the linguistic complement of the
anthropological evidence, and the strongest corroboration of the theory
of the kinship of the early inhabitants of Britain to the North African
white race’.
I would not, however, venture to commit myself to the theory of Sergi,
that the cradle of the ‘Iberian’ race, or of the ‘Mediterranean’
race of which it was an offshoot, was in Northern Africa or
Somaliland.[1750] Professor Boyd Dawkins infers ‘from their range as
far north as Scotland, and at least as far to the east as Belgium, that
they travelled by the same paths that the Celtic, Belgic, and Germanic
tribes travelled ... coming from the East, and pushing their way to
the West; and that another [group] mastered Northern Africa’; and he
argues that this view ‘is confirmed by the examination of the domestic
animals which they possessed. The short-horned ox, the sheep, and the
goat, are derived from wild stocks that are now to be found only in
Central Asia.... None of these animals were known in Europe before the
Neolithic Age.’[1751] But any one who has read so far will have seen
that the range of the ‘Iberian’ race ‘as far north as Scotland’ lends
no support to the theory that it originated in Asia. In regard to
the argument which the professor derives from the examination of the
domestic animals, Rolleston[1752] inclined to the view that ‘though
coming in the ultimate resort from the east, [they] ... did not reach
the north of the Alps directly from the East, but only ... from the
Greek and Italian peninsulas’. But the truth is that we do not know
whether the _earliest_ neolithic invaders of the British Isles or of
Western Europe possessed short-horned oxen, sheep, or goats.[1753]
Supposing that these animals came from the East, is it not possible
that they were introduced into Europe not by the ‘Mediterranean’ race
but by brachycephalic neolithic immigrants? Moreover, Professor Boyd
Dawkins has himself admitted that ‘the common domestic hog, descended
from the wild boar, may have been originally tamed in Europe’,[1754]
and that the vegetables possessed by the Swiss lake-dwellers may have
been ‘derived from Southern Europe’;[1755] and it is now generally held
that the domestic animals of the neolithic inhabitants of Europe were
of European origin, and that there is no evidence that their plants and
cereals were derived from Asia.[1756]
On the whole the evidence shows that the neolithic inhabitants of
Britain, or at all events a large proportion of them, were descended
from ancestors who lived in the Mediterranean basin. But it does
not follow that they were more intimately related to the people
whom the ancient writers called Iberians than to some other branch
of the Mediterranean stock. It is certain that before the Romans
entered the Spanish peninsula two languages at least besides Celtic
were spoken there,--Basque and the language of the so-called Iberian
inscriptions.[1757] The latter has not yet been deciphered: but, as we
have seen,[1758] all attempts to explain it by means of Basque have
failed; and, as Professor Morris Jones admits, all attempts to discover
traces of Basque influence in the Celtic dialects have been equally
unsuccessful.[1759]
Therefore it should be distinctly understood that if the term ‘Iberian’
is to be applied to the neolithic inhabitants of Britain, it must be
taken in a purely conventional sense.[1760]
M. d’Arbois de Jubainville[1761] adduces various British place-names,
for example, _Sabrina_ (the Severn), Isca (the Exe), _Albion_, and
_Cantium_ (Kent), which he chooses to call Ligurian; but I am not aware
that he has made any converts. Little or nothing is known about the
Ligurian tongue;[1762] and even if M. d’Arbois’s conjectures could be
verified their ethnological value would be comparatively slight; for,
as I have shown elsewhere,[1763] there is some reason to believe that
the Ligurians, like the Iberians, belonged to the ‘Mediterranean’ stock.
It is perhaps hardly necessary now to insist upon the fact that the
Long Barrow race is not extinct. Not only have their remains been
found, as we shall presently see, in graves of the Bronze Age and
the Late Celtic period,[1764] but men of the same type, but little
modified, are still numerous.[1765]
It is often taken for granted that no round barrows were erected in
Britain before the close of the Neolithic Age, and that the earliest
of the brachycephalic invaders whose remains have been found in them
landed with bronze weapons in their hands.[1766] But these assumptions
are made in spite of conclusive evidence. There is not the slightest
doubt that most if not all of the circular chambered cairns of
Argyllshire, Caithness, Orkney, and Derbyshire were erected before
the Bronze Age in those parts began.[1767] Dr. Garson, speaking of
brachycephalic skulls which have been found in round barrows in Orkney,
says that ‘the fact that no metals of any kind were found, and that
all the implements were of the most primitive manufacture, points to
the people belonging to the unpolished stone period’, and concludes
that ‘we probably post-date the existence of the people who buried
in the round barrows of Orkney if we attribute them with (_sic_) the
same antiquity as those of the round barrows of England’.[1768] Dr.
Garson has also shown that the round barrow of Howe Hill in Yorkshire
was erected in the Neolithic Age, and that the skeletons found in it
belong to the Long Barrow type.[1769] The round-headed people who
introduced drinking-cups into our island brought no bronze with them.
According to Barnard Davis, a skull from a chambered round barrow
at Parsley Hay Low in Derbyshire, which had a cephalic index of 81,
‘without doubt belongs to the early “stone-period”’;[1770] and he
assigns to the same epoch another skull, the cephalic index of which
was the same, from Green Gate Hill barrow, Pickering, Yorkshire.[1771]
Canon Greenwell suggests that some of the round barrows ‘belong to an
age before bronze was discovered’; and it is certain that the round
barrows of this country were connected by evolution with the earlier
long barrows.[1772] Finally, if Sergi[1773] is right in maintaining
that ‘the new burial custom of cremation’ was introduced into Europe
by brachycephalic immigrants, it follows that they invaded Britain in
the Neolithic Age; for in this country, as in Gaul, cremation was then
practised.[1774]
VII. THE ‘PICTISH QUESTION’
A view which has become fashionable of late years, owing to the
influence of Professor Rhys and Professor Zimmer, is that the
[dolichocephalic] neolithic people of this country were identical with
the Picts,[1775] whose name first occurs in the panegyric addressed
about A.D. 296 to Constantius Caesar.[1776] To clear the ground, I
should say, first, that it is universally admitted that descendants of
the neolithic race survived not only in the part of Scotland which was
inhabited by the Picts but in most parts of Britain. The question is
whether the Picts represented that race in a special sense, and still
spoke the neolithic non-Aryan language. As we shall see, Professor
Rhys himself, who maintains that they did, emphatically affirms that
among the medley of tribes who were known as Picts some were Celtic
and spoke a Celtic tongue. Secondly, it may be well to state certain
elementary facts of Celtic phonology (although I dare say that to most
of those who may read these pages they are already familiar), without a
knowledge of which parts of the following discussion and of the later
section on the Celts would be unintelligible. The ancient Gauls, for
the most part,[1777] and the Brythons, from whose dialect modern Welsh
is descended, are commonly called the P Celts; while the Goidels, whose
dialect was the ancestor of Gaelic, Irish, and Manx, are known as the Q
Celts. The reason of this distinction is that the Gauls and Brythons
changed the original sound _qu_ into _p_, while the Goidels retained
it, and in the sixth century of our era modified it into _c_.[1778]
It has been affirmed, however, on the evidence of the formularies of
Marcellus of Bordeaux, that some of the Western Gauls in the fourth
century spoke a dialect which was akin to Goidelic;[1779] and Professor
Rhys and Mr. Nicholson[1780] regard the words _Sequani_ and _Sequana_
(the Gallic name of the Seine) as proving that this dialect was not
confined to the west: but M. d’Arbois de Jubainville refuses to admit
that these names are Celtic,[1781] and contemptuously denies that the
formularies are to be taken seriously.[1782] Professor Rhys[1783]
and Mr. Nicholson[1784] also infer from certain inscriptions found
in the departments of the Ain and Deux-Sèvres, which probably belong
respectively to the first and the fourth century of our era, that a
dialect akin to Goidelic was spoken in those localities: but here
again M. d’Arbois dissents;[1785] and he remarks that an inscription
found at Géligneux in the department of the Ain contains a word,
_petru-decametos_,[1786] which belongs to the language of the P Celts.
Professor Rhys urges that ‘the presence of monuments in the language
occupying the subordinate position may be taken as evidence presumptive
of its being the vernacular in the immediate neighbourhood’:[1787]
but, as we shall see hereafter,[1788] a pillar, bearing a Goidelic
inscription, has been found at Silchester, where the vernacular
was undoubtedly Brythonic; and the obvious explanation is that the
inscription was the work of a stranger. M. d’Arbois,[1789] moreover,
unlike Professor Rhys, maintains that when the Celts first invaded
Britain, the Celtic language everywhere was one and the same: according
to him, none of the Celts had then changed _q_ into _p_, but that
change was made at a later date by the Celts who conquered Gaul, and
some of whose descendants afterwards conquered Britain. Until near the
end of the nineteenth century Celtic scholars unanimously believed that
all the Celtic dialects had rejected ‘Indo-European _p_’, except, as
Mr. Nicholson says,[1790] ‘in borrowed words or in certain combinations
of consonants’; in other words, that wherever the Indo-European or
Aryan tongue from which Celtic was descended had the sound of _p_ the
Celtic dialects had all lost it: but Professor Rhys holds that Mr.
Nicholson has proved from the above-mentioned inscriptions, found in
the departments of the Ain and Deux Sèvres, that it was retained by the
Sequani and the Pictones.[1791] M. d’Arbois de Jubainville of course
rejects this conclusion; and he reminds his opponents that _p_ is
absent from all Ogam inscriptions.[1792]
1. In 296, when the panegyric addressed to Constantius was written,
the Picts to whom the writer referred were confined to the part of
Scotland which extends northward from the firths of Forth and Clyde;
but Professor Rhys and Professor Zimmer maintain that the habitat of
the Pictish people was once much more extensive. ‘Irish literature,’
says Professor Rhys,[1793] ‘alludes to Picts here and there in Ireland
... in such a way as to favour the belief that they were survivals of
a race holding possession at one time of the whole country.’ That the
Picts once inhabited the whole of Britain is proved, in the opinion
not only of the two professors but also of M. d’Arbois de Jubainville,
who differs from them on the question of Pictish ethnology, by the
following linguistic facts.[1794] The Irish name of the Picts was
_Cruthni_.[1795] Britain has, since the Middle Ages, been called in
Welsh _ynys Prydein_: _Prydein_ is the Welsh equivalent of _Cruthni_;
and _ynys Prydein_ means ‘the island of the Picts’. Now, as Professor
Rhys remarks,[1796] _Prydein_, with its cognate forms, _Prydain_,
_Prydyn_, and _Pryden_, represents an old Welsh word _Priten_; and
accordingly, the Brythonic or the Gaulish name of the Picts, when
it reached the ears of the Greeks, would have been written by them
Πρετανοί. It must of course be borne in mind that _Cruthni_, _Prydain_,
and _Priten_ did not appear in literature until long after Caesar’s
time; but the etymology which connects Πρετανοί and Πρεταν(ν)ικαὶ
(νῆσοι)--the name by which Ptolemy and other Greek writers call the
British Isles[1797]--with _Priten_ is accepted by Celtic scholars who,
on the question of the ethnology of the Picts, differ widely among
themselves. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville[1798] concludes that in the
time of Pytheas the masters of Britain were the Picts; while Professor
Rhys holds that when, shortly before that epoch, the Brythons first
landed in Britain,[1799] not the Picts but the Goidelic Celts were
the dominant race. In other words, he believes that the Goidelic Celts
called the island which they conquered by ‘some such a Goidelic name as
Inis Chruithni, “Island of the Picts”’.[1800] M. d’Arbois identifies
the Picts of the time of Pytheas with the ancestors of the Goidelic
Celts: like Professor Rhys he regards the word _Pretani_ as simply
the Brythonic, or Gaulish form of a Goidelic word _Qrtanoi_, of which
_Cruthni_ was the later Irish equivalent;[1801] but he holds that no
Brythons had set foot in Britain until after the time of Pytheas, and
that the word _Pretani_ was learned by Pytheas not in Britain but in
Gaul.
Both the views that have just been stated seem to involve difficulties.
If Professor Rhys is right in believing that the pre-Roman Goidelic
invaders of Britain (whose very existence, as we shall afterwards
see, is not universally admitted) called the people whom they found
in possession by some such name as Chruithni or Cruthni, the name
which, transformed by Brythons into _Pretanoi_, was applied by Pytheas
to the inhabitants of Britain generally, it would appear either
that the Goidelic invaders had no name of their own or that it was
suppressed.[1802] Moreover, Professor Rhys does not explain how it
happened that Pytheas never learned the name by which, as he tells us,
the Brythons called themselves, namely, Brittones. On the other hand,
M. d’Arbois’s view would compel us either to assign the first Brythonic
invasion to a date a century later than that which is now generally
accepted,[1803] or to assume that Pytheas, although he visited Britain,
learned nothing there of the name of its inhabitants. I confess that I
cannot suggest any satisfactory solution.
It remains to be inquired whether the Picts of history did really, in
a special sense, represent the neolithic population, and whether they
spoke a non-Aryan language.
2. Was the word _Pict_, in its original form, pre-Aryan or Celtic?
The answers that have been given to this question only serve to amuse
the ignorant scoffer, and to illustrate the truth that even if the
labours of Zeuss placed the study of the ancient Celtic languages
upon a scientific basis, Celtic scholars still know very little about
them. When we inquire of Professor Rhys, we are perplexed by the quick
changes of front to which his most devoted disciples have by this time
become accustomed. In the second edition of his _Celtic Britain_[1804]
he said that ‘neither the Picts nor the Scotti probably owned these
names, the former of which is to be traced to Roman authors’; and
he described the theory which ‘connected the Pict with the Gaulish
Pictones’ as a ‘clumsy invention’.[1805] In his Rhind Lectures he
assured us that ‘the principal non-Aryan name of the inhabitants
of both islands [Great Britain and Ireland] was some prototype of
the word Pict’,[1806] and gave reasons, which are now generally
accepted, for believing that that name was not connected with the
Latin _pictus_.[1807] At the same time he definitely committed himself
to the view which he had previously derided as a ‘clumsy invention’,
and affirmed that ‘the word Pict ... is hardly to be severed from the
Pictones of ancient Gaul’. In _The Welsh People_, which first appeared
in 1900, and in a later edition of the same work, dated 1902,[1808]
he argued that ‘_Ictis_ [the name of an island mentioned by Diodorus
Siculus[1809]] and _Icht_ [the old Irish name of the English Channel]
represent possibly a Celtic pronunciation of the same Aboriginal word
which the Romans made into _Pictus_ ... we must’, he added, ‘suppose it
an early name which the Aborigines adopted, while the Celts ... applied
another name _Qṷrtani_, _Pretani_, _Cruithni_,’ &c. But in the same
year in which the first edition of _The Welsh People_ appeared he told
the members of the British Association that ‘_pictos_ was a Celtican
word of the same etymology, and approximately, doubtless, of the same
meaning as the Latin _pictus_; that the Celticans had applied it at an
early date to the Picts on account of their ... tattooing themselves;
and that the Picts had accepted it’.[1810] It is not absolutely clear
whether by ‘the Celticans’ he means only those people of Gaul who spoke
a language akin to Goidelic or the first Celtic invaders of Britain.
As, however, we are told that the Picts accepted their name from ‘the
Celticans’, it would seem that those ‘Celticans’ were, or at all events
included, the British Goidels; and we ask ourselves in bewilderment
why, if the ‘Celticans’ applied the name _pictos_ to the Picts, they
also applied the name _Qṷrtani_.[1811] But when we open the latest
edition of _Celtic Britain_,[1812] we find that the professor’s views
are still in process of development, or of flux. He now reverts to the
theory that ‘the native name which suggested the Latin [_Pictus_] was
not of Celtic origin either, though only found treated as Celtic’. He
adds that ‘the term Pictones, as occurring in Gaul in Caesar’s time,
makes it probable that it was also a name of long standing in Britain’;
and finally he avows with characteristic candour that ‘we know not
from what language it comes’. Turning to our other authorities, we
learn from Zimmer that _Picti_ is obviously a Latin translation of
the name [the ancestor of _Prydain_] which the Romans learned from
the Britons.[1813] In other words, the German _savant_ holds that
the word Pictos [if it ever existed except as a Latin accusative
plural] was neither aboriginal in Britain, nor Celtican. It has been
suggested[1814] that _Picti_ is connected with the old Irish word
_cicht_,[1815] a carver or engraver, and is the Cymric form of a
Goidelic word _Qicti_;[1816] while Mr. Nicholson, who insists that
_Picti_ is not Cymric but Goidelic, claims to have ‘fully shown that
this name is ... from the root _peik-_ “tattoo”, with Ind.-Eur. _p_
preserved’.[1817]
The one absolutely certain conclusion to which the student of ethnology
can come is that the name of the Picts has not been proved to be of
pre-Aryan origin.
3. Still, Professors Rhys and Zimmer will have it that the Picts must
have been a non-Aryan people. Caesar,[1818] in a well-known passage,
states that among the Britons groups of ten or twelve men had wives in
common; in other words, that one of the British customs was polyandry.
It has generally been assumed that he meant to say that the custom was
prevalent among the Britons generally; but Zimmer, after reviewing the
whole chapter in which the passage occurs, concludes that it refers
only to _interiores_--the Britons of the interior[1819]--whom Caesar
contrasts with _maritimi_,--the descendants of the Belgic invaders. The
latter, he argues, according to Caesar’s express statement, differed
but slightly in their customs from the Gauls:[1820] therefore the words
in which Caesar describes the British custom of polyandry cannot refer
to them, but must refer to _interiores_.[1821] The two professors
agree in thinking that Caesar, owing to his ‘inability to realize a
state of society exclusively based on birth’,[1822] misunderstood
the institution which he tried to describe; in other words, that
that institution was not polyandry but matriarchy,--the rule of
succession by which rank and property are transmitted in the female
line; a king, for example, being succeeded not by his own son but by
the son of one of his sisters.[1823] Zimmer, referring to Schrader’s
_Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples_,[1824] remarks that
among all Aryan-speaking peoples and among the primitive Aryans the
custom by which a father is succeeded by his own son (_das Vaterrecht_)
was the foundation of social ordinance.[1825] Professor Rhys,[1826]
indeed, thinks that this generalization cannot be proved, and refers
to a well-known passage in the 20th chapter of the _Germania_ of
Tacitus,--‘Sisters’ sons are held in as much esteem by their uncles
as by their fathers: indeed, some regard the relation as even more
sacred and binding’,[1827] &c. (_Sororum filiis idem apud avunculum qui
apud patrem honor: quidam sanctiorem artioremque hunc nexum sanguinis
arbitrantur_); but he suggests that the tribe of which Tacitus speaks
may have been mixed with some ‘aboriginal race practising the same
institution as the aborigines of the British Isles’. And I suggest
that the Picts were Celts mixed with aborigines who practised this
same institution, and consequently that if it prevailed among the
Picts, its prevalence does not prove that they were in any special
sense representatives of the aborigines, or that they spoke a non-Aryan
language.[1828]
Having corrected Caesar’s narrative to his own satisfaction, Professor
Rhys sets himself to prove that matriarchy was a Pictish institution.
He observes[1829] that ‘a Pictish king [during the later period of the
Roman occupation and afterwards] could not be succeeded by a son of his
own, but usually by a sister’s son. The succession,’ he continues, ‘was
through the mother, and it points back to a state of society which,
previous to the conversion of the Picts to Christianity, was probably
based on matriarchy as distinguished from marriage and marital custom.’
To show that matriarchy had formerly prevailed in Britain outside
the territory within which the Picts of history were confined, he
adds[1830] that ‘the ancient literature of Ireland abounds in allusions
to heroes who are usually described with the aid of the mother’s name’,
and that ‘this kind of nomenclature implies the Pictish succession as
its origin’. Again, he quotes an inscription found at Colchester, which
ends with the words
DONVM. LOSSIO. VEDA. DE SVO
POSVIT. NEPOS. VEPOGENI. CALEDO.
(‘This gift has been dedicated at his own expense by Lossio Veda, the
son of the sister [?] of Vepogen, a Caledonian’), and remarks that
when Lossio calls himself a Caledonian, that ‘is for our purpose much
the same as if he had called himself a Pict’, and that, moreover, both
_Veda_ and _Vepogeni_ ‘may be said to occur in the list of Pictish
kings’, where the latter is ‘written _Vipoig_’. _Vepogeni_, indeed, is
a Celtic word, borrowed, the professor assures us, in accordance with
Pictish custom; but ‘the reduction of Vepogen to _Vepog_, which is what
underlies _Vipoig_, is impossible on Celtic ground ... while Pictish
offers a simple and natural explanation’.[1831]
Professor Morris Jones remarks, in support of Professor Rhys’s
argument, that ‘the Pictish succession’ has ‘come down to our own times
among the Berbers’[1832] (or rather Kabyles), who, he says, have been
shown, on craniological grounds, to be akin to our neolithic race.
Apparently Professor Rhys does not regard the custom of reckoning
descent ‘by birth alone’ as confined in these islands to the Picts,
or to the pre-Aryan aborigines: if, as he is inclined, like Professor
Zimmer, to believe, it was non-Aryan, ‘it must,’ he says, ‘have been
accepted by the Goidelic Celts from the aborigines.’[1833]
Now, in regard to this last observation, the comment suggests itself
that what Professor Rhys has not yet proved is that those aborigines
were Picts. The Picts, as we shall presently see, were, according
to some Celtic scholars, themselves Goidelic Celts (mixed of course
with aborigines whom they had subdued and Celticized); according to
others, their speech was akin to Brythonic.[1834] And if, as Professor
Rhys insists, matriarchy may have been accepted by the Celts from
the aborigines, it is perhaps not incredible that, as Mr. Sidney
Hartland suggests, the Celts themselves, in prehistoric times, may have
passed through the matriarchal stage,[1835] and that the survival of
matriarchy among the Picts is not necessarily attributable to pre-Aryan
ancestry.[1836] But, be that as it may, the survival of matriarchy
among the Picts proves nothing more than that among the Picts, as
among every other British people, the substratum of the population was
pre-Aryan: it does not prove that the dominant element among them was
pre-Aryan, or that they spoke a non-Aryan language.
As for Professor Morris Jones’s argument, it may perhaps raise a
probability that the ‘Pictish succession’ prevailed among the neolithic
race, although, if the argument is worth anything, the professor ought
to be able to show that the same institution belonged to the ‘Iberians’
of Spain, of Gaul, and of other countries who have also been shown ‘on
craniological grounds’ to be akin to the Kabyles: but at all events
it lends no support to the theory that the Picts were, in any special
sense, descendants of the neolithic aborigines; for, assuming that
they were Celts, they might have accepted the Pictish succession from
them. There remains Professor Rhys’s statement that ‘the reduction of
_Vepogen_ to _Vepog_, which is what underlies _Vipoig_, is impossible
on Celtic ground’. Is the professor quite sure? A few years ago he
would certainly have said that the retention of ‘Indo-European _p_’
was ‘impossible on Celtic ground’; but in 1900 he announced that the
‘Celtican language’ which was spoken in the country of the Sequani
‘preserves intact the Aryan consonant _p_’.[1837] He has himself
assured us that both the Celtic dialects spoken in the British Isles
were greatly modified by a pre-Aryan language.[1838] Assuming, for
the sake of argument, that the Pictish language was Celtic, is he
prepared to deny that it could have been so far modified by a non-Aryan
tongue that ‘the reduction of _Vepogen_ to _Vepog_’ would still have
been ‘impossible on Celtic ground’?[1839] Finally, when he tells us
that Lossio’s description of himself as a Caledonian ‘is for our
purpose much the same as if he had called himself a Pict’, we cannot
help recalling his own statement[1840] that ‘the Caledonians were,
as we understand their history, Goidels’; though, to be sure, in the
latest edition of _Celtic Britain_[1841] he expunges this compromising
sentence, and substitutes for it ‘the Caledonians were Picts’.
For my part I accept the professor’s emendation unreservedly. Picts
the Caledonians certainly were; for does not the author of the
panegyric addressed to Constantine speak of ‘the Caledonians and other
Picts’?[1842] But for me the Picts were a mixed people, comprising
descendants of the neolithic aborigines, of the Round Barrow race,
and of the Celtic invaders,--a mixed people who spoke a Celtic
dialect. And what puzzles me is that the professor should not have
been struck by the anthropological facts that are fatal to the theory
that the Caledonians were Picts in the sense which he attaches to the
word,--that is, pure survivors of the neolithic aborigines, who spoke
a non-Aryan language. For the neolithic aborigines, as we have seen,
were, speaking generally, small dark men of the ‘Iberian’ type: the
Caledonians were big fair or red-haired men. Doubtless there were, as I
have said, ‘Iberian’ survivors among them; but who will deny that the
powerful race whom Tacitus describes were predominant, or that their
Aryan tongue had prevailed?[1843]
4. It is usually inferred from statements in Claudian[1844] and
Herodian[1845] that the Picts tattooed themselves; and their testimony
is supposed to be strengthened by the etymology of the names by which
the Picts were known to the Irish and Welsh respectively,--_Cruthni_
and _Prydain_. The former is said to be derived from _cruth_,[1846]
the Gaelic word for ‘form’ or ‘shape’; and the latter from its Welsh
equivalent, _pryd_.[1847] Thus _Cruthni_ and _Prydain_ would mean
‘the people whose bodies were decorated with figures’; and, as we have
seen, Zimmer has no doubt that the Roman name for the Picts--_Picti_,
or ‘painted men’--was simply a translation of _Prydain_ or its older
equivalent. Professor Rhys, who, in one of his many and diverse
utterances on the subject, affirmed that _pictos_ was a Celtican
word,[1848] drew this conclusion from the fact, pointed out by Mr.
Nicholson,[1849] that a coin of the Gallic tribe of the Pictones[1850]
bears on the obverse a tattooed face; and he supposes that the reason
why the Celticans applied this word to the Picts was that the latter
tattooed themselves. ‘The Picts of Britain and Ireland,’ he remarks,
‘are found also called _Pictones_’; and ‘ancient Egyptian monuments
represent the Libyans of North Africa with their bodies tattooed’.[1851]
Now what does this community of custom prove about the ethnology
of the Picts? The inhabitants of the Tonga and Society Islands and
of New Guinea tattoo themselves: so do the Burmese, the Shans, the
Maoris, and the people of British East Africa;[1852] so do very many
Englishmen. All the available evidence tends to show that among the
ancient inhabitants of the British Isles tattooing was not confined to
the Picts. Herodian does not mention the Picts at all: he merely says
that the Britons tattooed themselves. Professor Rhys admits, or rather
strenuously maintains, that in the territory inhabited by the Picts in
Scotland there were also numerous Celts;[1853] and he would hardly deny
that they were included among the people whom Herodian describes. He
himself remarks that ‘the Scotti (that is to say the Goidels)’[1854]
practised tattooing.[1855] Mr. Nicholson, to whom he appeals, argues
from the evidence of coins that tattooing was customary not only
among the Pictones, but also among several other tribes of Gaul,--the
Ambiani, the Baiocasses, the Caletes, the Coriosopites, the Osismi, the
Sequani, and the Unelli. All these peoples were undoubtedly Celtic;
that is to say, they were Celtic-speaking tribes among whom the Celtic
element, ethnologically speaking, was, I do not say numerically, but
politically predominant. Professor Rhys would certainly not argue that
they were Picts: yet if he admits, as he does, that they were Celtic,
the argument which he bases on the practice of tattooing collapses.
5. Some years ago Professor Rhys attempted to prove that the Pictish
language was related to Basque;[1856] ‘but,’ he says, ‘whether it is
related or not, my attempt to prove that it is has been pronounced,
and doubtless justly pronounced, a failure.’[1857] At the same time,
however, pointing to a famous ogam inscription, he wrote, ‘my challenge
still remains, that if Pictish resembled Gaelic or Welsh, or in fact
any Aryan language, those who think so should make good their opinion
by giving us a translation of such an inscription, for instance, as the
following from Lunasting, in Shetland:--_Xttocuhetts : ahehhttmnnn :
hccvvevv : nehhtonn_.’[1858]
The lay reader will perhaps mentally endorse the comment of
another Celtic scholar, Dr. Alexander Macbain, who disposes of the
cacophonous puzzle by observing that ‘it is neither Welsh nor any
other language’.[1859] For the present, at all events, it is safe to
say that Dr. Macbain is as likely to be right as Mr. Nicholson, who,
having boldly accepted Professor Rhys’s challenge, first judiciously
reconstructed the text of the inscription, and then made an heroic
attempt to translate his own version. It is Goidelic, so he assures us;
and it means
‘Place of O’ Cuhetts
his place within:
CUAIBH of Nehton’.[1860]
On the other hand, the translation which Professor Rhys ‘provisionally’
offers of _his_ text runs
‘“Kin--Ahehhtmnnn King Nechtan”.
That is to say, King Nechtan of the kin of Ahehhtmnnn’.[1861]
Perhaps it shows a slight lack of humour to attempt, even
‘provisionally’, to translate an inscription assumed to be written
in a language the very existence of which is doubtful. Still it is
conceivable that Professor Rhys’s text means what he says. But,
supposing that it resembles neither Gaelic, nor Welsh, nor any Aryan
language, what does it prove? Not that the Picts represented the
neolithic aborigines, but simply that in the remotest of the British
isles there still survived the non-Aryan language which, as every
scholar admits, was once spoken in Britain.
But the truth is that the so-called Pictish inscriptions, even in
the hands of the philologist, are so intractable that for ethnology
they are practically useless. ‘I can hardly do more,’ says Professor
Rhys,[1862] ‘than pick from previous attempts by others and by myself
what seems to me the most probable reading.’ This is only one of
numerous instances in his well-known article on the inscriptions which
show how impossible it is to construct the text with any approach
towards certainty.
Professor Rhys remarks, further,[1863] that ‘we have indications in
Adamnan’s Life of Columba that [in the sixth century of our era] the
language of the aborigines was still a living tongue’. The indications
are that when Columba, who spoke Goidelic, visited the province of
the Picts, he preached ‘to peasants or plebeians by interpreter’. To
those who hold, with Dr. Whitley Stokes and Dr. Macbain, that the
Pictish dialect was akin to Brythonic, the fact on which Professor
Rhys lays stress presents of course no difficulty. M. d’Arbois de
Jubainville, however, while he agrees with Dr. Macbain,[1864] makes a
reply to Professor Rhys which might be used by those who hold, with Mr.
Nicholson, that Pictish was akin to Goidelic. He tells a story of a
Breton priest of the diocese of Quimper who assured him that he himself
could not understand the Breton dialect of a woman who belonged to the
diocese of Vannes.[1865]
Mr. Nicholson[1866] says that ‘we have abundant materials for deciding
whether Pictish was or was not (1) Aryan, (2) Keltic, (3) Goidelic, in
(_a_) the place-names recorded by ancient geographers and one or two
mediaeval documents, (_b_) the person-names given by one or two ancient
historians and in mediaeval chronicles, (_c_) the inscriptions’.
From these materials Mr. Nicholson undertakes to demonstrate that
Pictish was Goidelic, and that ‘it stands to Highland Gaelic in
exactly the same relation in which Anglo-Saxon stands to modern
English’;[1867] while Dr. Whitley Stokes[1868] and Dr. Macbain[1869]
undertake with equal confidence to demonstrate that it was related to
Brythonic. According to Bede,[1870] the place which marked the western
termination of the wall of Severus was called in Pictish _Peanfahel_.
_Pean_ is commonly identified with the Welsh word _penn_, ‘a head’;
and accordingly it has been inferred that Pictish was ‘a Kymric or
semi-Kymric dialect’.[1871] Mr. Nicholson, on the other hand, claims
to have shown that _Pean_ is ‘a Goidelic borrowing from the Latin
_penna_ or _pinna_’. Professor Rhys[1872] formerly clung to the view
that _Peanfahel_ was a Brythonic name, but was not in the least
disconcerted thereby; for, he explained, ‘the Picts must have learnt
it ... from the Verturian Brythons.’ On the question of etymology he
has now become a convert to Mr. Nicholson’s view:[1873] but on the
question of ethnology he retains his own opinion; for, he explains,
‘The non-Celtic Picts, when we find them coming southwards, seem to
have been fast adopting the idioms of their neighbours.’[1874] Mr.
Nicholson[1875] analyses with laborious ingenuity a large number of
names in Adamnan’s _Life of Columba_, of place-names in the _Pictish
Chronicle_, of Pictish historical names, and of words which occur in
the ‘Pictish inscriptions’, and insists that they are Goidelic: Dr.
Whitley Stokes[1876] and Dr. Macbain[1877] produce words from the same
sources, from Ptolemy’s Geography, and from Dion Cassius, and insist
that they are Brythonic. Dr. Stokes’s authority is so great that his
verdict is worth quoting:--‘The foregoing list of names and other words
contains much that is still obscure; but on the whole it shows that
Pictish, so far as regards its vocabulary, is an Indo-European and
especially Celtic speech. Its phonetics, so far as we can ascertain
them, resemble those of Welsh rather than of Irish.’[1878]
But the arguments for Brythonic, on the one hand, and for Goidelic, on
the other, leave Professor Rhys unmoved. Prove as many Pictish words as
you please to have been Goidelic, as many as you please to have been
Brythonic: he will regard them with serene indifference.[1879] For, he
tells you,[1880] ‘the Pictish language would seem to have been rapidly
becoming overloaded with loan-words from Goidelic or Brythonic when we
first hear anything about it. So, failing to recognize this borrowing
of words by the Picts, some have been led to regard Pictish as a kind
of Gaelic, and some as a dialect akin to Welsh. The point to have been
decided, however, was not whether Gaelic or Welsh explains certain
words said to have been in use among the Picts, but whether there does
not remain a residue to which neither Gaelic nor Welsh, nor, indeed,
any Aryan tongue whatever can supply any sort of key.’ The professor is
still thinking of that outlandish inscription which, according to Mr.
Nicholson, is Goidelic, and the professor’s reading of which, according
to Dr. Macbain, is no language at all. But, admitting provisionally
the existence of ‘a residue’ to which no Aryan language ‘can supply
any sort of key’, we should, I must repeat, only have to conclude that
in certain remote parts of the extensive territory occupied by the
Picts a non-Aryan language survived into the Christian era, just as in
a remote part of France a non-Aryan language survives at this day: we
should not have to conclude that that language was spoken by the Picts
in general. ‘La question,’ says M. d’Arbois de Jubainville, in a notice
of Professor Rhys’s article on the Pictish inscriptions,[1881] ‘la
question est de savoir si cette population [the pre-Aryan population]
est restée dominante. Les noms de peuples tels que _Smertae_ ... des
noms d’hommes tels que celui du Calédonien _Argentocoxos_ ... me
semblent décisifs.’ It is absolutely certain, and is insisted upon by
Professor Rhys himself, that in Roman times many of the tribes which
were included under the general designation of Picts bore Celtic names,
and that many of the geographical names in the country which they
inhabited were Celtic also. On the other hand, not a single Pictish
name, tribal, or geographical, or personal, not a single Pictish word
which has been preserved by Ptolemy or by our other authorities, has
been proved to be non-Celtic; and if, as Professor Rhys maintains,
Pictish was a non-Aryan language overlain by loan-words from the two
Celtic dialects, it was so buried beneath them as to be no longer
discernible. Argentocoxos,[1882] as the professor says, was a Pict, and
one of the many Picts whose names were Celtic: if the Picts had spoken
a non-Celtic language, however much overloaded with Celtic loan-words,
would not their own names have been non-Aryan? As their names were
Celtic, it is reasonable to infer that their language was Celtic also.
The professor, it is true, points out that ‘in Wales many a man has the
English name John Jones, though he cannot speak English’.[1883] Yes,
but the Welsh are a conquered or, let us say, absorbed people, whereas
the professor himself assures us[1884] that before the time of Ptolemy
‘the Goidels and the Picto-Brythons [of the North] had come under the
power of the more purely non-Celtic tribes beyond them’.[1885] But this
is of course a pure assertion. The professor fails to prove that any
Celtic people in Britain came under the power of non-Celtic tribes.
Many centuries before the time of Pytheas the neolithic population had
for the most part been reduced to subjection; and, although remote
clans may possibly have retained their individuality, in many parts of
the island the descendants of the aborigines had become intermingled,
first with the ‘Round Barrow’ invaders, the earlier of whom at all
events, as I shall presently show,[1886] were not Celts, and secondly
with the Celts themselves. Professor Rhys[1887] himself admits that
the name of the Picts ‘was never, perhaps, distinctive of race, as
Brythons and Goidels seem to have been sometimes included under it’;
and, although he goes on to say that ‘the term probably applied most
strictly at all times’ to ‘the non-Celtic natives’, it is not likely
that the name of non-Celtic natives should have prevailed over that of
the Celts.
For all these reasons it appears to me infinitely more probable that
in Pictland as, according to Professor Rhys himself, in the rest of
Britain,[1888] the non-Aryan language should have been absorbed by
Celtic than that Celtic should have been absorbed by the non-Aryan
language.
There is probably this grain of truth in Professor Rhys’s theory,
that the non-Celtic natives continued to exist in greater purity in
the country which was occupied by a group of tribes who, during the
latter part of the Roman occupation and afterwards, were called Picts,
than in any other part of Britain. But I doubt whether this eminent
scholar could have spent his time less profitably than in striving
to demonstrate, first, that the language of the Picts was related to
Basque, and, when he was forced to abandon this attempt, in clinging to
the theory that it was a non-Aryan tongue.
VIII. THE ROUND-HEADS
There is, as we have already seen,[1889] sufficient evidence that
round-headed immigrants had begun to appear in Britain towards the end
of the Neolithic Age; but the majority of the prehistoric skulls of
this kind undoubtedly belong to the Age of Bronze. Men of the same
type were living in England at the time of the Saxon invasion;[1890]
and their descendants may be recognized here and there at the present
day.[1891] The prehistoric skeletons have been found not only in the
round barrows of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Wiltshire,
Dorsetshire, Denbighshire, Man, and Orkney, and in secondary interments
in long barrows, but also in Welsh caverns and graves and in the
short cists of Scotland.[1892] The range of this people in Britain
was, however, it need hardly be said, far wider than that which the
discovery of a few skeletons has indicated.
The round-headed invaders are commonly described as physically finer
men than the neolithic population whom in most parts of Britain they
subdued;[1893] but the truth is that, both in respect of stature and of
cranial form, they belonged to two utterly different groups, though,
as might be expected, some exhibit characteristics of both.[1894] The
average height of 17 brachycephalic men whose skeletons had been found
in round barrows before 1865 would have been, according to Dr. Beddoe’s
estimate, 5 feet 9 inches, or almost 1 metre 753; while the average
height of 27 men of various cephalic indices, including the 17 just
mentioned, whose skeletons (described in _Crania Britannica_) have
been found in round barrows, would, according to the same authority,
have reached 5 feet 9⅖ inches,[1895] or approximately 1 metre 763.
Measurements of skeletons which have been discovered since the
publication of _Crania Britannica_ have yielded results virtually the
same.[1896] On the other hand two groups of skeletons have recently
been described which belonged to a much shorter race. Four, taken from
round barrows in Glamorganshire, showed, according to Dr. Beddoe’s
method, an average height of about 5 feet 5¾ inches;[1897] while 7 male
skeletons, found in short cists in and near Aberdeenshire, ranged,
according to Mr. Alexander Low, between 5 feet and 5 feet 7 inches, the
average being only 5 feet 3 inches.[1898] The skulls of these skeletons
will be presently described.
The cephalic indices of 103 male skulls, found before the year 1894 in
round barrows or in other interments of the Bronze Age,[1899] ranged
from 70 to 88, 55 of them exceeding 80; while those of 19 skeletons
from round barrows in which no bronze was found ranged from 68 to 88,
six of them exceeding 80.[1900] In both series a large proportion
of the skulls whose indices fell short of 80 belonged, wholly or in
part, to the Long Barrow race. Other skulls, however, which have since
been described and of the characteristics of which Dr. Beddoe, the
compiler of this list, may have been ignorant, yielded indices higher
still.[1901]
But it is not enough to describe the invaders of the Bronze Age as
brachycephalic: they shared that characteristic with peoples who were
otherwise markedly different from them. Let us first consider those
which belong to the so-called characteristic type, which, until a
recent date, received more than its share of attention,--that which is
seen only in the taller skeletons. Their foreheads, says Rolleston,
were ‘sometimes ... especially in cases where the whole skull and
skeleton are marked by great strength and even ruggedness, markedly
sloping’.[1902] Their supraciliary ridges were often extraordinarily
prominent. ‘The eyebrows,’ says the same authority, ‘must have given
a beetling and probably even formidable appearance to the upper part
of the face, whilst the boldly outstanding and heavy cheek bones must
have produced an impression of raw and rough strength.... Overhung at
its root, the nose must have projected boldly forward.’[1903] These
men were, in some instances, extremely prognathous:[1904] their teeth
were often extraordinarily large;[1905] and, to quote Thurnam, ‘the
prominence of the large incisor and canine teeth is so great as to
give an almost bestial expression to the skull.’[1906] The reader who
scans the illustrations in _Crania Britannica_ and in Canon Greenwell’s
_British Barrows_ will, however, see that the brachycephalic skulls
even of the taller skeletons are not all of the same type. Moreover,
some few of the Round Barrow skulls combine the contour of the
characteristic brachycephalic skull of the British Bronze Age with
dolichocephaly;[1907] and this is one of the facts which tend to
prove that in certain parts of England the brachycephalic invaders
intermarried with the people whom they found in possession. In the
East Riding of Yorkshire, indeed, it would seem that the old race and
the new were as completely intermingled as the modern population.
Dr. William Wright tells us that in a collection of 80 skulls, taken
from round barrows and preserved in the Mortimer Museum at Driffield,
‘almost all the varieties of cranial shape met with in Europe are
represented.’ Their cephalic indices ranged from 69 to 92; and, says
Dr. Wright, ‘it is doubtful if it is possible to find a materially
more mixed series of skulls in a community of to-day.’[1908] Dr.
Wright, however, does not believe that the skulls of apparently hybrid
form prove intermarriage between the invaders and the old neolithic
population, or that the former were purely brachycephalic. ‘To grant
this,’ he argues, ‘one must believe that a pure round-headed race could
have made its tardy progress across Europe unmixed,--an assumption
which to my mind is incredible.’[1909] Has the doctor forgotten that
ten male skulls, found in short cists in and near Aberdeenshire and
evidently assignable to the end of the Neolithic or the beginning of
the Bronze Age,[1910] were all brachycephalic, and that nine of them
belonged to the same pure type.[1911] Has he forgotten that the round
barrow skulls of Wiltshire were mainly brachycephalic? Has he ever
walked over the mountains of Auvergne? Very likely the round-headed
race which he has in mind did not make its way across Europe unmixed;
but the mixture did not greatly diminish the roundness. Very likely
when it reached Britain it included a few long-heads; but the contrast
between the uniformity in Wiltshire and the diversity in East Yorkshire
suffices to disprove the doctor’s theory.
Some of Dr. Wright’s brachycephalic specimens belonged to a type which
is quite different from the ‘characteristic’ Round Barrow type, and
is also common to almost all the short Welsh and Scottish skeletons
mentioned above.[1912] These skulls are generally broader than those of
the other kind. The ten found in Aberdeenshire and its neighbourhood
ranged between 80·8 and 92·3, their average index being 85·39;[1913]
while those of Glamorganshire ranged between 81·7 and 86, and yielded
an average of 84·2.[1914] Not one of these skulls is prognathous:[1915]
all are high as well as round and broad: the supraciliary ridges are
only slightly developed: the cheek bones are not prominent: the face is
both broad and short; and the lower jaw is small.[1916]
Who were the brachycephalic people of the round barrows and the short
cists, and whence did they come? Those who have attempted to solve
these problems have generally had in mind only the tall round-heads,
whether their skulls belonged to the characteristic type or showed
signs of crossing with the other. Wherever the short people came from,
their ethnical affinities are certain: they belonged to the so-called
Alpine type of Central Europe, of which the French Grenelle race were
a branch. Let us for the present confine our attention to the others.
To the questions which I have asked at least six different answers have
been given:--that they were Goidelic Celts; that they were Belgae;
that they were Finns; that they came from Denmark or the Scandinavian
peninsula; that their original home was Dalmatia; and, lastly, that
they may be traced back to the valley of the Rhine.[1917] But the view
which has been repeated by almost every recent writer is that they were
Goidels.[1918]
1-2. The Goidelic theory and the Belgic (which I ought perhaps to
apologize for noticing) may be considered together; for if any argument
tells in favour of the latter, it tells as much or more in favour of
the former.
Thurnam, who does not trouble himself about the distinction
between Goidelic and Brythonic Celts, points out that ‘extremely
brachycephalic skulls have been exhumed from many of the French
chambered tumuli’;[1919] that seven skulls with cephalic indices of 80
and upwards from a dolmen near Senlis, which is in the territory that
was occupied by the Belgae, ‘have much resemblance to those from the
round barrows’;[1920] and that three skulls with indices of 80, 80,
and 85 respectively from a sepulchral grotto in the Belgic department
of the Oise are ‘very similar in general character to the short skulls
from the round barrows’.[1921] He argues that of the cranial types
represented by the peoples of the long barrows and the round barrows
respectively ‘one at least must be Celtic’:[1922] he points out that in
the cremation interments which have been discovered in round barrows
‘the appearances are consistent with what we are told of the funerals
of the Gauls ... by Caesar and Pomponius Mela’;[1923] and his general
conclusion is that the Round Barrow people were ‘an offshoot through
the Belgic Gauls from the great brachycephalic stock of Central and
North-Eastern Europe’.[1924] Finally, Professor Rhys maintained in
1890[1925] (it would be rash to assume that his opinion is unchanged)
that the Round Barrow race belonged to the Brythonic group, who, he
asserted, being comparatively broad-headed, were less pure than the
Goidels.
According to Professor Boyd Dawkins, the Round Barrow race must have
been Goidels, and not Wends, Finns, or Slaves, because the latter would
not have subsequently retreated eastward ‘against the current of the
Celtic, Belgian, and German invasions’;[1926] while the late Canon
Isaac Taylor[1927] affirmed that the skulls of the well-known ‘Sion
type’, which by some anthropologists are believed to have belonged to
the Celtic Helvetii, resembled those of the round barrows.
Now the view that the tall brachycephalic people of the round barrows
were the Belgae is so utterly absurd that it is difficult to conceive
how writers who posed as authorities on ethnology could ever have
entertained it.[1928] If some benighted classical scholar had ascribed
the Copernican system to Ptolemy, one may imagine how he would have
been derided by scientists; yet such a blunder would not have been
different in degree from that which Thurnam committed and Huxley
approved. For the Belgic invasion began, at the earliest, in the third,
and, as Professor Rhys himself maintains,[1929] in the second century
before the Christian era; and the first invaders of the Round Barrow
race landed in Britain, at the latest, about 1400 B.C.,[1930] and
probably several centuries earlier. The argument which Thurnam bases
upon the alleged similarity between Round Barrow skulls and some which
have been exhumed from French dolmens has no weight. To begin with, the
theory that any Celtic-speaking people invaded Gaul in the Neolithic
Age is contrary to historical and archaeological evidence;[1931] and,
assuming that they did, the resemblance between the skulls to which
Thurnam refers and most of those of the tall Round Barrow skeletons
is purely superficial. Any one may convince himself of this who will
take the trouble to compare the illustrations of Round Barrow skulls
in _Crania Britannica_ with those in _Crania Ethnica_; and Thurnam
himself in more than one passage[1932] admits, indeed emphasizes,
the distinction. Even Broca[1933] denied that there was any physical
affinity between the tall brachycephali of the round barrows and the
[so-called] ‘real Celts of Gaul’; and, as we shall see presently, by
the latter he simply meant the brachycephalic people, descended from
neolithic ancestors, that formed the substratum of the population
whom Caesar called Celtae. Similarly Dr. Beddoe truly says that the
[characteristic] Round Barrow skulls resemble those of Borreby in the
Danish island of Falster, rather than those of Broca’s Celtae.[1934] It
is true indeed, as we have seen, that some of the Round Barrow skulls
resemble some of the neolithic French skulls; but, speaking generally,
the former are far more rugged and in every way more strongly marked
than the latter.[1935]
More striking, however, than the contrast between the skulls of
the characteristic Round Barrow skeletons and those of the French
brachycephalic neolithic race is the discrepancy in stature. The
average height of the former was, as we have seen, on the lowest
computation, 5 feet 8⅖ inches; that of the latter was very little over
5 feet.[1936] Moreover, while the brachycephalic Finns and Danes and
the few modern brachycephalic inhabitants of England are generally tall
or moderately tall and fair, those of France and Central Europe are
generally not only short but dark.[1937]
The argument that since the Long Barrow skulls were pre-Aryan, those
of the round barrows must have been Celtic, begs the question. As we
shall see presently, there are other skulls in museums, which belong to
neither type, and which undoubtedly are Celtic. What reason is there to
deny that the earlier brachycephalic invaders who were buried in round
barrows may, as Mr. C. H. Read[1938] reasonably suggests, have been
pre-Aryan? The British Celts of the later Bronze Age were doubtless
cremated; and therefore their skulls are not forthcoming. And if the
resemblance between the cremation interments of the round barrows and
those described by Caesar proved that the former were all Celtic, it
would also prove that they were Greek![1939]
In answer to Professor Boyd Dawkins it may be said that if the tall
Round Barrow race were not Finns or Slaves, it does not follow that
they were Goidels. And supposing that they were Finns or Slaves, why
should it be necessary to assume that they ‘subsequently retreated
eastward against the current of the Celtic, Belgian, and German
invasions’? Or that they retreated eastward at all? The ‘Iberian’
immigrants certainly did not retreat ‘against the current’ of the Round
Barrow invaders: they retreated, if at all, to the remoter parts of
Britain. The argument that the Round Barrow skulls resemble those of
the Sion type is disposed of by merely comparing the measurements and
the illustrations of the two series. The Sion type, as Rolleston[1940]
says, ‘corresponds to many of our long-barrow skulls,’ and is not
brachycephalic but dolichocephalic or mesaticephalic:[1941] there
is no proof that it was that of the Helvetii;[1942] and, as I have
pointed out elsewhere,[1943] there is strong reason to believe that the
Helvetii did not appear in Switzerland before the Iron Age.
So much for the arguments which have been adduced in favour of the
popular theory. There are facts which absolutely disprove it. First,
there is no evidence that the brachycephalic people who built round
barrows ever reached Ireland, at least in appreciable numbers; for
not a single skull of the characteristic Round Barrow type has ever
been found there, and only four brachycephalic skulls which can be
referred to prehistoric times.[1944] Yet it is needless to say that
since a time long anterior to the Roman invasion of Britain Ireland has
been one of the principal abodes of the Goidelic stock. Secondly, it
is, as we have seen, in the highest degree probable, if not certain,
that the Round Barrow race first invaded Britain in the Neolithic
Age. Let us, however, for the sake of argument, accept Professor Boyd
Dawkins’s assumption that their advent synchronized with the beginning
of the British Bronze Age. Now, according to Professor Montelius, the
Bronze Age in this country began about 2000 B.C.; according to Sir
John Evans,[1945] six centuries later. It is impossible to fix with
certainty the date of the earliest Celtic invasion of Britain; but such
historical evidence as we possess points to the conclusion that it was
not earlier than the seventh century before the Christian era.[1946]
M. Salomon Reinach has argued that a Celtic-speaking people appeared
in North-Western Gaul in the ninth century,--the earliest date which
has ever been proposed by any scholar; but his view is based on the
mere conjecture that κασσίτερος, the Greek word for tin, which occurs
in Homer, is of Celtic derivation.[1947] M. d’Arbois de Jubainville,
indeed, who adopts this conjecture,[1948] supposes that the Celts
actually landed in Britain as early as the ninth century before Christ;
but even if we accept his chronology, we are confronted with the fact
that the very earliest date that has been assigned on historical or
linguistic grounds for the first Celtic invasion[1949] is four or five
centuries later than the latest, ten or eleven centuries later than
the earliest date which has been assigned by archaeologists for the
commencement of the Bronze Age in Britain. Yet anthropologists and
antiquaries will go on repeating the dogma that the builders of the
round barrows, who, at the latest, began to arrive in Britain at the
commencement of the Bronze Age, were Goidelic Celts. The moral is that
anthropologists and antiquaries would not be worse equipped if they
enlarged the sphere of their studies.
Again, the view that a Celtic-speaking people invaded Britain at the
close of the Neolithic or the beginning of the Bronze Age implies that
Celtic and Latin, the nearest of kin in the Aryan family of languages,
had become differentiated long before the Neolithic Age came to its
end. Would any philologist who knew the rudiments of archaeology
sanction a theory so preposterous?[1950]
The foregoing arguments apply equally to the short men whose remains
have been found in the greatest purity in North-Eastern Scotland. The
race to which they belonged began to arrive in Gaul very early in the
Neolithic Age:[1951] they themselves landed in Britain before its
close. Whoever they may have been, they were neither Goidels nor Belgae
nor Brythons of any tribe.
Finally, although I am aware that I am about to tread upon thorny
ground, I affirm that there is not the slightest reason to doubt that
the Celtic invaders of Britain, in so far as they were descended
from the Celtic-speaking people who conquered Gaul, were not a
brachycephalic but a dolichocephalic or mesaticephalic people. I have
already argued in favour of this thesis in a dissertation on ‘the
Ethnology of Gaul’,[1952] and I will now adduce fresh evidence in its
favour. But first let me make my meaning perfectly clear. I do not
mean that the Celtic invaders of Britain were all of the same type.
On the contrary, I assume that the dominant race had intermixed and
intermarried, before they embarked from the Continent, with descendants
of the neolithic stocks. I do not mean that even the invaders who
introduced the Celtic language into Gaul, even those who beat the
Romans on the Allia, were homogeneous. Dr. Beddoe, as I have remarked
elsewhere,[1953] warns us not to believe that there was ever a period
when, for example, all the Caledonians were red-haired. I only mean
that among the Celtic-speaking conquerors of Britain dolichocephaly, as
well as tallness and fairness, was a prevailing characteristic.
Thurnam[1954] asserted that ‘we may ask in vain for a series of ancient
dolichocephalic skulls which, on satisfactory archaeological grounds,
can be assigned to the immediately pre-Roman, and therefore to the
Celtic period, either in England or in France’. Let us consider England
first. Now it happens that the skulls of the ‘Late Celtic’ period, or
Early Iron Age, which have been found in this country are almost all
either dolichocephalic or mesaticephalic.[1955] Canon Greenwell,[1956]
it is true, explains this fact by the assumption that ‘the intruding
round-headed people ... were gradually absorbed by the earlier and
more numerous [Long Barrow] race’. ‘In this way,’ he says, ‘it appears
to me that we may account for the skull type of the Early Iron Age
without the necessity of requiring any immigration into Britain or its
conquest after the time of the presumed occupation by the bronze-using
round-headed people,’ &c. But that necessity is imperative. Had Canon
Greenwell momentarily forgotten his Caesar? The immigration of the
Belgae took place, at the earliest, in the third century B.C., many
centuries after the ‘occupation by the bronze-using round-headed
people’. It is true that some of the British skulls which belong to the
Late Celtic period are of the same type as those of the Long Barrow
race:[1957] but this only proves that the Long Barrow race survived;
and others are of a type which, as Rolleston says, is ‘entirely wanting
... in the series from the long barrows’.[1958] Unfortunately,
however, the Late Celtic skulls which have been found in Britain are
comparatively few;[1959] and hardly any of them can be assigned with
certainty to the Brythonic invaders.
In France, on the other hand, the skulls of the corresponding period
are very numerous; but few of them have been measured. Those few,
however, confirm my argument. They belonged with very few exceptions to
tall mesaticephalic or dolichocephalic men; and two of them may be seen
in Salles IX and X of the Musée de St. Germain, near Paris, the former
having been buried with his war-chariot, iron helmet, and long iron
sword. The mean index of twenty-seven adult male skulls of this type,
found in _tumuli_ of the Early Iron Age in the department of the Marne,
was 78·49; but Broca, who has described them, maintains that the index
of skulls of the purest ‘Kymric’ (or, to use the term which is now in
vogue, ‘Galatic’) type would be considerably lower; for, he argues, as
the Gauls of the Marne lived very near the frontier of the Celtae, they
must have intermarried with the brachycephalic people who formed the
great majority of that group of tribes.[1960]
Again, in a recent article on _tumuli_ of the Early Iron Age in
the department of the Côte-d’Or, Dr. Hamy points to the noteworthy
fact that two brachycephalic skulls, belonging to descendants of an
earlier race, were found ‘among the dolichocephali who predominated
in that population’;[1961] and in a paper which he has just published
on the earliest Gallic invaders of the Iron Age he shows that the
cephalic indices of the available skulls from the Châtillonnais and
the arrondissement of Beaune range between 73·1 and 76·59, while the
average stature was 1 metre 75·7, or just over 5 feet 9⅛ inches.[1962]
The prevalent view in this country is, I am aware, that the Celts were
a brachycephalic people; but it is begotten of sheer confusion of
thought. Professor Ripley[1963] remarks that ‘there is practically
to-day a complete unanimity of opinion among physical anthropologists,
that the term _Celt_, if used at all, belongs to the brachycephalic
darkish population of the Alpine highlands’; and he adds that the only
dissentient is M. G. de Lapouge.[1964] But Dr. Beddoe,[1965] whom he
counts among the professors of the orthodox faith, has emphatically
recorded his opinion that, at the time of the Roman conquest, the
Celtic-speaking people of Southern Britain ‘partook more of the tall
blond stock of Northern Europe than of the thick-set, broad-headed
dark stock which Broca has called Celtic’; and the ‘unanimity’ (which
is far from being ‘complete’) upon which Professor Ripley pins his
faith is due partly to misunderstanding or misinterpretation of Broca’s
famous essay, _Qu’est-ce que les Celtes_, partly to the desire of
establishing a uniform connotation, and partly to the fact that some
physical anthropologists have neglected to supplement their scientific
researches by the study of classical texts. Broca found the term
‘Celt’ used in a multiplicity of senses, and he attempted to put an
end to confusion by attaching to it one limited, conventional, and, as
we shall see, misleading signification. When, in the essay to which
I have just referred, he endeavoured to prove that the Celts were a
dark brachycephalic people, he expressly limited the term ‘Celts’ to
the population of that part of Gaul which, according to Caesar,[1966]
was inhabited by ‘a people who call themselves Celts and whom we
[the Romans] call Gauls’. ‘There is no proof,’ he insists, ‘that the
existence in the British Isles of a people bearing the name of Celts
has ever been authoritatively affirmed’:[1967] according to him, the
invaders of Britain who spoke the so-called Celtic languages were
the Belgae,[1968] for he knew nothing about Goidels or pre-Belgic
Brythons; and, although he allowed himself to be persuaded that the
tall Round Barrow race spoke Celtic, he denied ‘that there is any
other affinity except that of language between the brachycephali of
the round barrows and the real Celts of Gaul’.[1969] When he insisted
that ‘the Celts’ were a dark brachycephalic people, he did not mean
that darkness and brachycephaly were characteristic of the conquerors
who introduced the Celtic language into Gaul: he meant that they were
characteristic of the great mass of the mixed population whom Caesar
called _Celtae_,[1970] who were in the main descended from neolithic
invaders, and whose uppermost stratum, so to speak, consisted of
invaders whom Broca, speaking as a physical anthropologist rather
than a philologist, called ‘Kimris’.[1971] That the name _Celtae_ did
not belong to the people of Gaul until it was introduced by these
Celtic-speaking ‘Kimris’ is evident from the fact that it belongs to
the Celtic tongue:[1972] in other words, the Celts, anthropologically
speaking, were originally identical with the invaders who introduced
the Celtic language first into Germany and then into Gaul.[1973] These
invaders were tall and mesaticephalic or dolichocephalic; and the
Celtic-speaking conquerors of Britain belonged to the same stock.
‘The radical errors in Broca’s definition of the “Celts of history”
[so I wrote some years ago[1974]] are these:--first, he calmly assumes
that no classical writer’s testimony, except Caesar’s, is of any value;
and secondly, he fails to see that Caesar, by saying that the people
who called themselves “Celts” were called by the Romans “Gauls”, makes
it as clear as noon-day that for him and for his countrymen, as for
Polybius and Pausanias, the words “Celt” and “Gaul” were synonymous.
Broca admits that the older population of Gallia Celtica was conquered
by men of the same race as the Gauls or Celts who captured Rome.
Therefore it is absolutely certain that the Celtae of Transalpine Gaul
were called after their conquerors. The truth is that Broca, while
he aimed at putting an end to confusion, only made confusion worse
confounded. Moreover, throughout his discussion, _he simply ignores the
Helvetii, who, according to Caesar, were included among the Celtae_.’
Since the foregoing paragraph was written, I have lighted upon a
passage[1975] in which Broca himself justifies my argument and uses
the word ‘Celt’ in the sense which I attach to it. The Celtae of Gaul,
he remarks, ‘were already mixed before the arrival of the Kimris [or
Gallo-Brythonic invaders], since the name [Celtae] under which they
appeared for the first time in history had been imposed upon them
by the conquering race of the Celts properly so called, which, like
the Kimris and the Germans, came from the east, and, like them, was
dolichocephalic.’[1976]
Professor Ripley appeals to the German ethnologist, Johannes
Ranke,[1977] whose arguments, he insists, are ‘decisive’. But any one
who will take the trouble to read the chapter which Ranke devotes
to the Celts will see that his argument does not support Professor
Ripley’s contention. Virchow, he reminds us, has pointed out that
wherever the Celts are known to have penetrated dark peoples are now
to be found. But, as he fully admits, Virchow himself said, ‘I am not
on that account inclined to assume that the original Celts were ...
dark,’ and reminded his readers that the ancient writers described
the Celts as fair. Ranke points out, further, that wherever the Celts
originally dwelled in Central Europe we now find the people not only
dark but also brachycephalic; but at the same time he warns us to bear
in mind that in certain Celtic districts of Britain dolichocephaly is
unmistakable, and that there is evidence that on the Continent _the
Celtic invaders found a dark brachycephalic people in possession_. In
other words, Ranke does not commit himself to any theory as to the
physical characters of the Celts properly so called,--the invaders who
introduced the Celtic dialects into Germany, Gaul, Britain, and other
countries which they subdued. The reader will also bear in mind that
the writers who identify the tall brachycephalic Round Barrow race with
the Goidelic Celts unanimously maintain that they were fair.
That the Celtic-speaking invaders of Gaul and Britain were commonly
dolichocephalic or mesaticephalic is not only attested by the skulls
of warriors of the Iron Age, but is either attested or at least
not disproved by the results of modern observations of existing
Celtic-speaking peoples[1978] and of the country which was formerly
inhabited by the Gallic Belgae.[1979] When Sergi[1980] tells us that
the Gauls who captured Rome were ‘composed of brunet Celts and blond
Teutons’, he makes an assertion which, as it is absolutely unsupported
by any evidence, calls for no refutation; and it would be useless to
ask him who were the ‘blond Teutons’ who were the ancestors of the
red-haired Gauls of the Perthshire Highlands.[1981] As Dr. Beddoe[1982]
puts it, the Gauls of Scotland are probably descended from ‘Iberians’
crossed with ‘a long-faced, harsh-featured, red-haired race, who
contributed the language and much of the character’.[1983]
3. The late Mr. Charles Elton,[1984] referring to Professor A. H.
Sayce’s _Science of Language_,[1985] affirmed that ‘a Finnish idiom has
been traced in several of the British languages’, and inferred that the
tall builders of the round barrows were Finns. The idiom in question
may, for aught that I know, have been traced by some philologist who
had determined to find it, but not by Professor Sayce nor by any one
to whom Professor Sayce refers. Mr. Elton’s argument is as obsolete as
that which Professor Rhys founded upon his imaginary tracing of Basque
in the language of the Picts.
4. Much may be said for the theory of the late Professor Rolleston,
that the tall people of the round barrows came from Denmark or some
of the adjoining islands, if it be duly modified. On the coast near
Flamborough Head are remains of earthworks, which, as has been
demonstrated by General Pitt-Rivers, who excavated them, were erected
by invaders fighting their way inland; and, as he remarks, ‘it is
unlikely that any but Northmen should have landed in this spot.’[1986]
Thurnam himself admits that there is ‘a great resemblance’ between
the characteristic Round Barrow skulls and those from ‘the Giants’
Chamber at Borreby [in the island of Falster], and from other
Scandinavian megalithic tombs’;[1987] and his testimony is confirmed by
Rolleston[1988] and Dr. Beddoe.[1989]
Dr. A. H. Keane[1990] argues, in opposition to Rolleston’s view,
that if any of the Round Barrow invaders had come from Scandinavia,
‘they must have spoken some Low German dialect, of which there are no
clear traces in the tribal and place-names of the Bronze Age.’ The
answer is, first, that, as Mr. C. H. Read[1991] suggests, they may
have spoken not a Low German but a pre-Aryan dialect; and, secondly,
that we know absolutely nothing about either the tribal or the
place-names of Britain in the Bronze Age. Assuming that Low German
tribal or place-names existed in Britain before the Celtic invasion,
they would for the most part have been superseded by Celtic names,
just as the Celtic invaders of Gaul generally substituted their own
tribal and place-names for those of their predecessors, and just as in
certain parts of Scotland Celtic names of rivers gave place to Norse
names.[1992]
5. Messrs. J. Gray and J. F. Tocher infer from their observations of
the physical characteristics of the population of West Aberdeenshire
that ‘a tall, broad-headed, dark-haired, light-eyed people’, whom they
regard as ‘the descendants of the men of the Bronze Age’, formerly
inhabited Aberdeenshire, but were driven inland by later blond
immigrants, who were shorter and had narrower heads, and whom they
identify with North Germans.[1993] The resemblance of the tall dark
people to modern Dalmatians[1994] is, they say, ‘significant when taken
in conjunction with the fact that bronze first came into the British
Isles from South-East Europe.’
‘The fact!’ But is it the fact? Archaeology has certainly shown that
Britain, in the Bronze Age, was commercially connected with Northern
France, which, as Mr. C. H. Read[1995] says, was ‘supplied to a
certain extent from Italy’. But no archaeologist supposes that bronze
was carried all the way from Italy, still less from Dalmatia, into
Britain or even into Northern France by Italians or Dalmatians. It came
through the methods of primitive commerce. Moreover, as we have already
seen,[1996] ‘the men of the Bronze Age,’ by whom Messrs. Gray and
Tocher mean the tall brachycephalic people of the round barrows, were
still in their Stone Age when they began to invade Britain. A direct
immigration from the coasts of the Adriatic into West Aberdeenshire
or even Southern Britain is inconceivable; and if it had taken place
gradually across the Continent, we should find that the immigrants
had left traces of their presence on the way, which is not the case.
Notwithstanding the thoroughness with which Messrs. Gray and Tocher
conducted their investigation, I fear that it throws no new light upon
the ethnology of Ancient Britain. After the successive invasions and
immigrations, the internal migrations, and the intermarriages of 3,000
years, it is utterly impossible to establish by dint of even the most
elaborate census of a living population the fact that the people of
the Bronze Age even in West Aberdeenshire were ‘tall, broad-headed,
dark-haired, and light-eyed’; and if they were, why only in West
Aberdeenshire?
6. The Honourable John Abercromby maintains that the brachycephalic
invaders, or some of them, came at the beginning of the Bronze Age
or in the period of transition between the Neolithic Age and the
Bronze Age from the neighbourhood of the middle Rhine or from some
intermediate district between it and Britain.[1997] Remarking[1998]
that ‘the recorded finds of the last hundred years are sufficient to
establish the fact that the beaker [or drinking-cup] is the oldest form
of fictilia in the Bronze Age of this country’, he argues that the
immigrants who introduced the oldest drinking-cups of the kind which
Thurnam designated as ‘type β’ must have belonged to a tribe who at
one time lived in the valley of the Rhine, because between British and
Rhenish specimens of this type ‘there is a substantial agreement’ both
in form and ornament, which ‘seems too great to be the result of pure
accident’; and he points out[1999] that ‘the type exists not only in
the central Rhine, but also near its mouth’, though the intermediate
stages cannot be traced. The Rhenish cups belong to the Neolithic Age;
and it seems impossible to prove that the earliest British examples
were not made before any objects of bronze were manufactured in or
introduced into Britain:[2000] but Mr. Abercromby has certainly
established a very strong probability in favour of the locality to
which he refers their origin.[2001]
The great mistake that has been made in discussing the question is
the not uncommon assumption that the brachycephalic immigrants who
buried their dead in round barrows arrived in Britain at one time and
came from one place. Some of them certainly appeared before the end
of the Neolithic Age: others may have introduced bronze implements or
ornaments; others doubtless came, in successive hordes, during the
course of the Bronze Age. Some of those who belonged to the Grenelle
race, who certainly came from Eastern Europe and possibly from
Asia,[2002] and whose centre of dispersion was the Alpine region,[2003]
may have started from Gaul;[2004] others could have traced their origin
to some Rhenish tribe; and I am inclined to believe that those who
belonged to the characteristic rugged Round Barrow type crossed over,
for the most part, from Denmark or the outlying islands. That the
first Celtic-speaking invaders landed in Britain before the end of
the Bronze Age I do not deny; and if they came from that part of Gaul
which was inhabited by the Celtae, I have no doubt that many of them
were brachycephalic. But it is nevertheless certain that among these
invaders the dominant element, who were Celtic in blood as well as
in speech, and whose physical type was that described by the ancient
writers, were not brachycephalic but mesaticephalic or dolichocephalic.
And if I am asked where the Celtic skulls of the later British Bronze
Age are to be found, I answer, Nowhere: they were reduced to ashes by
cremation.[2005]
It is interesting to find that, according to Huxley, of the skeletons
that were found in the famous Heathery Burn Cave, near Durham, which
was inhabited in the closing period of the Bronze Age, not one belonged
to either of the brachycephalic types, but all to ‘the same race of
rather small and lightly-made men with prominent superciliary ridges
and projecting nasal bones’[2006] which is represented by the river-bed
skulls of England and Ireland.[2007]
IX. THE CELTS
1. Little can be added to what has been said in the previous section
about the physical characteristics of the Celtic invaders of Britain.
Some Celtic scholars, as we shall presently see,[2008] deny that any
Goidels reached this country before the Roman conquest; but, assuming
that some did so, there is no reason to suppose that they differed
much physically from the Brythons. If Strabo[2009] was right in saying
that the Britons generally were less fair-haired than the Gauls, the
inference would seem to be that the Celtic invaders of Britain had
intermarried more freely than those of Gaul with the descendants of
the aborigines; nor would this inference be weakened by the fact that,
according to the same authority,[2010] they were conspicuously taller
than their Gallic kinsmen.[2011] I believe, however, that Strabo’s
statements were based upon nothing more than his own observation of
the few Britons whom he says that he himself saw in Rome, supplemented
perhaps by hearsay evidence derived from Roman soldiers or traders who
were not trained observers; and that his testimony is worth neither
more nor less than that of Lucan, who speaks of ‘the fair-haired
Britons’.[2012] Dr. Beddoe[2013] has concluded, from his observation
of the modern inhabitants of ‘those parts of Scotland and the north
of England where Kymric blood may well be supposed to remain in large
proportion,’ that the Belgae who invaded Britain as well as those
of Gaul were on the whole somewhat dark: but his arguments, which I
have examined fully elsewhere,[2014] do not prove that the dominant
Celts among the Belgae were dark, but simply that, before they invaded
Britain, they had become largely intermixed with an older dark
population, and that, since they reached this country, they and their
descendants have intermarried with people darker than themselves.[2015]
2. Professor Rhys has more than once changed his opinion about the
Celtic invaders of Britain since he began to handle the subject. In
the second edition of his _Lectures on Welsh Philology_[2016] he
argued that they were not ‘two distinct nationalities, speaking two
distinct languages’; in other words, he maintained that the Goidelic
and Brythonic dialects had been evolved within the British Isles
after the Celts had entered them. In the preface to _Celtic Britain_,
however, which was written in January, 1884, he recanted; and his old
view is now obsolete. For many years past he has maintained that the
earliest invaders were Goidels, or, as he now prefers to call them,
Celticans;[2017] and that the later comers were Brythons. But whereas
until a recent date he held that the only Brythonic invasion was that
of the Belgae, and that Pytheas, who visited Britain towards the end
of the fourth century B.C., ‘is not likely to have found any Brythons
here,’[2018] he now holds, or at all events held a few weeks before
the time when I am writing, that the first Brythonic invaders ‘appear
to have settled here before the middle of the fourth century B.C., for
Pytheas ... gives indirect evidence to their presence’.[2019] To this
view I hope he will firmly adhere. There is, indeed, no direct evidence
that any Brythonic immigrants landed in Britain before the Belgae. But
indirect evidence there is; and that of two kinds. The first has been
already noticed in the section on the Picts. There are good grounds for
believing that the authority whom Diodorus Siculus followed in his
notices of Britain was Pytheas.[2020] Diodorus speaks of the British
Isles as Πρετ(τ)ανικαὶ νῆσοι;[2021] and the _P_ in Πρετ(τ)ανικαί (if
that reading is certain), shows that Pytheas learned the word from lips
which spoke a Brythonic, or Gaulish dialect. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville
asserts that his informants were Gauls:[2022] but that is simply his
opinion; it is open to any one to argue that Pytheas probably learned
the name of the Britons as well as the facts which he reported about
them and their country in Britain, and not in Gaul. Be this, however,
as it may, it is, as we shall presently see, certain that during the
earlier period of the Roman occupation, the greater part of England
and a considerable part of Scotland were inhabited by Brythons; and,
as we shall also see, it is extremely improbable that they were all of
Belgic origin. The question of the chronological order of the various
Celtic invasions is, according to Professor Rhys,[2023] answered by
the present geographical distribution of the Celtic-speaking peoples
of the British Isles: ‘it may be regarded,’ he says, ‘as fairly
certain that those who are found driven furthest to the west were the
earliest comers.’ The argument might be sound enough (though the word
‘driven’ begs the question) if we were considering the British Isles
as a whole, and not merely Britain;[2024] and even those who maintain
that there were no people of Goidelic descent in Britain in the time
of Caesar could hardly answer Professor Rhys unless they assumed that
the Goidelic invaders of Ireland came from Spain, or that they dared
not risk a contest with the Southern Britons; for otherwise it is hard
to believe that they would not have directed their immigration towards
Britain, the nearer country.
Professor Rhys, in his _Celtic Britain_,[2025] endeavours to trace the
distribution of the Brythonic and Goidelic peoples, as he believes
it to have existed at the time of the coming of the Romans; and in
so doing he uses materials on which he founds another argument to
show that there were Goidels in Britain at that time. These materials
are Goidelic inscriptions which have been found in North Wales, in
Cornwall, and in Devonshire:[2026] but not one of them belongs to an
earlier date than the fifth century of our era. With the exception of
the districts in which they occur, of the greater part of Somersetshire
and Dorsetshire, of South Wales and the adjoining parts of England
which lie between the Severn and the Teme, and of Cumberland, part
of Westmorland, the Isle of Man, Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, Wigtown,
Ayrshire, Renfrew, and part of Lanarkshire, the professor regards
the whole of Britain south of the Firths of Clyde and Forth as
Brythonic; and he prints a list of proper names, most of which are
certainly Brythonic, in support of this conclusion.[2027] The northern
part of the island he divides, for reasons which have been already
examined, between Goidels and aboriginal tribes, whom he identifies
with the Picts properly so called.[2028] It will, however, of course
be understood that when he speaks of Goidelic and Brythonic tribes,
he means tribes who spoke the Goidelic and Brythonic dialects. The
former he regards as mingled largely with the aborigines, and the
latter with both Goidels and aborigines. But it is difficult to
understand how he has been able to maintain that the Dumnonii of
Cornwall and Devonshire were Goidels in the face of the fact that most
of the British emigrants who invaded Brittany came from the Cornish
peninsula,[2029] bringing the name _Dumnonii_ with them, and that he
himself formerly insisted that the Dumnonii who inhabited what is now
Renfrew and Ayrshire were Brythons.[2030] I say ‘formerly’, because
this is one of the many opinions which the professor has felt obliged
to discard: ‘the southern portion’ of the Scottish Dumnonii have just
been transformed by a stroke of the pen into ‘Goidels who adopted
Brythonic speech’.[2031] However, as M. d’Arbois de Jubainville says,
referring to the inscriptions upon which Professor Rhys relies, ‘To
conclude from the fact that five Goidels were buried, during the period
which elapsed from about 400 to about 700 A.D., in the territory
of the Dumnonii, that the entire population of that territory was
Goidelic seems extremely rash;’[2032] and, he asks,[2033] ‘if they
were Goidels, how came it that they brought a Brythonic dialect into
Brittany?’ Further, he asks why Professor Rhys maintains that the
Novantae of Galloway were Goidels when he admits that the Trinovantes
of Essex were Brythons;[2034] and the only answer which the professor
vouchsafes to this question is that the name _Novantae_ was ‘given
them probably by Brythons’.[2035] What are the grounds of his opinion,
he does not say. I may add that while he explains[2036] that ‘the
consonantal combination of _cs_ or _x_’ is Gaulish, that is to say,
Gallo-Brythonic, he says[2037] that it is ‘remarkable’ that ‘most of
the early names with _x_ belong to districts which have before been
pointed out as non-Brythonic’. When we look for these districts, we
find[2038] that they were those of the Taexali, the Vacomagi, the
Scottish Dumnonii, the Selgovae, and Cumberland. When we ask on what
grounds the inhabitants of these districts had been ‘pointed out as
non-Brythonic’, we find[2039] that the Taexali and the Vacomagi were
Pictish, that is to say ‘no doubt’ aboriginal; that the Dumnonii,
according to the professor himself,[2040] were ‘undoubtedly Brythons’,
and remained so until, discovering perhaps that he had inadvertently
given his case away, he changed them by his enchanter’s wand into
‘Goidels who adopted Brythonic speech’;[2041] and that the Selgovae are
asserted to have been, like the Novantae, ‘in a great measure ... most
likely a remnant of the aboriginial inhabitants.’[2042] Why? Because
they were afterwards included under the name _Atecotti_, which ‘appears
to have meant old or ancient’, and was ‘possibly given to them by the
Brythons’.[2043] Doubtless they were ‘in a great measure’ aboriginal,
as were doubtless all the British tribes; but seeing that _Uxellon_,
the name of a town in their country, is Gaulish, the natural conclusion
is that their Celtic masters were not Goidels but Brythons.
3. Professor Kuno Meyer holds that ‘no Gael ever set his foot on
British soil save on a vessel that had put out from Ireland’;[2044] and
his words are echoed by Dr. Macbain.[2045] Professor Meyer points out
that ‘we have the concurrent testimony of Irish and Welsh tradition
that from the second century of our era till the sixth a series of
partial conquests of Britain took place’.[2046] Dr. Beddoe[2047] has
indeed argued that it is extremely improbable that ‘the Romans would
have allowed the Irish Gael to acquire by violence possession of a
large portion of one of their provinces’; and Professor Meyer, who
admits the difficulty, says that he will not attempt to explain it
away. He might have noted that the author of the panegyric which was
addressed A.D. 296 to Constantius Chlorus[2048] expressly affirms that
such invasions did take place. Professor Meyer also points out that the
Gaelic inscriptions which have been found in Southern Britain belong
almost exclusively to South Wales, the quarter to which the invasions
may be assumed to have been directed, very few having come to light in
North Wales, Devonshire, and Cornwall.[2049] On the other hand, it will
be admitted that the record of these invasions is no proof that Goidels
had not settled in Britain in pre-Roman times.
4. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville holds, as we have already seen,[2050]
that Goidels, or rather a people who spoke ‘the Celtic dialect from
which Goidelic was evolved’,[2051] were masters of the British
Isles in the time of Pytheas, and that between his time and that of
Caesar Britain was conquered by the Cymric Brittones. So far he is
substantially in agreement with the view which, until a recent date,
commended itself to Professor Rhys,[2052] who, as the reader knows,
now believes that there were two successive Brythonic invasions.[2053]
The more important differences between the two scholars lie partly in
their views, which have been already examined, of the Pictish question;
partly in the fact that M. d’Arbois is unable to accept the evidence
which satisfies Professor Rhys that in Caesar’s time and later Goidelic
tribes still remained in Western and Northern Britain. He holds that
many of them had been driven by the Belgae into Ireland, and that in
Britain they only survived as a vanquished people who had been forced
to adopt the language of their Gaulish conquerors.[2054] I am inclined
to believe, from the analogy of Gaul,[2055] that in Caesar’s time
Goidelic was still spoken in remoter parts of the island.
5. Mr. Nicholson has recently attempted to prove that all his
predecessors are entirely mistaken even on the few points on which
they are agreed. According to him, the earliest Celtic invaders of the
British Isles were Brythons, whom, however, he prefers to call Kymri;
after them came a horde of Goidels; in the third century before Christ
the Picts, who were also Goidels, invaded Scotland; and finally came
the Belgae, who were Goidels too! The result was that ‘apparently
the great majority of the tribes inhabiting Roman Britain were
Goidels’,[2056] although ‘of the later Kymric recovery and victory in
Wales and some other parts there is no manner of doubt’.[2057] It will,
at all events, be admitted that a victory, however late, gained by a
small minority, was no mean achievement.
How does Mr. Nicholson set about proving this revolutionary theory?
He tells us that ‘on the map of Roman Britain’ he can only see
one ‘certainly Kymric geographical name’[2058]--Pennocrucium (now
Penkridge) in Staffordshire. The long lists of Cymric names which
have been drawn up by Professor Rhys, Dr. Whitley Stokes, M. d’Arbois
de Jubainville, and Dr. Macbain do not move him at all. When he is
confronted with geographical, tribal, or personal names belonging to
Pictland--names such as _Argentocoxos_, _Epidii_, _Gartnait_, the
_Ochil_ Hills, and the prefixes _aber_ and _pet_--he either ignores
them or, as his opponents would say, explains them away.[2059]
Professor Rhys’s list[2060] is disposed of with the same breezy
self-confidence. _Corstopiton_, _Epeiacon_, (Mons) _Graupius_,
_Leucopibia_, _Maponi_, _Parisi_, _Petuaria_, _Prasutagos_, _Rutupiae_,
_Toliapis_,--these names are either left out of account or explained
as Goidelic by the simple method of affirming or ‘suspecting’ that the
_p_ in each case is ‘Indo-European’.[2061] The reader will form his
own opinion if he can; only he will bear in mind that the weight of
authority is all on one side. When doctors disagree, the patient must
decide for himself which is the quack.
So much for the assertion that the Goidels, who, according to Professor
Kuno Meyer and Dr. Macbain, were non-existent in Britain at the time
when the Roman conquest began, formed then ‘the great majority’ of the
population. What is the evidence for the theory that they came later
than the Brythons?
There is no doubt that the Celts who first entered Gaul were
Goidels[2062] (assuming that Goidelic was then a distinct
dialect[2063]), and that the latest Celtic invaders of Gaul as of
Britain were Belgae.[2064] If the Belgae had been Goidels, we should
then have to admit that Gaul was invaded first by Goidels, then by
‘Cymri’, and finally by Goidels again. Is this likely? And is it not
likely that if Goidels were the first Celts who invaded Gaul, they were
also the first who invaded Britain?
Mr. Nicholson offers the following arguments in favour of his theory.
Remarking that the Menapii were a Belgic tribe, he says[2065] that ‘the
Isle of Man(n) [which Caesar calls _Mona_] is called _Monapia_ by Pliny
(iv, 103)’; and that the Gaelic dialect which is spoken in the island
is evidence that its inhabitants in Pliny’s time were Goidels.
Now I ask, first, is it certain that Pliny’s _Monapia_, rather than
Caesar’s _Mona_, was the name by which the Isle of Man was known to
its own inhabitants? Is it not probable that the name _Monapia,_
which is, at all events presumably, Brythonic, came to Pliny from a
Brythonic source?[2066] Secondly, assuming that the names _Monapia_ and
_Menapii_ are etymologically connected, does it necessarily follow that
_Monapia_ was a name peculiar to the Belgae, seeing that the tribal
name _Ceutrones_ occurs not only in Belgic Gaul but in the Alps?[2067]
Thirdly, is Mr. Nicholson prepared to prove that the Isle of Man was
not colonized by Goidels after it had received the name _Monapia_
from Brythons? Lastly, since Mr. Nicholson himself affirms[2068] that
although the name _Aremorici_ is ‘certainly Kymric’, it nevertheless
‘is no proof that the Aremoricans were Kymric’, why does he insist that
the fact, if it is a fact, that _Monapia_ was Goidelic proves that the
Belgae were Goidels?
Again, he says that the Parisi, who lived near the mouth of the
Humber, were Belgae,[2069] and he believes that ‘their name preserves
Indo-European _p_’.[2070] But Caesar did not include the Gallic Parisii
among the Belgae, and did include them among the Celtae.[2071] Mr.
Nicholson’s belief, that the _p_ in their name is Indo-European, is not
shared by any other Celtic scholar.
Thirdly, he argues that the Atrebates, who were certainly Belgae, were
Goidels; for, he says,[2072] ‘With one exception, no ogam-inscription
has ever been found in these isles outside territory which is known to
have been once in Goidelic occupation. The single exception is that
of the stone found at Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester).’ But, according
to Mr. Nicholson himself, ‘the great majority’ of the British tribes
were Goidelic: yet in only a small minority of their territories are
ogam inscriptions forthcoming; and that minority, with the possible
exception of the Atrebates, is in the west of England. What then is
proved by the solitary inscription at Silchester? The individual who
erected it was doubtless a Goidel:[2073] but if it is to be regarded
as a proof that the Atrebates were Goidels, then the existence of
synagogues in Great Britain proves the truth of that widespread
delusion which Professor Tylor[2074] has described as ‘abject
nonsense’,--the ‘Anglo-Israel theory’.[2075]
Fourthly, Mr. Nicholson remarks[2076] that between the Parisi and
the Iceni, the name of whose king, Prasutagus,[2077] he regards ‘as
containing Ind.-Eur. _p_’, while all other Celtic scholars regard it
as Brythonic, dwelled the Coritani.[2078] ‘From their position on the
coast,’ he says, ‘they should belong to the same Picto-Belgic family,
and I submit that their name is simply Qṛtanoi, Cruitni.’ In other
words, Mr. Nicholson submits that a single tribe, which he assumes
to have been Belgic, called itself by the same name which, on his
own showing,[2079] had been given to the entire population of Great
Britain[2080] long before the Belgae set foot in the land!
6. I have set down the gist of the linguistic evidence which has
been offered in support of the various theories about the Goidels
and the Brythons in order that the reader may be able to form an
independent judgement about its value. It goes without saying that on
any particular question of Celtic etymology no opinion except that
of a competent Celtic scholar is worth listening to: on most of the
questions that concern us competent Celtic scholars differ widely among
themselves: Professor Rhys differs from himself; and Mr. Nicholson,
whose competence I neither affirm nor deny, differs from everybody.
Even the lay reader who has studied the writings of Dr. Windisch,
of Professor Rhys, of Dr. Whitley Stokes, of Dr. Macbain, of Mr.
Nicholson, and of M. d’Arbois de Jubainville, and who has made much
use of Alfred Holder’s _Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz_ cannot but see
how few of the etymologies that relate to ethnology are to be accepted
as certain. It would of course be absurd to sneer at the services
which philology has rendered to ethnology and history; nevertheless
the fact remains that on almost all the fundamental questions of
Celtic ethnology the philologists agree to differ. And, at the risk
of appearing flippant, I cannot help saying that when I read some of
Mr. Nicholson’s pages, when I see how M. Salomon Reinach demonstrates,
with the approval of M. d’Arbois de Jubainville and of Professor Rhys,
who for once find themselves in agreement, that κασσίτερος, the Greek
word for tin, must be of Celtic derivation because the root _cassi-_
is found in numerous Celtic names,[2081] I ask myself whether some
future philologist will not adduce the similarity between _Tamesis_
and _Tamesi_, the name of a Mexican river, as a proof that the Celts
once colonized Central America; whether he will not compare the name of
Admiral Togo with that of the British prince, Togo-dumnos, and prove
that ‘the Japanese Nelson’ was of Celtic extraction.[2082]
7. Caesar, in a familiar passage, states that ‘the maritime districts
[of Britain are inhabited] by people who crossed over from Belgium to
plunder and attack [the aborigines], almost all of them being called
after the tribes from whom the invaders were an offshoot’.[2083] It
is, however, impossible to define the limits of the region which, in
Caesar’s time and during the period that elapsed between the date of
his departure and that of the Claudian conquest, was occupied by the
Belgae. The only tribal names that indicate their presence are those of
the Catuvellauni,[2084] who, about the commencement of the Christian
era, occupied a territory of uncertain area round Verulamium, or St.
Albans, which included Hertfordshire, Middlesex, and probably parts of
Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Northamptonshire; the Atrebates,
who possessed parts of Hampshire and Berkshire; and the Belgae, whose
chief towns, according to Ptolemy,[2085] were Aquae Calidae, or Bath,
and Venta, or Winchester.[2086] Caesar’s words would certainly lead us
to believe that the Cantii, the Trinovantes, and the Regni were also
Belgic peoples, although their names do not occur in the list of the
Belgic tribes of Gaul.[2087] Professor Rhys indeed affirmed in the
second edition of _Celtic Britain_[2088] that ‘there is no evidence
that the Cantii ... should be considered Belgic’; and this statement
is repeated in the edition which has recently been published: one
feels therefore that the evolution of the professor’s views is quite
normal when one reads in an intermediate volume, published two years
ago,[2089] that the earliest Belgic invaders of Britain were probably
the Brittani,[2090] and that the Brittani were probably the Cantii.
8. Finally, Dr. Macalister regards certain skeletons which have been
found in the War Ditches of Cambridgeshire below layers that contained
traces of late Roman occupation as Anglian[2091]; and it may be that
they testify to a pre-Roman immigration from Northern Germany.
X. CONCLUSION
For the sake of clearness I shall summarize the results which this
inquiry has attained. No human remains, except those of Bury St.
Edmunds and Cattedown, which can be certainly attributed to the
Quaternary Period have been found in Britain; but it is probable that
the earlier inhabitants belonged in part to the Neanderthal stock, and
that towards the close of the Palaeolithic Age they were joined by
immigrants akin to the Chancelade people of the Lozère valley. There
is no conclusive evidence that the earliest neolithic invaders found
this island inhabited; but it has not been demonstrated that even
here there was a ‘hiatus’ between the Old and the New Stone Age. The
source of the first neolithic influx was probably in France, in the
southern parts of which at all events the latest palaeolithic and the
earliest neolithic inhabitants were akin. The neolithic invaders who
built the long barrows of Southern Britain and the chambered cairns of
Scotland, and many of whom built round barrows also, were a branch of
the ‘Mediterranean’ race, and likewise came from France, perhaps in
some cases originally from the Spanish peninsula; but if they are to be
called ‘Iberian’ the term must be regarded as conventional. There is no
evidence that they were related more nearly to the Basques than to some
other branch of the Mediterranean stock.[2092] They certainly spoke
a non-Aryan language; and so probably did the earlier brachycephalic
invaders, of whom the first comers landed in Britain before the end
of the Neolithic Age. These invaders--the principal builders of the
round barrows and the short cists--continued to arrive in successive
hordes during the earlier part of the Bronze Age, some probably from
Gaul, some from the Low Countries and the valley of the Rhine, and
others, who settled in Yorkshire and Northumberland and perhaps in
Derbyshire, from Denmark or Danish islands and possibly also from the
Scandinavian peninsula. The brachycephalic Round Barrow skulls fall
under two different types. Some resemble those of the French Grenelle
race--in other words, the so-called Alpine race of Central Europe--and,
like them, belonged to individuals of low stature; although the
general superiority of the Bronze Age Britons in this respect is so
great as to preclude the supposition that men of the pure Grenelle
type invaded Britain in considerable numbers: others illustrate the
rugged and, in some cases, almost brutal type which Thurnam and
Rolleston have so forcibly described; and some of those of Yorkshire,
especially Rudstone, and Northumberland exhibit these characteristics
in such a degree that they may almost be grouped apart. The majority
would seem to show that people of the two types intermarried, as they
certainly did with the dolichocephalic neolithic population. The first
Celtic invaders were Goidels, who certainly reached Ireland in the
Bronze Age, and who may be supposed to have settled in Britain also
before the time of Pytheas. The first Brythonic immigrants probably
inaugurated the Iron Age in this country, and began to arrive a short
time before the visit of Pytheas. They were succeeded by the Belgae,
who, like them, came in successive hordes, the first probably in the
third century before Christ. The Belgae and the other Brythons spread
over the greater part of Southern Britain and many parts of Scotland.
Both they and the Goidels were doubtless mixed with people of the
‘Iberian’ and Grenelle races with whom they had intermarried before
they left the Continent; but the purer representatives of the two
Celtic stocks--the descendants of the invaders who had introduced the
Celtic languages into Gaul and of their continental kinsmen--belonged
to a type different from both of the Round Barrow types, being not
only tall and generally fair but dolichocephalic or mesaticephalic. A
people characterized by dolichocephaly and low stature, who apparently
were not descended from the Long Barrow race, but whose affinities are
doubtful, were settled in the Early Iron Age in East Yorkshire, and,
it would seem, nowhere else in Britain. The Picts of Romano-British
history were a medley of tribes, among whom Celts were, as everywhere,
predominant, but who probably included a greater proportion of the
descendants of the neolithic and other pre-Aryan peoples than any other
British group. It is possible that in the remoter parts of Pictland a
non-Aryan dialect was still spoken when the Romans invaded Britain;
but the pre-Aryan Picts as a whole had been Celticized, and the Celtic
language had prevailed, although it had been largely modified by the
speech with which it had come in contact. Everywhere in Britain the
pre-Roman stocks have, in greater or less proportions, survived.[2093]
Few Englishmen, Welshmen, or Scotsmen, if their pedigrees could be
traced back far enough, would not be found to count among their
ancestors men of the type who were buried in long barrows, sturdy
warriors of the Bronze Age, and Celts who fought against Caesar or were
subdued by Agricola.
* * * * *
The study of ethnology is as fascinating to its votaries, partly
by reason of its very difficulty, as the attempt to determine the
distances of the less remote stars must have been to Bessel, Henderson,
and Struve; but I can sympathize with those to whom, in both cases,
the quest of knowledge for its own sake appears equally unprofitable.
They may well ask the ethnologist why he does not proceed to deduce
from what he knows conclusions that would interest all students of
history and of human nature. ‘There are few fields,’ says Professor
Bury,[2094] ‘where more work is to be done or where labourers are more
needed than the Celtic civilisations of Western Europe. In tracing
from its origins the course of western history in the Middle Ages, we
are pulled up on the threshold by the uncertainties and obscurities
which brood over the Celtic world. And for the purpose of prosecuting
that most difficult of all inquiries, the ethnical problem, the part
played by race in the developement of peoples and the effects of race
blendings, it must be remembered that the Celtic world commands one of
the chief portals of ingress into that mysterious prae-Aryan foreworld,
from which it may well be that we modern Europeans have inherited
far more than we dream.’ But when we have entered the ‘prae-Aryan
foreworld’, how shall we map out its various provinces, and what clue
shall we have gained to the solution of ‘the ethnical problem’? That is
as complex as the problem, which theoretically may not be insoluble,
of forecasting remote meteorological as accurately as astronomical
phenomena; and its solution is more hopeless still. We want to know
what contributions the various British races which we have identified
made to the formation of the British character, which is so obviously
different from that of any other nation, and which is, so to speak, the
generalized manifestation of the characters of the English, Scottish,
and Welsh peoples, and, descending the scale, of the characters of
the inhabitants of every district, and finally of every man.[2095]
Again, we want to trace the manifold sources from which the ‘Celtic’
character, with the idiosyncrasies of which we are all more or less
familiar, is derived. But the Celtic character is not everywhere the
same. Study it in Wales, in Man, in the Scottish Highlands, in Ireland,
in Cornwall, in France, and you will find that while it is Celtic
everywhere, everywhere it is different;[2096] that everywhere it has
become what it is because it is compounded, in different degrees,
not only of Celtic, not only of pre-Celtic and pre-Aryan, but also
of post-Celtic elements. And all these elements have been modified
and moulded by different geographical and climatic influences and
by adventitious circumstances too numerous to be particularized and
too elusive to be estimated.[2097] Those who know Ireland well have
observed that the character of Anglo-Irishmen, whose blood is neither
more nor less Celtic than that of many Englishmen, has acquired a
quasi-Irish tinge, which is discernible in their children even when
they have been born and bred in England; and this sets us thinking,
though we think in vain. We all know the passage in which Mommsen
compares the Gauls to the modern Irish: the ethnologist knows enough
to see that it is as misleading as it is brilliant; but he knows too
little to attempt to rewrite it. Anthropologically speaking, the Gauls
(I use the word in its most comprehensive sense) were very different
from the modern and indeed from the ancient Irish; and if Mommsen’s
analogy were more than superficial, we should be forced to conclude
that the character of the Gauls, as it is revealed in ancient writings,
was that of the dominant Celts, perhaps mostly Gallo-Brythonic, alone;
and that the character of the Irish is simply that of Celts, mostly
Goidelic, who were once but have long ceased to be dominant. Who will
attempt to differentiate the respective shares of the pre-Aryan Long
Barrow race, of the few representatives of the pre-Aryan Grenelle race
who settled in this land, of the tall harsh-featured Round Barrow
people, of the Goidels, and finally of the Brythons in building up the
character which was to be further modified by the Roman, the Saxon, the
Dane, the Norman, the Fleming, and aliens of every nationality, who
each and all contributed something to a result which, influenced by
the Continent, by the Far West, and now by the Far East, is still in
process of evolution?
THE NAMES ΠΡΕΤΑΝΙΚΑΙ ΝΗΣΟΙ, _BRITANNI_ AND _BRITANNIA_
Πρεττανοί, which (written with a single τ) is supposed to represent the
Brythonic or the Gaulish equivalent of a Goidelic word _Qrtanoi_--the
assumed progenitor of the Irish _Cruthni_[2098]--is found in certain
manuscripts of Strabo[2099] instead of the more usual Βρεττανοί:
Diodorus Siculus[2100] (who derived part of his information about the
British Isles indirectly from Pytheas[2101]) Strabo, Ptolemy,[2102]
and Marcian,[2103] appear to have described them as Πρετανικαὶ νῆσοι,
for perhaps they were not responsible for the ττ which appears in
manuscripts; and Stephanus of Byzantium speaks of Πρετανίας and
Πρετανίδες.[2104] According to Professor Rhys[2105] and M. d’Arbois
de Jubainville,[2106] the form Βρεττανικαὶ (νῆσοι), which occurs in
most of the manuscripts, is to be accounted for by the fact that
_Brittani_, the Goidelic name of the Brythonic invaders of Britain,
which had no connexion with Πρετανοί, was eventually confounded with
it: ‘the confusion,’ says Professor Rhys, ‘is to be detected in the ττ
of Πρεττανική;’[2107] and he attributes it to scribes. The questions
connected with all these names are very difficult. The first puzzle
is this:--if, as the professor says,[2108] Πρετανικαὶ νῆσοι, ‘under
the influence of the name of the Brythons, Βρεττανοί, became at last
Βρεττανικαὶ νῆσοι, that is to say “Brythonic isles”,’ why did Diodorus
Siculus, Ptolemy, and Marcian persist in calling them Πρετανικαὶ νῆσοι?
Again, the professor’s views about the Brittani, who, he tells us,
called themselves Brittones, have lately undergone a sweeping change.
In 1902[2109] he regarded ‘the first of the Belgic peoples to cross
over to this country’ as an offshoot of ‘the Brittani or Brittones
whom Pliny seems to have found so called in the valley of the Somme’
(and whom, by the way, Pliny,[2110] whatever he may have found them
called, called neither Brittani nor Brittones, but Britanni); and he
considered that their name, ‘from being exclusively that of the first
settlers, came to be extended to the successive hordes, so that at the
last it actually denoted all the settlers here of Belgic descent.’
But the Britanni who are mentioned by Pliny were a Belgic tribe of
such small importance that Caesar either ignored or had never heard of
them; and, granting that some of them invaded Britain, of which there
is no evidence, it is to the last degree improbable that they rather
than the Belgae, of whom they would only have formed an item, should
have imposed their name upon the people of the whole island. In 1902
Professor Rhys maintained that the Brythonic invaders of Britain were
all Belgae. In 1904[2111] he distinguished the Belgae from the other
Brythons, maintained that they were the second group of Brythonic
invaders, and gave the name _Brittones_ not only to them but also to
their predecessors. Whether or not he still holds that these two groups
of Brittones derived their name from Pliny’s Britanni, I cannot say. If
so, it is somewhat puzzling that one tribe of the so-called Brittones
were the Belgae, who presumably called themselves after the Gallic
group of tribes which, as a whole, was designated by that name: the
professor’s theory would lead to the startling conclusion that while
a single horde of the second group of Brythonic invaders were called
_Belgae_ after the entire nation of which they were an offshoot, the
two Brythonic groups of invaders, Belgic and non-Belgic alike, were
conjointly called after the most obscure tribe of the second group! He
explains the name _Brittones_ as connected with the Welsh _breithyn_,
cloth, and concludes that ‘the word Brython and its congeners meant
a clothed or cloth-clad people’, and that ‘the race with which the
Brythons contrasted themselves to their own satisfaction, when they
began to give themselves that name, was probably some of the aboriginal
tribes whose home they invaded on the Continent’.[2112] But if so,
it seems wellnigh inexplicable that none of the Continental Belgae,
none of the other Gauls, were called either Brittones or Brittani, and
that only one petty Belgic tribe, which was unknown to or unnoticed by
Caesar, was even called Britanni. As Windisch says,[2113] Professor
Rhys’s etymology has to contend with serious difficulties; and it must,
I think, be admitted that if the Brythons were called either Brittani
or Brittones, the mention by Pliny of the Belgic Britanni throws no
light upon the origin of the name. It is perhaps conceivable that, as
Dr. Macbain[2114] has suggested, ‘the tribe on the Somme were some
returned emigrants from Britain.’
Britain, says Professor Rhys, is traceable to _Britannia_, and
_Britannia_ to _Britanni_,--‘the Latin name of the people’. He observes
that the Greek form of _Britanni_ was Βρεττανοί, and he adds that ‘the
practical identity between the Latin and Greek forms makes it probable
that it was from or through the Greeks of Marseilles that the Romans
first heard of these islands. This,’ he continues, ‘is not all, for the
Latin _Brittanni_, and especially the Greek Βρεττανοί, have their exact
counterpart in the Medieval Irish plurals Bretain, genitive Bretan,
which had at times to function as the name both of the Brythons and of
the island. It is to be noticed that neither Βρεττανοί or Britanni, nor
the Irish Bretain has anything corresponding to it in the dialects of
the Brythons themselves. From whom, then, did the Greeks hear the word
which served as the basis of their names for Britain and its people? It
cannot have been from the Brythonic peoples of the south-east of the
island, or any, perhaps, of the Gauls of the Continent: it was probably
from the natives of the south-west who brought their tin to market, and
in whose country the only Celtic speech in use was as yet Goidelic.
When, however, the Romans came to Britain they learnt the name which
the Brythons gave themselves in the south-east of the island, and this
was not Britanni, or Brettani, but Brĭttŏnes.’[2115] On the other
hand, Dr. Macbain[2116] suggests that the ‘Greek form Prettania [or
rather _Pretania_, the form which is assumed to have been derived from
_Priten_ or its older equivalent, and indirectly from _Qrtanoi_] gave
rise to the name Britain,--a bad Latin pronunciation’. Mr. Nicholson
objects that ‘in neither Greek nor Latin is _p_ known to pass into
_b_’.[2117] Is it possible that the Latin pronunciation, if it was bad,
may have been traceable to a bad Greek pronunciation, which gave rise
to Polybius’s[2118] Βρεττανικαί (νῆσοι), and which was itself due to a
defect not in pronunciation but in hearing?
THE BIRTHDAY OF RELIGION
Those who, like Professor Tylor, reject the theory that certain savage
tribes have no religious belief would probably accept the evidence
which Lord Avebury[2119] adduces in its favour: only they attach to
the word Religion a meaning different from his. Indeed he himself, in
one passage,[2120] uses the word in Professor Tylor’s sense; for he
remarks that ‘one of the lowest forms of religion is that presented
by the Australians, which consists of a mere unreasoning belief in
the existence of mysterious beings’; and he admits that religion,
in this sense, ‘is general to the human race.’[2121] Dr. Frazer,
however, would apparently refuse to make even this concession. He is,
or was, inclined to believe that ‘faith in magic is probably older
than a belief in spirits’;[2122] for ‘magic is nothing but a mistaken
application of the very simplest ... processes of the mind, namely,
the association of ideas by virtue of resemblance or contiguity’,
while ‘religion assumes the operation of conscious or personal agents,
superior to man, behind the visible screen of nature. Obviously,’ he
continues, ‘the conception of personal agents is more complex than a
simple recognition of the similarity or contiguity of ideas.’[2123] I
can only say that to me this is not obvious; the fancy of a primitive
savage that fire, running water--everything that moves--is alive, is
doubtless a less rudimentary mental act than the fear of a horse that
a traction-engine is a formidable monster, but the difference is only
one of degree.[2124] And Dr. Frazer’s definition of magic is singularly
narrow: magic and religion were rooted in the same soil; and their
branches intertwined.[2125]
To M. Salomon Reinach also ‘it appears evident that the true primitive
savage ... does not believe himself to be surrounded by spirits; he is
in the state which Herbert Spencer calls _passive atheism_.... The most
backward primitive savages whom we know are in the neolithic age....
The superstition (δεισιδαιμονία, dread of demons) which dominates their
whole existence ... is ... the outcome of a long evolution.’[2126] But
did not the process begin when the primitive savage, conscious of life,
fancied that sun and stars, flood and fire were also alive? And how can
M. Reinach make it ‘evident’ that there ever was a savage so primitive
that he had no such fancy? It is not true that the most backward
savages whom we know, or at least have known, are in the Neolithic Age.
The Tasmanians, a hundred years ago, were in their Palaeolithic Age,
but they believed themselves to be surrounded by spirits.[2127] Lord
Avebury indeed affirms that ‘some races entirely disbelieve in the
survival of the soul after the death of the body’;[2128] nevertheless,
if they believe in spiritual beings, they have the germ of religion.
For M. Reinach[2129] religion was born at the moment when man, finding
himself constrained to do what he feared might offend malignant
spirits, began to devise means of conciliating them. But may it not be
said with equal truth that the birthday of religion was when man began
to form the conception, on which religion, in the ordinary sense, is
based, that spiritual beings exist?
M. Reinach has recently pronounced that ‘fire-worship preceded the use
of fire, just as the worship of cereals preceded and prepared the way
for their cultivation’.[2130] One must infer that the ‘true primitive
savage’, who, according to M. Reinach, was in a state of ‘passive
atheism’, and therefore had not begun to worship fire, had not found
out how to produce it. If M. Reinach is right, the ‘passive atheist’
must have been primitive indeed.
Professor Robertson Smith held that ‘religion in the only true sense of
the word’ began ‘not with a vague fear of unknown powers, but with a
loving reverence for known gods who are knit to their worshippers by
strong bonds of kinship’.[2131] But it was in the ‘vague fear’ that the
‘loving reverence’ had its germ.
Dr. J. G. Frazer, in a recent article[2132], argues that the Australian
aborigines have no religion: but by religion he means ‘a propitiation
or conciliation of the higher powers’;[2133] and he admits that
some Australian tribes ‘have a notion of spiritual beings who can
help or injure them’.[2134] In other words, their belief fulfils
Professor Tylor’s ‘minimum definition of religion’; and Professor A.
C. Haddon justly remarks that ‘it is doubtful whether more than a few
anthropologists of repute would deny the term religion to the beliefs
and practices of the Arunta’ of Central Australia.[2135]
DUMBUCK, LANGBANK, DUNBUIE
I have said nothing in the first part of this book about the famous
‘crannogs’, or pile-dwellings (so called), which were discovered a few
years ago at Dumbuck and Langbank in the estuary of the Clyde, the
hill-fort of Dunbuie by Dumbarton Castle, and the remarkable objects
which they contained, because it is admitted that they belong to a
period several centuries later than the Roman conquest of Britain;
but, for a reason which will presently be apparent, they must not
be ignored. Everything worth reading that has been written upon the
subject is included in two recent books--_Archaeology and False
Antiquities_, in which Dr. Robert Munro contends that the disputed
objects are spurious, and the _Clyde Mystery_, in which Mr. Andrew
Lang endeavours to show that the difficulty of regarding them as
forgeries is at least as great as the difficulty of maintaining their
authenticity, and that, if they are genuine, they prove the survival of
ritual and magical ideas that must have belonged to the Stone Age.
It may be premised that Professor Boyd Dawkins,[2136] after a careful
examination of certain engraved oyster shells, which were a part of
the finds at Dunbuie, reported that he ‘had satisfied himself that
two of the shells were American blue points’, and, as he somewhat
superfluously added, ‘consequently of very modern date.’ Mr. Lang,
admitting this, suggests that, as Dunbuie was left unguarded for
several months, the shells were introduced by some local wag.[2137] At
the same time he argues that if the disputed objects were not genuine,
either the forger must have been a man of extraordinary erudition,
who had studied the archaeology of England, America, France, Germany,
Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Australia, or, by a coincidence which is
incredible, he produced objects which are found in all those countries.
I would suggest, however, that he may himself have been a person of
quite ordinary education, who was either employed by an archaeologist
with a peculiar sense of humour or learned what was necessary for his
purpose from some one more erudite than himself. Mr. Lang reminds us,
further, that if the disputed objects have been found in Britain only
in the basin of the Clyde, certain painted pebbles, similar to those of
Mas d’Azil, which have been found in Scottish brochs, are also unique
in Britain, and yet are disputed by nobody; and he might have said the
same of the strange objects of Mycenaean type which were found in a
barrow on Folkton Wold.[2138]
Dr. Munro, on the other hand, can see no resemblance whatever between
the disputed objects and the genuine productions of Australia or
certain other questionable ‘antiquities’ that recently startled the
explorers of a Portuguese dolmen.[2139] The reader, as Mr. Lang says,
must decide for himself; and I doubt whether he will see eye to eye
with Dr. Munro.
The doctor also insists that if the Scottish objects are survivals, ‘we
ought to find, at least somewhere in Britain, decided and undisputed
evidence of the existence of a phase of culture in the Stone Age in
which the prototypes ... would be the prevailing forms in general use.
But,’ he adds, ‘of such archaic remains there is not a vestige.’[2140]
No; but the earth has not yet given up all the vestiges of the Stone
Age: the first discovery of a Scottish interment of the Early Iron Age
has been made within the present century,[2141] and the doctor will
admit that it is probably not unique; besides, do not the brochs and
Folkton Wold suggest an answer to his argument?
Mr. Lang, concluding that at present the only position which the
impartial _savant_ can reasonably assume is a seat upon the proverbial
fence, admits that ‘the very strong point against authenticity is this:
_numbers_ of the disputed objects were found in sites of the early
_Iron Age_. Now,’ he continues, ‘such objects, save for a few examples,
are only known--and that in non-British lands--in _Neolithic_ sites.
The theory of survival may be thought not to cover the _number_ of the
disputed objects.’[2142] May it not also be said that as an ignorant or
sportive forger undoubtedly carved the oyster shells, so the disputed
objects may have been smuggled into the sites by a forger who was well
informed?[2143]
INHUMATION AND CREMATION
Dr. R. Munro[2144] says, on what authority I do not know, that the
object of cremation was ‘to liberate the spirit more quickly’. Is it
then to be concluded that in cases where inhumation and cremation were
practised simultaneously in the same barrow,[2145] it was intended that
certain spirits should be liberated quickly and others slowly?
Mr. W. C. Borlase[2146] remarks that ‘the transformation which would
have taken place when incineration was introduced ... would ... have
... been from a cult which was probably filthy and material to one
which was pure and spiritual’. We have seen that the ‘probably filthy’
and the ‘spiritual’ cult were practised simultaneously by the same
people; are we to assume that when inhumation was reintroduced in the
Early Iron Age filth and materialism were revived?
Professor Boyd Dawkins[2147] insists that cremation was introduced
into Britain by ‘the bronze-using Celtic tribes’; and Dr. Munro[2148]
apparently agrees with him. Putting aside the fact that most of the
tribes to which the professor refers were not Celtic,[2149] there is no
evidence that cremation was first introduced by bronze-using tribes:
if it was, the long barrows in which primary cremation interments have
been found must have been erected in the British Bronze Age! It may
or may not be true that, as Canon Greenwell suggests,[2150] some of
the Yorkshire round barrows were erected in the Stone Age; but at all
events they were later than the long barrows of the same county. Those
long barrows, according to Dr. Munro and Professor Boyd Dawkins, must
have been erected after a bronze-using people had introduced cremation
into Britain. How then would the professor and the doctor explain the
fact that in the round barrows of the Yorkshire Wolds there was a
reaction in favour of inhumation, seeing that Canon Greenwell[2151]
found in them 301 interments of unburnt and only 78 of burnt bones?
Dr. Munro[2152] remarks further that, ‘so far as available evidence
has been adduced, it would appear that the only sepulchral remains,
proved to have been older than the custom of cremation, are the
chambered cairns in the south-west of England. When, however, the
analogous cairns of Argyllshire, Caithness, and the Orkney Islands were
constructed, the religious wave had already enveloped Northern Britain.
Hence, though generally destitute of bronze relics, these structures
were generally contemporary with the Bronze Age burials elsewhere in
Britain.... The explanation ... is that in out-of-the-way localities
... the Stone Age civilisation lingered longer than in those on the
main routes of commercial intercourse.’ Certainly; but no sepulchral
remains in Britain are ‘_proved_ to have been older than the custom of
cremation’. Inhumation preceded cremation in Cornwall;[2153] but there
is no evidence that when inhumation was first practised there cremation
was not practised in other parts of Britain. Though cremation was very
rare in the chambered long barrows of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, it
was not unknown:[2154] it was almost universal in the unchambered long
barrows of Yorkshire; and it cannot be proved that they were later than
the chambered long barrows of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire.[2155] The
chambered cairns of Scotland were not only ‘generally’ but absolutely
‘destitute of bronze relics’. Very likely some of them may have been
erected after the Bronze Age had commenced in Southern Britain; but
even this can hardly be proved. What has been proved is that even in
the Palaeolithic Age in the caves near Mentone cremation was already
practised side by side with inhumation.[2156]
[Since the rough draft of this note was written Professor Boyd
Dawkins[2157] has asserted that the long chambered barrow of Stoney
Littleton belonged to the Bronze Age, while he admits, apparently
because it did not contain cremated interments, that the long chambered
barrow of Rodmarton was neolithic.[2158]]
Professor Ridgeway’s views, which are expounded in his well-known
chapter, ‘Cremation, Inhumation, and the Soul,’ have been noticed in
the first part of this book. In regard to Western usage he blunders
in a way which makes me hesitate to accept his statements about
archaeological details that I have not myself studied. He says that
‘in Dorsetshire ... the extended position seems to be the prevalent
one’,[2159] a remark which I have already noted[2160] as an instance of
the danger of relying upon second-hand evidence; he implies that the
invaders who ‘conquered Dorset, Wiltshire, and Cornwall’ in the Bronze
Age were Belgae;[2161] and he states that ‘in France inhumation was
universal before the age of metal’,[2162] which, as I have shown,[2163]
is contrary to fact.
SEPULCHRAL POTTERY
Some antiquaries have maintained that drinking-cups, food-vessels,
incense-cups, and urns were not specially made for sepulchral purposes,
but were merely ordinary domestic vessels.[2164] On the other hand,
it has been urged that most of them were too fragile to stand rough
usage; that many are so contracted at the bottom that they would
have been ill adapted to serve as table or culinary ware; that the
food-vessels and the drinking-cups were too porous to hold fluid long,
while the shape of most of them would have made them inconvenient for
any ordinary purpose; and that all are wholly unlike the domestic
pottery which has actually been found in hut-circles, forts, barrows,
and the Heathery Burn Cave.[2165] Mr. J. R. Mortimer[2166] replies
that drinking-cups and food-vessels were quite strong enough for
domestic use; that ‘the form of the typical drinking-cup is well chosen
for the purpose its name implies, and most of the food-vessels are
the prototypes of our ... porringers, jars’, &c. It may be admitted
that some few food-vessels, for instance the one figured by Thurnam
in _Archaeologia_, xliii, 381, are, apart from their decoration,
not unlike domestic bowls; but what about incense-cups? The truth
perhaps lies between the opposing views; for drinking-cups and
food-vessels have been exhumed from pit-dwellings near Taplow;[2167]
and Pitt-Rivers,[2168] speaking of an urn which was found on the bottom
of the ditch of the camp in South Lodge Park in his estate, observes
that ‘it is more probable that the urn would be found in the ditch
thrown away as refuse if it was in ordinary use, than if it were only
fabricated for ceremonial purposes’. He remarks further that ‘the
large quantities of pottery of the same quality ... afterwards found
in different parts of the Camp, confirms this opinion [that sepulchral
pottery was used for domestic purposes], as it could not all have
been used for funeral urns’.[2169] Moreover, fragments of ornamental
pottery of the drinking-cup type were found by Pitt-Rivers in a pit
in Martin Down Camp.[2170] Still, the fact remains that only a very
small proportion of the pottery which is commonly called sepulchral has
been found outside sepulchres; and even it may have been intended for
sepulchral use.
STONEHENGE
Stonehenge has exercised the minds of many generations of antiquaries.
An exhaustive bibliography, filling 169 pages and containing the
titles of 947 books and articles, was published in the _Wiltshire
Archaeological and Natural History Magazine_ for 1901: but nearly all
the works therein enumerated are obsolete; and any one who wishes to
form an independent judgement will find all the necessary materials in
the volumes which will be referred to in this article.
I. Modern opinion has for some time been tending to the conclusion
that Stonehenge was erected, or at least began to be erected, in the
Bronze Age. Excavation has proved that it did not exist before the
use of copper or bronze, however uncommon it may have been, was known
in this country;[2171] and the arguments of Rickman,[2172] James
Fergusson,[2173] and others who contend for a Roman or post-Roman date
have been or can be demolished. To refute them in the text of this
article would be useless; for no competent archaeologist now regards
them as worth discussion.[2174]
Dr. Arthur Evans maintains that Stonehenge was built in the earlier
half of the third century before Christ, although some parts of it may
be of later date; that ‘sun worship was at most a secondary object in
its structure’; and that it was ‘one of a large series of primitive
religious monuments that grew out of purely sepulchral architecture’.
Let us first consider the question of date.
Dr. Evans has no difficulty in establishing, what has already been
demonstrated in Part I of this book,[2175] that ‘Stonehenge was
at least begun before the close of the Wiltshire “Round-Barrow”
Period’.[2176] At the same time he holds that ‘its foundation
belongs to the conclusion of this period’. He points out that ‘of 36
disk-shaped barrows [in the neighbourhood of Stonehenge] 35 contained
cremation interments.... The number of glass beads contained in these
barrows is also,’ he continues, ‘evidence of their comparatively late
date[2177].... The general inference which we draw from the intimate
structural connexion between Stonehenge and these disk-shaped barrows
is, that the great stone circles themselves were erected towards
the close of the Round-Barrow Period. The proportionately frequent
occurrence of gold relics in barrows in the immediate neighbourhood
of Stonehenge, 4 out of 5 such discoveries having been made within
half-a-mile of this monument, points in the same direction.’ And
if it should be argued that the barrows may have been built after
the erection of Stonehenge, his answer would be that ‘the barrows
themselves, with the exception of the two within its own area, are
disposed without any reference to Stonehenge, and do not in any way
cluster about it, as we might reasonably have expected them to do had
the bulk of them been reared after the Stone Circle’. Dr. Evans then
observes that an amber collar ‘found in one of the Lake barrows about
two miles from Stonehenge ... is of a form and arrangement identical
with the amber necklaces found in the great cemetery at Hallstatt,
and from the similar character of the boring of the beads must in all
probability have come from the same centre of manufacture’; and he
endeavours to show that we may infer from recent discoveries that ‘a
large proportion of the Hallstatt remains reach down to the period
between the approximate dates of 450-300 B.C.’[2178] On the other hand,
Late Celtic antiquities, which began to appear in Britain ‘at least
as early as the second century B.C.’, are absent from the barrows of
Wiltshire; and the latest date which can be assigned to these barrows
is about 250 B.C. Dr. Evans concludes that ‘we may approximately refer
the foundation of Stonehenge to the end of the fourth or beginning of
the third century’.[2179]
Some of these arguments do not appear to have much weight. Dr. Evans
himself admits that there is a great structural distinction between
Stonehenge and the disk-shaped barrows:[2180] in the latter the
surrounding ditch is _inside_ the bank; in the Stonehenge vallum it
is _outside_. Those barrows at all events in which chippings of the
stones were found were later than Stonehenge;[2181] and whatever
conclusion may be drawn from the arrangement of the barrows, their
number is so great as to suggest the inference that many of them were
erected there because Stonehenge was regarded as a holy place. In a
recent article,[2182] however, Dr. Evans has reinforced his argument,
pointing out that the circle called the Rollright Stones, which stands
on a hill overlooking the valley of the Warwickshire Stour, also stands
‘in immediate relation to a large group of [disk-shaped] sepulchral
barrows’, and giving additional and conclusive evidence as to the late
date of these particular monuments. He would not, however, I believe,
now assign to Stonehenge quite so early a date as the ‘beginning of the
third century’; for the commencement of our Early Iron Age is commonly
referred to about 400 B.C.[2183] Of the two barrows in which Hoare
found chippings of the Stonehenge stones one was bell-shaped,[2184] the
other belonged to the kind which he called ‘flat’,[2185] but which, as
Thurnam points out,[2186] is simply a variety of the bowl-barrow; but
Thurnam has given reasons for believing that many barrows of this form
may not have been earlier than disk-shaped mounds.[2187]
In 1901 excavations were made at Stonehenge, but only in ‘a fraction
of the whole site’, under the superintendence of Professor W.
Gowland.[2188] The principal objects discovered were chippings from the
‘sarsens’ and ‘blue-stones’; more than one hundred stone implements,
many of which were of flint, and had evidently been used for dressing
the softer stones of the monument, while others consisted of ‘the hard
quartzite variety of sarsen’; bones of domestic animals; ‘splinters of
antlers of deer’; ‘a portion of a large antler with its lowest tine
worn away,’ apparently from its having been used as a pick; and Roman
coins, which, however, were only found in the superficial layers.[2189]
‘The layers of the excavations,’ says Professor Gowland, ‘in which
the flint and stone tools were found was absolutely undisturbed
ground’;[2190] and the chippings were found as far down as the surface
of the bed rock. Only one trace of copper or bronze was visible, namely
a stain, described by the formula CuCO₃, on a sarsen block, seven feet
below the surface. The work of trimming the stones appears to have been
done with stone implements only. The copper stain, however, proves that
copper or bronze must have been in use at the time when the builders of
Stonehenge were at work. Professor Gowland[2191] affirms that the stain
‘can only have been produced by prolonged contact with some very small
object of copper or bronze or some material containing copper.... It
may perhaps have been an ornament, but cannot possibly have been an
implement.’ He argues, further, that ‘even if metal tools were of no
use for this particular work, it is difficult to believe that, if the
monument were of the Bronze Age, no bronze implement would have been
lost in the course of its erection’.[2192] I, on the other hand, would
remind him that no bronze has been found in the hut-circles of Dartmoor
or in various cemeteries which undoubtedly belonged to the Bronze
Age,[2193] and I suggest that if the workmen who built Stonehenge had
no use for bronze tools when they were building it, they were not more
likely to lose them on the site than the masons who built St. Paul’s
Cathedral to drop their table knives within the area of the churchyard.
However, Professor Gowland does not pin his faith upon this argument.
He points out[2194] that many of the flint implements which he
discovered at Stonehenge closely resemble those which were discovered
by Canon Greenwell at Grime’s Graves, and which were attributed by
him to the close of the Neolithic Age, or, at the latest, to a period
when bronze had not come into general use.[2195] But nobody who has
learned the ABC of archaeology needs to be told that stone implements
were used long after the introduction of bronze;[2196] and no expert
sees anything improbable in the theory that such tools were used in
constructing Stonehenge towards the end of the Bronze Age. Besides, as
Professor Gowland admits, Dr. Maskelyne has pointed out that ‘bronze
tools would not work sarsens’;[2197] assuming, then, that Stonehenge
was erected in the Bronze Age, how could the sarsens have been dressed
except with implements of stone? But the discovery upon which Professor
Gowland lays the most stress is that of the deer-horn pick. Similar
picks were found in large numbers at Grime’s Graves. The one which
Professor Gowland found, if it really was a pick, must have been used
for excavating the pits in which the stones of Stonehenge were erected;
and Professor Gowland argues that if bronze tools had been in use at
the time, ‘it would seem not unreasonable to assume that they would
have been employed, as they would have been so much more effective for
such work than the picks of deer’s horn.’[2198] But no bronze pick has
ever been found in this country; and deer-horn picks have been found
in interments of the Bronze Age,[2199] and even in a Romano-British
deposit in the village of Woodyates on Cranborne Chase.[2200] Professor
Gowland provisionally assigns the date ‘about 2000-1800 B.C.’ for
the erection of Stonehenge; and he adds that Sir Norman Lockyer’s
astronomical calculation ‘gives an approximate date ... of 1680 B.C.,
with a margin of error ± 200 years’.
More than one attempt has been made to determine the date of Stonehenge
from the orientation of its axis; and these attempts have been founded
upon the assumption that one, at all events, of the objects which the
builders had in view was the worship of the sun. ‘The chief evidence,’
as Sir Norman Lockyer and the late Mr. F. C. Penrose have observed,
‘lies in the fact that an “avenue” ... formed by two ancient earthen
banks, extends for a considerable distance from the structure, in
the general direction of the sunrise at the summer solstice.’[2201]
On the avenue, 100 feet from the so-called Slaughter Stone, stands a
large monolith, called the ‘Friar’s Heel’, or the ‘Heel Stone’. At one
time it was generally assumed that on Midsummer Day, at the time when
Stonehenge was built, an observer, standing on or behind the ‘Altar
Stone’, could see the sun rising above the tip of the Heel Stone. At
the present time, however, as Mr. Arthur Hinks points out, ‘the sun
rises further south than it has done for the last ten thousand years’;
and yet, from the point of view of an observer standing behind the
Altar Stone, ‘it still rises north of the stone.’[2202] In fact ‘it is
some seven days before or after midsummer day when it rises directly
over the stone’.[2203] Moreover, as Professor Flinders Petrie[2204]
says, the ‘skew position’ of the Altar Stone would seem to show that
it is not now in its original position. Accordingly Sir Norman Lockyer
felt obliged to leave the Friar’s Heel out of his calculations, and
to confine himself to attempting to determine the orientation of the
avenue.[2205] The method which he and his colleague adopted was to peg
out as accurately as possible ‘the central line between the low and
often mutilated banks’ of the avenue, and then to measure ‘the bearings
of two sections of this line near the beginning and the end’.[2206]
‘The resulting observations,’ he tells us, ‘gave for the axis of the
avenue nearest the commencement an azimuth of 49° 38′ 48″, and for
that of the more distant 49° 32′ 54″.’[2207] But neither of these
measurements was adopted by Sir Norman. He found, or thought that he
found, that the mean between the two values which he had obtained,
namely, 49° 35′ 51″, was ‘confirmed by the information, supplied by
the Ordnance Survey, that from the centre of the temple [Stonehenge]
the bearing of the principal bench mark on the ancient fortified hill,
about eight miles distant, a well-known British encampment named....
Sidbury, is 49° 34′ 18″; and that the same line continued through
Stonehenge to the south-west strikes another ancient fortification,
namely, Grovely Castle, about six miles distant, and at practically the
same azimuth, viz., 49° 35′ 51″. For the above reasons,’ he says, ‘49°
34′ 18″ has been adopted for the azimuth of the avenue.’[2208] Having
regard to the rate of change in the obliquity of the ecliptic,[2209]
he concluded that the date of the foundation of Stonehenge was 1680
B.C.; but he admits that this date ‘may possibly be in error by ±200
years’.[2210]
It would appear then that, if Sir Norman Lockyer’s calculations are
well founded, Stonehenge was erected at some time between 1880 and 1480
B.C. Certainly the conclusion does not err on the side of excessive
precision. But the foundation upon which the calculations rest has
been shown by Mr. Hinks to be rotten. To begin with, the assumption
that Sidbury Hill was connected with the erection of Stonehenge is
absurd. Does Sir Norman Lockyer mean to suggest that the bench mark was
prehistoric? ‘In our climate,’ says Mr. Hinks, ‘Sidbury is probably
not visible from Stonehenge at sunrise once in twenty years.’[2211]
In point of fact it is never so visible: only the trees on the top of
the hill are to be seen. Furthermore, as Mr. Hinks points out, Sir
Norman Lockyer has assumed that ‘for [the temple of] Karnak the moment
of sunset was when the sun’s centre had just reached the horizon;
for Stonehenge sunrise was the moment when the first tip of the sun
appeared above the hill. It was necessary to adopt these precise yet
different phases for the two cases, because any other assumptions
would have led to results obviously absurd.’[2212] Finally, Sir
Norman Lockyer is obliged to assume that the builders of Stonehenge
could tell the exact day on which the midsummer solstice occurred.
The utter improbability of this assumption must be apparent to any
one who remembers that the astronomer who constructed the Julian
calendar miscalculated the dates both of the summer and of the winter
solstice.[2213]
Mr. E. J. Webb, whose brilliant article in the _Edinburgh Review_
of October, 1894, demolished Sir Norman Lockyer’s theory as to the
orientation of the Egyptian temples,[2214] has written me a letter in
which the futility of attempting to determine the date of Stonehenge
by astronomical reasoning is explained with a clearness which leaves
nothing to be desired. ‘As,’ he writes, ‘the sun in our latitudes
does not rise at right angles to the horizon, but with a considerable
slant, it follows that the place where his upper rim begins to appear
is appreciably further towards the north than the place where his
centre appears, and this again than the place where he is first seen
fully risen,--that is, where his lower edge touches the horizon.’ Now I
think myself that, even if we could credit the builders with complete
accuracy, attempts to get the date of the building astronomically would
be vain, because (1) we do not know the exact place (if such there
was) at which the observer’s eye was supposed to be placed. (Flinders
Petrie does to some extent get over this difficulty by supposing that
the observer took up a position from which the point of the Heel Stone
appears exactly level with the horizon. I doubt, however, whether we
have a right to be sure that the point is exactly where it was at
first. Some of the stones have leaned over considerably, and why not
this? But the difficulty is much greater for Lockyer, who takes no
account of the Heel Stone.) (2) We do not know whether the ancients
would have understood by the moment of sunrise the moment when the
sun’s upper rim appears (_A_), or the moment when his centre appears
(_B_), or the moment when his lower rim appears (_C_). (3) Even if we
did know this, yet, as every one who has watched the sun rise must
admit, it is practically quite impossible to be certain when any one of
these moments occurs. Lockyer tacitly admits this when he arbitrarily
takes as the moment of first appearance the time when 2′ (about 1/16)
of the sun’s disc are risen.
‘It is clear that (_A_ being assumed) when Stonehenge was built, an
observer looking along Flinders Petrie’s line of sight would see
the Friar’s Heel considerably to the south of the place of sunrise,
inasmuch as, though that place has ever since been moving southwards,
we see it slightly to the south even now. Lockyer therefore puts the
Friar’s Heel out of his theory altogether, in the belief that a stone
which did not exactly mark the place of the most northerly sunrise
could be of no use. I think, on the other hand, that a stone placed a
little too far south would probably suit what is likely to have been
the purpose in view even better than one which exactly marked the
solstitial sunrise. For if, instead of asserting that Stonehenge was
roofed over, and a beam of light admitted at the moment of sunrise
to its darkened sanctuary[2215]--all of which is pure guesswork--we
suppose that the builders were contemplating merely such bonfires and
rejoicings as, by Lockyer’s own admission, certainly have taken place
in various parts of the world, may we not ask how people in those
ancient days knew when these festivities were to be held. For the later
days, of which we have knowledge, the answer is easy enough: then
people had the Julian calendar, according to which St. John’s Day, or
whatever day was selected, always recurred at the same place in the
solar year, whether at, or before, or after the solstice. But we do not
know whether in pre-Roman times the inhabitants of Wiltshire had any
settled calendar at all; and if they had, it is probable that, as in
almost all ancient calendars, the days of the month, and therefore most
likely the festivals, were reckoned by the moon.[2216] The fifteenth,
let us say, of a particular month meant the day when a particular moon
was fifteen days old; and if this day should coincide in one year with
the solstice, it would not coincide with it the next year, and could
not have coincided with it the year before. How then could people
tell when the Midsummer festival ought to be held? I answer that they
might have very easily done so some time beforehand by the aid of a
stone set up so as to mark, not the solstitial sunrise itself, but an
earlier--and therefore of course also a later--one. If the Friar’s
Heel stood, as on Lockyer’s theory it did, some little way to the
south of the place of the midsummer sunrise, then the sun must have
risen over it twice--first towards the end of his journey north, just
before the solstice, and secondly on his return southward, just after
the solstice. Now if the Stonehenge people looked out for the morning
on which the sun first seemed to rise over the stone, and counted the
days to a morning when he seemed to rise there again on his return
journey, they could, by halving this number, obtain the time of the
solstice with as much accuracy as they could have required. After doing
this once, they could in following years always know, by watching the
sun’s first approach to the Friar’s Heel, for what day to appoint the
midsummer rejoicings. That these rejoicings took place at sunrise I do
not assert. Bonfires, at least in these times, usually take place at
night.... I do not think we have any right to say with certainty that
any solstitial festival ever took place at Stonehenge or near it. For
even granting that, as seems not unlikely, Stonehenge was orientated
more or less closely to the solstitial sunrise, and that the Friar’s
Heel was really used for the observation of the sun, it does not follow
that Stonehenge was a “solar temple” any more than Milan Cathedral,
which is orientated more or less closely to the equinoctial sunset, and
has had a meridian line traced upon its pavement. And even if we knew
that it was a solar temple, we should have no right to infer what kind
of worship went on there.’[2217]
Although Dr. Evans’s arguments are not all equally strong, there
can be little doubt that his view as to the date of the erection of
Stonehenge is approximately correct. The stones were certainly not
standing when round barrows were first erected on Salisbury Plain;
for one is contained within the _vallum_, which, moreover, encroaches
upon another.[2218] Mr. F. R. Coles has shown that ‘so far as direct
evidence has been obtained by rightly conducted excavations, the
outstanding feature of all the Scottish circles that have been
investigated is the presence within them of interments of the Bronze
Age’.[2219] That Stonehenge was erected before the close of this
period, or at all events before the dawn of the Iron Age in Wiltshire,
is certain; and, as it was the most elaborate and highly finished of
all the stone circles of Great Britain, we may fairly infer that it was
one of the latest of them all.
II. The most interesting pages of Dr. Evans’s article are those in
which he attempts to trace the pedigree, so to speak, of Stonehenge,
and to divine the purpose of its builders. He cites instances to show
that ‘wherever the meaning of these great stone monuments has been
clearly revealed to us, we find them connected either directly or
indirectly with sepulchral usage’.[2220] He contends that in the most
characteristic examples ‘the Circle is an enlarged version of the ring
of stones placed round the grave-mound; the Dolmen represents the cist
within it; the Avenue is merely the continuation of the underground
gallery, which in our earliest barrows leads to the sepulchral
chamber’.[2221] But is there any evidence that interments ever did take
place within the precincts of Stonehenge? General Pitt-Rivers remarked
that the question could be definitely settled by excavation;[2222] but
scientific excavation, as we have seen, has hitherto been confined
within a small area. The evidence amounts to this:--a vessel, which
Dr. Evans calls an incense-cup, was discovered by Inigo Jones,[2223]
and incense-cups have never been found except in association with
interments;[2224] while the numerous bones of domestic animals which
have been exhumed, along with charcoal and fragments of pottery, from
the interior circle,[2225] point to the conclusion that Stonehenge was
the scene of sepulchral rites such as we know to have been performed
in barrows.[2226] Furthermore, the older monument of Avebury contains
two smaller stone circles, within each of which are the remains of a
stone chamber, which, Dr. Evans argues, ‘there can be little doubt once
contained interments.’[2227] But Dr. Evans is at no great pains to
argue that Stonehenge was itself a cemetery: it is on its connexion,
close or distant, with sepulchral usage that he lays stress. While he
points out that ‘in the case of the Chambered Barrows the [surrounding]
stones may be said still to fulfil an original structural function’,
he holds that ‘in the case of the Circles they bear a more purely
ritual signification. In some cases,’ he adds, ‘we find transitional
examples in which the stone circle is actually seen in the act as it
were of separating itself from the earth barrows. Thus in the great
monument of New Grange [in Ireland] the stone circle is separated by
an interval of some twenty feet from the central mound.’ Then, going
to the Far East for an illustration, he tells us that, while the stone
circles and dolmens which are still erected by the Khasis of Assam
‘are in themselves non-sepulchral’, they ‘are reared as a propitiation
either to the departed Spirits of their own ancestors or to any other
Spirit’.[2228] But Dr. Evans does not deny that Stonehenge was also a
solar temple: he admits, indeed, that its orientation ‘certainly seems
to associate the Sun in the religion of the spot’.[2229] This theory is
supported by observations made by Professor Gowland in Japan. ‘There,’
he tells us, ‘on the seashore at Futa-mi-gaura ... the orientation of
the shrine of adoration is given by two gigantic rocks which rise from
the sea as natural pillars. The sun, as it rises over the mountains of
the distant shore, is observed between them, and the customary prayers
and adorations made ... the point from which the sun is revered is
marked by a structure of the form of a trilithon,’[2230] &c.
But although some evidence has been collected in support of the theory
that certain stone circles in the British Isles and elsewhere were
orientated more or less closely to the Midsummer sunrise, it does
not necessarily follow that they were solar temples;[2231] and a
scientifically conducted examination of the circles of Kincardineshire
and Aberdeenshire has shown that their main diameters ‘are in scarcely
any instance oriented (_sic_) to any point of the compass as we
understand the term’;[2232] while Mr. W. C. Lukis, pointing out that
on Dartmoor and in Cornwall circles are to be found in clusters, and
that there are three circles quite close to one another at Stanton
Drew, asks, ‘if they were temples, why should the worshippers have been
gathered into separate congregations?’[2233] The only answer which I
can suggest is that while each of these circles was probably erected
either for sepulchral purposes or in honour of a dead ancestor, the
rites which were from time to time solemnized within them may have been
connected with the worship of the sun. There is no reason to believe
that in any megalithic circle in the British Isles solar worship was
more than incidental.
About forty years ago the late distinguished archaeologist, Professor
Nilsson, wrote an article,[2234] the main object of which was to
prove that Stonehenge was a temple of Phoenician origin, consecrated
to the worship of Baal; but the evidence upon which he relied was so
unsubstantial that no useful purpose would be served by summarizing his
arguments, which, indeed, are virtually obsolete.
Professor Flinders Petrie[2235] argues that certain parts of Stonehenge
are much later than others; and Dr. Evans, who agrees with him, remarks
that ‘this is strongly shown by the fact that each of the Stone Circles
as well as the Earth Circle has a different centre’.[2236] Dr. Evans
also points out that, in the case of the circles which are still
erected in the East, ‘the huge blocks are not all put up at one time
but in batches of an equal number of stones at intervals of time.’
Professor Gowland has shown that the sarsen stones in the outer circle
must have been erected before the trilithons, and the trilithons
before the blue-stones.[2237] ‘That the stones,’ he remarks, ‘of
the central trilithon were erected from the inside of the circle
has been conclusively demonstrated by the excavations; hence the
“blue-stones” in front cannot have been erected before them. Moreover,
the “bluestone”, No. 68, the base of which was laid bare in Excavation
V, was found to be set in the rubble which had been used to fill up
the foundation of No. 56, and further, in a lower layer than its base,
there were two ... blocks of sarsen with tooled surfaces.... If [the
outer sarsens were set up] from the inside [of the circle], their
erection must have preceded that of the trilithons and hence of the
“bluestones”. On the other hand, should the outer sarsens have been
reared from the outside, it would not be possible for the “bluestones”
to have been placed in position before them, as they would then have
seriously interfered with, if not altogether prevented the erecting
operations.’ Mr. William Cunnington, however, observes that ‘the fact
that specimens of all the varieties of rocks which constitute the inner
circle of Stonehenge have been found in the mixed substance at the base
of ... [the stump of one of the blue-stones] proves that they were all
on the spot when the inner ellipse was erected’;[2238] and Professor
Gowland, who confirms this view, concludes that ‘no long interval
of time separated the erection of the sarsen and the “bluestone”
monoliths, although the work must have occupied a considerable period’.
III. Unwarned by the _Edinburgh Review_ and Mr. Hinks, Sir Norman
Lockyer published in _Nature_[2239] a series of ‘Notes on Stonehenge’,
which might be safely ignored if his authority had not made converts,
even among archaeologists and men of science who happen to be ignorant
of certain essential facts. He now maintains that the sarsens
‘and above all the trilithons of the magnificent naos represent a
re-dedication and a re-construction of a much older temple’; and,
further, that ‘the older temple dealt, primarily but not exclusively,
with the May year’, while ‘the newer temple represented a change
of cult, and was dedicated primarily to the solstitial year’. It
is unnecessary to examine in detail the process by which he has
endeavoured to establish these conclusions; but I shall give a few
specimens of his work.
‘Acting,’ says Sir Norman, ‘on a very old tradition, the people from
Salisbury and other surrounding places go to observe the sunrise
on the longest day of the year at Stonehenge. We therefore,’ he
concludes, ‘are perfectly justified in assuming that it was a solar
temple.’[2240] Not improbably it was--from one point of view; but how
old is the tradition? The earliest extant mention of Stonehenge is in
the _Historia Anglorum_[2241] of Henry of Huntingdon, who lived in the
twelfth century, but who does not refer to the tradition. Stonehenge,
according to Sir Norman Lockyer, was rebuilt in 1680 B.C. It is
therefore impossible to prove that the tradition originated even as
early as two thousand nine hundred years after the alleged date of the
alleged second dedication of Stonehenge. Tentatively I would suggest
that it may have arisen after 1771, when the astronomical theory was
anticipated by a Dr. John Smith.[2242]
Among the ‘considerations’ to which Sir Norman would ‘direct
attention’ in support of his theory the fifth[2243] runs as
follows:--‘It is quite possible that the rebuilding of the temple
in 1680 B.C. was part of a very large general plan which could only
have been undertaken by a large, powerful and comparatively civilized
tribe or people under strict government, commanding the services of
skilled mathematicians, for Stonehenge, Old Sarum, and Grovely Castle
occupy the points of an equilateral triangle of _exactly_ six miles in
the sides, and the three sides are continuations of the entrances at
Stonehenge and Old Sarum and of a ditch running through the centre of
Grovely Castle, and the line Stonehenge--Old Sarum passes _exactly_
through Salisbury Spire, which again is exactly two miles from Sarum.
We ought to restore the old name, Solisbury.’
‘Skilled mathematicians’ on Salisbury Plain in 1680 B.C., a thousand
years before the dawn of mathematics in Greece,[2244] busily engaged
in forming, for some recondite religious purpose, gigantic equilateral
triangles! Sir Norman italicized the word ‘exactly’. Evidently then
he wished to impress upon us, in proof of the mathematicians’ skill,
not only that they made their triangle equilateral, but that each
side measured six miles,--no more and no less. Is it not a remarkable
coincidence that the unit of measurement in the British Bronze Age
was the English statute mile? I confess that I cannot grasp the
significance of the prolongation of ‘the line Stonehenge--Old Sarum’
to Salisbury Spire, or of the fact that this additional section was
‘exactly two miles long’, unless the builders of Stonehenge were
Christians as well as mathematicians and Salisbury Spire was standing
in 1680 B.C. Nor indeed, it should seem, can Sir Norman himself: at
all events in _Stonehenge and other British Monuments Astronomically
considered_--a book which is, in the main, a reproduction of his
‘Notes’--the passage which I have quoted disappears: equilateral
triangle and skilled mathematicians are left to the kindly obscurity
of _Nature_. But if ‘the line Stonehenge--Old Sarum’ and the line
Stonehenge--Grovely Castle have lost all significance, why persist
in staking a hopeless case upon the imaginary importance of the line
Stonehenge--Sidbury Hill?
Sir Norman Lockyer has not restricted his researches to Stonehenge,
sun-worship, and the solstitial year. He has discovered instances in
which stone circles have been used for the observation not of the sun
but of the stars, and in which, ‘on account of the change in a star’s
place due to precession,’ ‘the sight line has been changed in the
Egyptian manner.’[2245] Among these astral temples were ‘the three
circles of the Hurlers, near Liskeard’ and ‘the circles at Stanton
Drew’. After an interesting calculation he announces that ‘we have the
following declinations approximately:--
The Hurlers. Lat. 50° 31′ Stanton Drew. Lat. 51° 10′
Dec. N. 38½° Dec. N. 37°
” 38° ” 36½°
” 37°
Here then,’ he observes, ‘we have declinations to work on, but
declinations of what star? Vega is ruled out as its declination is
too high.’ He concludes that the star which ‘the astronomer-priests’
observed was Arcturus, and that ‘the approximate dates of the use of
the three circles at the Hurlers’ are 1600 B.C. for the southern, 1500
for the central, and 1300 for the northern circle; and at Stanton Drew
1260 B.C. for the great circle and 1075 B.C. for the south-western
circle.[2246]
Once more I am puzzled. Sir Norman remarks that all these circles are
considerably older than Stonehenge.[2247] Stonehenge, he says, was in
use as a solar temple in 1680 B.C. and a good deal earlier: none of
the older circles began to be used as an astral temple until 1600 B.C.
Why? Surely not because Arcturus, Capella, and Vega all refuse to fit
in with ‘the sight lines’ which Sir Norman has discovered except at
inconveniently late dates? Again, ‘Vega is ruled out as its declination
is too high.’ But the present declination of Vega happens to be exactly
38½°. ‘In other words,’ as Mr. Webb writes to me, ‘there exists
between the circle and one of the brightest stars in the sky a perfect
correspondence, which is nevertheless, beyond all possibility of doubt,
wholly accidental.’ Why did Sir Norman omit to mention this significant
fact?
But second thoughts or kind friends have once more come to Sir Norman’s
rescue. In his book ‘Vega is ruled out as its declination _was_ too
high’[2248] (the italics are mine). ‘He had become aware,’ remarks the
lynx-eyed Mr. Webb, ‘of the damaging fact that the present declination
of Vega actually _is_ 38½° N., in other words that, on his own
principles, we can prove that the Hurlers were set up to-day.’
THE CASSITERIDES, ICTIS, AND THE BRITISH TRADE IN TIN
I. THE CASSITERIDES
I. The identity of ‘the tin-islands’, which ancient writers called
the Cassiterides, is still a matter of dispute. Professor Haverfield,
indeed, has affirmed that ‘the recent researches of Usener [for which
read Unger], Rhys, and others, have made it almost certain that the
Cassiterides were off N.W. Spain’.[2249] Professor Rhys shall speak
for himself. ‘M. Reinach,’ he says,[2250] ‘argues, convincingly as it
seems to me, that the Cassiterides meant the Celtic islands, or, as I
may call them, the British Isles.’ And, if anything relating to this
question is certain, it is that the islands off North-Western Spain,
which are supposed to have been the tin-islands, have never produced
any tin at all.[2251]
One group of scholars insists that all the ancient writers who
mentioned the Cassiterides associated them with Spain. But what if the
ancient writers were misinformed, or misunderstood their informants?
Another group insists that for the metallurgists of ancient Europe the
sole source of tin was the British Isles; and with this pronouncement
they would apply the closure to the debate. But the British Isles were
not the sole source;[2252] and the debaters persist in wrangling. If
the only question were, From what parts of Europe did the Greeks and
Romans derive tin, it could be answered in a sentence:--from Galicia
in Spain, Cornwall, and, possibly, the Scilly Islands.[2253] But this
is not the only question. What we want to know is, Were the ancient
writers misled into believing that the Cassiterides were islands? If
they were not misled, were they all thinking of the same islands?
Or did they attempt to indicate the position of the Cassiterides by
simply guessing? If they were misled, was the district to which their
informants alluded Galicia or Cornwall, or did they refer to both? Did
the ancient writers fancy that islands used as depots for tin were the
places in which the mines were situated? Did those who professed to
inform them intentionally mislead them?
The theories which have recently held or still hold the field
are, first, that the Cassiterides were a group of islets off the
north-western coast of Spain; secondly, that they were headlands of
the same coast; thirdly, that they were the Scilly Islands; fourthly,
that they were Cornwall, which is supposed by some writers to have been
regarded either as an island or as a group of islands, separated by
estuaries, which were erroneously believed to be channels; and, lastly,
that they were the British Isles.[2254]
II. Diodorus Siculus,[2255] after stating that tin was produced in
Britain and in many parts of Iberia, goes on to say that there are
many tin mines in the islands called Cassiterides, which are situated
in the ocean, off the coast of Iberia and above the country of the
Lusitani.[2256] Strabo mentions the Cassiterides four times. In the
first passage[2257] he says that the extremity of the Pyrenees is
opposite the western parts of Britain, and that the Cassiterides, which
are situated in the same latitude as Britain, are in the open sea,
opposite to and north of the Artabri. In the second[2258] he mentions
both the Cassiterides and the British Isles, clearly distinguishing the
two groups. In the third[2259] he says that, according to Posidonius,
tin was produced in the country beyond [that is to say, north of] the
Lusitani, and also in the Cassiterides; that tin was conveyed from the
British Isles to Massilia, and that, according to the same authority,
tin, silver, and gold were produced in the country of the Artabri,
the most remote tribe of Lusitania, who face the north-west. In the
fourth[2260] he says that the Cassiterides are ten in number and lie
close together in the open sea, north of the harbour of the Artabri;
that one of them is uninhabited; and that the inhabitants of the rest
wear black robes reaching down to their feet, and walk about with
staves in their hands, ‘like the Furies in tragedy.’ They are, he says,
nomadic, and live upon flesh meat; and they barter tin and hides with
merchants for pottery, salt, and articles of bronze. Formerly, he adds,
the Phoenicians monopolized the trade from Gades, or Cadiz, with the
islanders; and they kept the route a close secret, which, however, the
Romans, after numerous attempts, succeeded in discovering. Finally,
Publius Crassus sailed across (διαβάς) to the islands, ascertained that
the tin lay near the surface, and indicated the route for the benefit
of traders, ‘although the passage was longer than that [from the
continent] to Britain.’ In another passage[2261] Strabo says that the
Artabri dwell in the neighbourhood of the north-western promontory of
Iberia, which he identifies with the Nerian promontory.[2262] Pomponius
Mela,[2263] himself a Spaniard, immediately after speaking of Baetica
and Lusitania, and immediately before mentioning the island of Sena,
which was off the coast of Brittany, states that the Cassiterides
are situated _in Celticis_. Pliny[2264] says that the Cassiterides,
so called from the abundance of tin which they produce, are situated
over against Celtiberia, and that opposite the promontory of the
Arrotrebae are ‘the six islands of the Gods’, which some call ‘the
Fortunate Isles’. In another passage[2265] he says that tin was first
fetched from ‘the island Cassiteris’ (or from ‘the tin island’) by
Midacritus, whom M. d’Arbois de Jubainville,[2266] wrongly, according
to M. Salomon Reinach,[2267] identifies with ‘Melkarth, who personified
the Phoenician race’. In a third passage[2268] Pliny says that tin has
been fabulously reported to have been obtained from islands in the
Atlantic. ‘Now,’ he continues, ‘it is certainly known to be produced in
Lusitania and Galicia.’ By ‘islands in the Atlantic’ Pliny certainly
did not, as Professor Ridgeway supposes,[2269] consciously mean the
British Isles; for in his geographical system the northern limit of the
Atlantic was marked by the north-western promontory of Spain.[2270]
Ptolemy[2271] says that the Cassiterides are ten in number, and are
situated in the western Ocean. Finally, Dionysius Periegetes[2272] says
that ‘the western isles’, which produce tin, and are situated below the
Sacred Promontory, or Cape St. Vincent, are inhabited by Iberians.
From a comparison of these statements it is clear, first, that the
ancient geographers who mentioned the Cassiterides regarded them as
distinct from the British Isles; secondly, that they believed them
to be situated somewhere off the coast of Spain (although, as we
shall presently see, the words of Strabo are not inconsistent with
the theory that he identified them with the Scilly Islands, or even,
unconsciously, with the British Isles); thirdly, that of those who
attempted to define their position one associated them with the
south-western, the others with the north-western coast; fourthly,
that one writer mentioned _an_ island, Cassiteris, from which tin was
fetched; and, lastly, that this same writer, having affirmed that the
tin islands were opposite Celtiberia, nevertheless denied that any
islands in the Ocean which extended as far north as the north-western
promontory of Spain produced tin.
III. Assume, for the sake of argument, that the Cassiterides were off
the north-western coast of Spain. What, then, are the islands with
which they are to be identified?
1. Unger[2273] remarks that it may be inferred from Ptolemy’s statement
that they were south of the Nerian promontory and off the western
coast of Galicia. Strabo, it is true, places them northward of the
northern coast: but, says Unger,[2274] Strabo is wrong; for on the
northern coast there are no islands distant more than one German mile
[or between four and five English miles] from the shore, whereas Strabo
himself says that the Cassiterides were further from the continent
than Britain. Dionysius Periegetes was, by common consent, mistaken.
Let us see then what islands we can find off North-Western Spain.
The coast between Cape Ortegal and the mouth of the Douro is broken
by several inlets or fiords, which are called Rias. East of Cape
Finisterre, in the Ria de Corcubion, are three very small islands;
and off the south-eastern entrance of this Ria, by Cape Minarzo, are
six tiny islets. About 20 miles south-east of Cape Finisterre is the
Ria of Muros and Noya: on the west of Mount Louro, which dominates the
entrance of this fiord on its northern side, are the four small islands
of Bruyos; and there are others within the fiord itself and south
of it. Unger[2275] remarks that the small size of all these islands
harmonizes with the word νησῖδες, or ‘islets’, which Diodorus applies
to the Cassiterides; and that the smallest of them may have been left
out of account when the number was given as ten. Off Pontevedra Bay,
which is north of Vigo Bay, are the islands of Ons and Orcela.
Strabo says that the harbour of the Artabri, north of which he places
the Cassiterides, was formed by a gulf on which were situated numerous
cities.[2276] Mela[2277] describes a gulf in the country of the Artabri
as having a narrow entrance and a wide circuit, and adds that four
streams flowed into it; and Ptolemy,[2278] having first mentioned a
harbour of the Artabri, immediately south of the Nerian promontory,
speaks, in the next section but one, of ‘the Great Harbour’, on the
shore of which he places Brigantium. The gulf mentioned by Mela
and Ptolemy’s ‘Great Harbour’ correspond with the Ria of Betanzos
and Ferrol, which is between Cape Finisterre and Cape Ortegal; but
there are no islands north of this harbour. The identification of
the harbour of the Artabri which Ptolemy places immediately south of
the Nerian promontory depends of course upon the identification of
the promontory itself. The latter is generally identified with Cape
Finisterre; and if this view is correct, the harbour must have been
the Ria de Corcubion. Unger, however, identifies the Nerian promontory
with the bluff of land, between Cape Finisterre and Corunna, from
which project the headlands of Punta del Roncudo, Punta de Nariga,
and Cape de S. Adrian;[2279] and if he is right, Ptolemy’s harbour
was the Ria of Corme and Lagos. But, as Unger points out, there are
no islands off this harbour or north of it.[2280] It is clear, then,
that if the Cassiterides really lay in Spanish waters and on the
north of a harbour of the Artabri, that harbour must be looked for
further south. Now Unger[2281] observes that Posidonius, as quoted by
Strabo,[2282] makes the territory of the Artabri extend southward as
far as the river Douro; for he says that their territory produced gold;
and, says Unger, in the country of the Artabri, in the narrower sense,
there are no auriferous streams. Accordingly, Unger identifies the
harbour for which he has been searching with the Puerto de Bayona,--the
southernmost inlet north of the Douro; and from this harbour he
maintains that Crassus sailed to the Cassiterides, which he identifies
with the islands of Bruyos. He points out that the distance from the
northern entrance of the harbour, opposite the island of Bayona, to the
islands of Bruyos is eight German miles. This distance exceeds that of
the shortest passage between Britain and the continent; and accordingly
Unger insists that it harmonizes with the statement of Strabo. But the
point which he most strenuously labours is that ‘in this case only is
explicable the circumstance, strikingly calculated to cause such a
mistake as Strabo made, that Crassus sailed northward from a harbour on
the west coast [of Galicia], and yet sailed in the open sea’.[2283]
Mr. Cecil Torr,[2284] on the other hand, insists that ‘unless it can
be shown that there were tin mines on the islands [near Vigo], the
story [of the voyage of Crassus] cannot be used to show that Crassus
visited those islands’. Strabo, he adds, states precisely that the
Cassiterides ‘lay to the north of Ἀρτάβρων λιμήν’, which ‘is obviously
the gulf that now holds Ferrol and Corunna’. Here, as we have seen,
there are, _in Spanish waters_, no islands; and Mr. Torr argues that
‘Strabo is so very accurate in his description of this part of Spain
that his account of the Cassiterides cannot be explained away as an
inaccurate description of the islands at Vigo.... It must be a bit
of downright fiction repeated in good faith.’[2285] To this latter
argument it might be replied, first, that just as Strabo was mistaken
in supposing that the direction of the Pyrenees was from north to
south, so he may have been mistaken in supposing that the Cassiterides
were on the north of Spain; and, secondly, that the other writers
whose testimony has been quoted place them off the west coast. No
other reply, indeed, could be made by those who hold, like Unger, that
the Cassiterides were in Spanish waters. But, for reasons which shall
presently be given, I agree with Mr. Torr that Ἀρτάβρων λιμήν must
have been ‘the gulf that now holds Ferrol and Corunna’, and also that
Strabo’s ‘account of the Cassiterides cannot be explained away as an
inaccurate description of the islands at [or rather near] Vigo’. Only
I believe that he is wrong in regarding that account as ‘fiction’.
Strabo’s Cassiterides _were not in Spanish waters at all: they were,
as he says, in the open sea, and far to the north of Corunna_. Mr.
Torr’s other objection rests upon the fact that tin was never produced
in any island off the coast of Spain, except, possibly, in Ons,[2286]
which, for reasons obvious to any one who consults the map of Spain,
Unger does not include among the Cassiterides. The only possible
answer to this objection has been already suggested in this article:
it is that the islands may have served as depots to which the tin
was conveyed from the mainland opposite, and that they may have been
confounded with the districts in which the tin was actually produced.
This suggestion, however, leaves unexplained the definite statement of
Strabo, that Crassus sailed across to the islands and found that the
islanders worked the tin easily because it lay near the surface. There
remain three other objections, which, unless Strabo’s authority is to
be absolutely discarded, appear insuperable. First, Strabo, I repeat,
distinctly states that the islands were ‘in the open sea’ (πελαγιαι);
and of the islands which Unger identifies with the Cassiterides not one
is more than four statute miles from the mainland, while the nearest
is not more than two. Secondly, as they are all within sight of land,
their situation could never have been kept secret. Lastly, since it
was unnecessary for those who desired to reach them to sail from the
harbour of Vigo, and easy to sail across from the neighbouring Ria
of Muros and Noya, it is difficult to understand why Strabo should
have said that the distance which separated them from the mainland
was greater than the distance from Gaul to Britain. It is true that
the islanders, according to Strabo, dressed in black, and that,
according to the same authority,[2287] the inhabitants of Lusitania did
likewise; but any one who regards this as an argument for identifying
the Cassiterides with the islands near Vigo must make up his mind to
reject nearly all the details which are given by Strabo, and to pin his
faith to the undoubted fact that the Cassiterides are placed by most
of the ancient authorities off the coast of Spain. M. Salomon Reinach,
however, with whom I agree, argues that ‘the fact that numerous
[ancient] writers place the Cassiterides in geographical connexion
with Spain only proves--what we knew before--that Phoenician Spain had
commercial relations with those islands’.[2288]
2. M. Hans Hildebrand[2289] thinks that the Cassiterides were headlands
of the Galician coast. He argues that if they are to be located ‘in
England’, the name Cassiterides must be applied to headlands in
Cornwall; accordingly, he says, ‘je demande la même concession pour
ma théorie espagnole, savoir que ce nom désigne des caps.’[2290]
But Cornwall is part of an island which is itself one of a group
of islands: Spain is not an island at all. M. Hildebrand’s theory
can by no ingenuity be defended except on the assumption that the
ancient writers were misled by the fact that in the language of the
Phoenicians, from whom the earliest notions about the Cassiterides
may be supposed to have been derived, there was no word which
specially denoted islands; and if it is accepted, not only must all
the statements of those writers which relate to the situation of the
islands, their number, their inhabitants, the mode in which the tin
was extracted, and the voyage of Crassus, be rejected as absolutely
fictitious, but it is utterly impossible to conceive how they should
have originated.[2291]
3. The old-fashioned view, which identified the Cassiterides with
the Scilly Islands, has even of late years had adherents of high
reputation, such as Dr. von Gutschmid,[2292] Emil Hübner,[2293] and
Mommsen.[2294] Although the bulk of the tin which supplied the wants
of ancient Europe came from Cornwall and Spain, it is nevertheless not
improbable that some came from the Scilly Islands.[2295] If so, the
real Cassiterides were the Scilly Islands and ‘the adjacent island’ of
Great Britain. But of the ancient writers there were only two of whom
it can be maintained that when they referred to the Cassiterides they
were thinking either of the Scilly Islands or of Cornwall,--Festus
Avienus and Strabo.
Festus Avienus was a writer of the fourth century, whose _Ora maritima_
was based either upon a Greek version of the Carthaginian account of
the voyage of Himilco,[2296] or, as seems more probable, upon a Greek
poem, which had itself been compiled from two distinct Greek narratives
of different dates, the latter being assignable to the period between
240 and 150 B.C.[2297] After describing the rocky peninsula,
Oestrymnis, he says that in the gulf formed by it lie the islands
called Oestrymnides, which are widely scattered and rich in tin.[2298]
He does not mention the Cassiterides at all. The Oestrymnides, however,
are generally, and, if Festus was right in saying that they produced
tin, necessarily identified with the Cassiterides: the peninsula is
rightly identified with Brittany,[2299] or, more strictly speaking,
with the promontory formed by Finistère; and therefore the gulf is
either the Bay of Biscay, or the gulf in which lie the Channel Islands.
After describing the Oestrymnides, Festus goes on to say that ‘from
here it is two days’ sail to the Sacred Island’, that is to say,
Ireland (_hinc duobus in sacram sic insulam Dixere prisci solibus
cursus rati est_[2300]); and then, remarking that ‘the island of the
Albiones’, or Britain, is near, he says that the Tartesii used to
resort for trade to the Oestrymnides, and that the Carthaginians also
used to sail ‘these seas’.[2301]
The question of the identity of the gulf is discussed by Friedrich Marx
in an article on the _Ora maritima_,[2302] of which a summary has been
given by Mr. W. H. Stevenson.[2303] Marx, says Mr. Stevenson, ‘explains
the _sub vertice_ [of the promontory or peninsula, Oestrymnis] of
Avienus[2304] as referring to the maps of antiquity, and as having
the sense of “northwards of”, so that the Tin Islands are conceived
of as north of the promontory of Finistère.... The Tin Islands must
therefore be the mainland of Britain and the Isle of Wight (which Marx
considers to be included among the _laxe iacentes insulae_ of Avienus),
and cannot be explained as the Scilly Islands, which have nothing
beyond their insular nature to favour the identification.’ But why
‘therefore’? What has the Isle of Wight beyond _its_ ‘insular nature’
to ‘favour the identification’? If Marx is right in his interpretation
of _sub vertice_, the gulf (_sinus_) lay north of ‘the promontory of
Finistère’; and since it can hardly be maintained that this gulf
was the English Channel, it must have been the gulf in which lie the
Channel Islands. If it was the English Channel, Marx can hardly venture
to argue that ‘the mainland of Britain’ is _in_ the Channel. If any
conclusion can be drawn from the words of Festus, it must be either
that the _laxe iacentes insulae_ were the Channel Islands and the
_sinus_ the gulf in which they are situated, or that the _sinus_ was
the Bay of Biscay and the _insulae_ Ushant and the adjacent islets.
But I agree with Mr. Stevenson that ‘the Tin Islands [of Avienus] ...
cannot be explained as the Scilly Islands’, unless the indications
which Avienus gives of their situation are utterly misleading.
Strabo, as we have seen, says that the Cassiterides were in the
open sea northward from the harbour of the Artabri; and Mr. H. F.
Tozer[2305] argues that, according to Strabo’s ‘idea of the relative
position of these countries [Spain and Britain] this would place them
a great distance to the west of the Scilly Islands’. This objection,
however, assumes that Strabo was aware that the Scilly Islands were
comparatively close to the Land’s End. Strabo imagined that the
direction of the Pyrenees was from north to south; that the coast of
Gaul extended in a straight line from the northern extremity of the
Pyrenees to the mouth of the Rhine; and that the southern coast of
Britain extended from a point nearly opposite and close to the northern
extremity of the Pyrenees, parallel with the coast of Gaul.[2306] He
expressly states that the Cassiterides were in the same latitude as
Britain; and therefore, if he had intended to identify the Cassiterides
with the Scilly Islands, it would have been quite natural for him
to say that they lay north of the harbour of the Artabri.[2307]
Müllenhoff[2308] indeed dismisses the claims of the Scilly Islands with
contempt; but all that he has to say against them is that they never
produced tin, and that they are small. The former objection is, as we
have seen, unfounded; the latter is irrelevant, for small islands may
contain mines, and the islands off the coast of Spain are smaller still.
But I am not concerned to argue that the sailors from whom the ancient
writers, directly or indirectly, derived their information intended to
convey that the Cassiterides were the Scilly Islands and the Scilly
Islands alone; for, although the Scilly Islands did produce some tin,
by far the greater part of the British supply of that metal doubtless
came from Cornwall. Professor von Gutschmid indeed explains that ‘the
tin was supposed [by the ancient writers] to be produced where it was
exchanged,--a very common case’;[2309] and although the place where the
Cornish tin was exchanged by the merchants who used the overland route
was Ictis, or St. Michael’s Mount,[2310] the Phoenicians may possibly
have found it convenient to occupy one of the Scilly Islands.[2311] But
it seems to me safer to conclude that the Scilly Islands may have been
originally included with Britain under the designation, _Cassiterides_.
The late distinguished geographer, H. Kiepert, maintained that although
the name, _Cassiterides_, had been originally used by the Greeks to
denote the tin-producing districts of Britain, it was erroneously
applied by Strabo to the Scilly Islands. ‘Only to this group’, he
insists, ‘can Strabo’s account of the discovery of the ten small
_Cassiterides_-islands on the north of Hispania by ... Publius Crassus
refer, as there are no other islands in this part of the ocean.’[2312]
4. George Smith, for whom the Cassiterides represented simply the
Cornish peninsula,[2313] observed, anticipating a similar argument
of Mr. Cecil Torr,[2314] that ‘the Hebrew, Phoenician, and cognate
languages had no terms which distinctly specified islands, peninsulas,
&c.; one word being used to signify islands, sea-coasts, and even
remote countries. In these languages the whole coast of Cornwall
and Devonshire might be termed island or islands.’ It may be
objected that the very same argument might be used to show that the
name, _Cassiterides_, really denoted the headlands on the coast of
Galicia.[2315] But it is easier to conceive how the misconception
should have arisen in the case of Cornwall, part of a remote island
in the northern ocean and close to the Scilly Islands, than in the
case of Galicia; and, moreover, the Galician theory leaves the story
of Crassus’s voyage unexplained. But the problem of the Cassiterides
cannot be satisfactorily solved by the simple statement that they were
Cornwall.
5. Müllenhoff,[2316] M. Salomon Reinach, and various other writers
identify the Cassiterides with the British Isles. According to M.
Reinach,[2317] ‘the whole question resolves itself into this:--what
islands in western Europe produce tin? The British Isles alone fulfil
this condition; therefore we must recognize in them the archipelago of
the Cassiterides.’ ‘If,’ he adds, ‘Strabo does not identify them with
the British Isles, though he mentions both the one group and the other,
this is because in the different chapters [of his work] he follows
different authorities, some of whom allude to the Cassiterides from
hearsay evidence collected in Spain, while the others describe the
British Isles from experience derived on the spot.’ Then, remarking
that the alleged derivation of κασσίτερος (the Greek word meaning
‘tin’) from a Sumerian word and from an Assyrian word have been proved
to be fanciful, he argues that κασσίτερος did not, as most ancient and
modern writers have supposed, give its name to the Cassiterides, but
on the contrary derived its name from theirs. Similarly, he points
out, at least four names of metals have been derived from the names
of places which produced them, namely, copper from Cyprus; silver (in
Gothic _silubr_) from the town of Salybe in Pontus;[2318] bronze from
Brundisium; and _Kalay_, the Turkish word for tin, from Kalah in the
peninsula of Malacca. M. Reinach goes on to argue that as the Greeks
derived their knowledge of the Cassiterides from the Phoenicians, the
termination ιδες must have been added by them. There remains therefore
_cassiteros_, of which the first part is found in numerous Celtic
words, for example, _Cassi_, _Cassi_-vellaunus, Velio-_casses_, &c.
M. Reinach gives reasons, which appear to me unsatisfactory, for the
conjecture that _Cassiterides_ means the same as _insulae extimae_
(‘the remotest isles’); and he holds that the name was given to the
British Isles by the Celts of Western Gaul.[2319]
Whatever M. Reinach’s argument may be worth, he and Müllenhoff are
unquestionably right in one sense: the British Isles, taken as a
whole, were the only islands from which the ancients derived tin. But
this truism did not require demonstration. The question is, whether
the identification of the Cassiterides with the British Isles can be
reconciled with what was written about them by the ancient geographers.
IV. The story which Strabo tells about Publius Crassus presents
some difficulty. As we have seen, he says that after the Romans had
discovered the route to the Cassiterides in spite of the efforts which
the Phoenicians made to conceal it, Crassus sailed across to the
islands, ascertained that the tin lay near the surface, and indicated
the new route for the benefit of traders. The first question is,
who was Crassus? Unger[2320] maintains that he was the consul of 95
B.C. who conquered the Lusitanians. If so, he must have sailed from
the mainland to the islands near Vigo which Unger identifies with
the Cassiterides. But, as I have already pointed out, these islands
are quite close to the coast: their distance from the mainland is
not greater, but many times less than the distance of Britain from
the Continent; their whereabouts could never have been kept secret;
and they have never produced tin. Therefore, if Publius Crassus was
the consul of 95 B.C., Strabo’s story is utterly untrustworthy.
Mommsen[2321] holds that Crassus was Caesar’s lieutenant of that name,
and that he sailed from Gaul to the Scilly Islands before Caesar’s
first invasion of Britain.[2322] How then are we to account for the
ignorance of Caesar, who tells us that tin was produced ‘in the
midlands’ (_in mediterraneis regionibus_[2323]) of Britain? Professor
Ridgeway, who believes that the Cassiterides were the islands near
Vigo, also identifies Crassus with Caesar’s lieutenant, who, as he
reminds us, invaded Aquitania--the south-western division of Gaul--in
56 B.C. ‘He is all the more likely,’ writes Professor Ridgeway,[2324]
‘to have passed into Northern Spain, inasmuch as the people of that
region had given great assistance to the Aquitani ... (_B. G._, iii,
23). Without doubt he was fully aware of the mineral wealth of that
country, as is shown by Caesar’s remark (iii, 21) on their skill in
defending cities, in consequence of their having numerous copper mines
and other works in that region. As is plain from Strabo’s words, the
Romans already knew how to reach the tin islands by sea, coasting
round from the Mediterranean and up from Gades on the old Phoenician
track. Crassus, then, by opening up a far shorter route, that of a
short sea voyage from the Cassiterides to the coast of Gaul (possibly
to the Garonne), at once developed this trade. The ore lay near
the surface. The distance by sea was greater than that across the
English Channel, but the readiness with which the tin was obtained,
combined with the shorter land transit, more than compensated this.
Strabo is evidently contrasting the rival tin-producing regions when
he introduces the allusion to Britain.... From this achievement of
Crassus and its results we can now understand in its proper light
the famous expression of Pytheas, that “the northern parts of Iberia
are more accessible towards Keltiké than for those who sail by the
ocean”.... He found, as Publius Crassus found three centuries later,
that the mineral regions and islands of North-Western Spain were far
more accessible for the Massaliotes by a land journey across Gaul
and a short sea voyage than by the long and perilous route round by
Gibraltar.’ But Professor Ridgeway mistranslates ‘the famous expression
of Pytheas’,--τὰ προσαρκτικὰ μέρη τῆς Ἰβηρίας εὐπαροδώτερα εἶναι
[τοῖς] πρὸς τὴν Κελτικὴν ἢ κατὰ τὸν ὠκεανὸν πλέουσι.[2325] He fails
to see that the word πλέουσι refers to πρὸς τὴν Κελτικήν as well as
to κατὰ τὸν ὠκεανόν. The passage simply means that it is easier to
sail along the northern coast of Iberia (Spain) from west to east in
the direction of Keltiké (Gaul) than to sail along the southern coast
from east to west in the direction of the Atlantic.[2326] This, as
Müllenhoff[2327] observes, is perfectly true, owing to the set of the
current and the prevalence of westerly winds. Moreover, Professor
Ridgeway does not seem to be aware that there are no ‘tin islands’ off
the coast of Spain: he does not explain how Crassus could have found
time in 56 B.C. to make the ‘short sea voyage’ of five hundred miles or
more from the mouth of the Garonne to the neighbourhood of Vigo, when
he was campaigning in Aquitania until the approach of winter;[2328]
nor, finally, does he explain how the Massaliotes would have gained by
conveying tin five hundred miles from the neighbourhood of Vigo to the
mouth of the Garonne, and then considerably more than three hundred
miles across Gaul to Massilia, instead of overland across Spain. Mr.
Tozer[2329] disposes of the difficulty by simply discrediting Strabo’s
account. ‘There is no reason,’ he says, ‘to doubt that Crassus made
such an expedition; but whatever the place was to which he went, his
account is quite untrustworthy, because he represents the Cassiterides
as producing tin, whereas that metal is not found in any of the groups
of islands which lie off the coasts of Gaul, or Britain, or Spain. The
explicit character of his statements, however, seems to have deceived
his contemporaries, and Strabo among them.’ But what theory can Mr.
Tozer frame to account for the gratuitous mendacity which he imputes
to Crassus, who, by the way, was not Strabo’s contemporary?[2330]
Strabo’s story is, in any case, obviously inaccurate:[2331] but I agree
with Mr. Tozer that it contains a kernel of truth; and I can only
suppose that Crassus, when he was in Brittany in 57-56 B.C.,[2332] was
directed by Caesar to visit and report upon the tin-producing districts
of the British Isles.[2333] And if I am asked how I account for the
mistake which Caesar made when he said that tin was produced in the
interior of Britain, I offer the following suggestion. Crassus may have
contented himself with landing on the coast, perhaps at or near St.
Michael’s Mount, where the tin was delivered to the merchants:[2334]
if so, he was doubtless informed that the tin was actually won in the
interior, as, in literal truth, it of course was;[2335] and Caesar may
have hastily concluded from his report that the tin mines were far from
the coast. As to the details with which Strabo embellished his story,
it would be idle to conjecture from what source they were obtained. We
may be sure that he did not invent them; but he may have confused items
of information furnished by different authorities.[2336]
V. The conclusion of the matter is this. The statements of Strabo are
most satisfactorily explained on the hypothesis that those from whom
he, directly or indirectly, derived his information referred to the
Scilly Isles and probably also the Cornish peninsula, or (which is
less probable) to islands off the coast of Brittany, at which trading
vessels may have touched on the voyage. All the other ancient writers,
except perhaps Polybius, undoubtedly associated the Cassiterides with
Spain. In so doing they were mistaken; for no islands in Spanish
waters, except Ons, which is out of the question, have ever produced
tin. The real Cassiterides--the ‘tin islands’ which were known to
the mariners from whom the ancient writers ultimately derived their
notions--were, speaking generally, the British Isles, and particularly,
the tin-producing districts of Cornwall and perhaps also the Scilly
Islands. It is possible that Polybius[2337] may have held this view;
for he does not mention the Cassiterides, and names the British Isles
as the source of tin.
How the ancients came to entertain such vague notions about the
Cassiterides, is not difficult to conceive. Evidently, when they
first heard of them, all that they could learn was that they were
somewhere in the western ocean. Knowing that Gades was the centre of
the tin trade, they would naturally assume that they were in Spanish
waters[2338]; and even when they learned that tin came from Britain
and from Galicia, they would cling to the idea that it came also from
islands, the geographical position of which the crafty Phoenicians
had striven to keep secret. Mr. Tozer[2339] may possibly be right in
suggesting that ‘when the nations about the Mediterranean obtained more
accurate information concerning the north-western coasts of Europe,
it was natural that they should affix the name to one or other of the
groups of islands with which they found the trade to be associated’.
‘Thus,’ he continues, ‘by some writers it may have been attached to
the Oestrymnides, by others to the islands of the Galician coast, and
even the Scillies may in some cases have been intended.’ But is it not
likely that the writers in question, when they attempted to locate the
Cassiterides, were not identifying them with any group of islands the
existence of which was certainly known to them, and the whereabouts of
which they knew? M. Salomon Reinach puts the matter well, though he
fails to perceive that Strabo was not referring to islands in Spanish
waters. ‘There were two traditions,’ he says, ‘relating to the tin
islands,--one Phoenician, of which the starting-point was Southern
Spain; the other Greek, which originated at Marseilles. With that
respect for the written word which characterized them, the ancients
accepted the two traditions side by side.... Even after the expedition
of Crassus ... Pliny dared not reject the geographical legend which
connected the islands with Spain; and a century later Ptolemy persisted
in the same error.’[2340]
Mr. W. H. Stevenson explains that Müllenhoff, of whose conclusions
respecting the Cassiterides he gives a lucid summary, holds that
they ‘were marked by guess-work on the early Greek maps ... off the
north-west coast of Spain ... and that they there remained on the maps
(much like the mythical island of Brazil in fifteenth-century maps),
although they had been known since the time of Pytheas, under the
names of Britannia, Albion, Ierne, &c., without their identity being
suspected. In a precisely similar manner the Electridae, which had been
put into the maps by guess-work, were retained long after it was known
that amber came from the shores of the Baltic, and not from islands in
the North Sea.’[2341]
Thus the important point to bear in mind is that the name
_Cassiterides_, which must, as Kiepert says, have been originally
applied to the British Isles, was afterwards misapplied to imaginary
islands, and applied by Strabo, not perhaps without some foundation in
fact, to the Scilly group.
II. ICTIS AND THE BRITISH TRADE IN TIN
Let us now consider the British trade in tin.
I. Diodorus Siculus[2342] states, on the authority of Timaeus, who
derived his information on this matter from Pytheas,[2343] that tin was
conveyed by the people of Belerium (the Land’s End) in wagons at low
tide from the British mainland to an island called Ictis; purchased
there by merchants from the natives; carried to Gaul; and transported
on pack-horses to the mouth of the Rhône,[2344] the overland journey
lasting thirty days. In another chapter[2345] he says, following
Posidonius, that tin was carried from Britain to Gaul, and then
conveyed on horseback to Massilia and to Narbo. Pliny[2346] states,
quoting Timaeus as his authority, that there was an island called
Mictis, six days’ sail from Britain, which produced tin, and to which
the Britons sailed in coracles. Strabo tells us that Corbilo in the
estuary of the Loire[2347] ‘was formerly an emporium’; and, as we learn
from Polybius, who couples it with Narbo and Massilia, that in the time
of Scipio Aemilianus it was one of the principal towns of Gaul,[2348]
it is probable that it was at one period the Gallic port to which
British tin, destined for the Mediterranean markets, was conveyed.[2349]
II. Now the first thing to do is to identify Ictis or Mictis; for it
is admitted that they were the same.[2350] According to Elton[2351]
and Professor Rhys,[2352] Ictis was the Isle of Thanet. ‘The important
point’, says Elton, ‘remains that the tin ... was stored at some
place, which was supposed to have lain at six days’ voyage from
the mineral district; and it seems reasonable to identify it with
the Isle of Thanet, at which the marts were established from which
the merchants made the shortest passage to Gaul.’ But there is no
evidence that ‘the marts were established’ in the Isle of Thanet, or
that ‘the merchants made the shortest passage to Gaul’; nor is there
one word in Pliny (whose statement shall be considered presently) to
justify Elton in stating as a ‘fact’ that the tin was ‘stored at some
place which was supposed to have lain at six days’ voyage from the
mineral district’.[2353] The view that Ictis was the Isle of Thanet
is absolutely untenable. ‘If,’ says Professor Ridgeway,[2354] ‘it was
Thanet, it follows that the tin was brought all the way from Devon,
which was impossible, as the great forest of Anderida stretched right
from Hampshire into Kent.’ Formerly the professor held that ‘the only
difficulty in identifying Ictis with the Isle of Wight is the statement
of Diodorus ... that the tin was conveyed across to the island at low
water’; for ‘geologists maintain that Wight could not have been joined
to the mainland in historic times’. Geologists, however, as we shall
presently see, have changed their minds; and accordingly Professor
Ridgeway has changed his. I shall therefore only take account of those
parts of his argument which are not obsolete. ‘Mr. Elton,’ he observes,
‘seems to forget that if the Britons brought the tin a six days’ voyage
from Cornwall to Thanet, there would be no need to bring it overland
by waggons across the estuary at low water.... Diodorus and Timaeus
are substantially agreed that there was an island where the tin came
to market, and that its name was Ictis or Mictis.... The tin could
not be carried overland on account of the forests, and they certainly
would not convey it all round the south and south-east coasts to the
Straits, and then round the coast of Gaul to Corbilo, if it was at all
possible to get across at a nearer point. The passage from the Isle of
Wight to the Channel Islands, and thence to Armorica and Corbilo, would
best attain this object.’ Professor Ridgeway then invokes numismatic
evidence. He states that Gallic coins of a peculiar type have been
found in the southern and western parts of England, in the Channel
Islands, and in the territories of the Turones, Pictones, Redones,
Namnetes, all the tribes of the Armorican peninsula, and the Volcae
Tectosages. ‘Follow the peoples enumerated above on the map,’ he says,
‘and we shall find them all lying in the basins of the Garonne and
Loire.... This evidence, then, points unmistakably to a route direct
from Armorica to the southern coast of Britain, or, in other words,
supports strongly the doctrine that the Isle of Wight was the island
called Ictis.’[2355]
Professor Ridgeway’s arguments, as directed against the theory of Elton
and Professor Rhys, are conclusive. Ictis was certainly not Thanet.
But the argument which he adduces from numismatic evidence in favour
of its identification with the Isle of Wight rests upon the assumption
that the coins in question could not have found their way to the
Channel Islands except in the course of the tin trade. The Dumnonii,
in whose country the tin was produced, had no coinage of their own,
and apparently made little use of money:[2356] the coins to which
Professor Ridgeway alludes were far later than the time of Pytheas;
and the professor himself affirms that in the time of Posidonius, whom
he wrongly regards as Diodorus’s authority for the description of
Ictis, the route from Ictis to Corbilo had been abandoned. Nor is it
easy to understand why the traders who conveyed tin from Cornwall to
Marseilles should have needlessly added between 300 and 400 miles to
the length and a corresponding amount to the expense of the journey.
Professor Ridgeway has himself made use of this very argument to prove
that Ictis was not the Isle of Thanet: can he not see that it tells
with equal force against his own theory, that Ictis was the Isle of
Wight?[2357]
Mr. Alfred Tylor[2358] insists that ‘St. Michael’s Mount’, which was
formerly identified with Ictis, ‘is a steep rock, and does not form a
harbour at all.’ What if it is a steep rock? Does not Thucydides[2359]
tell us that the Phoenicians ‘fortified headlands on the sea-coast [of
Sicily], and settled in the small islands adjacent, for the sake of
trading with the Sicels’?[2360] Nobody who knows St. Michael’s Mount
will contend that there would have been the slightest difficulty in
conveying tin on to the small plain on its landward side,[2361] or in
loading with tin vessels moored beneath it. Diodorus Siculus does not
mention any harbour in connexion with Ictis; but, as a writer who knew
every inch of the Cornish coast long ago pointed out, St. Michael’s
Mount afforded perfect shelter for shipping.[2362] ‘It still,’ says
Sir Charles Lyell,[2363] ‘affords a good port, daily frequented by
vessels, _where cargoes of tin are sometimes taken on board, after
having been transported, as in the olden time, at low tide across
the isthmus_.[2364] Colliers of 500 tons’ burden can now enter the
harbour, which is on the landward or sheltered side of the Mount.’
But the Isle of Wight has recently found a new champion,--the eminent
geologist, Mr. Clement Reid.[2365] He affirms that at the time when
tin was shipped at Ictis, ‘St. Michael’s Mount must have been an
isolated rock rising out of a swampy wood.’ By an interesting process
of reasoning, based upon evidence which he collected while revising
‘the geological map of the northern part of the Isle of Wight’, and
afterwards while mapping ‘the whole of the adjacent parts of the
mainland’, he arrives at the conclusion that about 100 B.C. a limestone
causeway, over which wagons could pass at low tide, extended from
the western side of the river Yar to the coast of Hampshire opposite
Pennington Marshes. He explains that the tin was transported by this
causeway to the Isle of Wight instead of being shipped in one of the
Hampshire harbours because the latter ‘are all more or less exposed
to the prevalent south-west wind, and are sheltered by no high land’,
and, moreover, ‘the harbours outside the Solent were probably always
rendered dangerous by bars of sand and shingle.’ Finally, he contends
that the identification of Ictis with the Isle of Wight shows that
‘the ancient writers can be literally depended on, and that their
descriptions are thoroughly in keeping with each other’. Pliny was
right in saying that Mictis ‘is distant inwards from Britain six days’
voyage’, for ‘six days’ coasting from the mouth of the Exe would amply
suffice to bring boats to the Isle of Wight’; and since ‘a coasting
trade of this sort would go direct to the Isle of Wight side of the
Solent’, Pliny’s account, which is based on Timaeus, naturally makes
‘no mention of the causeway alluded to by Diodorus, writing at a later
date’. (Mr. Reid presumably means, not that Diodorus wrote later than
Pliny, but that Posidonius, whom he assumes to have been Diodorus’s
authority, wrote later than Timaeus.) Caesar is right in saying that
tin was found in the interior, ‘for he refers to the British part
of the trade-route,’ that is to say, the (assumed) overland journey
from Cornwall to the Hampshire coast. Diodorus is right because the
limestone causeway answers to his description.
I submit that whoever is right, Mr. Clement Reid is wrong, because
the only equipment which he brings to the discussion is the special
knowledge of the geologist. Doubtless he has proved the former
existence of a causeway between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight; but
it does not follow that the Isle of Wight was Ictis unless it can be
proved that ‘St. Michael’s Mount must have been an isolated rock rising
out of a swampy wood’.
Can this be proved? I have searched all the relevant geological
and geographical literature, and have failed to find any evidence
in support of Mr. Reid’s assertion. The testimony of geologists,
except Mr. Reid, is all the other way. Sir Charles Lyell,[2366] Mr.
Pengelley,[2367] and Mr. Ussher[2368] of the Geological Survey all
hold that since the time when tin was shipped at Ictis, St. Michael’s
Mount has undergone no sensible change. But Mr. Reid has recently been
revising the old geological survey of Cornwall; and he tells me that
he reached his conclusion by calculating the rate at which the sea
washed away alluvium which once connected St. Michael’s Mount with the
mainland. Moreover, although he does not actually rely upon the hoary
fable, demolished by Max Müller, of ‘the Hoar Rock in the Wood’, he
laid stress in conversation with me upon the prevalence in Cornwall of
a tradition which supported his conclusion,--a tradition which, Max
Müller’s readers know, is simply worthless.[2369]
Now I would ask geologists whether it is not dangerous to strive after
chronological precision in geological inquiries by reasoning which
assumes that nature worked during a long period of remote time at a
uniform rate of speed. The calculations by which Sir Archibald Geikie
laboured years ago to estimate the time which the Thames occupied in
excavating its valley,[2370] the calculations which geologists have
made as to the time required for the deposition of the layers of
stalagmite in caves,[2371] have been proved to be futile. This much
at all events is certain: if Mr. Reid’s calculation is accurate, it
stultifies the testimony of the ancient authors to whom he appeals.
For I would ask Mr. Reid how he proposes to reconcile his own
statement, ‘that the ancient writers can be literally depended on,’
with the assumption, which he admits that he is compelled to make in
order to show ‘the perfect consistency of the accounts’, that ‘Mictis
and Ictis were the same island as Vectis’. Is he not aware that in
Pliny’s _Natural History_[2372] [M]ictis and Vectis are distinguished?
If he had studied Müllenhoff’s great work, he would not have attempted
to reconcile Pliny’s account of the six days’ voyage to [M]ictis with
Diodorus’s account, which ‘mentions only the causeway to Ictis’, by
assuming that the writer whom Diodorus followed lived two centuries
later than Timaeus. For Diodorus’s account was not, as Mr. Reid
fancies, based upon Posidonius; he also, like Pliny, derived his
information immediately from Timaeus, ultimately from Pytheas. Not less
hopeless is Mr. Reid’s attempt to explain Pliny’s account of the voyage
to [M]ictis. How could the Isle of Wight be described as ‘distant
inwards from Britain six days’ voyage’? Because, says Mr. Reid, ‘the
Isle of Wight and more easterly parts of the south of England were
politically part of Gaul perhaps even at that early date [300 B.C.];
the tin-producing “Britain” was apparently outside the dominion of
the Belgae, and must have been Devon and Cornwall.’ This argument
rests upon a doubtful ‘perhaps’, an obscure ‘apparently’, a desperate
‘must have been’, and the baseless assumption that the Belgae had
established dominion in Britain in the time of Pytheas: it leaves the
word ‘inwards’ unexplained; and it is pulverized by the mere fact that
in the very chapter from which Mr. Reid is quoting and everywhere else
Pliny uses the word Britain not in the sense of ‘Devon and Cornwall’,
but simply in the sense of Britain. To any man who is not obliged to
distort the plain meaning of words it is clear that, from Pliny’s point
of view, Ictis was six days’ sail from Britain, and that by ‘inwards’
he meant, speaking from the standpoint of an Italian, ‘northward.’ Thus
London might be intelligibly described as fifty-two miles ‘inwards’
from Brighton; but to say that Brighton is a day’s sail ‘inwards’ from
Portsmouth would be gibberish. As Müllenhoff has pointed out, Pliny
confounded the distance of Ictis from Britain with that of Thule.[2373]
Enough of Mr. Reid’s attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable. Like
Professor Ridgeway, he does not explain why men of business preferred
to pay the cost of the long voyage from the Isle of Wight to the mouth
of the Loire, when they need only have paid for the shorter voyage
from Cornwall, or why they chose to saddle themselves with the cost of
the overland transport from Cornwall to Hampshire. Nor does he explain
why this imaginary and expensive overland transport was substituted
for the imaginary coasting voyage. Nor again does he explain how
wagons, loaded with tin (for Diodorus does not speak of pack-horses
except in connexion with the journey across Gaul), were able to travel
two hundred miles along unmetalled trackways. The rate at which they
crawled, the numerous breaks down, the curses of the drivers, and
the wear and tear of the cattle I leave to Mr. Reid’s imagination.
The eminent archaeologist, Mr. C. H. Read, who accepts Mr. Reid’s
conclusions, assures us that a voyage from St. Michael’s Mount to the
mouth of the Loire is not to be thought of, for it would have involved
a ‘long and dangerous sea passage’.[2374] Is he serious? This long sea
passage was far shorter than the passage from the Isle of Wight: why
it was more dangerous than a passage which involved navigation in the
neighbourhood of the Channel Islands as well as of Ushant no seaman
will be able to understand. The passage which seems so terrible to Mr.
Read was made by Pytheas.[2375] The passage from Italy to Sardinia was
longer: several times longer was the passage from Britain to Iceland,
which was made long before the invention of the compass;[2376] as long
or longer the passage from Scandinavia to Britain, which was made,
according to Mr. Read himself,[2377] in the Bronze Age. That the Veneti
should have been quite willing to sail from the Isle of Wight to the
Loire, but so afraid of sailing in their stout ships from Cornwall that
they deliberately added more than a hundred miles to the length of
their voyage, is a mystery which Mr. Read must be left to explain.
But Mr. Reid, in the conversation which passed between us, urged
reasons in favour of his theory which are omitted in his paper and to
which I shall endeavour to do justice. Archaeological evidence, he
remarked, shows that the people of Cornwall were far more uncivilized
than those of Hampshire: even supposing that St. Michael’s Mount
was an island, it had no real harbour; and it would have been very
dangerous for mariners to attempt to get there especially in a fog or
a south-westerly gale. I reply that it would also have been dangerous
in such weather to attempt to fetch the coast of the Isle of Wight, as
the ship would have incurred the risk of running a-tilt against the
limestone causeway; that in a fog the skipper would have anchored; and
that, notwithstanding the lack of a proper harbour, the ship would have
lain snugly in sheltered water under the lee of St. Michael’s Mount.
The comparative barbarism of the people of Cornwall is irrelevant: as
they wanted to sell their tin, there was no danger that they would
molest their customers. Besides, Mr. Reid seems to forget that the
people who produced the tin delivered it to the traders at Ictis. The
traders transacted business directly with them; and, assuming that
Ictis was the Isle of Wight, they were as barbarous when they had
crossed the limestone causeway as they had been when they left the tin
mines. Mr. Reid’s argument compels him once more to throw overboard
the ancient authority, who, as he insists, ‘can be literally depended
on’; for Diodorus distinctly states that the tin-mining inhabitants
of Belerium were friendly to strangers, and _from their intercourse
with foreign merchants_ had become comparatively civilized.[2378] This
passage proves that, according to Diodorus, Ictis was in the territory
of Belerium, and by itself demolishes Mr. Reid’s theory. For how could
the inhabitants have become civilized by their commercial dealings if
the merchants never came near Belerium, and the only inhabitants who
came in contact with them were wagoners or boatmen?
It is clear then that the case for the Isle of Wight rests upon the
geological evidence, such as it is, that at the time when Ictis was a
trading station, St. Michael’s Mount was ‘an isolated rock rising out
of a swampy wood’. Common sense and the historical evidence are all on
the other side. If St. Michael’s Mount had not been available, there
would have been nothing to prevent the traders from shipping the tin
at Falmouth or in Plymouth Sound; and acceptance of Mr. Reid’s theory
involves, besides other insuperable difficulties, the assumption that
the tin-merchants were ignorant of the first principles of business.
III. We now come to the question, When did the overland trade in tin
between Corbilo and Massilia begin, and how long did it last? That it
existed before the time of Pytheas--that is to say, at least as early
as the fourth century before Christ--is certain;[2379] for, as we
have seen, Pliny and Diodorus Siculus derived their information about
Ictis ultimately from him.[2380] Müllenhoff,[2381] indeed, contends
for a still earlier date. Only on this hypothesis, he argues, can we
explain the remarkable fact that the great Celtic immigration at the
beginning of the fourth century B.C. not only did no harm to Massilia
but actually increased its prosperity, the profits of the trade being
appreciated by the Celts themselves. Still, there is no evidence that
it existed (except in the form of intertribal barter) before the
foundation of Massilia, or even that it had begun long before Pytheas
visited Britain.
Professor Ridgeway insists that it is ‘obvious that when the Belgic
tribes ... made permanent settlements on the south-east coast of
Britain, the course of trade would pass regularly from Kent into
Northern France, and that the old route by Armorica, Corbilo, and the
Loire would fall into disuse’.[2382] If anything is ‘obvious’, it is
that the course of trade would continue to follow the most convenient
route, and that merchants would not saddle themselves with the expense
of conveying tin, destined for Mediterranean markets, all the way
from Cornwall to Kent. Besides, how was it to be conveyed thither?
Certainly not by land; for Professor Ridgeway tells us himself that
the barrier interposed by the great forest of Anderida would have
rendered this impossible.[2383] Certainly not by sea; for, unless the
merchants had taken leave of their senses, why should they have paid
for the voyage from Cornwall to Kent, then for the voyage from Kent to
Boulogne, and then for the long overland journey to Marseilles, when,
by taking the route which led from St. Michael’s Mount to the mouth
of the Loire, both the voyage and the land journey would have been
considerably shortened? If Caesar does not expressly mention Corbilo,
neither does he expressly mention any other commercial port; and he
does imply that the Veneti had the lion’s share of the carrying trade
with Britain.[2384] Possibly Corbilo had lost its importance by the
time of Caesar; but the estuary of the Loire still formed one of the
two most important harbours in the west of Gaul, and Strabo mentions
it as one of the four principal Gallic ports from which ships bound
for Britain set sail.[2385] The argument based upon the fact that the
overland journey lasted thirty days implies that the merchants would
have deliberately preferred a longer to a shorter route; and as the
distance from the mouth of the Loire to Massilia was about four hundred
and eighty miles _in a straight line_, it does not seem incredible that
the journey should have lasted thirty days. But what puzzles me most
in Professor Ridgeway’s argument is that, while it is partly based
upon the testimony of Diodorus, it sets that testimony at defiance.
The professor holds that the authority whom Diodorus followed was
Posidonius. If so, Posidonius stated that in his time British tin was
shipped for the Continent at Ictis. Now Professor Ridgeway identifies
Ictis with the Isle of Wight. I have shown that Ictis was St. Michael’s
Mount. But, according to Professor Ridgeway, British tin was shipped,
in the time of Posidonius, neither at the Isle of Wight, nor at St.
Michael’s Mount, but in Kent.[2386] The train of thought which led to
this conclusion is one which my poor brain is powerless to follow.[2387]
Professor Haverfield[2388] affirms that the Roman annexation of Gallia
Narbonensis ‘secured that trade route by which Diodorus Siculus tells
us that British tin reached the Mediterranean, that is the route from
Narbo by the “pass of Carcassonne” and Toulouse to Bordeaux’; but I
cannot find any evidence that this was the route to which Diodorus
referred.
Professor Rhys[2389] has constructed a theory about the course of the
tin trade during the maritime supremacy of the Veneti which is even
more remarkable than that of Professor Ridgeway. He tells us that ‘at
one time they probably landed British tin at the mouth of [the Loire]
... and they fetched some of it at any rate from the south-east
of Britain’. In other words, the tin was conveyed at heavy cost by
the Britons three hundred miles from Cornwall to the south-east of
Britain, in order that the Veneti might add at least two hundred miles
to the voyage which they would have undertaken if they had fetched it
direct from Cornwall; and this was done although, as Professor Rhys
himself assures us, there was ‘communication between the Dumnonii [of
Cornwall] and the nearest part of Gaul during the Venetic period’. The
professor adds that ‘whatever direct trade in tin there may have been
between the tin districts of Britain and the Loire, it must have been
utterly unknown to Caesar’. I reply that if, as Professor Rhys holds,
there was trade in tin by way of South-Eastern Britain between the tin
districts of Britain and the Loire, this trade also must, on Professor
Rhys’s theory, have been unknown to Caesar, for he mentions neither
the one nor the other; but that the voyage which Crassus made to the
tin-producing districts of Cornwall, and about which Caesar is equally
silent, shows that Caesar was not ignorant, but merely reticent.
But Professor Ridgeway would assign a different reason for Caesar’s
silence. Remarking that ‘when Strabo, writing as a contemporary,
is describing the exports from Britain, he omits the mention of
tin, whilst from the extract from Posidonius, quoted alike by him
and Diodorus, it is plain that when the Stoic explorer visited
North-Western Europe, the British tin trade was still of importance’,
the professor suggests that in the time of Caesar Britain ceased to
export tin.[2390] But did not Strabo write long after Caesar died?
Professor Haverfield, on the other hand, has given reasons for the view
that ‘the early Cornish tin trade, which Posidonius and Caesar knew,
died out about the beginning of our era’; and he suggests that it may
have done so because the Romans had just discovered ‘the real site of
the Cassiterides in N.W. Spain’.[2391] ‘Very little,’ he remarks, ‘has
been found west of Exeter which can be connected with the first two
centuries of the Roman Empire.... Plainly the Romans of the conquest
period did not care to advance beyond Exeter.... Yet if the tin trade
had then been flourishing they would hardly have stopped. We must put
the halt at Exeter beside the silence of the writers after Caesar, and
suppose that for some reason the tin trade had ceased in Cornwall.
Perhaps as iron took the place of bronze in many lands tin was no
longer in such demand; perhaps the Spanish ore was cheaper than the
Cornish; perhaps the accessible Cornish tin streams seemed exhausted.
Whatever the reason, the Cornish tin trade vanished before A.D. 50. It
reappears two centuries later.’[2392]
Now the evidence that Professor Haverfield offers of its having
_reappeared_ is simply the discovery of one inscribed ingot of Cornish
tin, which belonged to the fourth century; and if no inscribed ingots
of an earlier date have been found, their absence hardly proves that
the Romans had not worked the mines before. This Professor Haverfield
admits; but, he insists, ‘it does prove that we have no right to say
that mining was going on.’[2393] Possibly: but if so, _the absence of
inscribed ingots of tin in Spain_[2394] _equally proves that we have no
right to say that mining was going on there_. Yet, if it was suspended
in Cornwall, it must have been contemporaneously active in Spain. It is
true that no Roman antiquities of earlier date than the third century
have been found in Cornwall, except some Samian ware and coins of
Trajan and Vespasian;[2395] and it may be true that, as the professor
says, these discoveries ‘prove no Roman influence or occupation’:[2396]
but, on the other hand, Cornwall has very few Roman antiquities even
of the third and fourth centuries,[2397] and no Roman or Romanized
towns or villas.[2398] Is it not then possible that, as Professor
Gowland suggests, the mines were worked throughout the whole period of
the Roman occupation of Britain, but not under Roman control?[2399]
He points out that ‘the stamps had been impressed [upon the solitary
ingot] when the metal was cold, and hence not necessarily at the mine,
but very probably by a Roman trader or officer at the coast’.[2400]
Professor Haverfield indeed states that the ingot was found not more
than a mile and a half from ‘an old working’, which has yielded Roman
coins:[2401] but Professor Gowland supports his own view by the
argument that ‘at the Roman lead mines in Britain the inscriptions
were always cast on the ingots of lead when they were made, and at
the copper mines were stamped on the cakes of copper while they were
red hot’. ‘The real site of the Cassiterides’ was not, as Professor
Haverfield thinks, ‘in N.W. Spain,’ but in the British Isles. ‘The
silence of the writers after Caesar’ in regard to the British trade in
tin, on which he lays stress, really resolves itself into the silence
of Strabo; for although the professor is quite right in saying that
‘later authors [namely, Diodorus, Strabo, and Pliny] merely include it
in quotations from earlier literature’, those who are familiar with
their writings will admit that there was no reason why any of them,
except Strabo, should have expressly added to those quotations the
information that the British tin trade continued in their own time. We
should certainly have expected that Strabo would have included tin in
his list of British exports if it had been exported in his time; and
I will not attempt to explain away his silence: but can it outweigh
the extreme improbability that for two centuries the civilized world
should have been entirely cut off from one of the two sources from
which its supply of tin had previously been derived? And when Professor
Haverfield suggests that ‘as iron took the place of bronze in many
lands, tin was no longer in such demand’, does he not momentarily
forget that not only in the lands round the Mediterranean but also in
those of Northern and Western Europe iron had taken the place of bronze
for many purposes several centuries before the Christian era, and that,
on the other hand, those implements and ornaments which were still made
wholly or in part of bronze were probably in greater demand than before?
IV. We have now to deal with the Phoenicians. Sir George Cornewall
Lewis[2402] and various other writers have endeavoured to prove that
the Phoenicians (including the Carthaginians) never traded directly
with Britain for tin; and in 1896 Dr. Arthur Evans remarked that ‘the
days are gone past when it could be seriously maintained that the
Phoenician merchant landed on the coast of Cornwall’.[2403]
Now Dr. Evans’s distinguished father, who holds that the Cassiterides
‘are rightly identified with Britain’, observes that ‘the traces of
Phoenician influence in this country are ... at present imperceptible.
But,’ he continues, ‘it may well be that their system of commerce or
barter was such as intentionally left the barbarian tribes with whom
they traded in much the same stage of civilization as that in which
they found them, always assuming that they dealt directly with Britain
and not through the intervention of Gaulish merchants.’[2404]
Some merchants certainly landed, if not on the coast of Cornwall at all
events on that of Ictis: is there any reason in the nature of things
why Phoenician merchants should not have done so? To the old-fashioned
view there are only two objections worth considering, namely, first,
that ‘the tin trade was carried on overland through Gaul’,[2405] and,
secondly, that the tin which was shipped to Gades may have come not
from Britain but from the mines of North-Western Spain. But, as we
have seen, there is no evidence that the overland trade had begun
before 600 B.C.,--the approximate date of the foundation of Massilia;
nor is there any evidence that the Phoenicians took part in it. From
Gades to Cornwall the voyage, as George Smith observes, was shorter
than the voyages ‘from Tyre to Malta, Carthage, or Sicily, which they
were performing continuously’.[2406] If Desjardins[2407] is right in
affirming that ‘the name _Corbilo_ unquestionably looks Phoenician’,
and that a Phoenician inscription has been found near Guérande, it
may be inferred that the carrying trade between Britain and Corbilo
was at one time either wholly or partly in Phoenician or Carthaginian
hands. That tin was obtained in ancient times from the mines of
North-Western Spain must be admitted: not only is the fact attested by
the statements of Strabo and Pliny,[2408] but it has been proved by
the researches of Mr. W. C. Borlase.[2409] But there is some evidence
that tin also came from Cornwall to Gades. Festus Avienus[2410] tells
us, ultimately, it may be assumed, on the authority of the Carthaginian
traveller, Himilco, that both the Carthaginians and the people of
Gades used to sail to the British seas.[2411] Sir George Cornewall
Lewis,[2412] indeed, argues that ‘if the date of the voyages of Hanno
and Himilco is correctly fixed, it follows that at a period subsequent
to the expedition of Xerxes, the Carthaginians ... had not carried
their navigation far along the coasts of the Atlantic; and that they
sent out two voyages of discovery--one to the south, the other to the
north--at the public expense’. All that we know about the date of
Himilco’s voyage is that it was not later than the fifth, probably
in the sixth century B.C.,[2413] and, according to Pliny,[2414] its
object was ‘to explore the outer parts of Europe’. Anyhow the evidence
remains that after Himilco’s time, if not before, the Carthaginians
traded by sea with Britain.[2415] Dr. Arthur Evans, I know, warns us
that ‘a truer view of primitive trade as passing on by inter-tribal
barter has superseded the idea of a direct commerce between remote
localities’.[2416] But the testimony of Diodorus, that is to say of
Pytheas, proves that traders purchased tin off the Cornish coast from
the natives who had prepared it for market, carried it across the
Channel, and unloaded it on the coast of Gaul, whence it was conveyed
overland to the mouth of the Rhône. If this was not ‘direct commerce’,
what was? That there was ‘inter-tribal barter’ in ancient times, no
well-informed person would deny; but that there was also ‘direct
commerce between remote localities’ is as well attested as any fact of
ancient history can be.
Mr. C. T. Newton indeed argues that ‘if the Phoenicians frequented
any portion of the British coast, it is probable that they would have
given names to the more important harbours and promontories, as they
did in Africa and Spain’.[2417] But is it not also probable that they
found it sufficient to hold, or even to occupy temporarily, as occasion
required, one or more of the Scilly Islands, or perhaps St. Michael’s
Mount, and that they may have given names to these places, although the
names have not survived.[2418] Their settlements in Africa and Spain
were not temporary but permanent.
I freely admit that the testimony of Festus Avienus is not conclusive;
but I see no reason for rejecting the statement of Strabo that the
Phoenicians traded directly for tin with the Cassiterides--that is to
say, the British Isles--and that they originally monopolized the trade.
M. Salomon Reinach,[2419] who supports the view that the Phoenicians
traded directly with Cornwall, insists, referring to a well-known
passage in Thucydides,[2420] that the overland route must have been
earlier than the maritime. ‘Corinth,’ says Thucydides, ‘being seated
on an isthmus, was naturally from the first a centre of commerce; for
the Hellenes within and without the Peloponnese, in the old days when
they communicated chiefly by land, had to pass through her territory
in order to reach one another.’[2421] M. Reinach argues that ‘nothing
could have suggested to the Phoenicians the idea of going with their
ships in search of tin if they had not already known the existence not
only of the metal but also of the distant country which produced it ...
the Phoenicians of Spain no more discovered the Cassiterides and tin
than the Portuguese discovered India and spices’. This may be freely
admitted. But the Phoenicians may well have acquired the knowledge upon
which they acted long before the direct overland trade which Diodorus
describes began. Tin was probably conveyed in very early times from
Cornwall to Gaul for the use of tribes who inhabited that country
before the immigration of the Celtic-speaking invaders; and, since Gaul
was in communication with Britain from the beginning of the Bronze
Age,[2422] the knowledge that tin was to be obtained in Britain might
have reached Phoenician ears even before Gades was founded.
But the most striking contribution which M. Reinach has made to the
literature of this subject is the suggestion that the traders who
first sailed from the Mediterranean into the English Channel were
not Phoenicians but Phrygians. Speaking of the well-known passage,
which I have already quoted, in which Pliny says that Midacritus was
the first who imported tin from ‘the tin island’,[2423] he argues
that the generally accepted identification of Midacritus with the
Phoenician Melcarth is erroneous. He points out that in Pliny’s list
of discoverers all except the most famous names are accompanied by a
complementary designation, for example (Toxius), _Caeli filius_[2424].
Therefore, even if, as has been supposed, what Pliny wrote was not
_Midacritus_ but _Melicertus_ (Melcarth), that unfamiliar name would
have been followed by some explanatory addition. M. Reinach then quotes
two passages from Hyginus[2425] and Cassiodorus[2426] respectively. In
the former we read that ‘King Midas, the Phrygian, son of Cybele, was
the first to discover lead and tin’ (_Midas rex Cybeles filius Phryx
plumbum album et nigrum primus invenit_); in the latter, that ‘Midas,
the ruler of Phrygia, discovered tin’ ([Aes enim Ionos Thessaliae rex],
_plumbum Midas regnator Phrygiae reppererunt_). It is clear then, says
M. Reinach, that, as the Jesuit scholar, Hardouin, perceived more than
two centuries ago, for _Midacritus_ in the MSS. of Pliny we ought to
read _Midas Phryx_. He adds that from a fragment of the Seventh Book
of Diodorus, preserved in the Chronicle of Eusebius, we learn that the
maritime supremacy of the Phrygians began about 903 B.C., and that of
the Phoenicians in 824.[2427]
DENE-HOLES
Of the various theories which have been published as to the object of
dene-holes three only are worth considering, namely, that they were
granaries; that they were refuges; and that they were sunk in order to
obtain chalk.
Subterranean granaries have of course been used in many
countries;[2428] but it is said that no grain has ever been found in
any dene-hole,[2429] whereas grain has been found in shallow pits and
on numerous other prehistoric sites in Britain.[2430] On the other
hand, a thorough exploration of the famous group of dene-holes in
Hangman’s Wood, Essex, revealed fragments of two millstones.[2431]
The Reverend E. H. Goddard remarks that ‘very similar places’ in
Brittany were used by ‘the peasant armies during the war in La
Vendée’ as refuges and lairs, and argues that dene-holes served a
similar purpose.[2432] Perhaps, though it would have gone hard with
the fugitives if their lairs had been discovered; but, seeing that
strongholds were available, it is difficult to admit that they were
dug with that object. The theory that they were shafts sunk for the
extraction of chalk rests mainly upon the evidence of Pliny, who states
that chalk was obtained in Britain for manure ‘by means of pits sunk
like wells with narrow mouths to the depth commonly of one hundred
feet, where they branch out like the veins of mines’ ([creta] _petitur
ex alto, in centenos actis plerumque puteis, ore angustis, intus ut
in metallis spatiante vena_[2433]). Messrs. T. V. Holmes and W. Cole,
who superintended the exploration of the dene-holes in Hangman’s Wood,
argue that ‘the above account could not have been given to Pliny by
any man who had ever descended into one of our [Essex] ... dene-holes,
which are entered by ... narrow shafts, but whose lofty symmetrical
chambers cannot be described as “branching out like the veins of
mines”.’[2434] I think, on the contrary, that, allowing for the natural
inaccuracy of a writer who gave his own version of information supplied
by one who had perhaps himself not descended into a dene-hole, Pliny’s
description was remarkably correct: the chambers which open out at the
bottom of the shafts in Hangman’s Wood are arranged in the shape of a
star-fish; the only material error with which Pliny can be charged is
that he compared them to the veins of mines; and that he was alluding
to them I have no doubt. Messrs. Holmes and Cole are, however, on
firm ground when they point out that his informant may have wrongly
assumed that the shafts were sunk in order to obtain chalk because the
chalk that was extracted from them was utilized. ‘And,’ they continue,
‘a foreigner accidentally discovering secret pits--and our surface
trenches showed our dene-holes to have been secret excavations--would
almost necessarily be deceived as to their use by natives.’ But is
it not possible that Pliny’s informant may have been a Briton? And,
assuming that he was deceived as to the purpose of the dene-holes, why
was he allowed to learn the existence and arrangement of the chambers,
and, approximately, the depth of the shaft?
Nevertheless, Messrs. Holmes and Cole are undoubtedly right in the
main. It has been argued that dene-holes are situated in places which
must always have been uncultivated, whereas the tracts in which chalk
lay near the surface may have been already occupied; that chalk has
been obtained in Wiltshire in modern times by mining although it was
to be had near the surface; and that the labour of sinking the shafts
may have been compensated by saving the cost of transporting chalk from
distant parts, where it was the surface rock.[2435] But, as Messrs.
Holmes and Cole observe, ‘there is plenty of bare chalk within a mile’
of Hangman’s Wood; and, as they pertinently ask, if the dene-holes were
sunk for chalk, why was their position so carefully kept secret?[2436]
Again, Mr. Spurrell, who admits that where chalk lay very deep shafts
may have been sunk merely in order to obtain it, remarks that ‘it is
evident that where the land is white with chalk the pits of great
depth so often found there could not have been dug for manure, and the
natives of Kent in such situations scout the idea as absurd’.[2437]
Messrs. T. E. and R. H. Forster contend that the elaborate design of
the chambers in Hangman’s Wood is ‘in reality a strong confirmation’
of the truth of ‘the chalk-quarry theory’; for ‘the star-fish-shaped
pit ... enables the miner to win more chalk at one sinking; and if
no examples of it were known, it would be necessary to postulate its
existence in order to supply the missing link between the primitive
bell-pit and the pillared and galleried mine of the kind seen at
Chislehurst’.[2438] But is the ‘bell-pit’ primitive, and is there a
link, missing or otherwise? Anyhow it is incredible that the people
of Essex, if they had undertaken the prodigious labour of sinking 70
shafts simply in order to obtain better chalk than what they could have
found hard by at the surface, would have contented themselves, after
boring through 60 feet of sand and gravel, with ‘the very uppermost
[and therefore worst] chalk’.[2439] As Mr. Holmes remarks,[2440] ‘it
must be obvious that the course which would commend itself to all
seekers after superior chalk would be to begin operations where chalk
is at the surface, make a shaft 10 to 20 feet deep, and procure chalk
lying at that depth’; and, while he freely admits that ‘a farmer might
naturally prefer to get chalk at a depth of 60 to 80 feet on his own
land rather than ... from some one else’s pit a mile or two away’, he
emphasizes the absurdity of supposing that ‘any people ... concentrated
their pits where they got the least return for their labour, and where
there was no counterbalancing advantage ... as they must have done at
Hangman’s Wood and Bexley on the Chalk-pit hypothesis’.[2441]
Charred wood, bones of animals, and large quantities of coarse
pottery have been found in a dene-hole near Dunstable,[2442] which is
sufficient evidence that some dene-holes were occasionally inhabited.
I conclude that dene-holes were intended to serve as granaries; that
they may have been used occasionally as places of concealment; and that
the chalk which was taken out of them was used, if it was wanted, for
manure. It is significant that their name means ‘_Dane_-holes’, that
is, hiding-places from the Danes.[2443]
The ‘bell-pits’ which have been already mentioned, and which are
sometimes confounded with dene-holes, were undoubtedly made for the
sake of the chalk; and, unlike dene-holes, they were made broad in
order that a large amount of material might be taken out of them at
each haul.[2444]
Some of the Kentish dene-holes, if Mr. Goddard is rightly informed,
contained bronze implements;[2445] and those of Essex are almost
certainly post-neolithic.[2446] Some bell-pits are ancient, but I doubt
whether it could be proved that any were pre-Roman: Pitt-Rivers[2447]
indeed believed that it was from the Romans that the Britons learned to
use chalk as top-dressing.
THE COAST BETWEEN CALAIS AND THE SOMME IN THE TIME OF CAESAR
The question of the period during which the gulf of St. Omer existed
has given rise to much discussion. According to Reclus,[2448]
Desjardins,[2449] and many other writers,[2450] even in the time of
Caesar this so-called gulf, which was really a shallow salt-water
‘mere’, covered the lowlands north-east of the hills of Artois between
Sangatte and Dunkirk, and extended inland to within a short distance
of St. Omer. No evidence, however, has been adduced to show that it
existed at that time;[2451] and it has been proved by M. J. Gosselet
that it did not exist before the latter part of the third century of
our era, for Gallo-Roman remains, including 2,354 coins, some of which
belong to the time of Postumus, have been found in the area. As M.
Gosselet says,[2452] the _Sinus Itius_ is a mere invention of writers
of the seventeenth century.
The ancient topography of Wissant, of the estuary of the Liane, and of
the headlands of Blancnez, Grisnez, and Alprech, is discussed in the
article on the Portus Itius.[2453]
The inland extension of the bay formed by the estuary of the Canche
has steadily diminished since the time of Caesar; and whereas, during
the last century at all events, the headland on its southern side has
gained considerably on the sea, the ‘Pointe de Lornel’ on the north and
the neighbouring sand-dunes have suffered continual erosion.[2454]
The country which lies between the hills of Artois and the sea, from
the mouth of the Canche to the mouth of the Somme, is, as Reclus[2455]
remarks, of recent formation; and, as late as the ninth century, the
environs of the town of Rue, which is now about six miles from the
sea, were covered by a vast shallow lake, 20,000 hectares, or about 78
square miles, in extent.
THE CONFIGURATION OF THE COAST OF KENT IN THE TIME OF CAESAR
This volume is not a treatise upon the physical geography of Ancient
Britain; and I am only concerned with geographical questions in so far
as they are essential to a right understanding of the history. It is
impossible to understand the narrative of Caesar’s invasions of Britain
without considering how far the physical geography of that part of the
island which was the theatre of his operations differed from what it is
now.
I. BETWEEN RAMSGATE AND SANDOWN CASTLE
Thanet, as everybody knows, was an island in Caesar’s time; and
Bede[2456] says that it was separated from the mainland by an estuary
three furlongs broad: but the late George Dowker[2457] concluded from
‘an attentive examination of the estuary’ that it was ‘much shallower
and narrower than is generally supposed’.
John Lewis,[2458] a well-known antiquary of the eighteenth century,
and William Boys,[2459] the historian of Sandwich, maintained that an
estuary, in which was included the harbour of Richborough, known to
the Romans as Portus Ritupis, had extended from the cliffs of Ramsgate
southward to Walmer, covering the sites of Stonar and Sandwich and
indeed the whole of the low ground between Sandwich and Deal, and
washing the shore of an island on which stood Richborough Castle. A
recent writer, Mr. H. Sharpe,[2460] who endorses this opinion, argues
that the Roman road from Canterbury to Richborough harbour (_ad portum
Ritupis_[2461]) terminated at Each End. The road ‘cannot’, he insists,
‘have run to Sandwich in Roman times. Montagu Burrows ... _Cinque
Ports_, 1888, p. 30,[2462] says--“Sandwich and Stonar are wholly
English. No Roman remains have been found at either” ... there is
good reason to suppose that the land upon which it [Sandwich] stands
and the land over which the Sandwich end of the road runs were not
formed when the Romans were here.’[2463] And again, ‘There is another
reason for supposing that Each End was ... the place where the boats
left the mainland for the island [of Richborough]. [The road running
northward from Dover] is marked on the Ordnance map[2464] as a Roman
road, and if complete would run to Each End, not to Richborough Castle
or to Sandwich ... the last mile from [Woodnesborough] to Each End, is
missing.’[2465]
Now, in regard to Stonar, Professor Burrows, as we shall presently
see, is mistaken; and, granting that the Roman road from Dover would,
if complete, run to Each End, how can Mr. Sharpe prove that it did
not run further? The late George Dowker stated, in a paper which was
published after his death, that he had himself ‘traced the Roman road
to Woodnesborough, and thence by Each End to near the Richborough
Island’;[2466] and the views of Lewis and Boys, which Mr. Sharpe
endorses, as to the wide extent of the estuary at the time of the
Roman conquest of Britain have been stultified by discoveries to which
Mr. Sharpe does not allude. Roach Smith affirms that ‘Roman remains,
indicative of habitations, have been discovered in the sand-hills
considerably to the north of Sandown Castle’, and that ‘coins have been
found at Stonar, opposite to Richborough’; and from these facts he
infers that ‘the recession of the sea from the low land between Thanet
and Walmer probably commenced at a period much earlier than has been
commonly supposed’.[2467]
That the hill on which Richborough Castle stood was nearly if not quite
insulated is generally admitted;[2468] but Mr. George E. Fox remarks
that it ‘was probably not washed by the open sea, though a broad
channel may have flowed close beside it, forming one of the southern
mouths of the strait, while a narrow strip of salt-marsh and sand-bank
lay between it and the open sea’. It would be more correct to say that
the island, on its eastern side, was separated by a channel from Stonar
Beach, the southern extremity of which lay east by north of the site of
Sandwich: the sand-hills were on the south-eastern side of this beach,
from which they were divided by a narrow channel. Mr. Fox goes on to
say that ‘a large extent of what is now marshland, lying to the west of
the hill, may then have ... formed the haven,[2469] making of the camp
hill an island’. He argues, however, that, on the eastern side, the
channel ‘could not have hugged the hill very closely, as at no great
distance to the south of the station on this same side, and in the
low ground presumably near the shore, fragments of a Roman house were
discovered in 1846’.[2470]
In the year 1876 Dowker affirmed that ‘the low shore and sand hills’
which now extend from the Deal beach to the latitude of Sandwich
‘extended [in the time of Caesar] much less than at present’;[2471] and
in a map which accompanied his paper[2472] he contrasted the low-water
line between Walmer and Sandwich, as he believed it to have existed
in 55 B.C., with the low-water line as it existed at the time when
he wrote. In the latitude of Sandwich the modern low-water line is
traced on this map a mile and a half east of the hypothetical ancient
line, which distance gradually diminishes to three-quarters of a mile
in the latitude of Worth and about one furlong in the latitude of
Deal. I find a difficulty in reconciling this map with Dowker’s own
statement that ‘Roman pottery, coins and traces of the Roman occupation
have been found in the sand-hills--and indeed below the sand-hills
considerably northward of Deal, beyond Sandown Castle’;[2473] and from
the fact which this statement records it follows that, in the time of
the Roman occupation of Britain, the shore-line at the place where the
discoveries in question were made cannot have been widely different
from what it is now.
II. BETWEEN SANDOWN CASTLE AND WALMER CASTLE
When we endeavour to trace the shore-line, as it existed in Caesar’s
time, opposite Deal and Walmer, we find that the writers who have
dealt with the question differ widely among themselves; while Dowker
again shows himself a most troublesome witness. Unfortunately this
meritorious geologist, who laboured hard to elucidate the geographical
questions connected with the ancient history of East Kent, was a bad
writer, and sometimes failed to make his meaning clear.
Major Rennell, who was in his day ‘the acknowledged head of British
geographers’,[2474] believed that Caesar landed at Deal. ‘Of course,’
he says, ‘the margin of the ancient beach, on which Caesar landed,
must now be very far within land, as well as very considerably
raised.’[2475] The words ‘of course’ prepare us for the discovery that
Rennell quotes no authority and gives no reasons.
Professor Montagu Burrows,[2476] also without giving either authority
or reason, tells us that Deal ‘probably had once a haven, which was
choked up in very early times’. But choked up it was not unless
it existed; and observe that its existence is only ‘probable’. As
a matter of fact, the so-called probability is unsupported by any
evidence.[2477] The professor goes on to say that ‘the old town [of
Deal] was already separated from the sea by a considerable interval
when Henry [the Eighth] built the three castles of Deal, Sandown,
and Walmer for the protection of the coast, which had now become a
continuous stretch of steep shingly beach’. Now if, in the time of
Henry the Eighth, ‘the old town was _already_ separated from the sea by
a considerable interval,’ the inference is that it had once been quite
close to the sea; and of this there is no evidence. Was the professor
thinking of Leland,[2478] who describes ‘Deale’ as ‘half a Myle fro
the Shore of the Se, a Fisshcher Village iii. Myles or more above
Sandwic’? If so, why should he assume that because Deal in the time
of Leland, that is to say, of Henry the Eighth, was half a mile from
the sea, it had once been on the sea? The only conceivable reply to
this question would be that as Upper Deal is now more than half a mile
from the sea,[2479] and as, according to Leland, it was only half a
mile from the sea in the time of Henry, it may once have been actually
on the seashore. But Deal Castle was built by Henry; and the sea was
therefore at least as far from Upper Deal in his time as it is now. The
truth is that Leland’s ‘Myles’ were sometimes very long: he tells us
that Sandwich was ‘iii. Myles’ from Deal, and it is really six.
Dowker, in the paper which he published in 1876,[2480] maintained that
‘Deal probably did not exist in Roman times’, and that, when Caesar
landed in Britain, ‘the coast was cut back behind Deal’:[2481] that
is to say, he virtually committed himself to agreement with the view,
already stated, of Major Rennell. In the same paper he affirmed that
‘the present town of Deal is situated on a comparatively recent beach’,
and went on to say, in proof of his assertion, ‘I have evidence of
the beach at the back of Deal containing mediaeval remains.’[2482]
What the evidence was, he did not say; and what he meant by ‘the beach
at the back of Deal’, I do not know. In 1887 another paper[2483]
was published, containing a report of his views. Herein I find that
there is ‘no evidence’ of ‘a shore-line cutting far back beyond the
Deal beach’. No evidence in 1887, though in 1876 the evidence was
irrefragable.[2484]
The opinion of Stukeley,[2485] who believed that Caesar had landed
between Walmer Castle and Deal, was diametrically opposed to that of
Rennell. He maintained that Caesar’s camps must have been ‘absorpt by
the ocean, which has so long been ... wasting the land away’. ‘Even
since Henry the VIII^{ths} time,’ he continued, ‘it has carried off
the seaward esplanade of the three castles’ [of Walmer, Deal, and
Sandown].[2486] But it does not follow that in the interval which
separated the time of Caesar from the time of Henry the Eighth the
sea in the neighbourhood of Deal had been continuously gaining upon
the land. It would appear that in the last four centuries it has
alternately advanced a little and receded.[2487] In 1615, 1626, and
1627 the waves were wearing away the walls which had been erected for
the protection of the castles of Walmer and Deal.[2488] During the
latter half of the eighteenth century, however, shingle was being
rapidly thrown up along the coast between St. Margaret’s Bay and a
point which, as Mr. Elvin[2489] says, was ‘considerably to the north
of Sandown Castle’; and, although during the first thirty years of
the nineteenth century the sea was again encroaching, at all events
at Walmer, the bank of shingle between the Rifle Range at Kingsdown
and Walmer then began again to increase, while northward of Deal as
far as Sandown Castle the sea was simultaneously gaining ground. In
1885 shingle was still accumulating at Walmer Castle and also at Deal,
although it was recognized that at the latter place its movements
were variable. For some years previously, however, the shingle which
formerly protected the cliffs between St. Margaret’s and Kingsdown had
been travelling northwards past Walmer to Deal; and during the fourteen
years that followed 1885 the same process was going on: I daresay it is
going on still. At Deal, wrote Dowker in 1899,[2490] ‘the shore line
has been nearly stationary until we approach the north end of Deal,
where the ... sea had washed most of the beach away and carried it past
the Castle.’ Finally, it must be borne in mind that from various places
between Walmer and the North Foreland a great deal of shingle has been
abstracted.[2491] Still, if _The North West View of Walmer Castle_,
by S. and N. Buck, which was published in 1735, was approximately
accurate, the sea was a good deal nearer the castle then than it is
now; and the observations that were made between 1741 and 1884 show
that while in that period the sea at Sandown Castle gained 200 feet
upon the land, off Deal Castle the increase of shingle amounted to 120
feet, and off Walmer Castle to no less than 385.
The Reverend Beale Poste, a well-known antiquary of the nineteenth
century, maintained[2492] that the bank of beach upon which Deal stands
must have existed in the time of Caesar, ‘since numerous Roman coins
are found at neap tides at low water on the chalk at the edge of the
beach.’ He added that ‘when the piles for the pier were driven into
the beach in 1842, it was found in a highly concrete state, almost
like rock, denoting great antiquity’. The former statement, if it is
correct,[2493] would seem to prove that the shore-line has receded, in
other words, that the sea has on the whole gained upon the land since
the days of Caesar; the argument based upon the condition of the beach
into which the piles were driven only tends to show that the lower
stratum of the beach was old.
Quite recently a discovery has been made which ought to set the
question at rest. Romano-British interments have been unearthed
about seven hundred yards north of Walmer Castle, ‘on the low ground
... adjoining, and only on a slightly higher level than the Castle
meadows.’[2494] The spot where they lay is about two hundred and fifty
feet west of the high-water mark of ordinary tides. The discovery, as
Mr. Cumberland Woodruff remarks,[2495] proves that ‘the shore lands
[between Walmer and Deal] were protected then as now, though probably
[or rather certainly] by a much thinner line of shingle’.[2496]
The conclusion appears to be this. There is no reason to suppose that
the coast-line between Sandown Castle and Walmer Castle was very
different in Caesar’s time from that which is depicted on the Ordnance
Map; and there is positive proof that between Walmer Castle and Deal
Castle, at some period of the Roman occupation, it was nearly the same.
On the other hand, it is certain that since Caesar landed a great deal
of shingle has accumulated along this part of the coast, especially at
Walmer; and it may be inferred that the beach was less steep then than
it is now.
III. THE GOODWIN SANDS
Before we attempt to inquire what was the condition of the Goodwin
Sands in the time of Caesar, it will be well to state the relevant
facts which have been ascertained since exact observations began to be
recorded.
‘The north-eastern part of the North Goodwin,’ says the author of the
_Channel Pilot_,[2497] ‘dries in places 7 feet at low water; the South
Goodwin not more than 4 or 5 feet at any part.’
The form of the sands is altered periodically by the tides. Beale Poste
argued in 1857 that the Goodwin Sands were still growing, as ‘Kingsdown
Mark, a pile ... built in the reign of Elizabeth to show the South Sand
head, is ... of no use, the sand having now extended itself a mile
further to the southward’. Moreover, he says, it was stated in the
Report of the Commission of the Harbours of Refuge for 1845 that ‘the
Brake Sand, a branch of the Goodwin Sands in the Small Downs, had moved
_bodily inwards_ towards the shore seven hundred yards within the last
fifty years’. This, he maintains, can only mean that ‘a deposit has
taken place on the inward side of the sand ... while the outward side
has been eroded by the winds and tides’.[2498] In 1885 it was found
that ‘the former Bunthead shoal’ had ‘entirely disappeared’,[2499]
and that ‘the whole body of the South Calliper’ had ‘moved about a
mile north-eastward’. Again, it was ascertained by ‘a re-survey of
the Downs, Goodwin Sands, and adjacent coast’, executed in 1896, that
since 1887 considerable changes had taken place. ‘The Goodwin Sand,’ we
learn from this source, ‘has continued its general movement towards the
coast, and the area of drying sand has largely increased.’[2500]
The results of borings carried out at various times in the Goodwin
Sands have shown that blue clay, resting on chalk, was found at the
depths of 7, 15, 57, and 78 feet.[2501] From these data Sir Charles
Lyell[2502] concludes that the Goodwins ‘are a remnant of land, and not
“a mere accumulation of sea sand”;’ and, referring to the destructive
storm mentioned in the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_[2503] as having
occurred in 1099, he conjectures that ‘the last remains of an island,
consisting, like Sheppey, of clay, may perhaps have been carried away
about that time’.
Dr. Guest[2504] holds that in Caesar’s time the Goodwin Sands did
not exist. He reminds us that, according to Somner,[2505] it was the
opinion of ‘several men of judgement’ that they had not appeared until
after the time of Earl Godwin, and, remarking that this was also the
view of Sir Thomas More, he argues that ‘we may infer that such at
that period was the opinion of educated men who had local knowledge’.
Leland,[2506] he goes on to say, ‘attributed the decay of Sandwich
to the Goodwin Sands, and as Sandwich was a flourishing port in the
fourteenth century, we may infer that it was not till the fifteenth
that the sands attained those formidable dimensions which produced
so much mischief.’ Immediately north of Sandown Castle there is, he
observes, a tract of land covered with low sand-hills, which, in
Philipot’s map of Kent, are called the ‘smale downs’,[2507] and upon
which the sea has long been encroaching. He accounts for the name
given to the roadstead by assuming that it once formed part of the
‘smale downs’, and affirms his belief that ‘the flats round Sandwich
once projected into the sea as a low ness or foreland,--probably
divided into islands, of which Lomea [an island which John Twine
asserted to have formerly existed about four miles from Thanet] was the
easternmost’. He assumes that as Lomea is not mentioned in Domesday
Book, it perished by some natural convulsion before the end of the
eleventh century, and goes on to say that ‘After the destruction of
this island, the Goodwin Sands may have been gradually accumulated,
not necessarily on the site of the island, but near it, and the Downs
just as gradually excavated’.[2508] Beale Poste[2509] also affirms
that in 1098 ‘an island named Lomea was overflowed, on which occasion
the sands are said to have been formed. This is mentioned by Giraldus
Cambrensis, and from him by Twine.... But Earl Goodwin (_sic_) died in
... 1053, and Domesday-book negatives that any extensive tract of land
was overflowed and lost, in this direction.’
Now John Twine[2510] (or Twyne) merely says that he has read about
Lomea in the works of ‘certain writers’. It was once, he says, a low
fertile island, which was submerged in consequence of a great storm,
and covered with sand, and it is now the Goodwin Sands. As for Giraldus
Cambrensis, I have searched his writings diligently, and I can find no
mention whatever therein either of Lomea[2511] or of the Goodwin Sands.
The name ‘Downs’ is easily accounted for. ‘The DOWNS,’ says the author
of the _Channel Pilot_,[2512] ‘in a general sense, implies the numerous
banks lying immediately off the coast between the South and North
Forelands ... that [anchorage] which is commonly ... known as the Downs
is off the town of Deal between Walmer Castle and the northern part of
the town,’ &c. I see no reason to doubt that the name of the roadstead
is derived from the aforesaid banks and from the sand-_dunes_ on the
shore.
Somner,[2513] remarking that, according to the common opinion, Lomea
was submerged in 1097, observes that there is no notice of such an
island either in Domesday Book or in ‘any Author whether foreign or
domestick, of any antiquity, that ever I could meet with’.
The late C. H. Pearson[2514] inferred from ‘the legend of their
formation’[2515] that the sands were ‘first remarked about the end
of the eleventh century’, and that they were ‘probably formed by
bank-currents gradually depositing sand about a shoal’.
On the other hand, S. Pritchard,[2516] the historian, so called, of
Deal, argues that the sands must have existed ‘from all time’ as
otherwise Deal and the adjoining country would inevitably have been
inundated. Why? The island, the former existence of which is assumed by
Sir Charles Lyell, would have been as good a protection as the sands;
and in the time, which was certainly anterior to the Roman invasion
of Britain, when the shingle bank had not accumulated to a sufficient
height,[2517] the very small area in the neighbourhood of Deal which is
below high-water mark may have been inundated, unless, as Dowker[2518]
and Mr. Spurrell[2519] believe, the level of the land has been
depressed since the Roman occupation.
The reader has doubtless already concluded that it is impossible to
affirm either that the Goodwin Sands existed in the time of Caesar,
or that they had not then accumulated to such a degree as to attract
attention, or that their place was occupied by an island. If the
silence of Domesday Book and, as it should seem, the absence of any
other positive testimony constitutes an argument against the hypothesis
of Sir Charles Lyell,[2520] the same argument may be advanced to show
that before the Norman Conquest the sands had not begun to appear.
Yet, as we shall see in a subsequent article, there is some reason to
believe that either sands or an island were there when Caesar invaded
Britain.[2521] Tradition, vague as it is, combined with Lyell’s
authority, disposes me to accept tentatively the latter alternative.
IV. THE SOUTH FORELAND AND THE DOVER CLIFFS
Professor Montagu Burrows[2522] affirms that ‘the space over which the
tides travel [in the Straits of Dover] must be at least two miles wider
than it was some 2,000 years ago’. This is one of the _ex cathedra_
statements in which the professor’s work abounds, and for proof of
which his amazed readers search his pages in vain. Dowker’s estimate
is more moderate: he only bids us ‘assume the Straits are now one mile
wider than when Caesar visited our shores’;[2523] but, like Professor
Burrows, he requires us to make this assumption in the dark.
In M. Vivien de St.-Martin’s great work it is stated that Cape Grisnez
‘perd en moyenne 25 centim. par an; autrement dit, il recule 25 m. par
siècle’.[2524] Assuming the accuracy of this statement, and assuming,
further, that the rate of erosion has been constant since the invasion
of Caesar, Cape Grisnez then projected seaward 489 metres, or about 534
yards further than it does now. I take for granted that the statement
is based upon exact and prolonged observation; but when did that
observation begin?[2525]
As for the South Foreland, it is certain that, as Dowker says,[2526]
it is (or at all events was in 1885 and for some years previously)
‘being gradually undermined by the sea’; but it would be a great
mistake to leap to the conclusion that this erosion has been going
on continuously since the time of Caesar. In 1850 Captain K. B.
Martin, who was harbour-master of Ramsgate, affirmed that the cliff
between Dover and the South Foreland, being protected by ‘an inclined
plane of shingle’ from the sea, had ‘preserved its contour from time
immemorial’.[2527] The phrase is somewhat vague: but the captain was a
careful observer; and we may believe him when he tells us that since
his boyhood, fifty years before the time when he wrote, there had
been no change.[2528] Why, then, were the Dover cliffs and the South
Foreland being gradually eaten away in 1876, when Dowker wrote, and in
1884? Simply because the supply of shingle had, from various causes,
been cut off.[2529] The erosion, said Mr. E. R. N. Druce, Engineer to
the Government pier at Dover, takes place ‘at no particular rate, but
falls of cliff at the points above named have taken place at intervals
for some years past ... since they have lost the protection of the
shingle at their base’. He added that the loss was ‘confined to areas
bare of shingle’, and that, so far as he could ascertain, there existed
no ‘data for determining the rate of erosion from early maps or other
documents’.[2530] It would appear, then, that Professor Burrows’s
assertion is based upon pure imagination.
When the subsidence which had taken place in the Neolithic Age was
virtually complete the sea was bordered by a narrow plain, to which
the high ground descended gradually. Erosion was at first rapid while
the waters were devouring loose talus; but when beaches had had time
to form it was of course retarded.[2531] How slow it is where the
rocks are hard is proved by the fact that the contour of a prehistoric
camp near Hastings shows that the seaward defence was formed not by
an artificial rampart but by the East Cliff.[2532] Yet Professor
Burrows asks us to believe that erosion has been as rapid in the
chalk of the South Foreland as in the soft cliffs between Flamborough
Head and the Thames.[2533] Generally speaking, as erosion proceeds,
cliffs become higher;[2534] and it is obvious that if the Channel had
been two miles wider in Caesar’s time, the Dover cliffs, if they had
existed, would have been insignificant. But since Caesar described
them as ‘precipitous heights’,[2535] and Cicero as ‘astonishing masses
of cliff’,[2536] they were evidently little lower then than now. Let
the reader ponder these things, and he will realize how monstrously
exaggerated is the estimate which assigns to the Straits of Caesar’s
time a breadth two miles less than our modern maps show.[2537]
V. DOVER HARBOUR
That a natural harbour existed at Dover in the time of Caesar is beyond
dispute. It is mentioned under the name of _Portus Dubris_ in the
_Itinerary_ of Antonine;[2538] and it was connected by a Roman road
with Canterbury and London, and also with Richborough. Napoleon the
Third[2539] affirms that it was entirely choked up about 950 A.D.; but
this is a blunder, for the harbour is mentioned in Domesday Book.[2540]
Even as late as 1582 it was stated by an engineer, named Thomas
Digges, that ‘Before the peere was builte out, there are men alyue can
remember that was no banckes or shelues of beache to be seene before
Douer,[2541] but all cleane sea betwene Arteclif [Archcliff] tower and
the castle clyffe’.[2542] Captain Martin[2543] holds that the remains
of anchors which have been dug up out of meadows in the valley prove
that the estuary was navigable as far as Crabble;[2544] and he believes
that it actually extended to Water’s End,[2545] and covered the sites
of the villages of Charlton and Buckland. Canon Puckle, however, argues
that ‘the primitive haven’ covered a space which extended barely a
quarter of a mile inland, ‘bounded by the lower half of St. James’
Street, Dolphin Lane, and Russell Street, and the east end of Dolphin
Lane,’[2546] and he states that when this area was ‘partly uncovered in
excavating for the new Russell Street gas works, quays and hawser-rings
were brought to light’. Captain Martin’s estimate, which is based
upon very uncertain data, must be regarded as an exaggeration: the
estuary may possibly have extended up to Crabble, but was certainly
not navigable so far except perhaps by coracles. Many years ago the
remains of a Roman bath were discovered on the site of St. Mary’s
church,[2547] and in 1887 a statue belonging to the period of the Roman
occupation was found ‘during excavations for the foundation of the
Carlton Club, in the Market Place’.[2548] These discoveries help to
define approximately the western limit of the harbour; and I believe
that Planche 17 of the Atlas accompanying Napoleon’s _Histoire de Jules
César_[2549] represents it with tolerable accuracy.
[Illustration: MAP OF ROMNEY MARSH PROPER and the parts adjacent
Reproduced from the map facing page liii of T. Lewin’s “Invasion of
Britain by Julius Cæsar,” 2nd. Edit. Showing what lands would have
been covered by the sea at high water (medium spring tides) before the
construction of the Rhee Wall. The figures denote the depth in feet,
according to levels taken by J. Elliott, of the present surface below
the high-water mark of Spring Tides.
ROMNEYMARSH
as (according to T. Lewin’s final view) It was certainly in the
TIME OF THE SAXONS
probably in the
TIME OF THE ROMANS
and perhaps in the
TIME OF THE BRITONS]
VI. BETWEEN DOVER AND SANDGATE
During the last three centuries, at all events, the coast between
Sandgate and Dover has undergone considerable changes. Large quantities
of stone have been removed from the Folkestone cliffs; and landslips
have occurred at Shakespeare’s Cliff, between Folkestone and Sandgate,
and behind East Wear Bay.[2550] It would be useless, however, for our
purpose, to describe these changes in detail; for they do not affect
the topographical questions that belong to the history of Caesar’s
invasions of Britain. Excepting the disappearance of the little
haven that once existed at Folkestone, the general character of this
section of the coast was much the same in 55 B.C. as to-day. It may
be, however, that the aspect of the high ground above East Wear Bay
was different. Between the cliffs and the heights which rise about
a quarter of a mile to the north of them there is a wild and broken
plateau, called the Warren, through which the railway runs. Referring
to this, William Phillips, a geologist of some repute, wrote in 1821,
‘The cliff, bounding this ruin towards the sea, is, from its position,
not _in situ_; and it is equally clear that the enormous masses of
which it is composed, have fallen forward [probably by ‘repeated
falls’] from near the summit of the cliff _in situ_.’[2551] When these
convulsions began to transform the landscape cannot, as far as I know,
be ascertained.
VII. ROMNEY MARSH
Between Hythe and Dungeness, on the other hand, there has been complete
transformation. There, within the brief span of historical time, wind,
tide, and river, and finally the labour of man, have wrought changes as
remarkable as those that in other regions required the lapse of ages
which the imagination fails to conceive. The antiquary who walks from
Westenhanger Station to the brow of Lympne Hill, and looks out over the
vast field of shingle that extends seaward, and, on his left, towards
Hythe, and then over the broad level of the marsh that stretches away
on his right between the Wealden upland and Dymchurch Wall, will easily
picture to himself the scene that once was there.
1. Before we attempt to construct a map which may represent the
coast-line between Sandgate and Dungeness, as it was in the time
of Caesar, it will be well to state those relevant facts which are
accepted by all geographers. There was a time when the area of Romney
Marsh was covered by a bay. At a later epoch the marsh was fringed by
a bar of shingle, which extended from Winchelsea to a point nearly
opposite Shorncliffe. Between West Hythe and Shorncliffe streams
flowed down from the hills, gradually forced an opening in the shingle
opposite Hythe, through which the sea entered, and thus formed Hythe
harbour, which, after remaining open for many centuries, was finally
choked up about 300 years ago. For some time after the marsh became
habitable the shingle protected it from the sea on the south, but
gradually was so diminished that it became necessary to construct a
sea wall. The river Rother debouched at some point within the area
of Romney Marsh. During the Roman occupation of Britain there was a
harbour called the Portus Lemanis, which has been located by one writer
at Romney and by others at Lympne, while some have identified it with
Hythe Haven. West of West Hythe Oaks, the marsh ‘is a rich mould ...
while all to the east, as far as Sandgate, is (with the exception of a
narrow strip to the south and east of Hythe, between the sea-beach and
the hills) one vast bed of shingle’.[2552]
2. The whole of Romney Marsh, properly so called,[2553] is even now
below the level of high water at spring tides. The hills which form its
northern boundary have themselves changed since the time when the waves
broke against their base. In the course of ages they have lost their
original sharpness of outline, and, as we learn from the geologist who
has described the formation of the Weald, have been ‘worn down into
undulating ground’;[2554] and nearly 200 years ago a local observer
described how, after an unusually wet season, Lympne Hill had been
completely transformed, in a single night, by a landslip.[2555] But
these changes are insignificant in comparison with that by which the
old Bay of Appledore has become a fertile pasture. Of what material
is this land composed? According to the late Thomas Lewin, it is
‘absolutely and exclusively a sea deposit’; and, in proof of this
assertion, he pointed to ‘the marine shells which pervade the whole
mass’.[2556] But it needs little acumen to see that the presence of
marine shells in the marsh does not justify Lewin in using the words
‘absolutely and exclusively’; and the late Colonel George Greenwood
maintained that the marsh had been formed by material brought down from
the Weald by ‘the aqueous erosion of the Rother’.[2557] As a matter of
fact, it was formed by the combined action of river and sea.[2558] But
unless and until a series of borings are systematically made, it will
be impossible to describe the recent strata with precision.[2559]
According to Topley, ‘The cause of the original formation of Romney
Marsh is altogether unknown. It is usually attributed to “the meeting
of the tides”; but as this takes place over a rather wide area, and
as shingle beaches and alluvial flats occur where no tides meet, the
explanation is not altogether satisfactory.’[2560] The well-known
geologist, F. Drew, explains that as soon as the bay had become
so shallow from the accumulation of silt that its bed was exposed
at low water, the sediment carried down by the Rother began to be
deposited on the surface. Like Topley, he confesses that how the silt
had accumulated is ‘not quite clear’; and he thinks that ‘the newly
formed surface’ may have been ‘actually upheaved by oscillation of
level, forming a plain well raised above the level of the sea’,[2561]
which, however, before the historic period, must have suffered a
subsidence.[2562] This supposition was based upon the fact that trees
are found near Appledore a few feet below the surface, which, if they
are _in situ_, must have grown at a time when the marsh was above the
level of the sea, and were perhaps contemporaneous with the submerged
forests of Devonshire and Cornwall.[2563] Some authorities, however, as
we shall presently see, hold[2564] that they were drifted into their
present position.
The late James Elliott, who in the middle of the nineteenth century
was engineer of Dymchurch Wall, diligently investigated the history
of the marsh, and added much to our knowledge. While the marsh was
being formed it was gradually closed by a bar of shingle, composed
of pebbles which had been partly broken off from the cliffs on the
south-west, partly carried down by rivers,[2565] and had been driven
up the Channel by the prevailing winds.[2566] Elliott remarks that
‘the result of such a protection from the open sea would be, that all
matter brought down by the hills would rest nearly where it was first
deposited, and, in process of time, dry land, at certain states of the
tide, would appear’; and that, on the ebb of every tide, ‘all the water
in the bay gradually receded towards the hills, and ... made its exit
at the eastern end of the shingle bank.’[2567] He concludes that the
shingle extended rapidly until it reached the eastern end of what is
now Dymchurch Wall, but that its progress thenceforward was extremely
slow. Meanwhile the sediment deposited by the sea was gradually raising
the surface of the marsh.[2568] Elliott, whose statements and opinions
were incorporated by Lewin in his book on the invasions of Caesar,
affirms that the advancing shingle spit was ‘intersected only by a
channel between Lydd and Romney’, which was ‘the mouth of the estuary
which lay behind the shingle’;[2569] but Lewin, in a later article on
the _Portus Lemanis_,[2570] appears to have abandoned this view, for
he there implies that the spit was continuous. At some period which
preceded the erection of the Rhee Wall, that is to say, the first
enclosure or ‘inning’ of the marsh, it would appear to have reached the
foot of the hills at West Hythe Oaks.[2571] The result, according to
Lewin, was that the marsh was temporarily enclosed. But, he says, ‘this
bar to the exit of waters from the marsh could not long continue, for,
though the sea was excluded, the Limen [that is to say, the Rother]
... and twenty smaller streams were continually increasing the volume
of water within the marsh, and ... the shingle spit was burst asunder
between Romney and Lydd.’ Thus, if Lewin’s final view is correct, the
sea again found an entrance on the west of Romney, and continued to
overflow the marsh at high tide until it was finally shut out by the
erection of the Rhee Wall. West Hythe Oaks was not the final goal of
the shingle spit. For a long period, as Lewin remarks, ‘the shingle
from the west continued to advance ... and for a time without again
touching the hills;’ but at length the advancing spit ‘was again
wrested aside and dashed against the hills at Hythe, between the
present barracks and the more eastern of the two Hythe bridges over
the canal’. According to Elliott, however, whose view was adopted by
Lewin in the Appendix to his book on the invasion of Britain by Caesar,
the shingle was not ‘dashed against the hills at Hythe’, but opposite
Shorncliffe. Anyhow the final result was that from the eastern end of
what is now Dymchurch Wall to a point nearly opposite Shorncliffe there
extended an irregular tract of shingle, broken only opposite Hythe by
an opening, which led to a narrow harbour extending along the foot of
the hills. This opening was due to the streams which flowed down from
the hills and found a vent by bursting the barrier of shingle, and
the scour of which kept the harbour open until, about three hundred
years ago, it was finally choked up. According to Elliott, the western
extremity of this harbour was at West Hythe Oaks; according to Lewin’s
final view at Hythe itself. Between Dymchurch and Hythe the shingle
formed a broad field; but the section between Hythe and Shorncliffe,
which formed the southern boundary of Hythe harbour, was long and
narrow. The whole tract was ‘perfectly flat and _above high-water
mark_’; and Elliott argues that it extended much further seaward in
Caesar’s time than it does now, because, while the supply of shingle
drifted from the south-west was cut off by the gradual elongation of
Dungeness, the eastward movement of the shingle along the fringe of the
marsh still went on.[2572] This argument he supports by a comparison
of the Ordnance Survey map executed in 1817 with an old map of the
marsh, probably made about the year 1550, which is in the Cottonian
MSS.[2573] at the British Museum. Assuming the accuracy of the old map,
it would appear that in the 267 years the shingle had receded about
two furlongs; and Elliott concluded that in Caesar’s time the coast
line at Hythe must have been nearly a mile from the hills. Having had
considerable experience in the handling of old maps, I so far differ
from Elliott that I am rather disposed to assume the inaccuracy of the
one on which he relies; but he is quite justified in concluding that
the coast line was much further from the Hythe hills in 55 B.C. than
now.[2574]
Elliott’s account of the formation of the Marsh has, however, been
recently disputed in a paper by George Dowker,[2575] which, although
it swarms with bibliographical and historical mistakes,[2576] cannot
safely be ignored. The author begins by endeavouring to show that
the Rother originally entered the sea at Romney; that it gradually
raised both its bed and its banks by depositing sediment; and that
‘the Rhee Wall was, in the first place, a natural river-bank’--the
bank of the Rother--‘subsequently raised and altered by the Barons of
the Cinque Port of Romney’,[2577] but (if I have grasped his meaning,
which is often obscure) only between Snargate and Warehorn.[2578] He
tells us that ‘The sequence of changes in the Marsh may be summarized
as follows:--Firstly, a shallow bay existed in a depression in the
underlying rocks. Into this bay the waters of the Rother, Tillingham,
and Brede, on their way to their outlet near Romney, deposited their
silt, so that the northern half of the Marsh had become dry land
previous to the time of the Romans. Around this bay were formed
sand-hills. In time of flood the waters of the river that ran out at
Romney overflowed, and, depositing silt, raised the banks on either
side. A slight depression of the land commenced, and has continued.
Beaches accumulated, especially between Romney and Hythe, and between
Romney and Winchelsea. Romney probably formed a promontory near
Dymchurch, near where the ancient river, then called the Limen,
discharged its waters.’[2579] He explains that originally the sea was
excluded from the marsh by sand-hills, and that ‘the sand-hills appear
to have been formed at a period before the accumulation of the beaches
had commenced, since the beach effectually stops the formation of
sand-hills’.[2580] No sand-hills now exist in the marsh, except between
Rye and Lydd, near New Romney, and near West Hythe; but, says Dowker,
‘We may connect these sand-hills by a hypothetical line extending
from Rye to Hythe.’[2581] The reason which he gives for believing
that there has been a depression of the land since the time of the
Romans is that he has found evidences of post-Roman subsidence in ‘the
neighbourhood of Richborough, Reculvers, and the Swale marshes of
Sittingbourne’.[2582]
Now Dowker gives no sufficient reason for refusing to accept Elliott’s
view (which he travesties) that the sea once found its way over the
marsh through a gap between the advancing shingle and the hills,
and also through a break in the shingle spit,--in other words, for
maintaining that the marsh had become dry land before the shingle
beach was formed. The notion that the Rhee Wall was, ‘in the first
place, a natural river-bank’ is simply fantastic. To begin with,
its direction is almost a straight line, whereas it is well known
that in open plains, where the slope is slight, rivers invariably
pursue tortuous courses.[2583] Along what is now called the Rhee Wall
runs the high road from Appledore to New Romney. It occupies what
was formerly a channel embanked on either side; and this channel
provided an outlet for the waters of the Rother, whose actual mouth
was at Appledore.[2584] As Elliott says, ‘In erecting this wall it
became necessary to provide some exit for the waters from the hills
as well as for the drainage of the land enclosed. This was done by
cutting a channel parallel with the wall from the pool or lake at the
_embouchure_ of the river Limene at Appledore to the sea at Romney ...
the wall was necessary to be continued across this lake until it met
the high land at Appledore.’[2585] Again, I cannot understand why,
if Romney Marsh Proper became dry land before the time of the Romans
without being artificially enclosed, Walland Marsh and Guildford Marsh,
which lie west and south of the Rhee Wall, should still have been
periodically overflowed by the sea; nor is it clear how in that case
the Rother could have excavated its hypothetical channel along the line
of the Rhee Wall. Lastly, it is impossible, on Dowker’s theory, to
locate the Portus Lemanis. He denies that it was at Lympne: it could
not, on his theory, have been at Hythe or at West Hythe, for he implies
that the shingle beach, behind which lay the historic Hythe Haven, did
not yet exist;[2586] and Romney--the only other possible site--is, as I
shall afterwards show, out of the question.
I am not concerned to dispute Dowker’s theory that the sea was excluded
from the marsh on the south by sand-hills before the shingle beach was
formed, though the mere presence of patches of blown sand near West
Hythe and near Romney does not justify him in connecting them by ‘a
hypothetical line extending from Rye to Hythe’; nor does he offer any
theory to account for the disappearance of this hypothetical line after
it began to be protected by a barrier of shingle. The important point
is that the fact of the erection of the Rhee Wall proves that before it
existed Romney Marsh Proper was liable to be flooded by high tides.
3. It has long been a vexed question where, in the time of Caesar,
and during the Roman occupation of Britain, the Rother discharged
itself. Hasted[2587] affirms that the bed of the river ‘may yet very
easily be traced ... under the hills from _West Hythe_ to Appledore’.
Beale Poste,[2588] who agrees with him, says that, according to the
_Itinerary_ of Antonine, the port of the river Lemanis, which he
identifies with the Rother, was the Portus Lemanis; that, according
to Somner, ancient records mention ‘the Lymne branch of the Rother
as still in existence in ... 820 at ... Warehorne, at about ...
three miles from the bend of our river towards Lymne’; and that ‘we
find the name Portus Limneus in Ethelwerd’s _Chronicle_, iv, 3, in
his annals of ... 893, which seems to imply the “Port of the river
Lemanis”.’ Holloway,[2589] the historian of Romney Marsh, after saying,
like Hasted, that ‘traces of the ancient bed of a river are still
visible under the foot of the Kentish cliffs’, adds that ‘our ancient
chroniclers, according to Lambarde, called this same place “Limene
Mouthe”, and which is interpreted by Leland to betoken the mouth of
the river Rother’. Drew[2590] holds that the river Limen, or, as it is
called by the anonymous geographer of Ravenna, Lemana,[2591] must in
the ninth century have flowed past Sandtun, ‘the patch of Blown Sand
between West Hythe and Butter’s (or Botolph’s) Bridge,’ because in a
charter of the year 833 allusion is made to ‘a piece of land at Sandtun
that was bounded on the south by the river Limen’. Finally, Mr. F. P.
Gulliver thinks it probable that the Rother had, a thousand years ago,
two ‘main distributaries’, one of which flowed out ‘through an inlet in
the bar south-west of Hythe’.[2592]
Hasted’s statement is quite incorrect. Elliott, who knew every inch of
Romney Marsh, positively affirms that ‘between Lymne and Appledore ...
not the slightest trace of any river remains’;[2593] and his statement
is confirmed by Topley.[2594] Dowker[2595] also observes that if the
Rother had ever flowed out near Hythe, ‘it must have occupied the
space where the Military Canal exists, in which case it has left no
historical or other trace behind, and against such a river the Ree
Wall could have been no protection.’ Moreover, if there is any force
in the argument of Drew, the river flowed south of the blown sand near
Butter’s Bridge, that is to say, a good mile from the hills.[2596]
Elliott accounts for the belief that the river entered the sea near
Lympne by the fact that a depression exists along the foot of the
hills, ‘many taking that to be the river which in truth was only an
estuary ... and which would only assume something of the character of
a river at low water.’[2597] In reply to Beale Poste, it is sufficient
to remark that the _Itinerary_ does _not_ say that the port of the
river Lemanis (or rather Lemana) was the Portus Lemanis, nor does it
even mention the river: it simply gives the distance of the Portus
Lemanis from Durovernum, or Canterbury.[2598] Beale Poste misquotes
Somner, who does not say a single word about ‘the Lymne branch of the
Rother’.[2599] It is quite true that we find the words _portu Limneo_
in the Chronicle of Ethelwerd;[2600] but it is not easy to see how
these words convey any more information about the geographical position
of the port than the words _portus Lemanis_. As to Holloway’s argument,
all that Lambarde[2601] says is that Robert Talbot,[2602] ‘a man of
our time,’ was of opinion that Shipway, near West Hythe, was so called
‘because it lay in the way to the Haven where the ships were woont to
ride.[2603] And that haven,’ adds Lambarde, ‘taketh hee to be the same
which ... is called ... of Antoninus _Limanis_, of our chroniclers
Limene Mouth, and interpreted by Leland to betoken the mouth of the
river of Rother.’ The _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ states distinctly that
the mouth of the Limen was at Appledore;[2604] and Leland was far
too acute to be duped by the notion that it had ever been at Lympne:
‘where the Ryver _Limene_ should be,’ he says, ‘I can not tel, except
yt should be that that cummeth above Appledor ... and that ys Cowrs ys
now changed.’[2605] With regard to Drew’s argument, allusion is made in
two charters[2606] to ‘a piece of land at Sandtun, that was bounded on
the south by the river Limen’, namely, a charter of King Aethilberht of
Kent, dated February 20, 732, and a charter of King Ecgberht of Kent,
dated 833. In the latter it is stated that there were salt-pans ‘in
the same place’, namely at Sandtun;[2607] and in both the boundaries
of the land are defined in almost identical terms,--‘the boundaries
of this piece of land are, on the east the King’s land; on the south
the river called the Limen; on the west and on the north the Hudan
Fleot.’[2608] That Sandtun was the patch of blown sand between West
Hythe and Botolph’s Bridge is a pure assumption on the part of Drew.
Furthermore, he would have found it difficult to indicate the position
of ‘the King’s land’ on the east, seeing that on the east, if the Limen
debouched opposite Lympne, there was only shingle or sea. Finally, it
is certain that before 833 Romney Marsh Proper had been enclosed;
and how a river could have flowed along the north of the marsh across
the Rhee Wall, or how, if it had worked this miracle, it should have
subsequently disappeared without leaving any trace of its existence,
is more than I can understand.[2609] At all events the level of the
marsh, which is 6 feet 6 inches lower at Appledore Dowles than at West
Hythe Oaks, proves that, even assuming the former existence of such a
river, centuries must have elapsed from the time when it ceased to flow
beneath the hills to the time when the shingle closed the marsh at West
Hythe Oaks.[2610]
Elliott[2611] concluded, ‘from several careful surveys of the whole
district,’ that the mouth of the Limen was at Appledore, where it
entered the estuary; and, as Roach Smith[2612] truly remarks, this
conclusion is confirmed by the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_. ‘We now,’ says
Elliott,[2613] ‘find the whole country about the mouth of the Limene,
at Appledore, in a circuit of about a mile (and at no other part),
at a few feet under the present surface, covered with trees of the
oak, alder, and birch ... evidently, from their position, having been
drifted from a distance, and deposited where now found.’ Lewin[2614]
points out that this ‘is the very lowest part of the marsh’; and he
holds that ‘the presence of oak trees ... decides that the trees are
not _in situ_,[2615] for ... there is something in the Marsh mould
uncongenial to the oak’. The course of the river, Elliott tells us, is
‘still traceable between Appledore and the Isle of Oxney, and thence
into the estuary, about half a mile south of Appledore’. Once, as we
have seen, according to Elliott, the estuary found an exit opposite
Lympne: when this was closed, there remained only the channel between
Romney and Lydd.[2616]
4. It is now necessary to inquire what was the geographical position of
the Portus Lemanis. The reader will, of course, see that this question
is quite distinct from that which he has just been considering. Whether
the Rother ever flowed along the north of the marsh or not, everybody
admits that the sea once had access there even at low tide; and the
question is whether the Portus Lemanis was this estuary, or rather that
part of it which lay below Lympne Hill. This is the generally accepted
view.[2617] In support of it Appach[2618] argues as follows:--First,
the name ‘Lympne’ is obviously a corruption of _Lemanis_, and Leland
found a tradition existing that Lympne had once been a port. Secondly,
at Lympne, Stone Street, the Roman road from Canterbury, ‘terminates
abruptly,’ and ‘no trace whatever of its continuance southward into
the marsh can be discovered’. ‘For what reason,’ asks Appach, ‘could
this road have been made if Lympne was not then a port?’ He goes on
to observe that, according to the _Itinerary_ of Antonine, ‘Portus
Lemanis was one stage distant from Canterbury;’ that, besides Stone
Street, the only Roman roads which converged at Canterbury were those
which led to Reculver, Richborough, and Dover; and therefore that the
Portus Lemanis must have been situated on Stone Street, and obviously
at its termination. Thirdly, according to the _Itinerary_, the distance
from Canterbury to the Portus Lemanis was 16 Roman miles, or about
25,872 yards;[2619] and the actual distance from ‘the margin of the
marsh below Lympne measured along the Stone Street to the point where
all the Roman roads at Canterbury would converge, if produced, is
fifteen statute miles’, or 26,400 yards.[2620] Fourthly, the existence
of Stutfall Castle proves that the Portus Lemanis was at Lympne; and,
moreover, the castle ‘had no southern wall because the sea came up to
the foot of the fortifications’. Fifthly, in the _Table of Peutinger_,
Lemanis is ‘marked with a castle, like Richborough and Dover’.
These arguments may, at first sight, appear conclusive: in reality
they are worthless. (1) Leland[2621] does not mention any tradition
about the port: he simply asserts that ‘Lymme Hill or Lyme was sumtyme
a famose Haven, and good for Shyppes that might cum to the Foote of
the Hille’. Lambarde,[2622] it is true, says that there was in his
time a tradition that Shipway was so called because ‘it lay in the
way to the Haven where the ships were woont to ride’; and he calls
this tradition ‘the report of the countrie people, who hold faste the
same opinion which they have by tradition receaved from their Elders’.
Also he himself asserts that ‘at the first, ships were accustomed to
discharge at Lymme’. But Shipway ‘lay in the way’ to West Hythe, not to
Lympne. As for the alleged tradition, everything depends upon the date
of its origin; and this cannot be ascertained. The name ‘Lympne’ may
be connected with _Lemanis_; but this does not prove that the Portus
Lemanis was at the foot of the heights on which Lympne stands: if it
had been east of Stutfall Castle, and the nearest town in Roman times
or later had been on the site of Lympne, the origin of the name would
be perfectly clear. (2) Appach insists that Stone Street ‘terminates
abruptly’ at Lympne; but, as a matter of fact, a road diverges to the
right from the straight course of Stone Street at New Inn Green, and
terminates just north of Stutfall Castle.[2623] Mr. Thurston of Ashford
points out that if the course of Stone Street were continued in a
straight line from New Inn Green, it ‘would point to the Shipway [or
Shepway] Cross, and continue down the present roadway which descends
the hill to West Hythe; and’, he adds, ‘this is the only place along
the hill where a roadway could possibly descend it in a straight line,
and I believe it was naturally selected as the road to the ships or
port.’[2624] (3) As for the argument based upon the distance given
in the _Itinerary_ from Canterbury to the Portus Lemanis, a moment’s
reflection will convince any reader who uses his map that it holds good
for the theory that the Portus Lemanis was at West Hythe as well as for
the view which Appach defends. (4) The situation of Stutfall Castle
may no doubt be used as an argument to prove that the Portus Lemanis
was at Lympne: but the castle is barely a mile and a half from West
Hythe Oaks, which, as we shall presently see, was in all probability
the western end of the port; and, although it was believed when Appach
wrote that the castle had no southern wall, excavation has since proved
that it had.[2625] Appach’s last argument depends, like the one which
precedes it, upon the assumption that Stutfall Castle would have been
useless unless it had stood in _immediate proximity_ to the Portus
Lemanis. What if Lemanis was ‘marked with a castle’? Why should not the
castle have protected the neighbouring part of ‘the Saxon shore’ and a
harbour at West Hythe?
The late antiquary, W. H. Black,[2626] remarked further, that the
discovery of a Roman altar in Stutfall Castle, erected by the ‘admiral
of the British fleet’ (_praefectus classis Britannicae_), proves that
the Portus Lemanis was at Lympne; and, observing that ‘the Saxon
Chronicle tells us of the arrival of a fleet of Danes at “Limene
mouth”’, he argues that ‘it is impossible to deny the identity of
Lymne with that name’. But, whatever may be the etymological connexion
between _Lympne_ and _Limene_, it has been shown already that according
to the very chronicle which Black cites, the mouth of the Limen was
at Appledore;[2627] and the discovery of the Roman altar is perfectly
consistent with the view that the harbour which was the admiral’s naval
base was near West Hythe.
Elliott originally held that the Portus Lemanis was the estuary at
Lympne;[2628] and his opinion was quoted by superficial writers in
support of this view several years after he had himself discarded it.
For he finally came to the conclusion that, even as early as Caesar’s
time, there was no harbour at Lympne.[2629] He tells us that ‘recent
investigations in taking a series of levels over the whole of Romney
Marsh have established the fact that the estuary must have been closed
at the eastern extremity (where the Portus Lemanis is commonly looked
for) many centuries before the sea was shut out from ... Romney Marsh
Proper; for at the extreme eastern end of Romney Marsh, by Hythe
Oaks, the surface of the land is 18 inches higher than it is a mile
westward, a state of things that could not have existed had there been
any outlet towards the east after the closing of the Marsh westward.
The inset and outset of the tides twice a day to and from the estuary
would have counteracted the silting, and produced not an elevation,
but a depression of the surface. There is ... a regular and continuous
fall of the land next the hills, from Hythe Oaks into Appledore Dowles
... the lowest part of the Marsh being 6 feet 6 inches lower than
the land at Hythe Oaks. There could have been no silting after the
inclosure of the Marsh, and the present level is such as it was when
the Marsh was reclaimed.... The barrier which sealed up the eastern
mouth of the estuary was the accumulation of shingle from the west, and
(_sic_) which long before the historic period had reached the hills
at Hythe Oaks. If Romney Marsh, at the foot of the castrum [Stutfall
Castle], was dry land at that time [A.D. 368-9, when Theodosius[2630]
was in Britain] and occupied by the Romans (as we know to have been
the case), Stutfall could not have been the “Portus Lemanis” ... as it
was not accessible from the sea, and lay a mile and a half at least
from it. The sea could not have flowed there without putting the whole
of Romney Marsh Proper under water to the depth of eight or ten feet
every springtide.’ Similarly, Lewin[2631] states, on the authority of
Elliott, that ‘the greater elevation of the soil towards the east of
Romney Marsh Proper can be only accounted for by the fact that when
the shingle “full” had been thrown quite across the Marsh at West Oaks
... the sea still entered from the west, and that, thenceforth, the
process of silting went on for many centuries ... most rapidly towards
the east, where the water was tranquil, and less rapidly towards the
[site of the subsequently erected] Rhee Wall, in which direction was
the scour of the current’.
‘Many centuries’ is a vague expression; but for ‘many’ substitute
‘three’, and, even for the time of Caesar, the argument still holds
good,--unless Elliott’s theory of the formation of the marsh is to be
rejected.
But there are writers whom Elliott’s reasoning (if indeed they have
considered it) leaves unconvinced. According to Mr. George E. Fox, it
has been proved by excavation that the existing _castellum_ at Stutfall
is not earlier than the time of Constantine;[2632] but Sir Victor
Horsley, while confirming this statement, tells us that he has himself
found ‘in the foundation of the chief gate an altar ... marked with
barnacles, having been clearly at one time under the sea’; and from
this he infers that an earlier fort was ‘overwhelmed by an incursion
of the sea over Romney level’. Sir Victor also tells us that he has
found ‘in the concrete boulder formation of the south wall ... a coin
of Maximinus, who flourished 237 A.D.’, and ‘at the foot of the wall
on the inner side, a Gaulish coin of Tetricus the elder, of a date
about 260, and finally in the black soil of the camp, i.e. in the
most recent and superficial layers, numerous coins of the Constantine
family’.[2633]
I do not know whether Sir Victor Horsley concludes from these
discoveries that there was a harbour at Lympne when the earlier
hypothetical _castellum_ at Stutfall was destroyed; but at all events
that is the opinion of Mr. Fox. But the ‘incursion of the sea’ which
Sir Victor Horsley believes to have overwhelmed the original fort, if
it was not caused by an abnormally high tide rushing in between Romney
and Lydd before the erection of the Rhee Wall, may have been due to a
similar tide which burst the bar of shingle between Dymchurch and West
Hythe. Even after the marsh had been artificially enclosed, such floods
occurred. Stukeley[2634] tells us that ‘George Hunt, an old man, living
in the farm-house ... says, once the sea-bank broke, and his house with
all the adjacent marshes was floated’,[2635] &c.
Lewin maintained that the Portus Lemanis was neither at Lympne nor at
West Hythe, but at Hythe. This, it should be noted, was the conclusion
at which he finally arrived:[2636] when he wrote his book on the
invasion of Julius Caesar, he held that in 55 B.C. there was a port at
Lympne, although in the Appendix to that book he discarded this view,
and argued that the only port was a pool harbour extending behind a
shingle spit from West Hythe Oaks to a point opposite Shorncliffe.
His final view, as we have already seen,[2637] was that this harbour
extended no further westward than Hythe itself: but in giving utterance
to this opinion he did not explain why he had abandoned the one which
preceded it, and indeed made no allusion to it at all.
He states that ‘in the course of ages’, after the shingle had reached
West Hythe Oaks, it ‘was again wrested aside and dashed against the
hills at Hythe, between the present barracks and the more eastern of
the two Hythe bridges over the canal’. He goes on to say that ‘the
part between Hythe Oaks and Hythe (now Duck Marsh) was thus barred
from the sea, and became a lake into which flowed the rivulet called
Slabrook and other springs, and these waters accumulating forced their
way back at Hythe Oaks, and there opened a way for themselves ...
into the estuary in the west; but, as the flood was not considerable,
the outlet was of no great breadth. The shingle spit ... was again
carried along eastward until it reached Shorncliffe.... Between Hythe
and Shorncliffe, however, was left behind (i.e. north of) the spit, a
triangular space, into which flowed two streams ... one from Saltwood
and the other called Seabrook, and the waters within this spit were
gradually swollen, until they forced a passage through the shingle, at
a point near the end of the elm avenue at Hythe.’ The change which his
opinion underwent will be at once apparent to any one who compares the
map which Elliott constructed for _The Invasion of Britain by Julius
Caesar_ (facing page liii) with that which accompanies the article in
the fortieth volume of _Archaeologia_[2638] (facing page 369). Lewin
argues that it was so easy to exclude the sea from Duck Marsh that
‘probably the inclosure was made by the Britons before the arrival of
the Romans. On the south-east,’ he explains, ‘the shingle bank was
continuous up to the hills ... on the west the sea entered only from
the marsh at the foot of the hills by a narrow channel; and all that
was required was a short dam at this point between the shingle bed
and the hills.’ The remains of this dam, Lewin observes, are ‘still
distinguishable ... at Hythe Oaks, but the part next the hills has been
swept away by the military canal. This partial inclosure, prior to the
inclosure of Romney Marsh, accounts for a fact otherwise inexplicable,
viz. that Duck Marsh is not within the jurisdiction of Romney
Marsh.’[2639]
Perhaps. But the date of the construction of the dam is not known.
May it not have been made after, or simultaneously with, the erection
of the Rhee Wall, to secure Romney Marsh against all possibility of
inundation, not to protect Duck Marsh, which, according to Lewin’s
earlier view, was originally overflowed by Hythe harbour? In other
words, is it not possible that when the dam was made Hythe harbour
extended westward as far as West Hythe Oaks? This, as I have already
said, was not merely Lewin’s original view: it was also the view which
Elliott, his friend and adviser, retained _after_ the publication of
the article in _Archaeologia_. At all events this view finds expression
in a map which Elliott prepared for Furley’s _History of the Weald
of Kent_, which was not published until 1871, five years after the
appearance of Lewin’s article. That being the case, and considering
that Lewin did not explain the reasons which led him to change his
opinion, I am unable to follow him.
In support of the theory that the Portus Lemanis was at Hythe Lewin
argues, first, that Stone Street terminated at West Hythe; secondly,
that the port could not have been at West Hythe; otherwise ‘_the whole
of West Hythe ... would have been deluged_’. ‘The very name,’ he adds,
‘shows that Hythe was the principal town, and West Hythe an accretion
to it.’ Thirdly, he affirms that Roman remains have been found at
Hythe; and, fourthly, that a branch from Stone Street led to Hythe. He
also bases an argument upon the itinerary of Richard of Cirencester,
which, as every scholar now knows, is a forgery.[2640]
Stone Street does terminate, as Lewin says, at West Hythe; but the
fact goes to prove that it gave access to a harbour which was at West
Hythe.[2641] Granting that West Hythe would have been ‘deluged’ if the
port had been there, what then? Why should it not have been? Lewin does
not explain what he means by ‘the whole of West Hythe’; and, in default
of this explanation, it is impossible to understand his argument.[2642]
He himself, as we have seen, in his book on the invasion of Britain
by Julius Caesar makes the port extend westward as far as West Hythe
Oaks; and Black shows that, so far from its being true that West Hythe
is merely an ‘accretion’ of Hythe, Hythe is merely East Hythe, and
that it is so called in Ogilby’s _Britannia_.[2643] The discovery of
Roman remains at Hythe does not prove that Hythe was the Portus Lemanis
any more than the discovery of Roman remains at Dymchurch proves that
the Portus Lemanis was there. Or rather, the discovery does not prove
that the Portus Lemanis extended no further westward than Hythe; for
I freely admit that it extended in front of and to the east of it. It
is not proved that a branch from Stone Street led to Hythe;[2644] and
if there was such a branch, the fact does not prove that the harbour
did not extend as far as West Hythe Oaks. Finally, Black points out
that, whereas the distance of Lympne (and, he might have added, of West
Hythe) from Canterbury corresponds with that of the Portus Lemanis from
Durovernum, as given in the _Itinerary_ of Antonine, the distance of
Hythe by road from the same place is two miles further.[2645]
5. The first step taken for the enclosure of Romney Marsh was the
erection of the Rhee Wall. By whom and at what date this work was
executed is not certainly known. It is generally attributed to the
Romans; but Lewin[2646] assures us that Mr. Smiles, in his _Lives of
the Engineers_, ‘expresses an opinion that the Marsh was reclaimed by
the Belgae.’ What Mr. Smiles[2647] really says is that ‘the reclamation
of this tract is supposed to be due to the Frisians’; and he does not
tell us by whom the supposition is entertained, or on what grounds it
is based. Lewin himself, asking whether [Appledore] ‘Dowles’ is not
derived from the Celtic word _dol_, says that ‘if a part of Romney
Marsh was named by the Ancient Britons, the marsh itself must have
been reclaimed by them’.[2648] From the same word Appach[2649] draws
precisely the opposite inference. ‘Apuldore Dowles,’ he says, ‘appears
to be allied to the Welsh _dol_, a bend. If so, it would mean a bend
or curve, and so a recess or bay; and Apuldore Dowles would mean the
bay of Apuldore.’ Whatever may be the value of this argument, the name
‘Apuldore Dowles,’ does not go to prove that Romney Marsh was ‘inned’
by the Britons; for, as Appach[2650] truly remarks, there is no other
local name in Romney Marsh Proper which shows any trace of a Celtic
derivation.
Mr. W. A. S. Robertson,[2651] on the other hand, states, on the
authority of Professor Skeat, that ‘Rumenea’, the name by which,
according to Lambarde,[2652] Romney was known to the Saxons, is
compounded of the Gaelic word _ruimen_ (marsh) and the Saxon affix
_ea_ (river); and he concludes that ‘before the Roman occupation there
was in this great estuary sufficient land, uncovered by water, to be
denominated ... _Rum_ or _Ruimen_’. Again, arguing that the καινος
λιμην, or ‘new harbour’, mentioned by Ptolemy,[2653] was at Romney, he
says that ‘if it was called into existence by ... the Rhee Wall, it
follows that the Rhee Wall’ was ‘probably formed at least as early as
the first century of the Christian era’.
If the ‘new harbour’ was at Romney! There is not the slightest
evidence that it was there.[2654] As for the word _ruimen_, how can
Mr. Robertson prove that it was applied to Romney Marsh ‘before the
Roman occupation’? Moreover, supposing that the marsh was not embanked
by the Britons, there was ‘sufficient land uncovered by water to
be denominated _Ruimen_’ twice every day, when the tide was low,
before the Rhee Wall was made; and the name lends no support to Mr.
Robertson’s theory.
I do not attach much importance to the argument, first propounded
by Sir W. Dugdale[2655] and often repeated since, that because the
Britons, according to Tacitus[2656]--or rather, according to a speech
put by Tacitus into the mouth of a British chief--were employed by the
Romans in draining and embanking marshes, therefore the Romans enclosed
this particular marsh. But, considering that Roman remains have
frequently been discovered in that part of the marsh which lies on the
east of the Rhee Wall,[2657] it is surely inexplicable that if the wall
was built by the Britons, no Celtic remains have ever been found there.
Appach[2658] not only rejects the theory that the Britons built the
Rhee Wall, but denies that Romney Marsh Proper was enclosed during the
Roman occupation. He maintains that, in Caesar’s time, ‘the northern
portion, at all events, and possibly the whole of the interval between
the island of Romney and the high ground of Kent was open sea.’ For,
he argues, ‘Lympne was the ancient Portus Lemanis ... that place could
not have been a port unless there had been free access to it from the
Channel, and it is clear from the manner in which the marsh and shingle
were deposited, that there was always open sea between Lympne and the
Channel until the interval between the ancient island at Romney and the
high ground of Kent had been closed by the gradual growth of the marsh
and shingle.’
The assumption upon which this argument rests has been already
disproved: the Portus Lemanis was not at Lympne. Appach’s theory forces
him to assume that the sediment which formed the marsh was deposited at
an incredibly rapid rate. He maintains[2659] that ‘the upper portion
of Romney Marsh, for a depth of thirty feet ... below its present
surface (which would give sufficient water for the heaviest of Caesar’s
ships at the lowest Spring tides) might very well have been deposited’
in ‘about five hundred years’. But, according to Elliott,[2660] the
average rate at which the silt was deposited was not more than about
one-eighth of an inch _per annum_.
Dowker, on the other hand, although he once regarded it as ‘evident
that at the period of Caesar’s invasion the marsh was little better
than a swamp, great part being under water at high tide’, maintained
that the discovery of Roman pottery on the west of Dymchurch disproved
Appach’s theory.[2661] But he did not take account of dates. Appach
himself[2662] noted the discoveries which had been made near Dymchurch;
but he observed that while some of the objects discovered had been
pronounced by the Society of Antiquaries to be ‘decidedly Roman’,
others had been attributed by the same body to subsequent periods; and
he concluded that the marsh had not been enclosed before the middle of
the fifth century.
This theory is pulverized by one fact which Appach ignores. Dymchurch
is not the only place in Romney Marsh Proper where Roman remains have
been found: they have been discovered in Eastbridge, at Newchurch,
at Ivychurch, and indeed over the whole area.[2663] On the other
hand, Welland Marsh, Guildford Marsh, and Denge Marsh--those parts of
Romney Marsh, popularly so called, which extend westward of the Rhee
Wall--have yielded none.[2664] The inference is certain: Romney Marsh
Proper was enclosed during the Roman occupation of Britain.
6. The conclusions which we have now reached are, first, that the
Rother did not, in the time of Caesar, enter the sea at Lympne, but
debouched into the estuary near Appledore; secondly, that the marsh
was then closed at West Hythe Oaks, and therefore that there was no
harbour at Lympne; thirdly, that the Rhee Wall had not then been built,
and therefore that the marsh was still flooded at spring tides by the
inrush of the sea between Romney and Lydd; fourthly, that the Portus
Lemanis was a pool harbour extending from West Hythe to a point nearly
opposite Shorncliffe; and, lastly, that the Rhee Wall was built in
Roman times.
But, as the reader will hereafter see, if these conclusions are
erroneous, the error will not lead us astray when we have to determine
the place where Caesar landed in Britain.
PORTUS ITIUS
I. REVIEW OF THE CONTROVERSY
The greater part of the vast literature which has accumulated on the
question of the identity of the Portus Itius is obsolete;[2665] and
it is now sometimes taken for granted that the choice is restricted
to Wissant and Boulogne. Nevertheless, as I am determined to set the
question at rest, I shall examine the claims of three other ports,
which, in recent times, have found advocates whose names command
respect,--the estuary of the Somme, Ambleteuse, and Calais.
The question began to be seriously discussed in the fifteenth century.
The Italian geographer, Raymond de Marliano, identified the Portus
Itius with Calais;[2666] and in the following century the famous
Ortelius[2667] did the same. Chifflet[2668] and other scholars, well
known in their day, chose St. Omer, situated, as they believed, at
the head of a wide and shallow gulf, which was erroneously assumed to
have covered the low-lying lands between Sangatte and Dunkirk.[2669]
Adrien de Valois[2670] declared for Étaples; and numerous other absurd
suggestions were defended with more or less ingenuity. From Dieppe
to Ghent there was not a harbour, a roadstead, or a fishing port,
which had not its champion. But the controversy soon began to centre
itself between Wissant and Boulogne. Camden[2671] was the first to
declare for Wissant. Du Fresne[2672] (commonly called Du Cange), one
of the most illustrious French scholars of the seventeenth century,
defended its claims against Sanson; and d’Anville,[2673] Henry,[2674]
Walckenaer,[2675] and Sir Richard Colt Hoare[2676] followed his
example. Cluver[2677] wrote briefly but effectively on the other side;
and Scaliger[2678] characteristically exclaimed that those who did
not, like himself, decide for Boulogne, were lunatics. During the last
half-century, although Wissant has not lacked able defenders, the
case for Boulogne has been tending to prevail. But the arguments of
Haigneré, of Napoleon the Third, of Desjardins, and finally of Rudolf
Schneider failed to silence opposition. Men so able as George Long, Dr.
Guest, Dean Merivale, Dr. Hodgkin, Karl Müller, and Alphonse Wauters
remained unconvinced: Freeman[2679] roundly asserted that ‘since Dr.
Guest’s exposition of the matter it is hardly necessary to say that
“Portus Itius” or “Iccius” is not Boulogne’: Professor Ridgeway and Mr.
H. E. Malden, in their animated controversy[2680] on the question of
Caesar’s landing-place, agreed in identifying the harbour from which
he sailed with Wissant: more recently Dr. Emil Hübner[2681] has done
the same; and the well-known Caesarian scholar, Professor H. J. Heller,
at the close of a pungent criticism[2682] of Schneider’s dissertation,
concluded that the identity of the Portus Itius was still an open
question. Mr. H. F. Tozer,[2683] indeed, has recently pronounced the
question to be insoluble; and Mommsen,[2684] who in 1889 still adhered
to his old belief, that ‘among the many possibilities most may perhaps
be said in favour of the view that the Itian port ... is to be sought
near Ambleteuse’, nevertheless remained convinced that ‘it requires the
implicit faith of local topographers to proceed to the determination
of the locality with such data’.
Evidently, then, unless the problem is to be abandoned in despair,
there is room for another treatise. But this treatise must justify
its existence. I have not ‘the implicit faith of local topographers’:
but there are more data than Mommsen had leisure to examine; and the
locality can be determined with absolute certainty.
There is indeed a summary way of dealing with the question which has
long since satisfied practical men: doubt is confined to the minds
of scholars and of those who look to them for guidance. Men who are
familiar with war and who have a sufficient knowledge of the conditions
of navigation in the Straits of Dover know that there was only one
port on the north-eastern coast of Gaul which would have answered all
Caesar’s requirements, and that Caesar would not have made a foolish
choice. Accordingly the greatest of modern soldiers affirmed without
hesitation that the greatest soldier of Rome had sailed to Britain from
Boulogne. But this reasoning, perhaps because of its simplicity, has
not seemed conclusive to the learned world.
II. THE DATA FURNISHED BY CAESAR, STRABO, AND PTOLEMY
Caesar says that, before his first expedition to Britain, he sent Gaius
Volusenus to reconnoitre the British coast and ascertain what harbours
were capable of accommodating a large fleet, and that he himself
marched with his whole force for the country of the Morini, ‘because
the shortest passage to Britain was from their country’ (_quod inde
erat brevissimus in Britanniam traiectus_); and he goes on to say that
he ordered ships from the neighbouring districts, and likewise the
fleet which he had built in the previous summer for the war with the
Veneti, to assemble there. He set sail soon after midnight with about
80 transports, some ships of war, and some small fast-sailing vessels
(_speculatoria navigia_) from a port which he does not name, and sent
his cavalry to ‘a further port’ (_in ulteriorem portum_) about 8 Roman
miles off, with orders to embark there in eighteen transports, which
had been prevented by contrary winds from reaching the port whence he
himself sailed, and to follow him. In another chapter he speaks of the
_ulterior portus_ as _superior portus_; and it is admitted that this
port was either north or east of the one from which he himself sailed.
On the fourth day after he landed in Britain (the day of landing being
doubtless reckoned as the first day[2685]) the eighteen transports set
sail. They were getting close to Britain and were descried from the
Roman camp when a storm suddenly arose, and none of them could keep on
its course, but some were carried back to the place from which they
had started, that is to say, to the _superior portus_; while the rest
were driven down ‘in great peril to the lower and more westerly part
of the island’ (_ad inferiorem partem insulae, quae est propius solis
occasum magno suo cum periculo deicerentur_), whence, after anchoring
for a time and shipping a quantity of water, they were compelled to
stand out to sea, and ran for the Continent. When Caesar returned to
Gaul, two of his ships were unable to reach ‘the same ports’ (_eosdem
portus_) as the rest of the fleet, and were carried ‘a little further
down’ (_paulo infra_). Before his second expedition he assembled a
fleet of about 540 transports and 28 ships of war at the Portus Itius,
‘from which port he had ascertained that the passage to Britain was
most convenient,[2686] being about 30 [Roman] miles from the Continent’
(_quo ex portu commodissimum in Britanniam traiectum esse cognoverat,
circiter milium passuum_ XXX _transmissum a continenti_). His entire
flotilla amounted to more than 800 sail, as it included privately owned
vessels. The transports were of small draught and comparatively broad,
and were constructed for rowing as well as sailing. Caesar was delayed
at the Portus Itius for about 25 days by north-westerly winds.[2687]
His entire army, which was with him all that time, amounted to 8
legions and 4000 cavalry. He set sail about sunset, accompanied by 5
legions and 2000 cavalry, with a light south-westerly wind, or, to
speak more accurately, the wind called _Africus_, which may have blown
from any quarter between south-west and W. by S. ⅓ S. Labienus was left
behind with 3 legions and 2000 cavalry ‘to protect the ports’ (_ut
portus tueretur_), which implies that on the second expedition, as on
the first, Caesar thought it necessary to keep more than one port under
his control; and during his absence Labienus built 60 ships.[2688]
Strabo,[2689] evidently referring to Caesar’s first expedition, says
that he sailed from ‘the Itian’ [naval station?] (τὸ Ἴτιον), and that
the length of his voyage to the point which he reached ‘about the
fourth hour’ was 320 stades, which is equivalent to 40 Roman miles.
Ptolemy[2690] mentions the Itian promontory. Its longitude, he says,
was 22° 15′, and its latitude 53° 30′; and he places it on the west of
Gesoriacum, or Boulogne. The longitude of Gesoriacum, he says, was 22°
30′, and its latitude 53° 30′.
III. CAESAR SAILED FROM THE PORTUS ITIUS ON BOTH HIS EXPEDITIONS
It is necessary to inquire whether Caesar sailed from the same port
on both his expeditions; for he mentions the _ulterior portus_ only
in connexion with the first; and if on that occasion he sailed from
the Portus Itius, the search for the Portus Itius is conditioned by
the existence of the _ulterior portus_. Drumann,[2691] remarking that
Caesar chose the Portus Itius in 54 B.C. because he had ascertained
that the passage from it to the island was _the most convenient_,
argues that ‘before it was consequently unknown to him’, and that ‘at
first he sought _the shortest passage_’. Long,[2692] on the other hand,
insists that when Caesar says that he had ascertained that the passage
from the Portus Itius was the most convenient, he apparently means
‘that he had by his first voyage found out that this was the best place
to sail from’. ‘His first voyage,’ Long continues, ‘was very lucky, and
there was no reason to change his place of embarkation, particularly
as he intended to land, and did land, at the place where he had landed
before. Besides this, when he speaks (v. 8) of his landing-place on the
second voyage, he says, “qua optimum esse egressum superiore aestate
cognoverat”; the same form of expression that he uses in speaking of
the place of embarkation (v. 2), except that he does not there use the
words “superiore aestate”.’ I may observe that it is not quite true
that Caesar in 54 B.C. ‘intended to land, and did land, at the place
where he had landed before’.[2693] On the other hand, Mr. H. E. Malden
has remarked (though he has since abandoned the conclusion to which
his remarks led him) that Caesar ‘names the second [port] and does
not name the first ... he especially mentions that he disembarked on
both occasions at the same place, he gives himself every opportunity
for saying that he sailed from the same port, if he did so, but yet
he never says it’.[2694] Strabo admittedly implies that in the first
expedition Caesar’s point of departure was the Portus Itius: but his
testimony does not settle the question; for he may only have been
putting his own construction on Caesar’s words. Rudolf Schneider[2695]
concludes that it is impossible to _prove_ that the Portus Itius was
the starting-point of both voyages, but that it most probably was,
because Caesar, before his first expedition, had stayed long enough in
the country of the Morini to find out the most convenient harbour. I go
further, and shall prove, in the course of this discussion, that, on
his first as on his second expedition, Caesar sailed from the Portus
Itius.[2696]
IV. THE VALUE OF CAESAR’S ESTIMATE OF THE DISTANCE BETWEEN THE PORTUS
ITIUS AND BRITAIN
Rudolf Schneider[2697] insists that it is idle to lay stress on
Caesar’s estimate of the distance from the Portus Itius to Britain,
first, because he had no means of making an accurate calculation, and,
secondly, because we cannot tell whether he reckoned the distance to
the nearest point of Britain or to his own landing-place. As regards
correspondence with Caesar’s estimate, Schneider continues, there is
nothing to choose between Boulogne, Wissant, and Calais: Dover is 34
Roman miles from Boulogne, 25 from Wissant, 28 from Calais. It might
perhaps be argued that, if Caesar took his own landing-place as the
terminus, it would be hardly safe to ignore his estimate. For Wissant
is 27 Roman miles from Deal, and Boulogne 39; and, assuming that Caesar
landed near Hythe, Wissant is 32 Roman miles from that port, and
Boulogne 37. It appears, however, to me almost certain that Caesar’s
estimate referred to the distance from the Portus Itius to the nearest
frequented port of Britain;[2698] and it must not be forgotten that
the ancient writers generally overestimated the distance from one
port to another.[2699] Moreover, it is not absolutely certain that
Caesar estimated the distance of the Portus Itius from Britain at 30
Roman miles. _XXX_ is indeed found in all the extant _MSS._;[2700] but
as Strabo unquestionably used the _Commentaries_ when he wrote his
notice of Caesar’s voyage, and estimated its length as 320 stades, it
is not improbable that he found in his copy the number _XXXX_.[2701]
Schneider, however, points out that Strabo’s estimate of the length
of the south coast of Britain differs from Caesar’s; and the accuracy
of the _MSS._, as regards the number _XXX_, may perhaps, as he says,
be supported by a comparison of Pliny with Caesar. Pliny[2702] says
that the shortest passage between Ireland and Britain is 30 miles, and
Caesar[2703] says that the passage from Ireland to Britain is equal
in length to the passage from Britain to Gaul. On the whole, we may
conclude that Caesar’s estimate of the distance between the Portus
Itius and Britain does not help us to decide whether the Portus Itius
is to be identified with Wissant or with Boulogne. But, in considering
the arguments for the identity of the Portus Itius with the mouth of
the Somme, Caesar’s estimate must obviously be taken into account.[2704]
V. THE ESTUARY OF THE SOMME
The advocate of the Somme was the late Astronomer-Royal, Sir George
Airy. His arguments shall be considered for the benefit of those
who are influenced by his great reputation; but one fact, which he
ignores, is alone sufficient to wreck his theory. If Caesar sailed
from the mouth of the Somme, the _superior portus_, from which his
cavalry transports sailed was, as Airy of course maintains, the mouth
of the Authie, and the place where he landed in Britain was, as Airy
likewise maintains, Pevensey. Therefore, on Airy’s theory, the cavalry
transports, when they were approaching Britain and were seen in the
offing from Caesar’s camp, were approaching Pevensey; and the gale
which prevented them from reaching their destination and drove some of
them ‘in great peril’ (_magno cum periculo_) westward down the coast,
carried the others back to the mouth of the Authie.[2705] But, as the
harbour-master of Dover remarked to me, and as any one may see for
himself who has the most rudimentary knowledge of seamanship, it would
have been utterly impossible for them to fetch the mouth of that river.
But to timid reasoners this may appear too summary a method of
disposing of Airy’s theory. Let us then hear what he has to say.
First, Airy maintains that Caesar, when he says that he ‘set out for
the country of the Morini’ (_in Morinos proficiscitur_), merely implies
that he arrived ‘near it or close to it’, not necessarily that he
actually entered it. He insists that in every instance in which Caesar
‘uses the inflexions or derivatives of “proficiscor”’ ‘another sentence
or another clause is required to denote arrival at the journey’s
end’.[2706]
Now Caesar uses _proficisci_ with _in_ thirty-five times. If the
reader will turn to the lists of those passages in Meusel’s _Lexicon
Caesarianum_ (ii, 96, 1240), he will find that in almost every instance
in which Caesar says that he himself or any one else ‘started for’ or
was about to ‘start for’ this or that place, the context proves that
the place was reached. Of course the proof is generally furnished
by ‘another sentence or another clause’, or by more than one other
sentence. But this is not always the case.[2707] And for the passage
in question similar proof is forthcoming. Immediately after telling us
that he marched for the country of the Morini, Caesar goes on to say
that he ordered his fleet to assemble there.[2708] As Long sensibly
remarks,[2709] ‘when a man says that he “marches for” or “towards the
country of the Morini because the passage from there to Britain was
the shortest”; that he ordered all his ships to come there; and that
while he was waiting “in these parts” (_in his locis_[2710]) to get his
ships ready, ambassadors from a large part of the Morini came to him,
there is only one conclusion, which is, that he was in the country of
the Morini and sailed from it.’ If Caesar had removed his ships from
the country where he had assembled them and had sailed from some other
place, he would surely have said something to warn his readers against
drawing the conclusion which, to every one except Airy, has always
appeared inevitable.
Secondly, Airy points to the passage[2711] in which Caesar relates that
while he was collecting ships for the first expedition envoys came
to him from the Morini: ‘the visit of the ambassadors,’ he argues,
‘without any mention of hostile occupation, seems to imply that neither
Caesar nor any part of his army was in the country of the Morini at the
time of preparing the naval expedition, and appears to render it most
improbable that he had passed through their country.’[2712]
No unbiassed reader would assent to this conclusion. The Morini
naturally sent ambassadors to Caesar because they wished to deprecate
his wrath. Similarly in 53 B.C. the Ubii sent envoys to him when he
was in their country, not as an enemy but as a friend.[2713] Besides,
Airy, not having a really intimate knowledge of the _Commentaries_,
overlooked another important point:--the Morini did not act as
one undivided state; some only of their _pagi_, or sub-divisional
communities, sent ambassadors: others sent none.[2714]
Thirdly, Airy refers to Caesar’s statement, that, on returning to the
Portus Itius from his second expedition, he directed Gaius Fabius to
winter in the country of the Morini with one legion.[2715] ‘It appears
to me,’ he says, ‘that the order (after his second return) for legions
to march _from the Portus Itius_[2716] “in Morinos” makes it certain
that he was not in their country.’[2717]
The words ‘from the Portus Itius’ beg the question. One legion (not
‘legions’) was sent into the country of the Morini, not from the Portus
Itius but from Samarobriva, in the country of the Ambiani, where, as
the context shows, all the legions were temporarily assembled.[2718]
Similarly in the following year, 53 B.C., Caesar concentrated all his
legions at Durocortorum, or Reims, immediately before distributing them
in their respective quarters for the winter.[2719]
Fourthly, Airy refers to the well-known passage in which Strabo[2720]
says that ‘the Itian’ [naval station?] is παρὰ (τοῖς Μορινοῖς). Παρά,
he seriously affirms, means ‘near to’, not ‘in’ (the country of the
Morini[2721]).
If Airy’s sense of humour had not been dormant, it would surely have
occurred to him that, in a matter of pure scholarship, it was unlikely
that all Greek scholars should be wrong while he alone was right. Dr.
Guest took the trouble to refute him;[2722] and if he had referred to
other passages in Strabo,[2723] he would have seen for himself that
παρ’ οἷς means ‘in whose country’.
Airy was far too vigilant a controversialist not to see that there were
well-grounded objections to his theory; and he attempted to anticipate
them. Caesar, as we have seen, states that when his fleet was returning
to Gaul after the first expedition, two of the ships failed to make
the same harbours as the rest, and ‘were carried a little lower down’
(_duae_ [naves] _eosdem quos reliqui portus capere non potuerunt et
paulo infra delatae sunt_[2724]); and he goes on to say that the troops
who landed from these two ships were attacked by the Morini while they
were marching from the place where they had disembarked to his own
camp. The words _paulo infra delatae sunt_ are interpreted by almost
every commentator except Airy[2725] as meaning that the two ships were
carried a little further down the coast than the other ships; and if
this interpretation is correct, it is obvious that the harbours in
which the other ships came to land were in the country of the Morini.
But Airy is unmoved by this consensus of opinion. ‘The word “delatae”,’
he says, ‘is repeatedly used by Caesar for “drifted”, and “infra
delatae” is “drifted down”, the word “down” apparently relating not to
any geographical direction, but to the force of the wind.’[2726]
As a matter of fact, Caesar uses the past participle of _defero_ in
the sense of ‘drifted’ four times,[2727] namely, in the passage which
we are now considering and in _B. G._, v, 8, § 2 (_longius delatus
aestu orta luce sub sinistra Britanniam relictam conspexit_), _B.
C._, iii, 14, § 2 (_una ex his_ [navibus] ... _delata Oricum atque
a Bibulo expugnata est_), and _B. C._, iii, 30, § 1 (_praetervectas
Apolloniam Dyrrachiumque naves viderant ... sed quo essent eae delatae
... ignorabant_). None of these passages lends the slightest support
to Airy’s theory; and the other three passages in which he uses the
adverb _infra_[2728] in a local sense, namely, _B. G._, vi, 35, § 6
(_transeunt Rhenum ... XXX milibus passuum infra eum locum ubi pons
erat perfectus_[2729]), _B. G._, vii, 61, § 3 (_nuntiatur ... magnum
ire agmen adverso flumine sonitumque remorum in eadem parte exaudiri et
paulo infra milites navibus transportari_[2730]), and _B. C._, i, 64,
§ 6 (_reliquas legiones expeditas educit magnoque numero iumentorum in
flumine supra atque infra constituto traducit exercitum_[2731]), are
fatal to it.
Again, the passage in which Caesar says that the distance from the
Portus Itius to Britain is about 30 [Roman] miles,[2732] assuming
that it is genuine, might well have disconcerted a less resourceful
reasoner; for the distance from the mouth of the Somme to St. Leonards,
off which place Airy maintains that Caesar anchored on his first
voyage,[2733] is about 65 Roman miles; and to Pevensey Level, where
he makes Caesar land, a little more. But Airy confidently grapples
with the difficulty. ‘I conceive,’ he remarks, ‘that the sentence has
been mistranslated. The Portus Itius and the continent are placed in
contradistinction. The _convenient passage_ was from the Portus Itius,
the distance of 30 miles was from the continent.’[2734]
Read the sentence again,--_portum Itium ... quo ex portu commodissimum
in Britanniam traiectum esse cognoverat, circiter milium passuum XXX
transmissum a continenti_. Classical scholars are agreed that these
words can only mean what Airy insists that they do not mean, namely,
that the distance from the Portus Itius to Britain was about 30 Roman
miles. If not from the Portus Itius, from what port? What would have
been the good of specifying the distance if Caesar had been thinking of
some other port which he did not use?[2735]
Furthermore, the distance from the mouth of the Somme to Pevensey Level
is about twice the distance from Boulogne to Dover, to Hythe, or to
Lympne; and Caesar says that the reason why he marched for the country
of the Morini was that the passage from their country to Britain was
the shortest.
But it would seem that Airy was not quite convinced of the soundness of
his own reasoning. ‘If,’ he says, ‘any reader thinks that the reasons
for excluding the Portus Itius from the land of the Morini are not
sufficiently cogent, the whole is easily reconciled with the hypothesis
that the Portus Itius was the mouth of the Somme by supposing that in
the time of Caesar the Morini stretched south-west of the Somme ... the
geography which limits their territory to the north of the Somme is 120
years later. Any one who reflects on the change of boundary of Russia,
of Prussia, of Turkey, and of other European States, within a period
of much less than 120 years, will find no difficulty in admitting this
change in the limits of the Morini.’[2736]
It is sufficient to answer that there is no analogy between the
political history of Europe in the earlier half of the nineteenth
century and that of Gaul in the 120 years that followed the invasion of
Britain by Caesar. The Gallic peoples during that period were not at
war with one another; and there is not the slightest reason to suppose
that the Morini possessed a wider seaboard in Caesar’s time than 120
years later. Lewin’s reply to Airy is worth quoting[2737]:--‘He offers,
as a solution of the difficulty, that in the time of Caesar the Morini
stretched south-west of the Somme. If so, then the Somme itself, from
which Caesar sailed, and to which he returned, was, according to the
Astronomer-Royal, in the country of the Morini; and yet, a few lines
before, the Astronomer-Royal had stated that the order (after Caesar’s
second return) for legions to march into the country of the Morini made
it _certain_ that he was _not in their country_! Thus to avoid Scylla,
it is laid down, as _certain_ that Caesar did not sail from the Morini;
and then, to avoid Charybdis, the reader is invited to assume that the
place of embarkation was amongst the Morini.’
Finally, Airy affirms that the mouth of the Somme was by far the best
harbour which Caesar could have selected, and that its capability for
his purpose ‘is proved by the ... experience of William of Normandy,
who at one tide floated out of it 1400 ships’.[2738]
Now William the Conqueror assembled his fleet and embarked his army not
in the mouth of the Somme but in the mouth of the Dive:[2739] he was
merely obliged, as Lewin says,[2740] ‘to take temporary shelter ... at
the mouth of the Somme.’ But this blunder is of no great consequence.
The Somme might have served Caesar’s purpose if only it had not been
twice as far from that part of Britain to which he intended to go as
Boulogne.
VI. AMBLETEUSE
The _Commission de la Topographie des Gaules_[2741] identify the
Portus Itius with Ambleteuse; and Mommsen[2742] is disposed to agree
with them. They argue that Strabo[2743] affirms the existence of
two ports in the country of the Morini; that one of the two was
evidently Gesoriacum; and that the Portus Itius was therefore something
different. The passage in Strabo to which the commission refers will
be most conveniently examined in a later section.[2744] Meanwhile
it is enough to say that if it proves that the Portus Itius was not
Gesoriacum, it does not prove that the Portus Itius was Ambleteuse.
General Creuly[2745] decides for Ambleteuse on the ground that
its distance from Wissant corresponds with Caesar’s statement of
the distance which separated his own port of embarkation from the
_ulterior portus_, and that the intervention of Cape Grisnez between
Ambleteuse and Wissant would have justified Caesar in describing the
latter as the _ulterior portus_. He remarks that if the Portus Itius
is identified with Boulogne, the _ulterior portus_ must have been
Ambleteuse. But, referring to Vergil’s well-known line--_tendebantque
manus ripae ulterioris amore_[2746]--he argues that the word _ulterior_
implies the intervention between the Portus Itius and the _ulterior
portus_ of an ‘objet disjonctif’, such as a promontory; and he insists
that no such ‘objet’ intervenes between Boulogne and Ambleteuse.
But Heller[2747] observes that a passage in the _Germania_[2748] of
Tacitus--(Gerunt et ferarum pelles), _proximi ripae negligenter,
ulteriores exquisitius_--would seem to show that _ulterior_ means
much the same as _longinquior_.[2749] Besides, if the distance from
Ambleteuse to Wissant justifies us in identifying Ambleteuse with the
Portus Itius and Wissant with the _ulterior portus_, the distance from
Boulogne to Ambleteuse, as I shall presently show, equally justifies us
in identifying Boulogne with the Portus Itius and Ambleteuse with the
_ulterior portus_.[2750]
Not a single valid argument ever has been or can be adduced in favour
of Ambleteuse. The harbour is far too small to have contained Caesar’s
fleet; and the merest tiro in his army could have decided at a glance
between its merits and those of Boulogne.[2751]
VII. CALAIS
I only consider the claims of Calais because their one modern advocate,
General von Göler,[2752] was a distinguished Caesarian scholar. There
is no evidence that Calais was ever used as a harbour in, or for twelve
centuries after, the time of Caesar. If Caesar started from the Portus
Itius on his first expedition, it is impossible, on the theory that
Calais was the Portus Itius, to find the _ulterior portus_. Moreover,
it would have been impossible for Caesar to sail, on his second
expedition, from Calais to any point of the Kentish coast between
Walmer and Sandwich.[2753] For, as the wind was from the south-west,
he would have had to sail within seven points and a half of the wind
on a flood tide, which would have tended to carry him into the North
Sea, and with shallow flat-bottomed vessels which made excessive
lee-way.[2754] Finally, Calais Harbour is not natural but artificial;
and it is certain that it did not exist in the time of Caesar.[2755]
VIII. WISSANT
Wissant is between Cape Grisnez and Cape Blancnez, both of which, in
Caesar’s time, projected somewhat further out to sea than they do
now.[2756] Dr. Guest argues that the sandy waste, more than two miles
long and varying in breadth from a quarter to half a mile, which
lies between the uplands and the sand-hills, was once covered by the
sea;[2757] and he conjectures that the ‘pool-harbour’ thus formed
communicated with the English Channel by ‘the gap through which flows
the Rieu des Aiguilles’, a rivulet which crosses the sandy plain. At
the same time he admits that it is very difficult to say what the
limits of the ancient harbour were.[2758]
Dr. Guest’s theory, which was regarded by Mr. Freeman and Dean Merivale
as conclusive, is a theory and nothing more. Mariette, the famous
Egyptologist, states that the dunes themselves (without which Dr.
Guest’s harbour could not have been) were not formed before the time
of Edward the Third;[2759] and M. H. Rigaux concludes, from a recent
minute exploration of the coast between Cape Grisnez and Sangatte,
that the dune which extends from the ‘ruisseau de Guiptun’, near
Tardinghem, to the ‘ruisseau d’Herlan’ at Wissant did not exist in
Caesar’s day.[2760] Moreover, pottery, pre-Roman and Roman, has been
found in the sand behind the dunes between Wissant and Tardinghem
as well as east of Wissant;[2761] numerous finds have proved that
the coast between Sangatte and Dunkirk has undergone subsidence and
extended further seaward in Roman times than now;[2762] and it may
be concluded that the sandy plain at Wissant was not then covered by
the sea. It would appear, then, that Dr. Guest’s pool-harbour was
imaginary. Haigneré,[2763] moreover, remarks that if there ever had
been such a harbour, it must have been speedily choked up by sand blown
from the very dunes which _ex hypothesi_ formed it; and this argument
is confirmed by the fact that irruptions of blown sand, before the
dunes were ‘fixed’ by being planted with coarse grass, engulfed many
buildings at Wissant.[2764] It has, however, been pointed out by Mr.
E. C. H. Day[2765] that ‘a shoal having less than a fathom of water on
it at the lowest tides, extends from Cape Grisnez, in a north-easterly
direction, in such a manner as to cut off a channel about half a mile
in width, and having a depth of from two to three fathoms of water
in it, directly abreast of Wissant. The shoal,’ he adds, ‘during the
course of centuries of exposure to the heavy seas that break upon the
coast, must have undergone some considerable amount of destruction.
Formerly, therefore, this shoal must have formed a natural breakwater,
and have rendered the channel within it a convenient harbour.’ But,
assuming the correctness of Mr. Day’s deduction, this ‘harbour’ would
have been exposed to the fury both of the west and of the north-east
wind. M. Léon Lejeal,[2766] who tells us that a French engineer, M. J.
Voisin, supposes that the shoal was once connected with the mainland,
and thus formed a partially-sheltered harbour, concludes that there
is nothing to show that it was large enough to shelter the fleet ‘que
voulut y ancrer l’imagination d’une archéologie en délire’;[2767] and
M. Leblanc, who in the year 1863 was engineer of the port of Calais
and was intimately acquainted with the geology of Wissant, ridicules
such a notion. ‘Toutes les fois,’ he remarks, ‘que j’allais de Calais
au Gris-Nez ... je traversais Wissant, en étudiant cette question, et
je me disais à moi-même: quelle preuve peut on avoir d’une pareille
absurdité?’[2768] Hariulf, a chronicler who lived in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, described the harbour of Wissant as an ‘inlet’
(_ingressum maris_),[2769] which would seem to imply that it was
simply a creek formed by one of the rivulets which meander across the
sand. Henry, the historian of Boulogne, who was bent upon proving
the identity of Wissant with the Portus Itius, would certainly have
anticipated Guest’s theory if he could have done so with truth; but,
after a careful examination of the site, he came to the conclusion that
Caesar’s ships must have been drawn up on an exposed beach.[2770]
1. Long[2771] argues that the distance of Wissant from Sangatte
corresponds with the distance between the port from which Caesar
started on his first expedition and the _superior portus_; that its
distance from the English coast agrees ‘at least as well as any other
place’ with Caesar’s estimate of the distance from the Portus Itius to
Britain; that its name, which [according to Michel Baudrand,[2772]
a writer of the seventeenth, century] French sailors used to call
Esseu and the Flemings Isten, ‘is near enough to Itius to add to the
probability of the identity of the two places’; that there are traces
of a Roman road from Wissant to Thérouanne; that in the neighbourhood
of Wissant ‘fresh water was abundant, the soil rich, and the beach
the best that there could be for such ships as Caesar’s’; and that,
if Wissant was not, strictly speaking, a port at all, ‘Caesar did not
want a port in the modern sense of the word. He wanted his ships at
the nearest place to Britain.... His vessels would be hauled up on the
beach till the wind was fair. He had no port on the British coast, and
he hauled up all his ships after they were damaged by a storm.’ ‘This
long sandy beach,’ he says, ‘was the best place along all this coast
for Caesar’s purpose.’[2773]
Of these arguments the first, _mutatis mutandis_, is equally applicable
to Boulogne. The argument from nomenclature is worthless:[2774]
‘Wissant’ is not derived from ‘Itius’; it is said to be merely a
corruption of ‘Weiss-sand’ (Whitesand).[2775] There is no evidence for
the alleged Roman road. The Roman road which, according to Henry,[2776]
led from Thérouanne to Wissant, really led to Sangatte.[2777] Dr.
Guest, who carefully explored Wissant and its neighbourhood, found that
the soil, which Long calls ‘rich’, is ‘notoriously barren’.[2778]
And, in reply to the last of Long’s arguments, it is sufficient to say
that, although Caesar did perforce beach his ships on the coast of
Britain, yet he suffered heavily from not having a port; and the mere
fact that he sent Volusenus to ascertain what ports on the British
coast were capable of accommodating a large fleet proves that his
original intention was to land in a port, and not on an open beach.
Long’s assertion, that the beach at Wissant ‘was the best place along
all this coast for Caesar’s purpose’, Dr. Guest, who agrees with him
in identifying the Portus Itius with Wissant, treats with utter scorn;
but his criticism is founded upon the groundless assumption that the
sand-dune between Wissant and Tardinghem then existed.[2779] However,
Long admits that ‘it would not be possible _now_ to draw up a fleet
like Caesar’s on the beach’. ‘But,’ he persists, ‘if there have been
such great changes on this coast that Dr. Guest’s huge harbour is
filled up, why may not my beach have undergone some change also?’[2780]
The reply is obvious. What Long calls ‘my beach’ may have undergone
changes: but, unless it can be proved not only that ships could have
been hauled up on the beach of Wissant in Caesar’s time, but also that
there then existed at Wissant a harbour large enough to accommodate
Caesar’s fleet, the claim of Wissant to be identified with the Portus
Itius cannot be admitted.
But Long is not the only writer who maintains that the Portus Itius was
not a port properly so called; and this question is so important that
we must fairly examine the arguments that have been adduced in support
of Long’s view.
Heller argues that since Caesar beached his ships on his return from
the second expedition, we may conclude that the Portus Itius was not
a harbour in the strict sense, as, if the shelter of a harbour had
been available, he would not have taken the trouble to draw them up on
shore.[2781]
But Heller forgets that the ancients never left their ships at anchor
for any lengthened period, but invariably laid them up high and dry for
the winter.[2782] Moreover, if eight hundred ships had been beached at
Wissant, would it not have been necessary, in order to protect them
from storm-driven spring tides, to construct an enormous naval camp,
the earth necessary for which did not exist?
Professor Ridgeway insists that, if Strabo is to be believed, the
Portus Itius can only be identified with Wissant.[2783] Strabo[2784]
calls Caesar’s place of embarkation το Ιτιον. This word, the professor
observes, is obviously an adjective, and, as it agrees with a neuter
word understood, it cannot agree with λιμήν or κόλπος (a harbour), but
must agree with ἄκρον or ἀκρωτήριον (a headland). Evidently, then,
Strabo’s το Ιτιον is the same as Ptolemy’s Ἴτιον ἄκρον. Similarly
Strabo[2785] speaks of Cape Finisterre as Νέριον, while Ptolemy[2786]
calls it Νέριον ἀκρωτήριον. Now Strabo does not call το Ἴτιον a
harbour, but only a roadstead ναύσταθμον, a term which Thucydides[2787]
applies to Cape Malea. Thus, if Strabo was right, the Portus Itius was
the roadstead sheltered by the Itian promontory.
The professor’s argument is not convincing. Granted that Ιτιον must
agree with ἄκρον, on him lies the burden of proving that the headland
in question was not Cap d’Alprech, which shelters the estuary of the
Liane, and the geographical position of which corresponds closely
enough with that which Ptolemy assigns to Ιτιον ἄκρον.[2788] When
the professor remarks[2789] that ‘the advocates of both Wissant and
Boulogne support the claim of Grisnez’ against Alprech he is mistaken.
Desjardins is only one of many French writers who ‘support the claim’
of Alprech against Grisnez. Moreover, supposing that the professor is
right in identifying the Itian promontory with Grisnez, he is wrong
in assuming that the word ναύσταθμον necessarily excludes the idea of
a harbour. Sometimes it is used to denote a port already described as
a λιμήν, or harbour properly so called, in order to draw attention to
the fact that that harbour was a naval station. Thus Strabo,[2790]
immediately after mentioning the Piraeus and the other two harbours of
Athens, says that the ναύσταθμον was capable of accommodating the four
hundred ships which composed the Athenian fleet. And Pausanias,[2791]
speaking of Nauplia, the port of Argos, which, according to
Strabo,[2792] was the ναύσταθμον of the Argives, says, ‘there are
harbours in Nauplia’ (λιμένες εἰσὶν ἐν Ναυπλίᾳ).[2793] To anybody who
knows anything about ancient navigation, the suggestion that Caesar
would have kept 800 ships riding at anchor for several weeks in an open
roadstead, exposed to the fury of the north-west wind, while, a few
miles off in the Liane, there was an ample sheltered harbour available,
must appear simply ridiculous. And, assuming that Strabo did intend to
convey that το Ιτιον was merely a roadstead, the answer is that Strabo
is refuted by Caesar, who says that his ships assembled _ad portum
Itium_,[2794]--‘in the Itian harbour.’ The Portus Itius must have
been a port, properly so called; and the more discerning advocates of
Wissant naturally accept this view.[2795]
Long maintains, further, that, although Caesar does not say directly
that the passage from the Portus Itius to Britain was actually the
shortest, yet he does so indirectly; for he tells us that he went to
the country of the Morini ‘because the shortest passage to Britain was
from their country’; and the port in their country which he selected
was the Portus Itius.[2796] But, as all who are familiar with the
_Commentaries_ will admit, Long throws an undue strain upon Caesar’s
language. Caesar tells us, in general terms, that the shortest passage
to Britain was from the country of the Morini: but it is bad logic to
conclude from this statement that the passage from the Portus Itius
must have been actually the shortest as the crow flies. Caesar would
never have chosen the passage which was in this sense the shortest if
it had been on other grounds objectionable: obviously what he meant to
say was that of the regular passages to Britain that from the country
of the Morini was the shortest; and the passage from the Portus Itius
being, as he says, ‘the most convenient,’ was, for all practical
purposes, the shortest.
It is clear, then, that Long failed to establish the identity of the
Portus Itius with Wissant. Let us see what better informed advocates of
the same theory have to say.
2. Not to mention the arguments which are common to him and Long, Dr.
Guest gives the following reasons for his belief:--that the (assumed)
harbour of Wissant was large enough to hold Caesar’s fleet; that
it lay beneath Cape Grisnez, which he identifies with the Itian
promontory; and that William of Poitiers, a chronicler of the eleventh
century, called it ‘Portus Icius’.[2797] He will not admit that William
was simply stating his own opinion: ‘I think,’ he says, ‘this name may
have been handed down to him by the Romanised Gauls, inasmuch as the
name of Ician seems to have been long kept afloat in the recollection
of the Celtic population of these islands’; and he points out that
‘the old Irish name for the English Channel is _Muir n’ Icht_’, or
‘the Itian sea’. But the fact on which he lays most stress is the
proximity of Wissant to Cape Grisnez. He freely admits, indeed, that
Cap d’Alprech may, in Caesar’s time, have been a more considerable
promontory than it is at present;[2798] but he cannot conceive that
the promontory which Ptolemy selected for especial mention should have
been any other than the famous cape which is and must always have been
the most conspicuous feature of the north-eastern coast of France, and
which marks the point where the coast, making a sharp angle, begins to
trend towards the east. ‘Cape Grisnez,’ he concludes, ‘there can hardly
be a doubt, was the Ician promontory, and if so, the great port which
lay beneath it must have been the Ician Port.’[2799]
‘The great port which lay beneath it,’--these words, Dr. Guest, beg
the whole question. That the harbour of Wissant was large enough to
hold Caesar’s fleet would be true, if Dr. Guest’s conjectural tracing
of its outline were _correct_: but the fact, if it were a fact, would
simply remove one of the objections which have been brought against
Wissant; it would not prove that Wissant was the Portus Itius. For
the harbour of Boulogne was also large enough, and was also, as will
presently appear, in other respects far more convenient. The argument
that William of Poitiers called Wissant the Portus Itius has no weight.
Maistre Wace, who wrote about a century after William of Poitiers,
believed that Caesar had sailed from Boulogne.[2800] Moreover, Hericus,
a monk of the ninth century,[2801] identified Bibracte with Autun; but
it is now universally admitted, and it is certain, that Hericus was
wrong.[2802] It may be admitted that _a priori_ it would seem much more
likely that the Itian promontory was Cape Grisnez than that it was
Cap d’Alprech; but if the former identification is to be accepted,
it is necessary to assume that Ptolemy made a gross blunder. It is
of course quite true, as Dr. Guest says,[2803] that Ptolemy did make
mistakes; but still the fact remains that the geographical position
which he assigns to the Itian promontory is, allowing for a slight
error in longitude, that of Cap d’Alprech. As Mr. Peskett puts it,
‘Ptolemy, proceeding northward, places the headland between the Somme
and Boulogne’;[2804] and I may add that if you only know Cap d’Alprech
by the map, you will be surprised, when you actually see it, to find
how bold a headland it is. Moreover, even if Ptolemy was mistaken, it
does not follow that the Itian harbour was Wissant. Professor Rhys, who
believes that the Gauls as well as the Irish called the Channel ‘the
sea of Icht’, remarks that ‘in that case Portus Ictius would designate
Caesar’s place of embarcation, somewhat in the same way that Dover
might in English be termed the Channel Harbour. The former probably
had a Gaulish name of its own, which may have become the Latin one
also as soon as the Romans began to be a little more at home in the
north of Gaul; so that it would be labour in vain to try to detect
_Ictius_ in any place-name still current on the French coast.’[2805]
Let us, however, assume, for the sake of argument, that Professor
Rhys is mistaken. Even then it does not follow that the Portus Itius
was Wissant. For it will not be denied that Boulogne was, in Caesar’s
time as in the time of the emperors, a frequented harbour; and it is
certain that Wissant was not a harbour capable of containing Caesar’s
fleet. Therefore Boulogne, which is only nine statute miles south of
Cape Grisnez, was obviously the nearest important harbour to that
promontory. Why, then, if Cape Grisnez was the Itian promontory,
should Boulogne not have been called the Itian harbour? Even on the
desperate theory that when Caesar spoke of a harbour, he did not mean
a harbour but only a roadstead, that roadstead was not at Wissant; for
if Caesar’s ships had waited there, either at anchor or on the beach,
exposed to the north-west winds for twenty-five days, they would have
been in extreme peril.
Dr. Guest admits of course that Boulogne, not Wissant, was the
permanent harbour of the Romans in North-Eastern Gaul under the empire;
but in this fact he sees no objection to his theory. He believes that
the Romans, when they had to choose a permanent harbour, rejected
Wissant and chose Boulogne because of the sterility of the country in
the neighbourhood of the former. ‘Wissant,’ he remarks, ‘or rather the
port adjacent to Wissant, may have answered Caesar’s purpose, when he
had hundreds of ships to supply the wants of his commissariat; but when
a port was to be provided to meet the ordinary purposes of traffic, it
was necessary to select one that possessed local resources.’[2806]
The reason which Dr. Guest gives for the choice of Boulogne is sound
enough as far as it goes; but what support does it lend to the theory
that Caesar used Wissant as a temporary harbour? The sterility of
the neighbourhood would hardly have recommended it. It must have had
some great advantage to compensate for this defect if it was really
to be preferred, even as a temporary harbour, to Boulogne. But it is
impossible to point out one single advantage which Wissant could have
had, for Caesar’s purpose, over Boulogne, save only that, as the crow
flies, it was a little nearer to Britain.
Dr. Guest, indeed, assures us that ‘Caesar had no time for weighing
the comparative merits of the ports north and south of him, and for
determining which of them was “the most convenient”’.[2807] No time!
Had he not five days to spare for Volusenus’s reconnaissance? A
single day would have sufficed to ride along the coast from Wissant
to Boulogne; a few minutes spent at each of those places would have
sufficed ‘for determining which of them was “the most convenient”’: but
the greatest general of Rome could not spare even one day for a duty
which the worst would not have neglected; so he pitched upon Wissant,
because, as Dr. Guest tells us, ‘it afforded him the shortest passage’!
So argued the man who, according to Freeman, ‘settled the whole
matter,’ the man who, from Freeman’s point of view, appeared to stand,
side by side with Stubbs, ‘at the head of living students of English
history.’[2808]
3. Heller is not as ardent an advocate of Wissant as Guest; but he
has written some very ingenious papers in defence of Guest’s view.
Many of his reasons are virtually identical with those of the English
scholar; but from Caesar’s narrative of his second voyage he deduces a
fresh argument, which deserves special attention. Caesar, as we have
seen, set sail about sunset with a light south-westerly wind. About
midnight the wind dropped: the fleet, borne by the tide, drifted out
of its course;[2809] and ‘at daybreak Caesar saw Britain lying behind
on the port quarter’ (_orta luce sub sinistra Britanniam relictam
conspexit_[2810]). From the last statement Heller infers that Caesar’s
ship must have drifted to some point off the North Foreland: otherwise,
he argues, the word _relictam_ would be meaningless. For, he remarks,
Caesar believed that one side of Britain faced the north. Therefore
it must be assumed that he had no knowledge of that part of the coast
which trends northward beyond the mouth of the Thames: he must have
thought that the coast, at the North Foreland, turned sharply towards
the west. Otherwise he could not have believed that he had left Britain
behind; nor could he have believed this unless he had drifted to some
point off the North Foreland. Now Caesar started on his voyage about
the 6th of July.[2811] On that day the sun set about 8.16; and on the
following morning it rose about 3.54. There must have been light enough
to show the British coast as early as 3.15 or 3.20. Heller maintains
that Caesar could by daybreak have reached a point about 2 German [or
9½ English] miles south-east of the North Foreland, not quite as far
north as the latitude of Ramsgate, if he had sailed from Wissant; but
he insists that if he had sailed from Boulogne, he could not have
drifted further northward than the latitude of Deal, in which case he
could not have said that he ‘saw Britain left _behind_ on the port
quarter’.[2812]
This argument rests upon a strained interpretation of the word
_relictam_. It is probably true that Caesar could not have drifted
as far north as the latitude of Ramsgate if he had sailed from
Boulogne;[2813] but even if he had only drifted as far north as the
latitude of Walmer, he would have been perfectly justified in using
the word _relictam_. For that word does not imply that Caesar believed
himself to have left the _northern_ coast of Britain behind: it simply
implies that, as the current was carrying him in a north-easterly
direction[2814] and therefore sweeping him every minute further and
further away from Britain, ‘he saw Britain lying behind on the port
quarter.’ There is a parallel passage in the twenty-first chapter of
the _Acts of the Apostles_, which shows that this was his meaning.
In the second and third verses of that chapter the writer, after
describing the voyage of himself and St. Paul from Ephesus by way of
Cos and Rhodes to Patara, says, ‘Having found a ship crossing over unto
Phoenicia, we went aboard, and set sail. And _when we had come in sight
of Cyprus, leaving it on the left hand_, we sailed unto Syria, and
landed at Tyre’ (καὶ εὑρόντες πλοῖον διαπερῶν εἰς Φοινίκην ἐπιβάντες
ἀνήχθημεν, ἀναφάναντες δὲ τὴν Κύπρον καὶ καταλιπόντες αὐτὴν εὐώνυμον
ἐπλέομεν εἰς Συρίαν καὶ κατήλθομεν εἰς Τύρον). If the reader will look
at his map, he will see that the writer of the _Acts_, when he came in
sight of Cyprus and left it on the left hand, was in precisely the same
position with regard to Cyprus as Caesar would have been in with regard
to Britain if, drifting in a north-easterly direction, he had descried
the coast of Britain from some point in the latitude of Deal.[2815]
And if Heller will use his common sense he will see that if a ship
about the latitude of Deal were drifting away from Britain, that ship
would have left Britain behind just as really as if it had passed Cape
Wrath and were drifting towards Iceland.
Lastly, even if Heller’s explanation of the word _relictam_ were
correct, the argument which he builds upon it would be unsound; for
obviously that argument would only hold good if Caesar had drifted
north of the latitude of the North Foreland. Heller himself admits that
he had hardly drifted so far north as the latitude of Ramsgate; and at
this point, on Heller’s own theory, he could no more have said that he
had left _the northern coast_ of Britain _behind_ than if he had been
in the latitude of Deal.
Both Heller[2816] and Guest[2817] deduce an argument in favour
of Wissant from a well-known passage of Strabo.[2818] It runs as
follows:--‘There are four regular passages from the Continent to the
island, namely, from the mouths of the Rhine, the Seine, the Loire, and
the Garonne. People who cross from the country near the Rhine do not
sail from the mouth of that river, but from the country of the Morini
... _and_ in their country is the Itian (harbour), which Caesar used as
his naval station, when he was crossing to the island’ (τέτταρα δ’ ἐστὶ
διάρματα, οἷς χρῶνται συνήθως ἐπὶ τὴν νῆσον ἐκ τῆς ἠπείρου, τὰ ἀπὸ τῶν
ἐκβολῶν τῶν ποταμῶν, τοῦ τε Ῥήνου καὶ τοῦ Σηκοάνα καὶ τοῦ Λείγηρος καὶ
τοῦ Γαρούνα. τοῖς δ’ ἀπὸ τῶν περὶ τὸν Ῥῆνον τόπων ἀναγομένοις οὐκ ἀπ’
αὐτῶν τῶν ἐκβολῶν ὁ πλοῦς ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ ἀπὸ τῶν ὁμορούντων τοῖς Μεναπίοις
Μορινῶν, παρ’ οἷς ἐστι καὶ τὸ Ἴτιον, ᾧ ἐχρήσατο ναυστάθμῳ Καῖσαρ ὁ
θεός, διαίρων εἰς τὴν νῆσον). I have italicized the word _and_, because
the meaning of καί has been disputed. Dr. Guest argues that the port
from which the inhabitants of the country near the Rhine sailed must
have been Boulogne; and, he continues, ‘every unprejudiced reader ...
will be of opinion that he (Strabo) distinguishes it from his “Itium”.’
In other words, Guest would translate the doubtful clause by ‘in whose
country there is _also_ the Itian (harbour)’.
I, for one, fully agree with Dr. Guest; but some scholars are unable to
do so. Long,[2819] remarking that a similar use of καί, particularly in
clauses which begin with a relative, as παρ’ οἷς, is common in Strabo
and also in Thucydides, affirms that ‘the purpose of καί, when it is so
used, is to mark emphatically some thing or circumstance in addition
to one which has been mentioned’. Guest[2820] retorts that Xylander,
in his Latin version of Strabo, first published in Casaubon’s edition
of 1597, and revised by Siebenkees, who did not alter Xylander’s
translation of the passage in question, and Groskurd, in his German
version of 1831--‘the most careful and conscientious translation of
Strabo that has yet appeared’--both render και by ‘also’. This array
of authorities does not disconcert Long. He remarks[2821] that the old
Latin versions of Strabo and other Greek writers, although they were
very useful in their day, ‘are not of much value when there is any
great difficulty.’ Groskurd’s translation--‘wo auch der Hafen Ition
ist’--he regards as ambiguous. Had Groskurd desired to express, in
his translation, that Strabo meant to affirm the existence of another
harbour, besides those which he had just mentioned, he would have
written, not ‘wo _auch_’, but ‘wo _ebenfalls_’ (der Hafen Ition ist).
But, says Long, ‘Strabo mentions four usual points of transit from
Gallia to Britain, and if in this passage he means that there was
another besides the Itius, then there would be five points of transit
instead of four, and Strabo would contradict himself.’[2822] Long then
quotes two passages in support of his interpretation of και. ‘Strabo,’
he remarks, ‘says that Sinuessa is in the gulf of Setia, and adds αφ
ου και το ονομα.[2823] Groskurd translates και by “auch”, which has no
meaning here.... Again, Strabo, speaking of the high Alps, says περι
ὁ δη και συνισταντο οι λησται;[2824] which Groskurd translates, “die
Gipfel, um welche denn auch die Räuber sassen.” Xylander simply says
“ubi degebant latrones”, which I prefer to Groskurd’s version, though
Xylander’s version is not quite exact.’
To these arguments Guest made no reply; but Heller[2825] did so. He
admits that Thucydides, in relative sentences, often did use καί in
the sense which Long claims for it; but this sense, he maintains, is
restricted to phrases of which the meaning is unmistakable.
If Strabo did really mean to say that the Itian port was different
from that port of the Morini which was commonly used as the point of
departure for Britain, then I can only say that I believe, with Rudolf
Schneider,[2826] that Strabo was mistaken. As Caesar was the only other
ancient writer who mentioned the Portus Itius, and as he did not say
exactly where it was, it would have been quite natural for Strabo to
suppose that the Portus Itius was not the same as the well-known port
of the Morini.
4. Finally, it has been affirmed by Henry[2827] and many other writers
that the so-called ‘Camp de César’ and the various hillocks known as
‘mottes’ which are to be found in the neighbourhood of Wissant were
defensive works erected by Caesar or his lieutenants for the protection
of the Portus Itius; and de Saulcy tells us that an inhabitant of
Wissant, whose trustworthiness he had proved, informed him that
about two kilometres north-east of the village, at Haute-Sombre,
there existed a camp several hectares in extent, in which, he says,
‘il faudra reconnaître le camp des trois légions et des deux mille
cavaliers de Labienus.’[2828]
All these allegations have been disproved. The so-called tradition
which ascribed the ‘Camp de César’ to the invader of Britain originated
in the eighteenth century:[2829] at all events it is not mentioned by
any of the earlier advocates of Wissant; and the camp has been proved
to be of post-Roman date.[2830] Moreover, its area is not more than
50 ares 30 centiares, or 6,016 square yards, less than one acre and a
quarter, which would not have sufficed to accommodate more than 500
men.[2831] As for the ‘mottes’, they have been excavated, and have
been proved to be simply _tumuli_, which contained skeletons, flint
implements, and bone pins. And the Abbé Haigneré[2832] has shown, in an
amusing paragraph, that the so-called camp of Labienus, which, needless
to say, is not marked on the _Carte de l’État-Major_, is purely
imaginary.
Every argument which has been adduced in favour of Wissant has now been
examined; and if I could have accepted them or any one of them, I would
gladly have done so, for I myself once argued that the Portus Itius was
at Wissant. But my knowledge was then imperfect. It is not possible to
prove that the Portus Itius was at Wissant: it is possible to prove
that it was not.
1. Although Wissant is nearer to England than Boulogne, yet Caesar
would have gained nothing, even in regard to his mere voyage, by making
Wissant his place of departure. Captain Iron, the harbour-master
of Dover, unhesitatingly affirmed, after we had studied the chart
together, that the fleet would have ‘made a better run’ from Boulogne
than from Wissant. The reader will have no difficulty in understanding
this if he will consult the Admiralty Chart (_Dungeness to the
Thames_), and the Atlas entitled _Tidal Streams in the English and
Irish Channels_. It must be remembered that both in 55 and in 54 B.C.
Caesar started from Gaul when the tide was running down the Channel;
and that on his first voyage the tide turned north-eastward between
4.30 and 5 a.m., when he had been three or four hours at sea, and on
his second about 9.30 p.m., two hours or so after he had set sail.
Thus, on each occasion, the latter and greater portion of the voyage
was made on the flood tide.[2833]
Wauters does indeed succeed in proving that, in the middle ages,
Wissant was very frequently used as a place of embarkation by
travellers, merchants, and even troops sailing for the opposite
coast;[2834] and the point of his argument is that if, in the middle
ages, a large army could embark at Wissant, Caesar’s army could have
done the same; and that if Wissant was a convenient point of departure
for a voyage to Britain in the middle ages, it was not less convenient
in the time of Caesar. Haigneré[2835] retorts, truly enough, that the
quantity of merchandise which passed through the port at any one time
was very small, and that, as a rule, not more than two or three vessels
left the port simultaneously; but when he affirms[2836] that the
largest army which ever sailed from Wissant was a force of 2,000 men,
which John of Hainault led in 1327 to assist Edward the Third against
the Scots,[2837] he lays himself open to criticism. Wauters[2838]
replies that the force with which the Earl of Leicester sailed from
Wissant in 1173 must have been very large; for in the battle of
Fornham, in which the earl suffered defeat soon after he had landed
in Suffolk, 10,000 of his men were killed. This statement, which was
accepted by the late Bishop of Oxford,[2839] was made on the authority
of Benedict of Peterborough,[2840] who also describes the army of the
Earl of Leicester as _infinitus exercitus_. But (if we are to accept
the statement of a mediaeval monk as to the number of men who were
killed in a battle) Benedict does not say that _the army_ set sail
from Wissant, while Ralph de Diceto[2841] merely says that the Earl
of Leicester embarked in a ship at Wissant, accompanied by a numerous
band (_venit apud Witsant, ubi ... plurima comitante caterva, navem
ascendit_); and, assuming that the troops all embarked at Wissant,
there is no evidence that all the transports which carried them sailed
together. It is generally admitted even by the partisans of Wissant
(though not by Dr. Guest) that the mediaeval port was merely the creek
formed by the Rieu d’Herlan, otherwise called Rieu de Sombre; and if it
is true that an army which lost 10,000 men in a single battle embarked
at Wissant in 1173, the bulk of the ships which carried it must have
been anchored in the roadstead. The frequency with which Wissant was
used as a place of embarkation in the middle ages undoubtedly proves
that it was convenient, and this fact has been slurred over by the
advocates of Boulogne; but it nevertheless remains certain that Caesar
would not have found it convenient to sail from Wissant when _the
greater part of his voyage would have to be made upon the eastward
stream, and with a south-west wind_. At the same time I admit that we
do not know from what quarter the wind was blowing in his first voyage:
we only know that when he set sail it was favourable.[2842]
2. There is another objection to Wissant, which Dr. Guest, if he had
been consistent, would have been the first to urge. Like all the
other advocates of Wissant, he identifies the _superior portus_ with
Sangatte. Yet he tells us himself that it is hard to see how there
could ever have been a harbour at Sangatte.[2843] Similarly, H. L.
Long, himself an advocate of Wissant, who was well acquainted with the
coast between Boulogne and Calais, observes that ‘as a port, in our
acceptation of the term, Sangatte has fewer pretensions ... than even
Wissant; but still it is, and always has been a small station’.[2844]
The theory that it was a naval station is no doubt supported by the
fact that it was the terminus of a Roman road: but Caesar speaks of a
_portus_; and when Dr. Guest has to confute George Long, he is most
emphatic in insisting that _portus_ means ‘a harbour’ in the strictest
sense of the word.[2845]
Let us, however, assume that Sangatte may conceivably have possessed
a harbour in Caesar’s time. Even so, it is impossible to admit that
Sangatte can have been the _superior portus_. For, if the eighteen
ships which carried the cavalry had started from Sangatte, the
conditions of wind and tide which would have rendered a voyage from
Wissant to Kent less favourable than from Boulogne would obviously have
been more unfavourable still.
3. There is one passage in Caesar’s narrative which, to a sailor, would
be alone sufficient to prove that Wissant was not the port from which
Caesar sailed in 55 B.C. We have seen that the gale which drove some
of the cavalry transports from the point where they were first sighted
westward down the coast carried the others back to the port from which
they had started. I will assume that the latter were laid to on the
port tack:[2846] if they could not work to windward, a glance at the
map will show that they could not have returned to any point east of
Wissant. The gale must obviously have blown from some point between
the east and the north; and, if Caesar sailed from Wissant, the place
from which the transports started must, as we have seen, have been
Sangatte. Now it is absolutely incredible that a gale which drove some
of these ships from a point near the South Foreland[2847] westward down
the coast should have carried the others back to Sangatte. Caesar says
that the former were ‘in great peril’, and that, when they anchored,
the waves broke over them. A sailor would at once understand what their
peril was. They were in no danger of being driven ashore; for while the
gale was at its height they stood out to sea.[2848] They ran before
the wind; and they were in danger either of broaching to or, possibly,
of being ‘pooped’.[2849] From this we should conclude that the wind,
when it struck the ships somewhere east or north-east of the South
Foreland,[2850] blew from about the north-east: indeed, as the waves
broke over the ships, it may have blown from north-east by east; for,
if it had blown from the north-east or north-east by north, the ships,
if they anchored close in shore, west of Folkestone, would have been in
a sheltered position.[2851] The most easterly point at which they can
be assumed to have been when they were caught by the gale is NW. 4° N.
of Sangatte. Therefore if the wind had blown from the north-east, the
ships that were carried back to the port from which they had started
would have had to sail within less than eight points and a half of it
in order to reach Sangatte. But, as Falconer[2852] says, a ship laid to
in a gale makes from 5½ to 6½ points of lee-way. Reduce this estimate
to four, and you will see that the transports would have had to lie
within less than four points and a half of the wind in order to make
Sangatte. No ancient ship could have done this. Close-hauled and under
short canvas, as they would necessarily have been, the transports, as
Commander Richmond remarked to me, would ‘just have sagged to leeward’.
It may be objected that the tide would have helped them if it was
running up the Channel. But the flood tide is almost neutralized by a
north-easterly gale, and simply makes the sea more vicious: the ships
would have moved so slowly that they could not have crossed the Channel
in one tide; and when it turned and began to sweep them westward, their
prospect of reaching Sangatte would have been more hopeless than ever.
With a north-easterly gale, or even one which blew from north-east by
north, it would have been absolutely impossible, so Commander Richmond
and the harbour-master of Dover have separately and independently
affirmed, for the vessels to fetch that anchorage.[2853]
4. Desjardins[2854] shows that, whereas four Roman roads, meeting at
Gesoriacum, are mentioned in the itineraries,[2855] not a single Roman
road led to Wissant. The advocates of Wissant have, indeed, replied
that this proves nothing, since, in Caesar’s time, there were no Roman
roads in any part of Gaul.[2856] But this reply is nugatory. Since
no Roman roads led to Wissant, it is clear that if Wissant was the
Portus Itius, this harbour, which Caesar had ascertained to be ‘the
most convenient’ port of departure for Britain, was regarded by his
successors as useless. Such a hypothesis is not tenable.
5. The mention of roads suggests another objection to Wissant. We
have seen that Caesar’s army, consisting of five legions and 2,000
cavalry, remained weatherbound at the Portus Itius in 54 B.C. for
about twenty-five days; and that with them were three other legions
and 2,000 cavalry, who were left behind under the command of Labienus
to guard the ports during Caesar’s absence.[2857] Thus for twenty-five
days a force amounting to at least 32,000 men and 4,000 horses had to
be fed; and of these not less than 12,500 men and 2,000 horses for
about ten weeks more.[2858] No calculation is needed to show that these
multitudes could not possibly have been supplied by the country in
the neighbourhood of Wissant, even if it were as fertile as (according
to Dr. Guest himself) it is ‘notoriously barren’.[2859] Their food
must have come from a distance; and to transport it to Wissant without
roads would have been a task of extreme difficulty. Dr. Guest assumes
that Caesar’s fleet would have supplied his wants.[2860] But the fleet
could only have procured grain from a port. Surely, then, Caesar
would have found it most convenient to start from a port which was in
communication by road or by river with the interior. Such a port was
Boulogne, which enjoyed both these means of transit. What would have
been gained by abandoning it for the isolated Wissant?
Again, it will be remembered that Labienus built sixty ships during
Caesar’s absence in Britain;[2861] and we have seen that most of the
modern advocates of Wissant admit that there was no harbour there,
except the tiny creek formed by the ruisseau d’Herlan, or possibly
a roadstead which may have been partially sheltered by the Banc de
Laine. Not one of them has attempted to explain how Labienus could have
found the means of building sixty ships upon an exposed beach. But let
us admit that his genius could have improvised dockyards.[2862] Let
us even admit that the harbour of Dr. Guest’s imagination did really
exist. Still, sixty ships cannot be built without timber. How was all
this timber to be brought to Wissant without roads and without a river?
Even assuming that there was a Gallic road, it is doubtful whether
Labienus could have impressed the amount of carriage necessary to
transport the timber from the forests. But a few miles off at Boulogne
the difficulty would have disappeared.[2863]
6. Another objection is so obvious that it must impress every candid
inquirer. If Wissant was the Portus Itius, why was Wissant never
once mentioned during the first millennium of our era? There is no
evidence worthy of the name that it was used as a port before the
year 1013.[2864] It is surely inexplicable that the port which Caesar
regarded as the most convenient for his purpose should have been found
so inconvenient or so superfluous by his successors that during the
imperial epoch it fell into entire disuse. Wauters indeed retorts that
if Wissant was eclipsed by Gesoriacum under the Empire, so was the
Gallic town of Bibracte by the Gallo-Roman Augustodunum, and that,
although the naval station was Gesoriacum, Wissant _may_ have been
a great commercial port.[2865] But he omits to explain how a great
commercial port could have been left unnoticed by history, or how it
could have existed without a river and roads to connect it with the
interior. Nor is there any analogy between Wissant and Bibracte. The
hill-fort of Bibracte gradually fell into disuse because when Gaul
settled down under the Roman dominion it was no longer required.[2866]
7. Finally, Mariette[2867] argues that the mere name of Wissant, which,
like the names of many other villages in the Boulonnais, is of German
origin, proves that it was not founded before the fifth century, and
consequently that there could have been no frequented harbour there in
Caesar’s time.
It has now been demonstrated that Caesar did not sail from Wissant.
That it was the point of departure of his first expedition is out of
the question; for in that case the _portus ulterior_, from which the
cavalry transports set sail, must have been Sangatte; and we have seen
that they could not have returned to Sangatte when they were dispersed
by the gale. The _portus ulterior_ can only have been Ambleteuse; and
therefore Caesar sailed in 55 B.C. from Boulogne. But nobody will
believe that, having had experience of the advantages of Boulogne, he
would have discarded it in favour of a place which, for his purpose,
was in all respects inferior.
Nevertheless, to satisfy doubters, I shall state the case for and
against Boulogne.
IX. BOULOGNE
The reasons which point to the identification of the _Portus Itius_
with Boulogne are, speaking generally, that Boulogne, and Boulogne
only, satisfies all the requirements of Caesar’s narrative.
To begin with, the passage for sailing-vessels from Boulogne to the
south-eastern part of Britain is, and always has been, in circumstances
such as Caesar described, not only very convenient but by far the most
convenient. This is the testimony of seafaring men, both English and
French, who have practical experience of the winds and the currents
in the Channel: it was admitted, or rather strenuously maintained,
by Henry,[2868] who advocated the claims of Wissant; and any man
who studies the Admiralty Chart--_Dungeness to the Thames_--the
_Channel Pilot_, and the Atlas, published by the Admiralty, which
is entitled _Tidal Streams in the English and Irish Channels_, may
convince himself of its truth. Captain Pollet, the harbour-master of
Calais and Boulogne, furnished information to Ernest de Saulcy, who
was determined, by hook or by crook, to make out a plausible case in
support of Wissant; but he avowed his own opinion that Caesar must have
sailed from Boulogne.[2869] Captain Iron, the harbour-master of Dover,
in conversation with me, has done the same.
Secondly, the whole of Caesar’s fleet could easily have assembled in
the port of Boulogne; and they certainly could not have assembled in
any other port, properly so-called, on the coast of the Morini,[2870]
except the mouth of the Canche, which was several miles further
from Britain than Boulogne, and was in no respect more convenient.
Desjardins[2871] has shown that the estuary of the Liane was much
broader and deeper in Caesar’s time than it was in the nineteenth
century before the harbour was modernized, and that, as the headland
which sheltered it has suffered greatly from erosion, it extended
further seaward; and not only was it ample in extent, but it was the
only port protected from every wind.[2872] No one has described its
merits more eloquently than Henry, the advocate of Wissant; and no one
was more competent to form an opinion. He describes Gesoriacum as ‘le
havre le plus commode et le mieux situé de toute la Gaule-Belgique,
pour le commerce, la construction et l’équipement des vaisseaux’.[2873]
But, although it is certain that there would have been ample room in
the Liane for Caesar’s 800 small vessels,[2874] Airy insists that it
would have been impossible for them to clear the harbour in a single
tide.[2875] Now Caesar does not say that they did clear the harbour in
a single tide; nor is it necessary to assume that they did. Captain
Iron has, however, assured me that Caesar’s fleet of shallow vessels
could have cleared the harbour in a single tide even if the depth of
the water then had been no greater than in 1877. In that year the depth
_at low tide_ was 1 metre 60, or more than 5 feet[2876]; and it may
be regarded as certain that the draught of Caesar’s vessels in the
second expedition was much less than five feet.[2877] The estuary of
the Liane has been silted up so much since Caesar’s time that it would
hardly be an exaggeration to say that its depth then was three times as
much as in 1877;[2878] and it has been ascertained from the sinking of
artesian wells at the cement works of M. Demarle at Capécure[2879] that
at that place the ancient bed of the river is 19 metres below the level
of spring tides.[2880]
Thirdly, the distance of Ambleteuse from Boulogne corresponds closely
enough with Caesar’s estimate of the distance of the _ulterior portus_
from the Portus Itius. This does not prove the identity of the Portus
Itius with Boulogne: but, if it is not a fact, the Portus Itius was
not Boulogne; and it is therefore necessary to examine the arguments
of those who have denied it. ‘On measuring,’ says Airy,[2881] ‘upon
the beautiful Admiralty Chart the distance between the centre of the
entrance to Boulogne and the centre of the entrance to Ambleteuse, I
find it to be not quite 4½ nautical miles, or 5½ Roman miles; instead
of the 8 miles given by Caesar.’ This estimate is accurate; but it is
also irrelevant; for Airy measures the distance by sea; and Caesar
must have meant the distance by land. ‘It was quite immaterial,’ says
Lewin,[2882] ‘what was the distance by sea, for the eighteen transports
were windbound, and could not reach him; but, as he could not dispense
with the vessels, he had to consider what portion of his force could be
most conveniently despatched thither, and as the transports lay eight
miles off, he thought it best, in order to save time, to send thither
his cavalry ... by the nearest road from the port of Boulogne, through
Wimille and Slacq to the church at Ambleteuse, the distance is twelve
kilometres.’[2883] It is amusing to find that Airy, who lays so much
stress upon the accuracy of Caesar’s (assumed) estimate of the distance
by sea from the Portus Itius to the _ulterior portus_, maintains on the
preceding page (_Essays on the Invasion of Britain_, &c., p. 27) that
Caesar’s estimates of distances by sea were valueless.
Fourthly, Caesar’s narrative of the adventures of his cavalry
transports is easily comprehensible on the hypothesis that the port
from which he himself sailed was Boulogne, but on no other.[2884] As we
have seen, the storm of the 30th of August, 55 B.C., which prevented
them from making the Kentish coast near Caesar’s camp, drove some of
them westward to a point on the south coast, and carried the rest back
to the point whence they had started, namely, the _ulterior portus_.
That port, if Caesar sailed from Boulogne, was Ambleteuse; and there is
no difficulty in believing, nor has it ever been denied, that the wind,
before which some of the ships ran from the neighbourhood of the South
Foreland[2885] in the direction of Dungeness, would have carried the
others, which were laid to, back to Ambleteuse.
Fifthly, Caesar, as we have seen, sailed from the Portus Itius with a
south-westerly wind;[2886] and it is needless to tell any one who will
consult the map that to sail with a south-westerly wind, especially
with flat-bottomed vessels which made a great deal of lee-way, and on
the easterly going stream, from Boulogne either to Sandwich, Deal,
Walmer, Hythe, or Lympne, would have been easier than to sail from
Wissant.
Sixthly, it is universally admitted that Boulogne, which Pliny[2887]
calls the _portus Morinorum Britannicus_, was the permanent naval
station of the Romans in the imperial epoch, and that it was the
harbour from which they habitually sailed for the coast of Kent.[2888]
An inscription preserved in the Boulogne museum[2889] proves that this
station was established at least as early as the reign of Claudius,
while Suetonius[2890] tells us that Claudius embarked at Gesoriacum for
Britain. Indeed there is indirect evidence that the station existed in
the time of Augustus; for the road which ran from Mediolanum (Milan)
past Lugdunum (Lyons), Durocortorum (Reims), and Ambiani (Amiens),
to Gesoriacum[2891] was constructed by Agrippa. It has been argued
that, although Gesoriacum was the recognized harbour from the time of
Augustus, the fact does not prove that it was the harbour from which
Caesar sailed. But to those who admit that it has been proved that no
other port existed which would have served Caesar’s purpose the fact
will appear conclusive.[2892]
Seventhly, Desjardins[2893] has pointed out that Gallic ports were
always either in the mouths of rivers or otherwise sheltered from
storms. Such a port was Gesoriacum; and if Wissant was a Gallic harbour
at all, it was a solitary exception to the rule.
Lastly, Rudolf Schneider[2894] lays great stress upon the fact that,
according to Pomponius Mela,[2895] no harbour on the northern coast
of Gaul was better known than Gesoriacum; and he reminds us that
Pliny[2896] mentioned no other harbour in the country of the Morini.
Unless, he argues, the Portus Itius was identical with Gesoriacum,
Mela, Pliny, and the later writers must have forgotten its existence.
Now nothing would be easier than to make a dialectical reply to this
argument,--Is it not equally remarkable that none of these writers
even hints that Gesoriacum was the Portus Itius? This was the reply
which I made myself on another occasion. But the reply was sophistical.
Schneider’s argument depends upon the assumption that the Portus Itius
was one of the great harbours of Gaul; and considering that it could
accommodate 800 vessels, this assumption is certainly reasonable.
At all events it is impossible to suggest any other explanation of
the fact that after Strabo no writer mentioned the Portus Itius for
more than a thousand years, except this,--that the Portus Itius and
Gesoriacum were one.
It would be waste of time to repeat the arguments, which have already
been stated by implication in the section on Wissant, based upon the
unique advantages that Boulogne possessed in being connected with the
interior by river and road.[2897]
It remains only to consider the objections which have been made to the
identification of the Portus Itius with Boulogne.
1. The very fact that Boulogne was called Gesoriacum is regarded by
Long[2898] as presumptive evidence that it was not called Portus Itius.
Desjardins,[2899] who evidently regards this as a serious objection,
has taken great pains to remove it. He argues that the Portus Itius
was not exactly the same as the imperial harbour of Gesoriacum, but
that it comprised that part of the estuary of the Liane which lies
between Bréquerecque and Isques; and, he triumphantly remarks, the name
‘Isques’ is derived from _Itius_. But ‘Isques’ cannot have been derived
from _Itius_: the names ‘Ausques’,‘Quesques’, ‘Clerques’, ‘Setques’,
and ‘Wisques’ are derived from _Alciacum_, _Kessiacum_, _Quertliacum_,
_Sethiacum_, and _Wiciacum_; and the inference is that not _Itius_
but _Isiacum_ would have been transformed into ‘Isques’.[2900] Rudolf
Schneider,[2901] who is too honest and too hard-headed to be deluded
by Desjardins’s attempt to draw a distinction between Gesoriacum and
Portus Itius, frankly admits that the unrecorded change of name has not
been explained. But is there anything to explain? ‘Portus Itius’ is
not, properly speaking, a name at all: it does not designate a town;
it means simply ‘the Itian harbour’. Long saw nothing inexplicable
in the fact that Gesoriacum was called by Pliny _portus_ [Morinorum]
_Britannicus_: why, then, should he have found it impossible to
believe that its harbour was called by Caesar _portus Itius_?[2902] Was
not the port of Athens called the Piraeus?
2. Long, after making the amazing remark that ‘such a port as Boulogne
would have been quite useless in Caesar’s second expedition’, says that
‘the Romans estimated the distance from Boulogne to the British coast
at fifty Roman miles; but this is too much.... However, they were right
in making the distance more than the distance from Itius to the nearest
point of the British coast; and the conclusion is that Gesoriacum and
Itius were different places.’[2903]
The conclusion is simply that, assuming the identity of Gesoriacum with
the Portus Itius, Caesar’s estimate of the distance from Gesoriacum to
Britain was different from that of later writers. Besides, the only one
of ‘the Romans’, as far as we know, who ‘estimated the distance from
Boulogne to the British coast at fifty Roman miles’ was Pliny;[2904]
and it may be presumed that by ‘the British coast’ he meant Rutupiae,
or Richborough, which was a port, if not the chief port, of arrival in
his day. For he estimated the shortest passage at fifty Roman miles:
according to Dion Cassius,[2905] the shortest passage was 450 stades;
and this, according to the _Itinerary_ of Antonine,[2906] was precisely
the length of the passage from Boulogne to Richborough.
Long goes on to say that in the _Itinerary_ of Antonine the distance
from Boulogne to Richborough ‘was estimated at 450 stadia; and, if
we follow d’Anville in estimating this maritime stadium at ten to
the Roman mile, the distance is fairly given. So if we take the 320
stadia which Strabo gives as the length of Caesar’s voyages, we have
thirty-two Roman miles; or, if we take the reading which Eustathius,
copying Strabo, has in his commentary on Dionysius, 300 stadia, we
have exactly thirty Roman miles, as in Caesar’s text. The conclusion
is that, in addition to the fact of Boulogne (Gesoriacum) and Ouissant
(Itius) having different names, the ancient authorities place them at
different distances from the British coast.’[2907]
Again Long’s conclusion is at fault. To begin with, Strabo did not
estimate the maritime stadium at ten, but at eight to the Roman
mile.[2908] Assuming, however, that he did estimate it at one-tenth of
a Roman mile, there is no reason to suppose that when Caesar estimated
the distance from the Portus Itius to Britain, he meant the distance
to Richborough; and the only conclusion that can be drawn from Long’s
data is that ‘the ancient authorities’ reckoned the length of Caesar’s
voyage less than the distance between Richborough and Boulogne. And
when Long says that the estimated distance, 450 stadia, from Boulogne
to Richborough ‘is fairly given’, it is amusing to find him admitting
that Caesar’s estimate of 30 miles ‘exceeds the distance from Wissant
to the nearest part of the English coast, and it is about the true
distance from Boulogne to the same part of the English coast’. Thus, on
Long’s own showing, Caesar’s estimate of the distance from the Portus
Itius to the British coast corresponds with the actual distance from
Boulogne to the same, and the estimate of the _Itinerary_ is equally
true. The reader who has followed him so far will hardly be surprised
by his remark, that ‘even a real good harbour would have been useless
to Caesar’.[2909]
3. Heller,[2910] after quoting the statement of Pliny as to the length
of the shortest passage from Boulogne to Britain, and the statement
of the _Itinerary_ of Antonine as to the distance from Boulogne to
Richborough, argues (_a_) that, as they overestimated the distance from
Gaul to Britain, Caesar probably did the same; (_b_) that if Pliny had
identified Boulogne with the Portus Itius, he would not have estimated
the distance of Boulogne from the nearest point of Britain at 50 miles,
but would have followed Caesar and written ‘about 30’; (_c_) that if
Caesar had started from Boulogne, he would, according to the usual
tendency of the ancients, have overestimated the distance from Boulogne
to Britain, and would therefore have reckoned it at considerably more
than ‘about 30 miles’, seeing that the actual distance from Boulogne to
Dover is 33.
The first of these arguments, if it had come from a tiro, might have
been passed over with a smile; but one would hardly have expected it
from Heller. The third is based upon a misleading statement;[2911] and
even if we could be sure that Caesar overestimated the length of his
voyage, it would be inconclusive, for, as we have seen,[2912] it is not
improbable that he estimated it at 40 Roman miles. And as for Pliny,
‘the shortest passage,’ which he estimated at 50 miles, was probably, I
repeat, the passage from Boulogne to Richborough.
4. H. L. Long,[2913] if I do not misunderstand him, argues that there
could have been no port at Ambleteuse in the days of Caesar. Speaking
of ‘the immense irruption of blown sand’, he maintains that ‘this dune
... acts as a dam to the drainage of the valley; an interruption which
must have produced swamps in former days, and is now but imperfectly
corrected by an artificial channel, the embouchure of which forms the
little harbour of Ambleteuse’.
This argument obviously depends upon the untenable assumption that the
sand-dune existed in Caesar’s time; and it is shaken by the fact that
Roman antiquities have been discovered at Ambleteuse.[2914] Moreover,
according to the writer of the article _Ambleteuse_ in M. Vivien de
Saint-Martin’s _Nouveau Dictionnaire de Géographie Universelle_ (i,
1879, p. 115), Ambleteuse, under the rule of the English, had an
excellent harbour,[2915] and was not choked up by the accumulation of
sand until after 1549.[2916]
5. General Creuly,[2917] referring to the attack made by 6,000 of the
Morini upon the Roman soldiers who disembarked from the two ships which
failed to make the harbours in 55 B.C. and were carried ‘a little
further down’, insists that Caesar’s account of this episode[2918] is
incompatible with the view that the Portus Itius was Boulogne. For,
he argues, the 6,000 Morini could not have belonged to the _pagus
Gesoriacus_, that is to say, the district of Boulogne, since the
inhabitants of this region had submitted to Caesar, and, moreover, it
was so sparsely populated that 6,000 men could not have assembled on
the spur of the moment. He also reminds us that on the day following
the attack Labienus marched against the rebellious Morini, and soon
subdued them, as, owing to a drought, they were unable to take refuge
in the marshes which had served them as an asylum in the preceding
year;[2919] and he denies that there were any marshes in the _pagus
Gesoriacus_ large enough to serve such a purpose.
Creuly can only make a show of sustaining these objections by resorting
to Airy’s fantastic theory,[2920]--that Caesar, when he said that two
of his ships were carried ‘a little further down’, meant not ‘down the
coast’ but ‘in the direction of the wind’. If the inhabitants of the
district of Boulogne had submitted, why should they not have rebelled?
The Aduatuci submitted and afterwards rebelled:[2921] the Nervii
submitted and afterwards rebelled;[2922] the Britons submitted and
afterwards rebelled:[2923]--but it is needless to multiply examples.
For Caesar expressly states that the Morini who attacked his soldiers
_had_ submitted to him before he sailed for Britain.[2924] I am not
concerned to defend the accuracy of his statement, that their number
was 6,000: but Creuly admits that 6,000 Morini did assemble somewhere
in their own country; and how can he prove that the district of
Boulogne was more sparsely populated than any other? As to the marshes,
there is no evidence that they were in the immediate neighbourhood of
the spot where the soldiers were attacked; but if they were, what is
there to prevent us from identifying them with the marshes south of
Boulogne, between Camiers and Dannes?[2925]
6. Heller’s objection,[2926] that if Caesar had sailed from Boulogne
in 54 B.C. it would have been impossible for his ship to drift so
far by daybreak on the following morning as to justify him in saying
that he ‘saw Britain lying behind on the port quarter’ (_sub sinistra
Britanniam relictam conspexit_[2927]), has been already answered.
7. Caesar, describing his return to Gaul in 54 B.C., says that ‘at
daybreak he reached land’ (_prima luce terram attigit_), and that
his ‘ships were hauled up on the shore’ (_subductis navibus_[2928]).
It has been argued that ‘both of these expressions point to the
conclusion that he did not enter the mouth of a river’, and that ‘if
the Portus Itius was in the estuary of the Liane, to haul up the ships
over the banks on to the meadows would surely have been a difficult
operation’.[2929] The author of this argument forgot that the ships
need not have been hauled up on to the meadows at all unless they had
gone far up the river, and that they may have been docked. But an
expert whom he has since consulted assures him that, even if it had
been necessary to haul up the ships over the banks on to the meadows,
the operation would have involved no serious difficulty.
If this inquiry had merely established the probability of the
identification of the Portus Itius with the harbour of Boulogne, it
would not be possible to justify the labour which has been expended
upon it except on the ground that it will save those who may wish to
inform themselves a vast amount of research, and provide them with
complete equipment for arriving at an independent conclusion. But that
conclusion, if it is reached conscientiously by an unbiassed mind, can
only be one.
THE PLACE OF CAESAR’S LANDING IN BRITAIN
I. INTRODUCTION
After I had completed the researches which I undertook for the purpose
of writing this article, I saw that if an able soldier, or even an
intelligent civilian, who had a sufficient knowledge of ancient
warfare, were to ask himself where Caesar landed in Britain, he could
solve the problem after a brief inspection of the Ordnance Map. He
would perceive that there was only one part of the Kentish coast on
which Caesar could have expected to land, in the face of an enemy,
and then to march into the interior, without incurring unnecessary
loss. If he were told that a study of the tides had proved that Caesar
must have landed elsewhere, he would reply, ‘There must be something
wrong in your calculations. Perhaps you have neglected to allow for
the influence which strong winds and other causes exert upon the tidal
currents. Perhaps you have misinterpreted or unduly strained certain
parts of Caesar’s narrative. It is even possible that Caesar himself
may, from lapse of memory, have mis-stated the day on which he first
landed. Any one of these suppositions is credible: but it is incredible
that the experienced officer whom he sent to reconnoitre the British
coast should have advised him to land below a range of hills when open
country was more easily accessible; still more that he should have
accepted the advice. It is absolutely certain that Caesar did not
commit an act of folly which any general who knew his business would
have avoided.’
But such a summary mode of treating the question would not convince the
scholars who must be convinced before it can be set at rest; and the
conclusion at which they have arrived is that it is insoluble. So said
Mommsen:[2930] so say Mr. Warde Fowler,[2931] Mr. Tozer,[2932] and,
apparently, Dr. Hodgkin;[2933] so said the late eminent geographer, H.
Kiepert, according to whom the numerous attempts which have been made
to determine Caesar’s landing-place ‘have, because of the vagueness
of many expressions of the principal source [the _Commentaries_ of
Caesar], not attained more than a hypothetical value, even after three
centuries of learned quarrels’.[2934] Not because of the vagueness
of Caesar’s expressions, but because those who have commented upon
them have not taken the trouble to inform themselves. The indications
which Caesar gives are sufficient to enable any attentive reader to
determine the place where he landed with such certainty that every
doubt shall be removed,--if he knows how to use them; if, that is to
say, he possesses sufficient collateral knowledge to enable him to
understand what he reads. It is not enough to be a Latin scholar. It
is necessary also to study the ancient geography of the coast of Kent;
to be acquainted with the tidal phenomena of the English Channel; to
have at least an elementary knowledge of seamanship; to know Caesar’s
writings intimately, and not merely read the Fourth and Fifth Books
for the occasion; and, above all, to gain that understanding of the
principles of ancient warfare which can only be acquired by one who has
studied the history of modern campaigns, and has learned, by experience
or from intercourse with practical men, how things actually happen. No
genius is needed; only industry, backed by common sense and by some
intelligence and acumen; but such industry as may, perhaps, be thought
disproportionate with the object. Not even Mommsen, with his colossal
power of work, could spare the necessary time.
II. THE DATA FURNISHED BY CAESAR AND OTHER ANCIENT WRITERS
The data which we find in the _Commentaries_ are the following. Before
starting on his first voyage, Caesar sent a military tribune, named
Volusenus, whom he believed to possess the necessary qualifications,
in a ship of war, to make a thorough reconnaissance of the British
coast, and to ascertain what harbours were capable of accommodating a
large flotilla.[2935] Volusenus returned to Gaul four days after his
departure, having made all the observations that it was possible for
him to make without landing; for he had not ventured to put himself
in the power of the natives. Caesar himself marched his army into the
country of the Morini, as the shortest passage to Britain was from
their coast. The fleet which he ordered to assemble consisted of about
100 country-built merchant vessels, collected from the neighbouring
districts, as well as some ships of war and small fast-sailing
vessels, called _speculatoria navigia_, or ‘scouts’. His intention
had been made known in Britain by traders; and while his ships were
assembling, envoys sent by several British tribes presented themselves
before him, and promised to give him hostages, and to submit to the
Roman People. On their return they were accompanied by Commius, a
Gallic chieftain, who acted as Caesar’s political agent and who took
with him about thirty of his own horsemen. Of the merchant vessels
eighteen had assembled in a harbour 8 Roman miles ‘beyond’ that which
sheltered the rest of the fleet,[2936] and were prevented by contrary
winds from joining them. Caesar set sail ‘about the third watch’
(_tertia fere vigilia_) in favourable weather, having ordered the
cavalry to march to the ‘further’ port, embark there on the eighteen
transports, and follow him. Their movements, however, were somewhat
dilatory. ‘About the fourth hour’ (_hora circiter diei quarta_) the
leading division of the fleet had approached so close to the British
coast that Caesar could see an armed force of the enemy drawn up
‘on all the heights’ (_in omnibus collibus_). ‘The formation of the
ground,’ he says, ‘was peculiar, the sea being so closely walled
in by precipitous heights that it was possible to throw a missile
from the ground above on to the shore.’[2937] Regarding the place as
unsuitable for landing, he waited at anchor ‘till the ninth hour’ (_ad
horam nonam_) for the arrival of the rest of the fleet. Meanwhile he
assembled his generals and military tribunes, communicated to them
the report which he had received from Volusenus, and gave them all
necessary instructions. They returned to their respective vessels; and,
‘getting wind and tide simultaneously in his favour,’ Caesar weighed
anchor, sailed on (_progressus_) about 7 Roman miles, and ran the
ships aground ‘on an open and evenly shelving shore’ (_aperto ac plano
litore_).[2938]
The natives, divining his intention, had sent on ahead their cavalry
and charioteers, who were followed by the rest of the forces. The
important points in Caesar’s description of the disembarkation are
as follows:--some of the enemy, in opposing it, threw missiles from
the shore; others advanced a little way into the water, riding or
driving their horses. The transports, on account of their relatively
considerable draught, had necessarily grounded in deep water; and on
this account the Roman soldiers hesitated before jumping into the sea
to wade ashore. During the conflict Caesar made some of his war-galleys
sheer off a little from the transports, and take up a position on
the enemy’s exposed flank; and later on, when legionaries who had
just dropped into the sea and gathered in small groups were being
hard pressed, he manned the small fast-sailing craft and the small
boats belonging to the galleys, and sent them to the rescue. The enemy
derived an advantage from their knowledge of the places where the water
was shallow. Caesar concludes his description of the landing by saying
that it was impossible to pursue the enemy far, because ‘the cavalry
had not been able to keep their course and make the island’.
On the fourth day after the landing (the day of the landing being
doubtless reckoned as the first day)[2939] the eighteen transports that
carried the cavalry again set sail from the ‘further’ harbour with a
light wind. They were approaching the British coast and were visible
from Caesar’s camp, when a sudden storm came on with the result that
some of them were carried back to the harbour whence they had started,
while the others ‘were driven down in great peril to the lower and
more westerly part of the island’ (_ad inferiorem partem insulae, quae
est propius solis occasum, magno suo cum periculo deicerentur_). They
anchored: but the waves broke over them; and they were obliged to stand
out to sea in the face of night[2940] and make for the Continent.
On the same night there was a full moon; and Caesar remarks that full
moon causes extraordinarily high tides in the ocean. Owing to the high
tide and the gale, the ships of war, which had been drawn up on the
shore, were waterlogged, and many of the transports, which were riding
at anchor, were driven ashore and wrecked. A few days later one of the
legions was sent out in the ordinary course to cut corn. Presently
Caesar was informed by the troops on guard in front of the camp that
an unusual quantity of dust was visible in the direction in which the
legion had gone. When he had advanced ‘some little distance’ (_paulo
longius_) from the camp, he saw that his troops were in difficulties;
and he tells us that the place to which they had gone was the only
[accessible] spot in which the corn had not been cut, and that there
were woods close by. In repelling an attack which was made upon his
camp just before his departure, he made use of Commius’s small troop of
cavalry, and immediately afterwards he ‘burned all the buildings far
and wide’ (_omnibus longe lateque aedificiis incensis_). On his return
voyage he set sail soon after midnight.
The flotilla with which he sailed for Britain in the following year
consisted of more than 800 vessels. Of these over 540 were transports
and 28 war-galleys, while the rest belonged to individuals.[2941] Some
of the vessels used in the former expedition had been repaired: the
rest were built and rigged by Caesar’s troops during the winter of
55-54 B.C., and the following spring. The transports drew very little
water, and were adapted for rowing as well as sailing; and, to provide
room for troop-horses and stores, they were made proportionately
broader than the trading vessels used by the Italians in the
Mediterranean. Carrying five legions and 2,000 cavalry, they sailed
from the Portus Itius ‘about sunset’(_ad solis occasum_), with a light
south-westerly breeze. About midnight the wind dropped: the fleet was
carried far out of its course by the tidal stream; and at daybreak
Caesar ‘descried Britain lying behind on the left’ (_Britanniam sub
sinistra relictam conspexit_). He then followed the turn of the tide,
and, as he tells us, ‘rowed hard to gain the part of the island where,
as he had learned in the preceding summer, it was best to land’ (_remis
contendit ut eam partem insulae caperet qua optimum esse egressum
superiore aestate cognoverat_). He remarks that the soldiers who
rowed the heavily-laden transports deserved great credit for their
unremitting labour, which enabled them to keep up with the war-galleys.
The whole fleet had reached the coast by about noon. No enemy was to be
seen; and Caesar learned afterwards from prisoners that large forces
had collected at the landing-place, but that, panic-stricken by the
sight of 800 vessels, they had abandoned the shore and retreated to
‘higher ground’ (_superiora loca_).
After the disembarkation Caesar selected a suitable spot for his camp.
‘About the third watch’ (_de tertia vigilia_) he marched to encounter
the enemy, whose whereabouts he had ascertained from prisoners. He left
the ships riding at anchor in charge of ten cohorts and 300 cavalry;
and he describes the anchorage as on ‘a nice open shore’[2942] (_litore
molli atque aperto_). The force which accompanied him consisted of
four legions and 1,700 horse. After a march of about 12 Roman miles
he descried the enemy. They advanced with their cavalry and chariots
‘from the higher ground’ (_ex loco superiore_)[2943] to the banks of a
stream, and attempted to prevent the Romans from crossing. Repulsed by
Caesar’s cavalry, they took refuge in a stronghold in the neighbouring
woods, which is described by Caesar as ‘a well-fortified post of great
natural strength’ (_locum egregie et natura et opere munitum_).
In a storm which occurred on the following night most of the ships were
driven ashore, about 40 being totally wrecked; and in order to prevent
a repetition of this disaster, the ships were all hauled up on dry land
and ‘connected with the camp by one entrenchment’ (_cum castris una
munitione coniungi_).
In his general description of Britain Caesar says that neither the
beech nor the fir grow in the island.[2944] He describes it as
triangular, and says that one of its sides faces Gaul, and that ‘one
corner of this side, by Kent--the part which almost all ships from Gaul
make for--has an easterly, and the lower one a southerly outlook’.
Of the other two sides one, he says, ‘trends westward towards Spain’
(_alterum vergit ad Hispaniam atque occidentem solem_); while the
other has a northerly aspect, and ‘its corner looks if anything in
the direction of Germany’ (_eius angulus lateris maxime ad Germaniam
spectat_).
The territories of Cassivellaunus were ‘separated from those of the
maritime tribes by a river called the Thames, about 80 [Roman] miles
from the sea’.
On the second of the two voyages by which the troops were transported
back to Gaul in 54 B.C., the ships started in a dead calm (_summa
tranquillitate_) at the beginning of the second watch, and reached
harbour at daybreak.[2945]
The only piece of evidence worth quoting which is not in the
_Commentaries_ is the statement of Dion,[2946] that Caesar, in
sailing from his anchorage to his landing-place in 55 B.C., rounded
a promontory. Some commentators, however, believe that important
additional evidence is furnished by Plutarch and Valerius Maximus; and
the statements in question will be considered in subsequent sections of
this article.
III. THE DAY ON WHICH CAESAR LANDED IN 55 B.C.
It is absolutely certain, and is universally admitted, that the full
moon which Caesar mentions occurred on the night of August 30-1, 55
B.C.:[2947] to speak more precisely, it occurred at 3 h. 33 m. a.m.
on the 31st.[2948] Now, with one or two exceptions, which shall be
presently considered, the commentators have concluded that Caesar
landed on the fourth day before the full moon, that is to say, on
the 27th of August. But any one who has read this article with close
attention will have seen that their conclusion rests upon a careless
interpretation of Caesar’s narrative. Caesar says that the eighteen
cavalry transports sailed from Gaul on the fourth day after he landed
in Britain; that when they were approaching the island they were
prevented from keeping their course by a storm; that some of them were
driven westward down the coast and anchored, but were obliged to run
back, in the face of night, for the Continent; and that on the same
night there was a full moon.[2949] Whereupon the commentators leap
to the conclusion that the day on which Caesar landed was the fourth
before the full moon. They forget that what Caesar said was, not that
the transports approached the British coast on the fourth day after he
landed, but that on that day they started from Gaul. The distinction
is important. The transports may have weighed anchor in the night. On
all his four voyages Caesar set sail at night; and Strabo says that
for vessels sailing from Gaul this was the regular practice.[2950]
Let us assume that Caesar landed on the 26th of August. Then, if we
adopt, as almost all the commentators have done, the inclusive mode
of reckoning, the transports may have sailed from Gaul on the night
of the 29th.[2951] On the 30th, in the morning, they would have
been approaching Britain. Then came on the storm. On the following
night--the night of August 30-1--occurred the full moon.
It may be objected that if Caesar had landed in Britain on the 26th of
August, and if his transports had set sail on the night of the 29th,
but after midnight--say between 2 and 3 a.m.--he would have said that
they set sail not on the fourth but on the fifth day after his landing.
I will take note of this objection, but I doubt whether it is valid.
In the thirty-third chapter of the Second Book of the _Commentaries_,
after describing the sortie made by the Aduatuci, which took place in
the third watch of the night, that is to say after midnight, and their
repulse, he goes on to say that ‘on the following day the gates were
broken open’ (_postridie eius diei refractis portis_ &c.); in other
words, he loosely reckoned the third watch of the night as part of the
day that preceded the one which he calls _postridie eius diei_. It is
therefore at least possible, I think it probable, that he landed on the
fifth day before the moon which he described as full.
But it has been argued that Caesar may have made a mistake in
describing the moon as full. He remarks, as we have seen, that the full
moon produces very high tides in the Channel; and he states that on the
night of this particular full moon many of his ships were waterlogged
by an extraordinarily high tide. But the strongest spring tides, in the
eastern part of the Channel, between Dungeness and Beachy Head, occur,
not at the time of full moon, but a day and a half later, and east
of Dungeness two days later.[2952] Airy,[2953] premising that ‘it is
impossible to judge precisely of the day of full moon, either from the
appearance of the moon’s diameter ... or from the time of moon-rising’,
argues that the moon which Caesar described as full was probably, as
a matter of fact, that which produced the spring tide. Accordingly he
assumes that Caesar landed on the third day before the full moon.
Airy’s argument, however, is unsound. No well-informed man needs
to be told that, long before Caesar’s time, astronomers were able
to predict the phases of the moon with sufficient accuracy for all
ordinary purposes. Livy records that in 168 B.C. a tribune in the army
of Aemilius Paullus told his men that a lunar eclipse would occur on
the following night.[2954] It is therefore at least not unlikely that
Caesar should have known on what night the full moon which followed his
landing occurred. The fact that the extraordinarily high tide occurred
on the night which he calls the night of the full moon, presents no
difficulty. The tide on the night of the full moon, even though, in
normal circumstances, it would not have risen as high as a spring tide,
properly so called, would in any case have been unusually high; and
under the influence of the gale which Caesar mentions, its height would
of course have been increased. Extraordinarily high tides, indeed, have
occurred in such circumstances even at neaps;[2955] and it would be
just as reasonable to argue that Caesar ante-dated the day in question
as that he post-dated it. For, as Airy himself assures us, the moon
would have appeared full on the night before it really was so, that is
to say, on the night of August 29-30; and if, as Airy assumes, full
moon had occurred on the night before that to which Caesar assigned it,
he would surely have noticed that the moon appeared full on the two
successive nights which preceded what, on Airy’s hypothesis, he called
the night of the full moon.
The conclusion is that it is not possible to say with absolute
certainty on what day Caesar landed. It is morally certain that he
adopted the inclusive method of reckoning.[2956] It is, as we have
seen, probable that he landed on the fifth, but he may have landed
on the fourth day before the moon which he described as full. It is
highly probable that he fixed the day of the full moon correctly; but
we cannot be perfectly sure. Accordingly it seems to me probable that
he landed on the 26th of August: but he may have landed on the 27th, or
possibly even on the 25th.
Nevertheless, I assure the reader that this uncertainty matters
nothing. If he will bear with me to the end, he will see that we shall
be able, notwithstanding, to determine the place of landing.
IV. DID CAESAR LAND AT THE SAME PLACE IN BOTH HIS EXPEDITIONS?
It remains to inquire whether, in both his expeditions, Caesar landed
at the same place. The commentators are virtually unanimous in holding
that he did; and Napoleon, whose view is an exception to the rule,
believes that the landing-place of 54 B.C. was only a few kilometres
north of that of the preceding year.[2957] He and von Göler[2958]
both rely on the express statement of Dion Cassius[2959]; but Dr.
F. Vogel,[2960] who attaches no importance to Dion’s testimony on
matters of this kind, reminds us that Caesar ‘speaks only of the
place which he had ascertained in the preceding year to be the best
for landing’,[2961] and does not say that he had actually landed
there. I agree with Vogel that Dion’s statement proves nothing; for
there is no reason to suppose that it represents anything but his own
interpretation of Caesar’s words. Nevertheless, it is certain that
Caesar did land in the same ‘part of the island’[2962] in 54 B.C.
and in 55. For, as we shall subsequently see, if he landed on both
occasions in East Kent, the coast which answers to the requirements of
his narrative lies within the extreme limits of Walmer and Sandwich:
if in 55 B.C. he landed at any point west of the South Foreland, it is
not possible to suggest any reason why he should have chosen in the
following year a new landing-place also on the west of that promontory
but in a different ‘part of the island’; and not only has it never been
suggested, but it is incredible that he should have landed in 55 B.C.
on one side, and in 54 on the other side of the South Foreland.
It is hardly necessary to add that before his fleet hove in sight in
54 B.C. the Britons assembled in great force to oppose his landing: in
other words, they felt sure that he would attempt to land at or near
the place where he had landed the year before.
V. THE VARIOUS THEORIES ABOUT CAESAR’S PLACE OF LANDING
Not less than a dozen different theories have been formed regarding the
place of Caesar’s landing. It has been identified with Weybourne on the
coast of Norfolk; with Richborough; with the neighbourhood of Sandwich;
with Deal, or, to speak more correctly, the coast between Deal Castle
and Walmer Castle; with Dover, Folkestone, Hythe, Lympne, Hurst on
the northern fringe of Romney Marsh, Bonnington near Appledore, Rye,
Bulverhythe, and Pevensey. Most of these theories, however, obviously
fall into groups. Richborough, Sandwich, and Deal; Hythe, Lympne,
Hurst, and Bonnington; Bulverhythe and Pevensey,--these three groups
represent three main theories, each of which has undergone modification
in detail. The rest may be summarily dismissed. The absurd suggestion
that Caesar landed in Norfolk was elaborated in two successive
pamphlets;[2963] and, what is still more amazing, a zealous antiquary
thought it necessary to devote a third[2964] to its refutation.
Neither Folkestone nor Rye has now any advocates; and the absurdity
of their pretensions must be self-evident to every intelligent reader
of the _Commentaries_. The theory that Caesar landed at Dover is only
worth mentioning because it was seriously maintained by the eminent
geographer, Konrad Mannert;[2965] and perhaps Heller underestimated the
acumen of his readers when he took the trouble to confute it.[2966]
The claim of Bonnington was maintained with considerable ingenuity by
a professional advocate in a book[2967] which George Long,[2968] who
dissented from its conclusions, commended as ‘a work of real value’;
and it would not be safe to ignore it. Even the view that Caesar landed
at Pevensey demands consideration. It was first put forward in 1852 by
the late Astronomer Royal, who defended it against a series of attacks
with equal ability and vivacity: a few years ago it was resuscitated
by Professor Ridgeway: Mr. Warde Fowler[2969] observes that ‘much can
be said in favour of this opinion’; and the late Camden Professor of
Ancient History in the University of Oxford[2970] was inclined to
accept it. But the controversies which have attracted most attention
have been centred between the advocates of Lympne or Hythe on the one
side and of Deal or Sandwich on the other. And, although there are
many collateral questions, the chief point at issue is this,--when
Caesar sailed with wind and tide in his favour from the place where
he anchored on the morning of his first voyage, and steered for the
place where he landed, was the tidal stream running up or down the
Channel? Among those who have recently approached the subject the
prevailing belief would appear to be that it has been proved that he
sailed down. ‘The old belief,’ writes Mr. Warde Fowler,[2971] ‘that he
turned eastwards and landed at Deal cannot, in the present state of our
knowledge of the tides, be any longer maintained.’ I engage to convince
every reader who will give me his attention that the so-called proof is
no proof at all.
VI. THE QUESTION OF THE TIDES
Before we attempt to construct a tide-table for the 26th and 27th of
August, 55 B.C., we must first satisfy ourselves whether in that year,
at any given period of the moon’s age, the tidal stream in the eastern
part of the English Channel began to flow and to ebb at precisely the
same time as it does in similar circumstances now. On this point there
has been much divergence of opinion. Dr. Guest, the late geologist
George Dowker, and Professor Montagu Burrows have all argued that the
changes which have taken place in the configuration of the coast[2972]
must have produced changes in the tidal currents. The points on which
Dr. Guest laid special stress were, that in Caesar’s time Thanet was
an island; that Dungeness did not then exist; that Romney Marsh was
covered at high tide by an estuary 50,000 acres in extent; and that the
estuary of the Thames was far wider than it is now.[2973] Dowker called
attention to the great changes which, since Caesar’s time, must have
taken place in the Goodwin Sands: ‘would no effect,’ he asked, ‘be
felt by the tides if the Goodwins were now an island?’ Again, observing
that Drew ‘points out how the beach formerly near Rye had been swept
away, and re-deposited in a different direction’, he concluded that
‘geological changes of outline have altered the direction and velocity
of the currents’.[2974] Some years later he returned to the subject.
‘If,’ he wrote,[2975] ‘we assume the Straits are now one mile wider
than when Caesar visited our shores,[2976] the tide which runs with
a velocity of about three miles an hour up Channel, would carry more
water into the German Ocean than a river a mile wide and 15 feet
deep.... There are other changes also that have taken place in the
German Ocean, which must have exerted immense influence on the tides
when we remember that a north-east wind will materially heighten the
tidal lever by forcing up the water of the North Sea. The travelling of
beach in an eastward direction shows that the set of the tide is more
strong in that direction now on some part of the coast than formerly.’
Finally, Professor Montagu Burrows remarks[2977] that ‘Not only may the
depth of the Channel have largely varied, but the space over which the
tides travel must be at least two miles wider than it was some 2,000
years ago,[2978] and therefore the point of meeting of the North and
South tide-streams cannot possibly be exactly the same’.
On the other hand, Airy says, ‘I express my opinion without hesitation
that no conceivable changes in the coast within historical times can
have produced any sensible change in the relation of the tidal currents
to the moon’s age.’[2979]
I have submitted these remarks to Sir George Darwin, the author of
the articles on the tides in the Ninth Edition of the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_ and the Supplement to that edition. ‘In my opinion,’ he
replies, ‘Airy is absolutely right and Burrows and the others wrong.
A channel from Sandwich to Reculver could not have made any sensible
change, and so also it would be impossible to detect the difference if
Goodwin Sands were an island. All the phenomena now observed must have
occurred at the same times within, say, a minute, and with an intensity
measurably identical in the days of Caesar. Even if you were in a
position to indicate exactly the nature of the changes in the channel
since that time, it would be impossible to compute the nature of the
_excessively minute_ changes in the currents.’
This decisive answer will not be seriously gainsaid. Evidently the
divergence of opinion is between those who are not and those who are
qualified to judge.
Airy says that ‘on the day of Caesar’s landing the tide off Dover
turned to the west about 1 h. in the afternoon, and at 3 h. it would
be running with a strong stream to the west’.[2980] Airy, as we have
seen,[2981] supposes that the day of Caesar’s landing was the 28th of
August; but if the statement which I have just quoted is accurate, it
follows that even on the 26th the tide at 3 p.m. was running westward.
Again, in 1866, the Admiralty Hydrographer affirmed that on the 27th of
August, 55 B.C., the current ran westward until 6.30 p.m.;[2982] and if
he is right, it must on the previous day, unless the circumstances were
abnormal, have continued flowing in the same direction until 5 p.m. or
later. Lewin,[2983] relying upon a table compiled by a Mr. Barton of
Dover, and based upon observations made by ‘some experienced pilot or
fisherman’, and upon another table filled up from actual observation
‘on every day of July, 1862’, states that ‘with high water ... at
7.31 a.m., the tide could not turn eastward at the earliest until
4.26 p.m., and at the latest not until 5.21 p.m.’ Nevertheless, he
admits[2984] that, with high tide at 7.31 a.m., the tide might possibly
have turned eastward at 4 p.m. Finally, Mr. H. E. Malden tells us that
‘at any time that afternoon between two o’clock and seven, in any part
of the Channel between Dunge Ness and Dover, the tidal current was
running westward ... when Sir George Airy, the greatest authority of
the century upon the tides, says that they were the same then as now,
_cadit quaestio_. We are lifted out of the uncertainties of historical
topography into the certainties of scientific knowledge.’[2985]
This pronouncement is certainly calculated to overawe the timid
inquirer. Nevertheless, I venture to suggest that a man who knows
little or nothing about the tides should refrain from patting on the
back one who knew a great deal, but who did not think it necessary for
his purpose to tell all that he knew.
Airy may have been the greatest authority of the century upon the
tides: but, apart from his asseveration that they were the same then
as now, in the contribution which he made to the solution of the
problem which we are investigating he relied upon authorities which
are accessible to everybody. Those authorities (I will mention a few
besides those which Airy used) are the _Nautical Almanac_; _Tide Tables
for the British and Irish Ports_ (published by order of the Lords
Commissioners of the Admiralty); the _Channel Pilot_; _Tidal Streams,
English and Irish Channels_ (an Atlas of 12 charts published at the
Admiralty in 1899); Captain Usborne Moore’s _Report on Observations ...
in the Straits of Dover_ (also published at the Admiralty in 1899);
an article by Admiral Sir F. W. Beechey published in _Philosophical
Transactions_, volume cxli, 1851, pages 703-18; and an article
published in _Archaeologia_, volume xxxix, 1863, pages 277-302. The
last-named article includes a report of observations on the tidal
streams in the Straits of Dover, made in 1862 under the superintendence
of E. K. Calver, R.N. These observations were made for the purpose
of settling the question whether the stream with which Caesar sailed
from his anchorage ran up or down the Channel. They were made ‘in
comparatively still weather’ on the 21st of August, the 4th and 5th of
September, and the 4th of October, 1862, at eleven distinct stations
within a space extending to one mile and a half from the shore, and
from the South Foreland to Shakespeare’s Cliff. The days on which
they were made were, reckoning inclusively, respectively the fifth
before the new moon, and the fifth, the fourth, and the fourth before
the full moon. ‘From the average of these observations,’ says Calver,
‘it appears that, when high water at Dover occurs about 7 h. 30 m.
a.m., the inshore flood or easterly-going stream ... turns 4 h. 48 m.
after it is high water upon the shore. Taking then, for example, a 7
h. 31 m. a.m. high water, and assuming that the ebb or westerly-going
stream runs on the average for 6¼ hours, it follows that the flood or
easterly-going stream on that day would turn off Dover at 12 h. 19 m.,
and the succeeding ebb ... would run to the westward until 6 h. 34 m.
p.m.[2986]’ Vice-Admiral W. H. Smyth, summing up the results of the
observations, remarked that the tide turned westward ‘soonest near
the beach and latest in the offing’, and that ‘the turn is sooner to
the east of Dover than to the west, still not differing more than one
hour’.[2987]
So far as we have yet examined them, the results of these observations
fully bear out what Airy and Lewin maintain,--if it is assumed that
high tide at Dover on the day of Caesar’s landing must have occurred
about 7.30 a.m. But if we scrutinize the tables more closely, and give
due weight to certain other facts emphasized by our authorities, we
shall see that the dogmatism of Airy and Lewin is unjustifiable. They
and their followers make no allowance for the great influence which
winds exert upon the tidal streams in the Channel.[2988] Moreover, it
is useless to base conclusions upon the average of the results obtained
in Surveyor Calver’s observations. If we scan the tables which give
those results in detail, we shall find that although, on the average,
the stream turned westward 4 h. 48 m. after high water at Dover, yet on
the 21st of August it turned only 3 h. 40 m. after high water.[2989]
We shall also find that the duration of the flood, as observed by
Calver, varied from 4 to 7 hours; and although the duration of the ebb
was only observed twice,[2990] it may actually have varied as much.
On the first of the two occasions on which it was observed it was 6
hours, 10 minutes; on the second, only 5 hours, 53 minutes;[2991]
and, according to the _Channel Pilot_,[2992] it is occasionally only 4
hours. Therefore it is possible that if on the day of Caesar’s landing
high water occurred at Dover at 7.31 a.m., the tide may have turned
westward as early as 11.11 a.m., and may have continued to run westward
for a period not longer than 5 hours, 53 minutes, that is to say, until
5.4 p.m.
But this is not all. It is desirable that the reader should become
acquainted with Lewin’s methods of reasoning. Lewin himself, after
studying the _Admiralty Tide Tables_ for the year 1859, admits that ‘on
January 14th, being the fourth day before the full moon, high water at
Dover is at 5.31 a.m.’, and that it may possibly have occurred as early
on the day of Caesar’s landing. This admission throws a breaking strain
upon his theory; but by dint of dexterous manipulation of the facts he
is just able to make a show of saving it from ignominious collapse.
‘As’ he says, ‘the stream turns at four hours after high water, and
continues for seven hours, it turns at the earliest at 9.31 a.m. and
runs till 4.31 p.m.... In no case, therefore, would the tide be running
east at 3 p.m.’ But Lewin is here compelled to ignore observations
of which, in another part of his book, he makes free use. As we have
already seen, he admits[2993] that on a day when high tide occurred at
7.31 a.m. the stream might turn eastward at 4.26 or even at 4 p.m. If
he is right, it follows that on a day when high tide occurred at 5.31
a.m. the stream might turn eastward at 2.26 or even at 2 p.m. To make
this admission, from which, if he had been confronted with his own
words, he could by no subtlety have escaped, would have been to throw
up his case; and such candour would have been too much to expect from
a professional advocate. Let him, however, shift his ground, if he
pleases, and rely upon Calver’s observations. They will not avail him.
We have just seen that, according to Calver, the stream turned westward
on the 21st of August, 1862, 3 h. 40 m. after high water; and the
duration of the westward stream, on one of the two occasions on which
he observed it, was only 5 h. 53 m.[2994] According to these data, if,
on the day of Caesar’s landing, high tide had occurred at 5.31 a.m.,
the westward stream might have ceased at 3.4 p.m. It would have been
impossible for Lewin, if he had been required to take account of this
statement, to deny it. But to admit it would have been to sign the
death-warrant of his own theory.
So far I have only been concerned to show that Lewin’s whole train
of reasoning, examined in the light of the evidence which he himself
adduces, is radically unsound. I have argued on his hypothesis--that
high tide at Dover, on the day of Caesar’s landing, _may_ have
occurred at the earliest time at which it can possibly occur on the
fourth day before the full moon. Neither Lewin nor Airy nor any other
commentator has attempted to determine, by the aid of lunar tables,
the hour at which, on the day in question, high tide did actually
occur.[2995] Nevertheless, if the problem which we intend to solve is
to be attacked in a scientific spirit, the hour ought to be determined.
Messrs. John A. Sprigge, William Fraser Doak, M.A., F.R.A.S., and T.
Charlton Hudson, B.A., F.R.A.S., all of the Nautical Almanac Office,
have been so kind as to determine it for me. Their calculations are
preserved; and at the end of this article, on page 665, will be found
a memorandum, in which they have described the method on which they
worked. It will be sufficient here to state the results, the error in
which, as they point out, is probably insignificant. On the 26th of
August, 55 B.C., the Greenwich mean time of high water at Dover was
6.21 a.m.; on the 27th, 7.42 a.m.; and on the 28th, 8.44 a.m.[2996]
Thus it turns out that on the day of Caesar’s landing high water did
not occur at all early. This fact, however, will not sustain the theory
of Airy and Lewin. Since high water at Dover on the 26th of August
occurred at 6.21 a.m., and since the tidal stream, according to one of
Calver’s observations, turned 3 hours, 40 minutes after high water,
the stream may have turned westward at 10.1 a.m. Assuming that the
duration of the westward stream was 5 hours, 53 minutes--the same as
that recorded on one occasion by Calver--the stream would have ceased
at 3.54 p.m. But Calver’s observations were made ‘in comparatively
still weather’;[2997] and, to quote Admiral Beechey, ‘winds greatly
affect the time of turn of the stream.’[2998] Now Caesar sailed from
his anchorage with wind as well as tide in his favour; and the wind
which carried him to his landing-place may have accelerated the turn of
the stream. It is clear, therefore, that on the day of Caesar’s landing
the stream may have turned eastward earlier than 3.54 p.m.; and if it
turned twenty-five minutes earlier, it turned in ‘the ninth hour’.
But, it will be objected, Caesar may have landed on the 27th of August;
and in that case the stream could not have turned eastward before the
close of the ninth hour. Certainly it could not have done so unless it
had turned westward unusually early, or unless its westward duration
had but little exceeded four hours; and although this has been shown
to be within the bounds of possibility,[2999] it is to the last degree
improbable. But if he landed on the 26th of August, an assumption which
has been proved to be not inconsistent with his narrative,[3000] it is
not improbable that the stream may have turned eastward in the ninth
hour; and this is all that I am concerned at present to show.
It may be said that, in order to refute the dogma of Airy and Lewin,
I have supposed an extreme case. I can only say that I did not start
with the intention either of refuting or defending that dogma: I
merely examined it, and found that it would not bear examination. And
I am justified in supposing an extreme, or rather an exceptional,
case because Airy and Lewin have both affirmed that it is absolutely
impossible that in the ninth hour on the day of Caesar’s first landing
in Britain the tidal stream can have been running towards the east.
But, supposing that it did not turn eastward until after the ninth
hour, still the theory that Caesar must have sailed in the opposite
direction will not stand. For the reader, if he has patience to bear
with me to the end, will convince himself, from Caesar’s own words,
that Caesar did not stir from his anchorage until after the ninth hour
had passed.
VII. THE THEORY THAT CAESAR LANDED AT PEVENSEY
The two distinguished advocates of the theory that Caesar landed at
Pevensey are not in complete accord. Airy holds that he sailed both
in 55 and in 54 B.C. from the mouth of the Somme;[3001] Professor
Ridgeway from Wissant.[3002] It has been proved in my article on the
Portus Itius that he started from Boulogne; and whoever accepts that
proof will, perhaps, skip this section. I am willing, however, for the
sake of argument, to accept in turn both Airy’s identification of the
Portus Itius and that of Professor Ridgeway: but I may remark that when
Airy wrote he had forgotten that in Caesar’s time there was a natural
harbour at Pevensey;[3003] and if Caesar had landed in a harbour he
would not have left the fact unnoticed.
If we are to accept the premiss on which Airy himself lays so much
stress, namely, that in 55 B.C. the tidal currents in the Channel, at
any given period of the moon’s age, were the same as they are now,
Caesar did not land at Pevensey. Airy, as we have seen, assumes that
Caesar landed, in 55 B.C., on the third day before the full moon, and,
appealing to the authority of Sir F. W. Beechey, he affirms that, off
Hastings, the current turns westward five miles from the coast two
hours later than it does close inshore. ‘If,’ he concludes, ‘we suppose
Caesar to have first attempted the neighbourhood of St. Leonards, the
tide, which a few miles from shore had turned to the west at 11 h.,
was, at 3 h., running in full stream to the west.’[3004] But, in order
to prop up his theory, Airy is forced to place Caesar’s anchorage at
five nautical or nearly six statute miles from the shore. To prove
that such an assumption is absurd, it is only necessary to say that,
at a distance of five nautical miles, Caesar could not have seen the
armed men who, as he tells us,[3005] were swarming upon the cliffs,
without the assistance of a powerful telescope.[3006] Lewin[3007]
rightly concludes that Caesar must have anchored within a mile from
the shore, at the outside, and probably within half a mile. Now high
water at Dover on the 27th of August, 55 B.C., occurred at 7.42, and
therefore at Hastings at 7.23 a.m.[3008] But off Hastings, within a
mile from the shore, the current turns westward about the time of high
tide,[3009] runs westward for about six hours and a half, and then
runs eastward for about six hours. At 3 p.m., therefore, on the 27th
of August, the tide off Hastings would have been running eastward, and
would have continued to do so until about 7.50 p.m. And on the 28th of
August, which Airy wrongly assumes to have been the day of Caesar’s
landing, the tide off Hastings would have turned eastward about 2.53
p.m., and would have continued to run in that direction until about
8.53. Consequently, on the theory of the tides which Airy himself so
strenuously maintains, it would have been impossible for Caesar to sail
with the tide from Hastings or from St. Leonards to Pevensey.[3010]
Even on Airy’s assumption that Caesar anchored five nautical miles
from the shore, his theory cannot stand: he can only make a show of
propping it up by assuming that Caesar landed on the 28th of August.
On the 27th, the stream would have turned westward at about 9.30 a.m.,
and would have ceased running westward about 4 p.m. Therefore, even
supposing that Caesar started on his seven miles’ sail in the ninth
hour,[3011] he would have done so on the very last of the tidal stream,
when it was barely moving; and it would have turned against him before
he had half finished his voyage.
Very wisely, from his own point of view--for his silence has hitherto
passed unnoticed--Airy ignored Caesar’s account of the voyage of
his cavalry transports. Some of them, as we have seen, were ‘swept
down in great peril’ (_magno suo cum periculo deicerentur_[3012]),
evidently running before the gale, ‘to the lower and more westerly
part of the island’ (_ad inferiorem partem insulac quae est propius
solis occasum_[3013]): the others were carried back to the port from
which they had started. That port, according to Airy, was the mouth of
the Authie. The gale evidently blew from about the north-east; but,
in order to give Airy the fullest latitude, I will assume that it was
from the north-north-east, although in either case the ships which ran
before the wind, once they had got under the lee of Beachy Head, would
have been in smooth water! The course which the transports would have
had to steer for the Authie, if they had been sighted off Pevensey,
would have been SE. by E. 2° S., or within less than nine points of
the wind. But in the gale they could hardly have made less than four
points of lee-way.[3014] Therefore, in order to reach their supposed
destination, they would have been obliged to lie within less than five
points of the wind, which they could not have done.[3015] ‘No!’ said
the harbour-master of Dover to me, after he had studied the chart, ‘No!
they would have fetched Dieppe.’[3016] I have assumed that they could
work to windward: if they could not, it is self-evident that they could
not have returned to the mouth of the Authie.
But if any one is not convinced, let him hear Airy plead his own cause.
1. Airy argues that Volusenus would never have recommended Caesar
to land under the cliffs of Dover, or at any point under the cliffs
between Folkestone and Hythe. ‘No commander,’ he says, ‘would steer
ships to a mural cliff three hundred feet high, with the intention of
landing in order to invade the country; nor would any defenders station
themselves there to repel an invasion; nor could a “telum” be thrown
with any aim. But a daring officer might steer to a less perpendicular
cliff, ten to thirty feet high, with the intention of forcing a
landing.... Such are the cliffs between Hastings and Pevensey; and I
conclude that they answer exactly to Caesar’s description.’ Assuming
that the cliffs off which Caesar anchored, when he first approached the
British coast, were in the neighbourhood of St. Leonards, Airy affirms
that ‘the run of eight[3017] miles would bring him to the beach of
Pevensey, answering perfectly to his description’.[3018]
Now whether Caesar did or did not steer towards ‘a mural cliff three
hundred feet high’, he certainly anchored off cliffs which he calls
‘precipitous heights’ (_angusti montes_); and Airy makes too great a
demand upon our credulity when he requires us to believe that Caesar
described by the words _angusti montes_ a ‘cliff ten to thirty feet
high’. So much for the theory that Caesar anchored off the clifflets of
St. Leonards:[3019] the argument that he could not have anchored off
the cliffs of Dover shall be considered in its proper place. The reader
has of course already observed that Volusenus, being a sane man, would
never have recommended Caesar to ‘force a landing’ under any cliffs,
great or small.
2. Airy argues that the Britons would naturally have assembled at
Pevensey in order to oppose Caesar’s landing, because ‘Pevensey was
the weakest point of Britain’.[3020] No! replies Lewin, Pevensey
was not _then_ the weakest point; for it was ‘backed by the Andred
Forest’.[3021] Airy[3022] triumphantly observes that William the
Conqueror landed there; but Lewin[3023] rejoins that when William
landed the forest presented less difficulty to an invader than in
Caesar’s time, as the Romans and the Saxons must have made clearances.
Be this as it may, it is certain that William did not attempt to march
northward through the forest. He returned, immediately after his
victory, to Hastings: from Hastings he marched eastward to Romney,
and from Romney to Dover.[3024] He had his own reasons for landing at
Pevensey: but Caesar, for reasons equally good, chose the shortest
passage; and although, as I have shown,[3025] these words are not to
be taken in an absolutely literal sense, they alone exclude the notion
that Caesar landed in Sussex. Obviously it is in the last degree
improbable that Volusenus would have reconnoitred the coast so far
westward as Pevensey; nor could the Britons have expected that Caesar
would be so foolish as to double the length of his voyage in order to
land there.[3026]
3. Airy argued that, except on the hypothesis that Caesar landed
at Pevensey, it is impossible to account for the long duration of
his first voyage. His rate of sailing, said Airy, if, as Dr. Guest
maintained, he had started from Wissant and anchored off the Dover
cliffs, would not have exceeded two miles an hour. ‘When in Shetland,’
he adds, ‘I have sailed in one of the ordinary fishing-boats of the
country, hoisting a single lug-sail ... with a pleasant, easy breeze
(sometimes dying away), from Lerwick to the head of Balta Sound, in
Unst, in about eight hours. The distance, as measured on the Admiralty
Chart, exceeds forty nautical miles.’[3027]
This was one of Airy’s more plausible arguments; and it demands
consideration. To begin with, it must be pointed out that Caesar did
not, as Dr. Guest believed, sail from Wissant, but from Boulogne,
which is more than seven nautical miles further from Dover. Airy
assumed[3028] that Caesar’s first voyage lasted from midnight till
10 a.m. But it is impossible to say how long it lasted. Caesar does
not say that he started at midnight: he says that he started ‘about
the third watch’ (_tertia fere vigilia_); and the third watch lasted,
on the night of the 25th-26th of August, from midnight till 2.32
a.m., on the night of the 26th-27th till 2.33 a.m.[3029] Nor does
he say that he reached Britain at 10 a.m.; he says that he reached
it ‘about the fourth hour of the day’, which lasted on the 26th of
August from 8.33 to 9.42.[3030] As Mr. Peskett says, ‘the possible
duration of the voyage lies between the extreme limits of 9 h. 40′
and 6 hours.’[3031] Split the difference, and you will find that the
average rate of sailing would have been about three knots and a half
per hour. The answer to Airy’s argument is that Caesar’s narrative is
quite consistent with the view that his ships may have remained for
some time anchored off the Gallic coast in the expectation that the
cavalry transports would sail out of Ambleteuse harbour to join them;
and, further, that the wind may have shifted to an unfavourable quarter
before the voyage was at an end.[3032]
4. Airy[3033] maintains that a river corresponding with Caesar’s
description of the one on the banks of which he defeated the Britons
on the day after his second landing,[3034] is to be found in the
neighbourhood of Pevensey, and of Pevensey only. That river, he says,
was the Rother, and the scene of the victory was Robertsbridge. He
produces evidence to show that if Rye Sluice were broken, ‘the whole
valley at Robertsbridge would now become a great tidal morass.’ This,
he continues, ‘was its state in the age of Caesar, and it must have
been a very formidable defence against an army advancing from the
coast.’
Undoubtedly; so formidable that it would have been absolutely
impassable. How Caesar’s cavalry succeeded in forcing their way over
this ‘great tidal morass’ Airy omits to explain. If he had studied
Caesar’s description[3035] of the much less formidable morass over
which his ablest marshal, Labienus, tried in vain to construct a
causeway, and from which he was obliged to retreat, he would hardly
have made Caesar attempt to cross ‘a great tidal morass’ in the face of
an enemy.
Caesar, as we have seen, descried at daybreak, on his second voyage,
the coast of Britain ‘lying behind on the left’;[3036] and if these
words mean, as all commentators except Airy and Professor Ridgeway
maintain, that he had drifted to some point east or north-east of the
South Foreland, they alone dispose of Airy’s theory. Airy of course saw
this; and accordingly he put his own construction upon the passage. ‘I
cannot conceive,’ he says,[3037] ‘that the expression refers to any
direction but to that of the drift; it asserts that, in reference to
the direction of tidal current, the coast was on the left hand. It is
therefore indecisive as to place.’
Lewin, in his reply,[3038] overlooked one consideration, which by
itself overthrows Airy’s interpretation. If, as Airy would have us
believe, Caesar’s vessel had not drifted as far east as Dover, she
was, owing to the direction of the current, moving parallel with the
British coast.[3039] How, then, could Caesar, in the case supposed by
Airy, have said that he saw Britain ‘_lying behind_ on the left’ (_sub
sinistra relictam_)?
The theory that Caesar landed at Pevensey is irreconcilable with the
fact that the four chieftains who attacked his naval camp in 54 B.C.
belonged not to Sussex but to Kent.[3040] Airy endeavoured to answer
this objection by the remark that the men of Kent were more numerous
than those of Sussex, and would therefore have gone to the assistance
of their countrymen.[3041] But, replied Lewin,[3042] ‘as the men of
Kent were distinct from the Regni, or men of Sussex, the natural
inference to be drawn from the assault of the camp by the _men of
Kent_ surely is that the _camp was in Kent_.’ I may point out further
that, considering the state of internecine war in which the Britons
habitually lived, and which was only suspended for the time under the
pressure of a common danger,[3043] it is not credible that the men of
Kent would have consented to make a long march away from their own
territory in order to undertake an operation which would have properly
devolved upon another tribe, and unlikely that they would have been
sufficiently well organized to feed their army during a march of such
duration.
The distance between the mouth of the Somme, which Airy identifies
with the Portus Itius, and St. Leonards, where he maintains that
Caesar first reached Britain, is, as he himself says,[3044] ‘about
52 nautical miles,’ that is to say, rather more than 65 Roman miles:
the distance between the Portus Itius and Britain, according to
Caesar’s estimate,[3045] was about 30 Roman miles. To say nothing of
this glaring discrepancy, Caesar’s account of his return voyage from
Britain to Gaul in 54 B.C. presents a difficulty which taxed all Airy’s
ingenuity to explain away. Caesar[3046] tells us that he started in the
second watch in a dead calm (_summa tranquillitate_), and reached Gaul
at daybreak. Naturally the opponents of Airy’s theory insist that to
cross from Pevensey to the mouth of the Somme in this time would have
been impossible.
But Airy is never so confident as when he has to defend an untenable
position. He roundly asserts that his critics do not understand
Caesar’s language. _Summa tranquillitas_, he tells them, does not mean
‘a dead calm’: it means ‘a stiff north-west wind’. Professor Thompson,
he informs us, assured him that a favourable wind ‘is compatible
with a “tranquillum mare”’; and he refers, in support of this view,
to a passage in one of Cicero’s letters,[3047]--‘I am forced to
wait for fair weather owing to the open ships ... of the Rhodians’
(_Nos Rhodiorum aphractis ceterisque longis navibus tranquillitates
aucupaturi eramus_). He also appeals to two passages in Vergil:--
_placidi straverunt aequora venti,
Creber et adspirans rursus vocat Auster in altum,_[3048]
and
_postquam alta quierunt
Aequora, tendit iter velis portumque relinquit._[3049]
‘It appears to me,’ he observes, ‘that Virgil’s idea of circumstances
favourable to navigation always implied the co-existence of brisk wind
and smooth water.’ The idea that Caesar’s fleet was rowed across the
Channel he scouts as ridiculous. ‘If,’ he adds, ‘with smooth water
there had been a brisk breeze, the steerage would have been good
... the voyage would have been easy ... we have only to suppose a
stiff north-west wind, capable of carrying the ships 7 or 8 miles an
hour.’[3050]
Now as to the first of these passages, the context shows that Cicero
had been weatherbound by the violence of the trade winds; and he uses
the word _tranquillitates_ in the sense of ‘fine weather’ in contrast
with these.[3051] His vessels were undecked; and therefore he could not
venture to set sail in a rough sea. It can hardly be inferred from this
passage, which Airy does not understand, that _summa tranquillitas_
means ‘a stiff north-west wind’. The first passage quoted from Vergil
simply says that gentle winds (_placidi venti_--an expression by no
means identical with _summa tranquillitas_) stilled the sea, and that
then a southerly wind invited Aeneas to set sail: the second tells us
that Aeneas set sail after the cessation of a storm. If Cicero does
not imply that _summa tranquillitas_ means ‘a stiff north-west wind’,
neither does Vergil. If Airy had really known his authorities, he would
have called to mind the passage in which Cicero[3052] relates, in
language virtually identical with that of Caesar, that he was prevented
from sailing by ‘an astonishingly dead calm’ (_mirae tranquillitates_).
And if he had known his Caesar, he would have thought of the
passage[3053] which tells how the ships of the Veneti were becalmed in
their fight with Decimus Brutus,--‘suddenly there was a dead calm, and
they could not stir’ (_tanta subito malacia ac tranquillitas exstitit
ut se ex loco commovere non possent_). If _tanta tranquillitas_ means
‘such a dead calm’, as it assuredly does, it is not easy to see how
_summa tranquillitas_ can mean ‘a stiff north-west wind’. If these
passages do not fix the meaning of _summa tranquillitas_, we may
dispense with further research.[3054]
I confess that I do not know whether more to admire the audacity and
resource which Airy displayed in controversy, or the sublime lack of
humour which permitted him to translate _summa tranquillitas_ by ‘a
stiff north-west wind’.
So much for the late Astronomer Royal. If I do not ignore the arguments
of Professor Ridgeway, it is because I am unwilling to appear wanting
in due respect for his reputation. But I would ask him to explain one
little difficulty which he has left unnoticed,--namely, how Caesar’s
cavalry transports could have contrived to return, as, on his theory,
they must have done, from a point near Pevensey to Sangatte, that is to
say, to steer E. 9° N. in the teeth of a gale which unquestionably blew
from some point east of north? Let the professor consult any seafaring
man, and he will learn that such a feat would have been absolutely,
absurdly impossible.
1. Professor Ridgeway labours to show that the distance of Pevensey
from Wissant corresponds with the distance, as stated by Caesar,
of Britain from the Portus Itius. He assures us that, according to
certain MSS. (which, however, he does not specify), that distance was
not ‘about thirty’, but ‘about forty miles’ (_circiter milium passuum
XXXX....a continenti_[3055]).
It is surprising that so distinguished a scholar should have committed
himself to a statement which five minutes’ search in any critical
edition of the _Commentaries_ would have shown to be unfounded. The
_MSS._ to which he appeals have no existence; or, if they exist, they
have never come to light.[3056] But, as I have already shown, on other
grounds,[3057] Caesar _may_ have written _XXXX_; so let Professor
Ridgeway have the benefit of the doubt, though I need hardly say that
the distance of Pevensey, and even of Bexhill, from Wissant is much
more than forty Roman miles.
2. The professor then invokes the authority of Dion Cassius. ‘If,’
he argues, ‘Caesar, on coming into the land of the Morini, found, as
Dio says, that all the landing places opposite the continent were
held by Britons, by which he evidently means the landing places in
the narrow part of the Channel, would Caesar obstinately persist in
crossing at the narrowest spot, or like a wise general seek for a more
suitable, although more distant landing place?’ This view, he pleads,
is supported by the fact that Caesar describes the passage from the
Portus Itius not as the shortest, but simply as the most convenient
(_commodissimus_).[3058]
Mr. H. E. Malden makes the obvious reply that Caesar did not, in point
of fact, avoid the landing-places in question for the reason suggested
by Professor Ridgeway; for ‘he landed in the teeth of a British
army’.[3059] Moreover, as we have already seen, Caesar tells us that he
sailed from the coast of the Morini ‘because the shortest passage to
Britain was from their country’.
3. The professor contends that his theory is supported by Caesar’s
account of his voyage in 54 B.C. Mr. Malden[3060] told him that Caesar
could not have sailed from Wissant [or, as he ought to have said, from
Boulogne] to Pevensey with a south-west wind;[3061] and that, since
the tide must have carried him in 54 B.C. at least as far as the South
Foreland,[3062] it would have been impossible for his men to row to
Pevensey--a distance of fifty-five miles--between dawn and noon, that
is to say in less than nine hours. The professor replied to the former
objection that Caesar ‘evidently sailed, not direct for Pevensey, but
rather across Channel’.[3063] The reply was as true as it was futile;
but it was true only because Caesar was bound, not for Pevensey but for
East Kent. Mr. Malden’s second objection the professor endeavoured to
rebut by the following arguments:--First, that as Caesar’s men began
to row at 3 a.m.,[3064] continued rowing till noon, and had the tide
in their favour for the first six hours, they could, if necessary,
have rowed fifty-five miles in nine hours. Secondly, that fifty-five
miles is an excessive estimate; and that the actual distance was not
more than thirty-nine; for _accessum est ad Britanniam_[3065] [the
words by which Caesar describes the arrival of his fleet] ‘seems to
denote nothing more than what he expressed by the words _Britanniam
attigit_[3066] in the story of the former voyage. But,’ continues the
professor, ‘he did not land at all at the place where he _Britanniam
attigit_, but dropped down with the tide seven miles further. Moreover,
Caesar does not say that he made for the very spot where he had landed
before, but simply _remis contendit ut eam partem insulae caperet qua
optimum esse egressum superiore aestate cognoverat_[3067] [“rowed
hard to gain the part of the island where, as he had learned in the
preceding summer, it was best to land”]. The high cliffs formed his
landmark.’ The professor is presumably referring to the cliffs eight
miles east of Pevensey, which, as Airy points out, are ‘from ten to
thirty feet high’: these cliffs would evidently have made a most
conspicuous ‘landmark’. However, the professor contrives to reduce the
length of the voyage by eight miles at one end: he curtails it at the
other by simply denying, like Airy, that when Caesar ‘saw Britain lying
behind on the left’, he had drifted past the South Foreland. He insists
that Caesar ‘might use the word _relictam_ [‘left behind’] when,
instead of finding himself close to the shore of Britain, he discovered
that, between the course he had sailed and the way he had drifted, he
had moved away from Britain’.[3068] This remark only shows that the
professor did not know what was the direction of the flood tide. Unless
Caesar had got past the South Foreland by the time when he ‘saw Britain
lying behind on the left’, the tide had not carried him ‘away from
Britain’.
The professor’s argument comes to this. He says that Caesar’s men
rowed as hard as they could; that they could have rowed fifty-five
miles in nine hours, but that they only did row thirty-nine! He asks
us to believe that they rowed fifty-five miles in nine hours, though,
on his own showing, the tide was against them for one-third of that
time![3069] Finally, when he argues that because Caesar did not land in
55 B.C. at the point where he _Britanniam attigit_, therefore he did
not land in 54 B.C. at the point where _accessum est ad Britanniam_,
he forgets two things:--first, that Caesar distinctly says that in 55
B.C. he sailed on seven miles from the point where he first _Britanniam
attigit_, whereas all commentators except Professor Ridgeway have
drawn from Caesar’s narrative the inevitable inference that in 54 B.C.
he landed at the point where _accessum est ad Britanniam_; secondly,
that the Britons expected him to land in 54 B.C. at the point where
_accessum est ad Britanniam_, for ‘large forces had assembled there’
(_magnae manus eo convenissent_). Does the professor seriously mean
to argue that if Caesar had landed elsewhere, he would not have said
so?[3070]
Not a single argument of the least weight has been or can be adduced
to show that Caesar landed at Pevensey or anywhere on the coast of
Sussex.[3071] On the other hand, there is not a single objection which
has here been brought against that theory which is not alone sufficient
to overthrow it. The truth is that Airy, with all his scientific
knowledge and controversial skill, was not adequately equipped to
discuss the question: his classical scholarship left much to be
desired; and, having once committed himself to the preposterous theory
that the Portus Itius was in the estuary of the Somme, he was forced to
look for Caesar’s landing-place far to the west of that part of Britain
in which Caesar’s narrative inevitably places it. To that part of
Britain our inquiry must henceforth be confined. Whether Caesar landed
east or west of the cliffs of Dover, he landed in Kent.
VIII. THE THEORY THAT CAESAR LANDED AT LYMPNE OR HYTHE
The most dexterous advocate of the theory that Caesar landed on
Romney Marsh was Thomas Lewin; and it says a great deal for his
persuasiveness that not one of his critics appears to have detected
the inconsistencies with which his work abounds. Those which vitiate
his argument, in so far as it relates to the tides, I have mentioned
already.[3072] The rest all spring from one and the same source. When
Lewin wrote his book, he adopted a theory as to the configuration of
Romney Marsh which, after obtaining what he considered ‘more accurate
information’,[3073] he discarded. This information he embodied in an
appendix to his second edition; but at the same time he allowed the
statements based upon his former researches to stand. Thus on page 65,
note 4, he implies that ‘the heart of the marsh’ was inhabited; but
in his preface (pages v-vi) he affirms that ‘the eastern end of the
Marsh where Caesar arrived was as much _terra firma_ in his day as in
our own’, virtually admitting, as the context and the map which faces
page liii alike show, that the rest was inundated at every high tide.
On page 92 he says that ‘the sea, as is proved incontestably by the
fragments of ships and anchors which have been dug up, flowed to the
very base of the hill, and formed there the port of Limne. Stutfall
[castle], therefore, was formed for the protection of the shipping.’ On
pages lxviii and lxix the incontestable proof is not only contested but
flung to the winds: ‘the fragments of ships and anchors’ are silently
annihilated; Stutfall Castle, it now appears, ‘was for the protection,
not of the port, but of Saxonicum littus’; and the ‘Portus Limanis’
(_sic_) becomes a ‘narrow gut’, extending from a point near Shorncliffe
to West Hythe behind a bank of shingle broken by a narrow entrance
nearly opposite Hythe. In an article which Lewin contributed to the
fortieth volume of _Archaeologia_ he remarks that if the Portus Lemanis
had been at the foot of Lympne Hill, ‘we should expect to find some
vestiges, however faint, of the port itself’: but, he adds, ‘I have
never heard or read (though I have often inquired) that any remnant of
a pier or sunken vessel, or even any anchor or other part of a ship’s
tackle, was ever discovered in this part.’[3074] Are we to infer,
then, Mr. Lewin, that when you told us on page 92 of your book that
‘fragments of ships and anchors’ had been ‘dug up’ at the foot of the
hill, you were romancing? On turning back to page 42, we find that the
above-mentioned ‘narrow gut’ first came into existence in the time of
the Saxons; but on page lxix we learn with bewilderment that it ‘must
have continued such until the abandonment of Britain by the Romans or
nearly so’. In the article which he contributed to _Archaeologia_ Lewin
changed his mind again. In the map which illustrates this article the
‘narrow gut’ extends no further westward than Hythe. On page 44 of the
book we read that Caesar landed on ‘the western side’ of ‘the creek of
Limne’ or ‘port of Limne’, the very existence of which the author’s
later and ‘more accurate information’ led him to deny. On pages lxxii
and lxxiv Caesar’s landing-place is silently transferred from ‘the
western side’ of ‘the creek of Limne’ to Hythe. On page 44 two islands
mentioned (according to Lewin) by Valerius Maximus are identified with
‘two islands’ depicted on ‘old maps’ of ‘the bay of Limne’: on page
lxxiii we are asked to identify them with two ‘islands’ in the ‘narrow
gut’ above mentioned.
The reader now understands that, according to the theory of the ancient
configuration of Romney Marsh which Lewin adopted in his Appendix and
illustrated in the map facing page liii of his book, it would have
been impossible for Caesar to land opposite Lympne, because on that
theory the marsh between Lympne Hill and the shingle beach was flooded
by the sea at high tide. Nevertheless, I shall consider the arguments
by which Lewin defended his original view--that Caesar landed opposite
Lympne--because distinguished scholars still hold that there was a
harbour there in Roman times.
When we come to examine Lewin’s final view--that Caesar landed at
Hythe--we shall find some difficulty in doing justice to it; for
he carefully avoids committing himself to any clear explanation of
his meaning. If we look at his map[3075] of the ‘narrow gut’, which
he believed to have extended from West Hythe to a point opposite
Shorncliffe, we shall see that, on his theory, Caesar must have done
one of two things. Either he must have landed on the shingle west of
the mouth of the gut, or he must have landed on the shingle east of
that mouth; for Lewin clearly gives us to understand that the Roman
ships did not sail into the harbour.[3076] He maintains that on the
day on which the first landing occurred a fierce struggle took place
between the Romans and the Britons in ‘the field south of Hythe’.[3077]
In order to reach this field, the Romans would have had to walk along
the shingle either westward or eastward, and then along the northern
shore of the ‘narrow gut’. But Caesar distinctly states that as soon
as the Romans stood on dry land, that is to say, on Lewin’s own
showing, on the shingle beach, they put the Britons to flight.[3078]
What becomes, then, of the imaginary combat in ‘the field south of
Hythe’? Furthermore, Lewin, while he is constrained to admit that this
field is ‘below high-water mark’, assures us that it was ‘certainly
dry at low water’.[3079] But he himself strenuously maintains that
the Romans _began_ to land three hours after low tide.[3080] Perhaps
he was uneasily conscious that he had contradicted himself when he
suggested that the Britons ‘would unquestionably have possessed
the skill to embank the port and drain the land in the immediate
neighbourhood’.[3081]
The theory that Caesar landed at or near Hythe involves another
mystery, which Lewin does not attempt to clear up. Where was the camp
which, in 54 B.C., Caesar linked by ‘a single defensive work’ (_una
munitione_[3082]) with the ships which he found it necessary to haul
up on dry land, and how was the defensive work constructed? Lewin
tells us that the ships could not possibly have been drawn up opposite
Shorncliffe, because the shore there ‘is rocky and precipitous’.[3083]
Therefore, if the landing took place near Hythe, they must have been
drawn up on the beach west of Shorncliffe, and on the seaward side of
the ‘narrow gut’,--as he suggests, opposite Hythe. If so, of what was
the ‘defensive work’ composed? Surely not of shingle? The entrenchments
which a child constructs with his toy spade at Margate would have
been just as effective. But if not of shingle, what other material
was available on a shingle beach? And what was the direction of the
‘defensive work’ which connected the ships with the camp? Presumably
the camp was on dry land behind the ‘narrow gut’, and constructed not
of shingle but of earth. Now the entrenchment which protected the ships
and connected them with this camp could hardly have been carried across
the ‘narrow gut’, which was deeply submerged at every high tide! I can
only suppose, then, that the connecting work was really constructed,
by some occult process, of shingle; traced out along the shingle beach
either eastward towards Shorncliffe, or westward to West Hythe Oaks,
and then along the northern shore of the ‘narrow gut’ until it joined
the camp. Or if, as Lewin suggests, the camp with which the ships
were connected was distinct from the camp which Caesar marked out on
an ‘advantageous position’ (_loco idoneo_[3084]) immediately after
his second landing; and if, as he affirms,[3085] it ‘must have stood
upon the seashore’, and its site ‘must long since have disappeared’;
then it can only be concluded that camp and connecting work were both
constructed of shingle!
Again, it is incredible that a gale which drove some of Caesar’s
eighteen cavalry transports past Hythe or Lympne to a more westerly
part of the island should have carried the rest back to the port from
which they had started, which Lewin rightly identified with Ambleteuse.
If the ships had been approaching Hythe when the storm arose, they
would have been obliged, in order to return to Ambleteuse, to steer SE.
by E. 9° S.[3086] Now Lewin himself maintains that the gale blew from
the north-east.[3087] As a matter of fact, if it had blown from this
quarter at Lympne or Hythe, it would have been practically innocuous;
for off either of those places vessels would have been sheltered from
it by the hills, and the transports which were driven westward would
not have been, as they were, swept by the waves: if the gale had blown
from the north-east off Walmer, its direction off Hythe would have been
about east-north-east.[3088] Still, for the sake of argument, I will
accept Lewin’s view. According to it, the ships would have been forced
to sail within less than eight points of the wind. But in a heavy gale
a ship will make as much as six points and a half of lee-way.[3089]
Let us reduce this estimate to four, which is certainly a liberal
reduction.[3090] It follows that the hapless transports would have
been required, in order to reach their destination, to lie within less
than four points of the wind, a feat which, I need hardly say, would
have been utterly impossible.[3091] Furthermore, Lewin affirms, in an
unguarded moment, that the gale, when a few hours later it wrecked
Caesar’s ships as they rode at anchor, was still blowing from the
north-east: but he does not explain how a north-easterly gale could
have driven ashore, that is to say, driven in a northerly direction,
ships anchored off Lympne or Hythe!
Such are a few of the absurdities in which Lewin’s theory plunges him.
However, he shall be heard in his own defence.
The argument upon which Lewin lays the most stress has been already
refuted.[3092] He maintains that at the time when Caesar, on the day of
his first voyage, quitted his anchorage and sailed with the stream to
the spot where he was to land, the stream must have been running down
the Channel.[3093] Let us assume, in order to allow more than its due
weight to his argument, that Caesar must have weighed anchor as early
as 3.30 p.m.,[3094] though I shall afterwards prove that the assumption
is both unnecessary and false; and let us also suppose that the tide
did not actually turn eastward until after 5 p.m. Even then, unless
Caesar could have calculated the exact time which it had still to run
with more than the certainty of the experts who prepare the _Admiralty
Tide Tables_, he would have had to face the risk that, before he
could reach his landing-place, it might turn against him. Even if
Heller[3095] is not right in interpreting the words ‘getting wind and
tide simultaneously in his favour’ (_et ventum et aestum uno tempore
nactus secundum_) as meaning that Caesar weighed anchor just after the
stream had turned, there can be no doubt that this would have been the
wisest course to pursue.
1. Having disposed, to his own satisfaction, of the question of the
tides, Lewin remarks that ‘Hythe would be much nearer than Deal, and
was the natural port for vessels from Boulogne’.[3096]
Yes, nearer by a bare two miles, and a few yards nearer than Walmer!
But, as Lewin himself insists,[3097] Caesar, when he sailed from
Boulogne, did not intend to land either at Hythe or at Deal; and unless
he intended to sail direct to one of those places, Lewin’s argument
collapses. Moreover, since the greater part of the voyage was made upon
the easterly-going stream, it would have taken longer to sail to Hythe
than to the coast between Walmer and Deal. And when Lewin affirms that
Hythe ‘was the natural port for vessels from Boulogne’, he apparently
forgets that he has already told us that ‘Folkestone ... would be the
natural port for Boulogne’,[3098] that Caesar’s fleet never entered
Hythe harbour, and that ‘the mooring of the Roman vessels within it
would be certain destruction’.[3099]
2. Lewin attempts to show that the wind which carried Caesar from
Boulogne to his anchorage on his first voyage, and which would, if
it had continued, have been in his favour if he had intended to sail
on towards Deal, veered round before he quitted his anchorage.[3100]
His argument runs as follows:--‘Caesar says that he started from his
anchorage ... having _got_ the wind in his favour, and the Latin word
_nactus_ implies that the wind had undergone a change.... When he
embarked at Boulogne he despatched the cavalry to Ambleteuse ... with
orders to follow him with all haste; but ... they did not leave that
haven for Britain until the fourth day after,[3101] and no plausible
reason can be given for this except that, for the whole of this
interval, the wind was contrary; that is ... had shifted.’ In a later
passage[3102] he maintains that if the wind had not shifted during the
voyage, the length of the passage, and especially the tardy arrival
of the transports, would be inexplicable. Moreover, he says, the word
_nactus_ ‘implies a change either in the _wind_ or the tide: the tide
had not changed, and therefore the change alluded to must have been
in the wind’.[3103] While, however, he argues that the wind must have
shifted, he endeavours to secure his retreat by affirming that, if it
had not shifted, Caesar could nevertheless have sailed to Hythe as
easily as to Deal. ‘Supposing,’ he says,[3104] ‘the wind to have blown
from the south, it would have been favourable to a movement, from a
point opposite Dover, either to the east or west.’
I freely admit--indeed I have myself maintained--that the wind had
shifted during the voyage. It had shifted to a point unfavourable, or
comparatively unfavourable, to ships sailing from North-Eastern Gaul
to Britain. I also, like Lewin, maintain that it shifted again before
Caesar quitted his anchorage. The fact is obvious. But what then? How
can Lewin prove that before Caesar quitted his anchorage the wind did
not shift to a quarter which would have been favourable to a run from
a point off the cliffs of Dover towards Deal? Moreover, it is not
true that if the wind had ‘blown from the south, it would have been
favourable to a movement, from a point opposite Dover, either to the
east or west’. If the wind had blown exactly from the south, it would
certainly not have been called favourable to a movement from a point
opposite Dover to Hythe, that is to say, within less than seven points
of the wind; and if the wind had blown from any point west of south,
the word ‘favourable’ would have been still less appropriate.[3105]
3. Lewin maintains that the wisest course which Caesar could have
pursued when he sailed on from his anchorage in 55 B.C. would have
been to steer westward. ‘Let us first consider,’ he says,[3106] ‘_a
priori_, what a prudent commander might be expected to do under
similar circumstances.... To the right he would see the precipitous
chalk cliffs stretching away ... till they terminated at the South
Foreland.... The lowlands about Walmer and Deal would not be visible;
and it is at least doubtful whether Volusenus had included them in
his survey ... tracing the line of cliffs westward, he could not
fail to see that they terminated at Sandgate, and that a broad level
plain there succeeded.’ At Hythe, he adds, there was a landing-place
‘distinctly visible from his moorings’.[3107]
This argument rests upon the absolutely groundless assumption that
Volusenus had not reconnoitred the coast on the north of the South
Foreland;[3108] in other words, that Volusenus, whom Caesar specially
selected as a thoroughly competent man, had grossly neglected his duty
and disobeyed his instructions. Besides, even if the landing-place
at Hythe had been ‘distinctly visible’ from Caesar’s moorings,[3109]
nothing would have been gained; for Caesar acted, not upon what he
could see, but, as he tells us himself,[3110] upon what he had learned
from the report of Volusenus. Whether he could or could not see ‘from
his moorings’ the place where he was to land, he knew the direction
in which he intended to sail. Finally, when Lewin considers ‘_a
priori_’ that ‘a prudent commander might be expected under similar
circumstances’ to land at Hythe or Lympne, he only advertises his own
ignorance of a commander’s business. As I shall show presently,[3111]
no commander who was not hopelessly incompetent would have dreamed, in
the circumstances of ancient warfare, of attempting to land either at
Hythe or at Lympne.
4. Lewin contends in his text that at Lympne and in his appendix that
at Hythe there was a landing-place which exactly corresponded with
Caesar’s description; and he denies that any such landing-place exists
at Deal. He affirms[3112] that the shore on the western side of ‘the
creek of Lympne’ was ‘_apertum_ or open, for the heights to the north
were at least a mile distant. The sea-beach was also _molle_ or soft
... in a sailor’s sense, _i.e._ it consisted of shingle, than which
nothing can be more favourable to the security of vessels.... Sand,
on the contrary, is, in naval phraseology, of the hardest kind, as it
has no “give”, and a ship beating against it would soon be dashed to
pieces.’ He says that, according to Lucan,[3113] Plutarch,[3114] and
Dion Cassius,[3115] there was ‘marshy ground’ at the place where Caesar
landed, and he assures us that marshes were formed by the streams which
entered the port of Hythe.[3116] He remarks that, according to Valerius
Maximus,[3117] there were two small islands near the landing-place,
which were the scene of an exploit performed by one of Caesar’s
centurions: ‘on looking,’ he says, ‘at the old maps of this part of the
coast, I find ... that the bay of Limne contained ... two islands.’
Like other people who had learned to measure the trustworthiness of
Valerius Maximus, Lewin had himself been sceptical about the anecdote
of the centurion; but how could he resist the testimony of the ‘old
maps’? He admits that he was converted:--‘the circumstance, so
apocryphal before, becomes thus no inconsiderable argument for placing
the descent in this locality.’[3118] Afterwards he changes his mind,
and transfers the islands some distance to the east of Lympne. They
actually existed, he tells us, a few years before the publication of
his book, ‘either near to or in the ancient port of Hythe’; they also
are depicted in various old maps; and they were ‘carted away’ by the
late James Elliott, the engineer of Romney Marsh.[3119] Furthermore,
he assures us[3120] that the incident described by Valerius Maximus is
also noticed by Plutarch,[3121] who ‘lays the scene in sight of Caesar
himself, and therefore close to the camp; and in a marsh or swamp,
which, with the light afforded by the account of Valerius, must be
taken to mean a lagoon subject to the alternations of the high and low
tides’.
Now as to the exact meaning of the word _apertum_ in the passage to
which Lewin refers, the commentators are not agreed. While he insists
that the beach on which he believes Caesar to have landed was ‘open’,
because ‘the heights to the north were at least a mile distant’, Dr.
Guest[3122] denies that they were ‘open’, because ‘there is a range
of heights at no great distance’. According to Long,[3123] ‘“open”
means that from the beach he could see into the country.’ Now any
one who has read the _Commentaries_ attentively will see that all
these explanations are wrong. For in his narrative of the second
expedition[3124] Caesar tells us that he ‘felt little anxiety for the
ships, as he was leaving them at anchor on a nice open shore’[3125]
(_eo minus veritus navibus, quod in litore molli atque aperto deligatas
ad ancoras relinquebat_). If the explanations which I have quoted
were correct, the word _apertum_ in this passage would be irrelevant.
Whether the ‘heights’ were ‘at no great distance’, or ‘from the beach
Caesar could see into the country’, the security of the ships would not
have been affected in the slightest degree. The word _apertum_ does not
describe the country near the shore: it describes the shore itself;
and, as C. Schneider[3126] says, _apertum litus_ means a shore free
from such obstacles or dangers as rocks, boulders, and the like.[3127]
But, even assuming that Lewin was right in his interpretation of the
word _apertum_, this much is certain:--the existence of the heights to
which he refers is alone sufficient to prove that Caesar did not land
either at Lympne or at Hythe or at any point between those two places.
This is a matter on which I confidently appeal to any military expert
who has studied the records of ancient warfare. Caesar might no doubt
have _landed_ at Hythe without any extraordinary difficulty; but if
he had been so foolish as to land there, he would have found that his
difficulties were only beginning. Never, even when fighting against
an uncivilized enemy, did he attempt to force his way up a hill if
it was possible to avoid doing so.[3128] If he had landed either at
Lympne or at Hythe, he could not have turned the line of heights which
extends behind those two places: he could not have penetrated into the
interior of the country unless he had passed them; and he could not
have passed them except at a cost of life which the least experienced
of his officers would have been too prudent to incur. Furthermore,
however ‘open’ the country may have been on the western side of ‘the
[imaginary] creek of Lympne’, he could not have landed there if, as
Lewin admits,[3129] the country was under water at high tide.
The argument which Lewin bases upon the word _mollis_ has no value;
for he does not fully understand the meaning of the word. _Mollis_, in
the passage which we are considering, simply means that the shore was
one where the anchorage was good, and where the ships, if they were
driven aground, would suffer comparatively little:[3130] it probably
also implies that the shore was gently sloping.[3131] Moreover, even
if the word _mollis_ implied that the shore on which Caesar landed was
composed of shingle, Lewin would not be justified in concluding that
Caesar landed at Hythe or Lympne unless he could prove that no other
shingle beach in Kent satisfied the requirements of Caesar’s narrative.
The statements of Lucan, Valerius Maximus, Plutarch, and Dion Cassius,
upon which Lewin lays so much stress, are not really evidence at all;
and if he had been a classical scholar, he would never have quoted
them. Nor, indeed, was his scholarship sufficient to enable him to
understand what they meant. The passage quoted from Lucan occurs in a
rhetorical speech which he puts into the mouth of Pompey:--
_Rheni gelidis quod fugit ab undis_
_Oceanumque vocans incerti stagna profundi_
_Territa quaesitis ostendit terga Britannis._
_Stagna_ of course simply denotes the English Channel, about which
Lucan’s ideas were vague; and the point of the line is the suggestion
that Caesar, in order to magnify the difficulties of his expedition,
mendaciously described ‘the pools of a shifting sea’ as an ocean.[3132]
As to Valerius Maximus, the idea of going to his collection of
anecdotes for the details of Caesar’s military operations is really
funny;[3133] but if he is to be counted an authority, he does not
support Lewin’s theory, but overthrows it.[3134] Lewin[3135] insists
that ‘the _vada_ described by Valerius Maximus as caused by the flux
and reflux of the tide are evidently the _vada_ referred to by Caesar
(iv, 26)’. Now ‘the _vada_ referred to by Caesar’ were the shallow
places of the shore on which he landed; and ‘the _vada_ described by
Valerius Maximus’ were, according to Lewin’s final view, in Hythe
harbour. Yet Lewin emphatically denies that Caesar landed in Hythe
harbour! Furthermore, Lewin assures us that the ‘islands’ of which
Valerius Maximus speaks were composed of earth, and have been ‘carted
away’. But Valerius Maximus says nothing about islands: the only island
which he mentions is Britain. As to the marshes, Heller[3136] points
out that Lewin is wrong in concluding from the narratives of Plutarch
and Dion that the coast on which Caesar landed was marshy. Dion’s
word τενάγη is simply his translation of Caesar’s _vada_, and means
not ‘marshes’ but ‘shallows’.[3137] Plutarch, as the words εἰς τόπον
ἑλώδη καὶ μεστὸν ὑδάτων (‘into a marshy place full of water’), which
are explained by the following words ῥεύματα τελματώδη (‘marshy [or
muddy] streams’), clearly show, was not speaking of a combat on the
seashore, but of one which took place inland; and when Lewin identifies
Plutarch’s ῥεύματα τελματώδη with Dion’s τενάγη, he simply exposes his
own ignorance of Greek. Moreover, Plutarch is so deficient in accuracy
and precision that his description of an incident of this kind is
useless for the purpose of topographical identification.
There is, therefore, no evidence that there was any marshy ground at
or near Caesar’s landing-place; and if there was, the fact does not
prove that he landed at Hythe.[3138]
5. Lewin[3139] next proceeds to examine Caesar’s narrative of the
events which followed his first disembarkation,--the hauling up of
the galleys on dry land, the wreck caused by the storm which occurred
on the night of the full moon, and the subsequent attack by the
British charioteers. The whole account, he tells us, corresponds
with the topography of Lympne and Hythe, but of no other place. The
shingle field between Dymchurch Wall and Shorncliffe, being ‘sound
and dry, without any mixture of ooze’, deserves Caesar’s epithet,
_aridum_:[3140] the ‘steep place’ (_declivis ac praeceps locus_[3141]),
down which the British chariots charged, is ‘in this part of the marsh
on the north’; the spring tide, driven by ‘a strong south-east wind’,
would have poured over the shingle, and waterlogged Caesar’s galleys.
‘It is a singular confirmation,’ says Lewin, ‘of our hypothesis of the
debarcation at Romney Marsh that the range of high water is greater
here than at any other point of the southern coast. At Dungeness, for
example, the mean range is twenty-one feet three quarters, while at
Deal it is only sixteen feet.’ Finally, he anticipates the objection
that if Caesar had landed near Hythe, he would have moored his ships
within Hythe harbour, and thereby avoided the destruction which
overtook so many of them. He explains that ‘the narrow and winding gut
which constituted the port’ was ‘little capable of receiving a fleet’,
and that, ‘as it ... could only be entered and quitted at high water,
and as its banks were lined by a hostile population, the mooring of the
Roman vessels within it would be certain destruction,’ but ‘it would be
highly useful for keeping up his communication with the Continent’.
That Caesar’s ships could have been hauled up on the shingle between
Dymchurch Wall and Shorncliffe; that the said shingle might have been
described as ‘_aridum_’; that a ‘steep place’ existed ‘in this part of
the marsh on the north’;[3142] and that the tide, driven by ‘a strong
south-easterly wind’, might have waterlogged Caesar’s ships if they had
been drawn up on the beach at Hythe,--all these things may be admitted:
but they avail nothing to establish Lewin’s theory unless he can prove
that on the east coast of Kent there was no place which answered
equally well to Caesar’s narrative; and it is amusing to find that in
another passage[3143] he rightly insists that the wind which he here
calls ‘south-easterly’ was ‘from the north-east’. The comparison which
he makes between ‘the range of high water’ at Romney Marsh and at Deal
is irrelevant; for I doubt whether he would have seriously maintained
that a spring tide between Walmer and Deal, heightened by a storm,
would have been insufficient to cause the damage which Caesar described.
The objection which Lewin anticipates, and waves aside, is not thereby
disposed of. If the reader will examine Lewin’s map, he will see
that Hythe harbour would have been amply large enough to accommodate
Caesar’s fleet;[3144] and if it could only be entered at high water,
the Portus Itius, according to Lewin himself,[3145] was in the same
case. That Caesar would have landed close to a harbour which he
afterwards found ‘highly useful’, without mentioning its existence,
is, to say the least, unlikely. Moreover, Lewin omits to tell us in
what respect Caesar could have found a harbour ‘highly useful’ even
for ‘keeping up his communication with the Continent’, if the dispatch
vessels which kept up the communication never entered the harbour; nor
does he explain what would have been the use of their entering the
harbour when, on his own showing, they could not have remained there
without ‘certain destruction’, but after they had entered it, must have
forthwith gone out again, and have been hauled up on the beach outside
along with the others.
6. It remained for Lewin to point out the spot on the banks of a river
about twelve miles from the Roman camp, where the Britons disputed
Caesar’s advance on the day after his second landing in Britain. He
maintained that Wye on the Stour, between Ashford and Canterbury,
answered in every detail to Caesar’s account, and denied that any such
place could be found on the theory that Caesar landed near Deal.[3146]
Airy[3147] objects that the Stour at Wye is ‘little wider than a wide
ditch’, and that, as it flows ‘between sound meadows, where there is
not, and never has been, any marsh or broad stream’, it never could
have been wider. Lewin[3148] replies that he has himself seen the Stour
at Wye when it was so full of water that ‘the mill had constantly
at work four pairs of stones from 5.30 a.m. till 8 p.m., except for
a short time at noon’; and I may add that it is more than ten yards
wide.[3149] Caesar does not describe the stream at all: he merely
calls it a _flumen_; and he calls the Oze and the Ozerain, the two
streams which encompass Alesia[3150] (the modern Mont Auxois), and
which are narrower than the Stour at Wye, by the same name. Moreover,
as Lewin[3151] justly remarks, Caesar, in describing the combat which
took place on the banks of the stream in question, and the subsequent
attack upon the British stronghold,[3152] ‘does _not_ make the river
the important part of the defence.’ The Stour at Wye and the features
of the surrounding country correspond sufficiently well with Caesar’s
account; but this does not constitute a positive argument in favour
of Lewin’s theory unless it can be proved that, on the theory that
Caesar landed in East Kent, it is impossible to discover a stream which
satisfies the requirements of his narrative.
D’Anville, the famous French geographer, added little or nothing to the
case for Hythe. He maintained that the ‘higher ground’ to which the
Britons withdrew on descrying the Roman flotilla in 54 B.C. must have
been the line of heights which extends just behind Hythe.[3153] But the
passage in which Caesar describes the retirement of the Britons, so far
from implying that the ‘higher ground’ was close to the landing-place,
implies the very reverse; for Caesar, immediately after telling us that
the Britons had retired to higher ground, expressly states that the
position on which he found them posted was about twelve miles from his
camp near the sea.[3154]
Lewin has now had a fair hearing; and those who are interested in the
question will decide whether he has made out his case. Over and above
what has been said in refutation of his arguments there remain other
facts which make it absolutely certain that Caesar did not land either
at Hythe or at Lympne.
1. Caesar, as we have seen, tells us that when he sailed from
the Portus Itius for Britain in 54 B.C. the wind was from the
south-west.[3155] Now a south-west wind would not have been favourable
to a voyage from Boulogne to Hythe, much less to Lympne. The wind
would have been abeam even if it had been possible to keep the ships
heading in the direction of Hythe, that is to say, even if they had
made no lee-way: the ships, being shallow and flat-bottomed,[3156]
would have made considerable lee-way; and two or three hours after the
voyage began the current turned east-north-east, and continued to run
in that direction until daybreak[3157]. It is curious that so adroit a
controversialist as Lewin should have inadvertently quoted an opinion
which damaged his own case. He tells us[3158] that a Mr. John Dougall,
in an unpublished tract, remarked that Caesar would have called the
south-west wind favourable if he had sailed from Boulogne for the South
Foreland. But, on Lewin’s theory, Caesar sailed, not for the South
Foreland but for Hythe; and Lewin naïvely tells us that, in Dougall’s
opinion, Caesar would never have called the wind favourable if it had
been on the beam. Certainly he would not have done so when the tide was
setting in the wrong direction.
2. Another objection to the theory that Caesar landed at Hythe or
Lympne is that it involves the assumption that when he started on
his first voyage, he steered for the unsuitable port of Folkestone,
or else that, although he was in possession of Volusenus’s report,
he did not know where he intended to land, and steered at haphazard.
According to Lewin’s original idea,[3159] he first anchored off the
cliffs of Dover. This is the view which naturally commends itself to
every unbiassed reader of the _Commentaries_; but, as Lewin afterwards
saw, it is irreconcilable with the theory that Caesar sailed from his
anchorage either to Hythe or to Lympne; for Caesar tells us that he
sailed 7 Roman miles, and Hythe is almost 11, Lympne about 14, Roman
miles from the nearest point of the Dover cliffs.[3160] Lewin thus
found himself obliged to relinquish his original view, and to maintain
that Caesar anchored off Folkestone,[3161] or, as he suggests in
another passage, and implies in his map,[3162] off East Wear Bay. But
second thoughts are not always best. Lewin insists that Folkestone
‘would be the natural port for Boulogne’.[3163] Why? Surely not because
the steamboats of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway Company
discharge their passengers there! ‘The natural port for Boulogne’ would
be the port to which, having regard to the prevailing winds and the
currents, it would be easiest to sail, and which would best accommodate
Caesar’s fleet. That port was Dover. Caesar’s narrative shows that he
required a capacious harbour;[3164] and the port of Folkestone was too
small.
3. Another consideration--one of several which, strange to say, have
hitherto been overlooked--is alone fatal to the theory that Caesar
landed either at Hythe or at Lympne. He tells us, in regard to his
first landing, that his troops were not able to pursue the enemy far
‘because the cavalry had not been able to keep their course and make
the island’.[3165] These words unmistakably imply that if he had had
his cavalry with him, he would have been able to make good use of
them; and in fact he says expressly that, in repelling the attack
which the Britons made upon his camp just before his departure from
Britain in 55 B.C., he actually did employ Commius’s small troop of
cavalry.[3166] The camp, so Lewin assures us when he is advocating the
cause of Lympne, was ‘in the marsh’.[3167] How, then, would Caesar
have been able to utilize his cavalry? Would he have sent them up
the steep slopes on which stand the ruins of Stutfall Castle? Even
on the incredible hypothesis that Romney Marsh had been embanked by
the Britons[3168] the cavalry would have been useless; for how could
they have acted in a country intersected by sluices?[3169] It is
possible, indeed, that if Caesar had landed at Hythe, his cavalry might
have acted in ‘the field to the south and east of Hythe’, in which
Lewin finally assumes that the combat took place on the day of the
landing,--if the Britons had patiently waited to receive their charge,
and if the field was not under water.[3170] But before the cavalry
could have come into action the Britons would have been on the hills
behind.
I do not deny that the cavalry could have managed to trot up Lympne
Hill or the hills behind Hythe, if Caesar had been so foolish as to
give the order.[3171] But the point is that the absence of the cavalry
prevented Caesar from pursuing the fugitives _far_; and that the hills
would have effectually concealed from him the nature of the country
that lay beyond them, its woods, defiles, and other obstacles. Does he
not tell us himself that when he had gained a victory on the day after
his second landing in Britain, ‘he forbade [his troops] to pursue the
fugitives far, partly _because he had no knowledge of the ground_’
(_eos fugientes longius Caesar prosequi vetuit, et quod loci naturam
ignorabat_,[3172] &c.)? Worse ground for the manœuvring of cavalry than
the wooded heights which extended behind Hythe and West Hythe it would
have been hard for Volusenus to find.
4. Heller[3173] has acutely seen that Caesar’s account of the
movements of one division of the ships which carried his cavalry is
irreconcilable with the theory that he landed at any point on the south
coast of Britain. Caesar[3174] tells us that the storm which arose
when these vessels were sighted from his camp drove some of them ‘to
the lower and more westerly part of the island’ (_aliae ad inferiorem
partem insulae, quae est propius solis occasum, ... deicerentur_).
‘This,’ says Heller, ‘can only mean a different side of the island
from that on which Caesar was: if he had meant to designate a point
on the same side, he would have said, _paulo infra ac propius solis
occasum_.[3175] If one compares the expression which he actually uses
in the thirteenth chapter of his Fifth Book--_unum latus est contra
Galliam. Huius lateris alter angulus, qui est ad Cantium, quo fere
omnes ex Gallia naves appelluntur, ad orientem solem, inferior ad
meridiem spectat_[3176]--it becomes clear that in the passage in which
the fate of the eighteen ships is described _inferior pars insulae_
means the southern side of the island. Consequently Caesar implies that
his camp was on the eastern angle.’
5. One of the episodes which Caesar describes in his narrative of
the first expedition is, in spite of the ingenuity with which Lewin
has tried to make it fit in with his theory, irreconcilable with the
view that he landed either at Hythe or Lympne. One day, when the 7th
legion had gone out to cut corn, Caesar learned from the troops on
guard in front of the camp that an extraordinary quantity of dust was
visible in the direction in which the legion had gone. He marched to
the rescue, and, after he had advanced some little distance (_paulo
longius_), he found that the legion was hard pressed by the enemy.
The place where the legionaries had been reaping was the only one in
which the corn had not yet been cut; and the enemy, anticipating that
they would come there, posted themselves in ambush in a wood close
by.[3177] Lewin[3178] argues that the camp must have been in Romney
Marsh, ‘probably on the seaside’; but he stultifies his own argument by
admitting, in his appendix, that the marsh was inundated at every high
tide.[3179] In his text he admits that neither the cornfield nor the
wood could have been in the marsh; and he could not at first conceive
how, if they had been anywhere else, the dust raised by the combatants
could have been seen from the ground in front of the camp. But, he
continues, ‘when I visited Hythe by land, and walked from it to the old
port of Limne, and mounted the hill, I discovered the explanation. On
reaching the top I stepped at once into a cornfield ... and on my right
was Park Wood.... What I had taken from the sea for a hill ... had no
descent on the north side ... and corn growing so near to the edge that
even the reapers, if labouring in that part of the field, might have
been seen from the camp. The whole narrative was now realized to the
mind’s eye.... The legion had marched up to the standing fields of corn
on the high ground, and the Britons, starting from their lurking-place
at the side, had intercepted their retreat, and surrounded them at just
such an interval from the edge that the combatants were out of sight
and hearing, but the dust flying in the air had attracted the attention
of the guard ... at a mile’s distance below.’
Now observe what becomes of Lewin’s explanation. First, ‘the old port
of Limne,’ to which he walked, became, before the publication of
his second edition, a figment of the imagination! Having obtained,
as he tells us, ‘more accurate information,’ he strenuously denied
its existence, and accordingly transferred Caesar’s landing-place to
Hythe.[3180] Yet in this same second edition the ‘explanation’ is
offered as confidently as ever! Secondly, he asks us to believe that
the only cornfield which the Romans had left unreaped was the one
nearest them! Thus the ‘explanation’ which Lewin discovered with such
pride collapses; and his theory, which cannot stand without it, falls
like a house of cards. What explanation he would have discovered on the
theory that Caesar landed at Hythe, he wisely omits to say.
IX. THE THEORY THAT CAESAR LANDED AT HURST
The latest supporters of the theory that Caesar landed on Romney Marsh
are Mr. H. E. Malden and, tentatively, Mr. Warde Fowler[3181] and
Professor Pelham.[3182] Mr. Malden relies upon the argument, drawn
from the study of the tides, which I have already refuted.[3183] But
on certain points of detail he differs from Lewin. He maintains that
Lewin’s description of Romney Marsh, as it existed in the time of
Caesar, is incorrect, and that ‘the coast-line then ran nearly east and
west from Sandgate towards Appledore’. In other words, he maintains
that the hills which bound Romney Marsh on the north were accessible
‘by ships sailing over what is now embanked land’. Accordingly he
believes that Caesar landed neither at Hythe nor at Lympne, but ‘on a
broad flat muddy shore’ near Hurst, that is to say, about three miles
west of Lympne. This, he assures us, ‘was a landing-place second to
none’; so presumably the mud was a recommendation. Mr. Malden notes
that there was ‘good camping-ground, wood and water on the slope
above’; but a few lines lower down he observes that ‘there would be
good camping-ground on the slope where Stutfall castle now stands’;
that is to say, three miles off on the east! He assures us, further,
that ‘the place agrees singularly with the account of the battle on the
shore’; that ‘the passage into the inner country would be easy by the
break in the hill above West Hythe’; and that ‘the hill is anywhere
accessible’. Finally, he remarks that ‘in A.D. 893 Hastings the pirate
came here with his fleet’.[3184]
Now Lewin, as I have already shown,[3185] gives three successive and
different descriptions of Romney Marsh as it existed in the time of
Caesar; and Mr. Malden does not say to which of the three he refers. It
is evident, however, that he is thinking of the first; and I am afraid
that he did not take the trouble to read the second edition of Lewin’s
book. In a previous article[3186] I have examined all Lewin’s theories.
I will here assume that Mr. Malden is right; that the coast-line ‘ran
nearly east and west from Sandgate towards Appledore’; and that the
northern fringe of Romney Marsh was accessible ‘by ships sailing over
what is now embanked land’. On this hypothesis and on any other it is
absolutely certain that Caesar could not have landed at the point which
Mr. Malden indicates. He does not know what ‘good camping-ground’,
in the circumstances of ancient warfare, was. If he knew the
_Commentaries_ as intimately as a man who professes to explain them
should do, he would see that neither at Hurst, nor ‘on the slope where
Stutfall castle now stands’, nor at any intermediate point did good
camping-ground exist; for everywhere along this line a camp would have
been dominated by higher ground above. Does Mr. Malden not remember the
words in which Caesar describes the camping-ground which Reginus and
Rebilus were compelled by adverse circumstances to occupy at Alesia?
They ‘were obliged’, he says, ‘to make the camp on a gentle slope,
which gave an assailant a slight advantage’ (_necessario paene iniquo
loco et leniter declivi castra fecerunt_[3187]). The slope between
Hurst and Stutfall Castle would have given an assailant not a slight
but a considerable advantage. Where, then, could Caesar have found
the ‘advantageous position’ (_loco idoneo_[3188]) which he selected
for his camp in 54 B.C.? ‘Hastings the pirate,’ as I have already
proved,[3189] did _not_ ‘come here with his fleet’; and what good
Caesar’s cavalry, the absence of which he deplored, could have done by
pounding up the hill, which was overgrown by woods,[3190] Mr. Malden
does not explain. The hill, as he says, is ‘everywhere accessible’,--to
a pedestrian: but, as I have already shown,[3191] ‘the passage into
the inner country,’ _in the face of armed resistance_, could only have
been effected with heavy loss; and it would be interesting to hear
Mr. Malden account for the fact that the Britons retired in 54 B.C.
to ‘higher ground’ twelve miles from the landing-place, when, just
above the landing-place which he calls ‘second to none’, there was
ground 312 feet above the level of the sea, and 300 feet above the
present elevated level of the marsh.[3192] I should also like to hear
him explain why Volusenus, a trained soldier who thoroughly understood
his business, should have advised Caesar to land at Hurst rather
than between Walmer and Deal; what motive could have induced Caesar
to attempt to sail from Wissant (which he identifies with the Portus
Itius) to Hurst with a south-west wind, that is to say, to attempt to
sail west-north-west, on an easterly-going stream, within six points
of the wind; how his cavalry transports contrived to sail back from a
point near Hurst to Sangatte, or even to Ambleteuse, against a gale
which drove their sister ships towards the west; or by what miracle
this gale dashed his ships ashore in a northerly direction!
X. THE THEORY THAT CAESAR LANDED BETWEEN HURST AND KENNARDINGTON
The late Francis Hobson Appach published in 1868 a book called _Caius
Julius Caesar’s British Expeditions_, the principal object of which was
to prove that Caesar’s troops disembarked in 55 B.C. between ‘the foot
of the spur from Aldington Knoll’ (which is about four miles west of
Lympne) on the right, and a point ‘about half way between Bonnington
and Bilsington’ on the left;[3193] and that in the following year the
left of the line extended as far westward as Kennardington. This theory
differs but slightly in locality from Mr. Malden’s, but is defended
by different arguments; and, moreover, from Bonnington westward the
slope of the hills which bound Romney Marsh on the north becomes much
gentler. Appach maintains that at least the northern portion, if not
the whole, of the marsh was, in Caesar’s time, submerged, and that
its northern fringe was accessible to ships sailing from the east.
His arguments have already been refuted in an earlier section of this
book;[3194] but for the purpose of the present inquiry I will assume
that he made out his case, and that, in Caesar’s time, ‘the Bay of
Apuldore,’ to which he constantly alludes, was, as he assures us, deep
enough to float ‘the heaviest of Caesar’s ships at the lowest spring
tides’.[3195]
Appach, of course, like Lewin and Airy, bases his theory upon the
hypothesis that the tidal stream which Caesar had in his favour when he
sailed from his anchorage to his landing-place must have set towards
the west. Although I have proved that this hypothesis is untenable, I
will assume, in order to do justice to Appach’s arguments, that Caesar
may have sailed with the westward stream.
1. Appach begins by arguing that Volusenus, when he was reconnoitring
the British coast, found on the west of Aldington Knoll ‘the very
ground of which he was in search’, namely, ‘a low level coast’, which
‘extended as far as Apuldore ... forming the head of a bay protected
from the waves in the Channel by the cliff at Fairlight ... and the
cliff at Folkestone’.[3196]
It may be freely admitted that this coast, if it was accessible by
sea, would have been a convenient landing-place, if Caesar had only
desired to land, and then to sail away again. But his object was to
invade Britain; and the landing-place which Appach believes Volusenus
to have selected would have led Caesar into the inhospitable forest
of Anderida,[3197] where no corn was to be procured. This objection,
indeed, is equally fatal to Mr. Malden’s theory; and neither he nor
Appach attempts to explain how there could have been ‘buildings far and
wide’ (_omnibus longe lateque aedificiis incensis_) on those lonely
slopes, on which, even now, woods are abundant, and buildings very few
and very far between.[3198]
2. Appach tells us that Caesar’s original intention was to disembark
between Sandgate and Hythe; and it must be borne in mind that,
according to him, Hythe harbour, as described by Lewin, did not then
exist. ‘This landing place,’ he says, ‘though open to the south and
east, was sheltered on the north and west. It was also sheltered from
the force of the sea and stream in the Channel, and must therefore have
been the principal British port on this part of the coast in the time
of Caesar.’[3199]
Perhaps (if it had existed),--‘on this part of the coast’. But then
Caesar[3200] says that ‘almost all ships from Gaul’ used to make for
what he calls the eastern ‘corner’ of Britain, ‘by Kent.’ He may have
been thinking of Dover, or of Richborough, perhaps of both; but I doubt
whether it is possible to force into his words the meaning that the
harbour where ‘almost all ships from Gaul’ discharged their freight was
between Sandgate and Hythe.
3. But let us assume that Caesar intended, for some inscrutable reason,
to land between Sandgate and Hythe. What, then, were the ‘precipitous
heights’ off which he anchored,--the heights from which it was possible
to throw a missile right on to the shore? Can Appach find them? Yes!
He tells us that they are there, and that if we look for them anywhere
else, we shall look in vain.[3201] He bids us note carefully the
passage in which Caesar describes them:--‘there, standing in full view
on all the heights, he saw an armed force of the enemy. The formation
of the ground was peculiar, the sea being so closely walled in by
abrupt heights that it was possible to throw a missile from the ground
above on to the shore’ (_in omnibus collibus expositas hostium copias
armatas conspexit. Cuius loci haec erat natura, atque ita montibus
angustis mare continebatur, uti ex locis superioribus in litus telum
adigi posset_[3202]). You are to observe, says Appach, that ‘Caesar
uses the word “all” ... thus pointedly implying, if not ... asserting
that there were more than two hills’. We are then told that, ‘it being
about half an hour after high water, the sea reached quite up to the
mouths of the three valleys between Hythe and Sandgate, so that the bay
of Hythe appeared to Caesar to be shut in by the hills exactly as he
describes it.’
Now these words alone are evidence that Appach did not know enough
Latin to qualify him for the task which he had undertaken. That
he should have misconstrued the words _montibus angustis mare
continebatur_ is not so surprising; but to a man who is familiar
with Caesar’s _usus loquendi_, the conclusion which Appach draws from
the words _omnibus collibus_--that Caesar must have seen at least
three _separate hills_--will appear somewhat forced.[3203] If he had
engaged a boat at Dover, and looked at the cliffs stretching away
eastward towards the South Foreland, he would have seen that they
answered exactly to Caesar’s description. The upper edge of the chalk
is not a straight line: it rises and falls in a succession of deep
curves, corresponding with the rolling downs above, which are, so to
speak, divided into a series of heights by well-defined depressions.
Here are the _omnes colles_, as plain as can be, not three of them
but six,[3204] between the Priory Valley and the South Foreland. And
Appach wants us to believe that the hills between Sandgate and Hythe
are ‘precipitous heights’ (_angusti montes_), from the summits of which
it would have been possible to throw a missile right on to the shore.
Precipitous heights! Go, reader, and look at them.[3205]
4. Appach candidly admits that Caesar, on his imaginary voyage from
Hythe to Bonnington, lost off Lympne the benefit of the westward
current, and ‘met the eddy in the bay of Apuldore running from west to
east along its northern shore’:[3206] but by this candour he gives away
his whole case; for who will believe that Caesar would have told us
that he ‘got the stream in his favour’ if the stream had turned against
him before he had completed half his journey?
5. Again, Appach observes that Caesar’s account of his first landing
implies that the Britons who opposed him used their chariots as well as
their cavalry; and he scoffs at the notion that the chariot-horses or
even the cavalry could have acted on shingle. Therefore, he concludes,
‘there could have been no shingle at the place where Caesar landed.
Bonnington fulfils this condition.’[3207]
Quite so; and the coast north of Sandown Castle also practically
fulfils, or once fulfilled, this condition.[3208] If Appach’s argument
shows that Caesar did not land on shingle, it does not show that he
landed at Bonnington. Moreover, granting that Caesar’s narrative
implies that chariots were used by the Britons in opposing the landing,
Appach fails to realize the situation. The horses were not required to
gallop into the sea; nor could they have galloped through the waves at
Bonnington any more than at Lympne, or Hythe, or Deal: but at any of
those places they could have seriously obstructed men who could hardly
keep their footing, and who were encumbered by their armour in the way
which Caesar[3209] so graphically describes. All that the horses had to
do was to convey their masters ‘a little way into the water’ (_paulum
in aquam_ [progressi]), so as to enable them to throw their missiles
with effect; and this they could easily have done if they had drawn
their light cars no faster than the ancient steeds which drag, or used
to drag, bathing-machines over the shingle at Eastbourne.
6. Finally, Appach cites the well-known passage in which Caesar
tells us that at daybreak on his second voyage he ‘descried Britain
lying behind on the port quarter’ (_sub sinistra Britanniam relictam
conspexit_). He argues that Caesar’s words would be meaningless ‘if
the configuration of the coast had been the same in his day as it is
at the present time, for Britain could not ... have been in any other
position. The expression, however, is peculiarly appropriate if the sea
then filled the Bay of Apuldore; for Caesar, sailing, as he thought,
from Boulogne to Kennardington, of course expected to see Britain on
his right.’[3210]
Yes, _we_ of course see that, as Caesar was drifting up channel,
‘Britain could not have been in any other position’ than on his
left. But Caesar was not writing for us: he was writing for his
countrymen, who did not know anything about the configuration of
Britain until they had read as far as the thirteenth chapter of his
Fifth Book.[3211] Moreover, if Appach had known his Polybius, he would
have remembered the passage in which readers who had passed their
lives in the Mediterranean basin were informed of the self-evident
fact that Hannibal, marching eastward through Southern Gaul, had the
Mediterranean on his right.[3212] Furthermore, if Caesar had steered
for Kennardington, he would have had to drift more than fifteen
nautical miles in order to reach a point opposite the South Foreland:
it would have been impossible to drift nearly so far between ‘about
midnight’ and daybreak;[3213] and unless he had drifted further, he
could not have seen Britain ‘lying behind’ on his left.[3214]
I need hardly add that Appach does not explain how those
cavalry transports got back, in spite of the north-easterly or
east-north-easterly gale, from off Bonnington to Ambleteuse.
Enough has been said to show that, even if ‘the Bay of Apuldore’, as
Appach describes it, existed in Caesar’s time, he never sailed its
waters. We now know where to look for his landing-place: he must have
first set foot in Britain on the eastern coast of Kent.
XI. THE THEORY THAT CAESAR LANDED BETWEEN WALMER AND DEAL
The oldest English writers whose works have come down to us believed
that Caesar had landed on the north of the South Foreland. This
was certainly the view of Nennius, or of an author whose work
Nennius edited;[3215] and Dr. Guest attached great weight to his
testimony.[3216] I think that, in doing so, he showed less than his
usual judgement; and perhaps he was not aware that Maistre Wace, who
lived in the twelfth century, had anticipated the modern theory that
Caesar landed on Romney Marsh.[3217] For some centuries, however, the
prevailing view, first definitely stated, if I am not mistaken, by
Leland,[3218] who lived in the reign of Henry the Eighth, was that the
disembarkation took place near Deal.[3219]
1. We know that Caesar, before he set sail from Gaul, intended to land,
if possible, in one of the harbours of Britain; for he instructed
Volusenus to ascertain what harbours were capable of accommodating a
numerous fleet, and, before he set sail, a deputation came to him from
numerous British tribes to promise submission.[3220] The choice, as we
have seen, lies between the harbours of Dover and Folkestone; and it is
not credible that Caesar should have deliberately preferred the small
harbour of Folkestone to the more spacious and more easily accessible
harbour of Dover.[3221] And if he steered for Dover harbour, the
‘precipitous heights’ off which he anchored in 55 B.C. must have been,
not the cliffs of East Wear Bay, but the cliffs between Dover and the
South Foreland.[3222]
Airy,[3223] indeed, denies that Caesar ever intended to land in a
harbour. ‘This,’ he says, ‘is not the manner of attempting debarkation
in a country possessed by an enemy.... Sir Arthur Wellesley made no
attempt at Lisbon, but put his troops on shore at the Mondego Beach.’
I wonder whether Airy knew the circumstances and the motives which
determined Wellesley’s action: at all events his argument will not
mislead any reader who has studied the history of the Peninsular
War. Why did Wellesley make ‘no attempt at Lisbon’? Simply because,
as Napier[3224] says, ‘the strength of the French, the bar of the
river, the disposition of the forts, the difficulty of landing in the
immediate neighbourhood, where a heavy surf broke in all the undefended
creeks and bays, convinced him such an enterprise was unadvisable if
not impracticable.... It was difficult to find a place to land. The
coast, from the Minho to the Tagus, save at a few points, is rugged
and dangerous; all the river harbours have bars and are difficult of
access even for boats.... Seventy miles northward of the Lisbon Rock,
the small peninsula of Peniché offered the only safe and accessible bay
adapted for a disembarkation; but the anchorage was within range of the
fort, which contained a hundred guns and a garrison of a thousand men.
The next best place was the Mondego river; there the little fort of
Figueras, now occupied by English marines, secured a free entrance, and
Sir Arthur adopted it.’ The reader will have noticed that Airy not only
ignores the circumstances which forbade Wellesley to attempt a landing
at Lisbon, but also ignores the existence of the Mondego river.[3225]
Caesar put his troops ashore on a beach; but he had intended to put
them on shore in the best available harbour, because, unlike Wellesley,
he had had reason to hope that his landing would not be opposed. If
he did not intend to land in a harbour, why did he instruct Volusenus
to report upon the Kentish harbours? And why did he steer towards
‘precipitous heights’, at the foot of which the dullest soldier in his
army knew that it would be madness to land, if he did not intend to
enter the harbour formed by the gap in those cliffs? Why did the enemy
occupy those heights unless they believed that this was his intention?
It might, indeed, be argued that after he received Volusenus’s report,
he decided that Dover harbour was unsuitable, and therefore abandoned
all idea of landing in a harbour. If so, he would not have steered
towards the Dover cliffs; but neither would he have steered towards
those of Folkestone or East Wear Bay. The only alternative would be to
assume that he anchored off the lower cliffs north of St. Margaret’s
Bay in order to wait for the overdue ships, having intended from the
outset of his voyage to sail on and land north of Walmer.[3226] But
when he says that ‘he thought the place [off which he anchored] most
unsuitable for landing’ (_hunc ad egrediendum nequaquam idoneum locum
arbitratus_),[3227] he unmistakably implies that he had contemplated
the possibility of landing there; and, as he could have decided
with his eyes shut that it would be absurd to land at the foot of
‘precipitous heights’, he must have concluded that it would be unwise
to attempt to land, in the face of an enemy, in the harbour which was
formed by the gap in the cliffs. Probably, before he knew that his
landing would be opposed, he intended to observe the harbour with his
own eyes and decide upon its merits himself.
Mr. H. E. Malden, however, remarks that, according to Dion Cassius,
‘Caesar made the land on the first occasion where he ought not, οὐ
μέντοι καὶ ᾗ ἔδει προσέσχεν.’ ‘Surely,’ Mr. Malden continues, ‘this
implies not that Caesar aimed at a certain point for a landing place
and then abandoned it upon a nearer view, but that something like what
befell him on the second voyage happened on the first also, and that he
drifted out of his course to a point which he did not intend to reach.
If so, this disposes of all idea of his aiming at Dover as the usual
port of landing.’[3228]
Yes,--‘if so’. According to Mr. Malden,[3229] Caesar landed near Hurst
in Romney Marsh. On this theory, he would have anchored off the coast
near Sandgate, which was very little out of his course if he intended
to land near Hurst, and not at all out of his course if, as Mr. Malden
wrongly supposes, he sailed from Wissant. It is universally admitted,
and it is certain that when Caesar was approaching Britain, and for
some hours previously, the tidal stream was running up the Channel.
Will Mr. Malden explain what that current could have been which would
have caused Caesar’s ships, while steering either from Wissant or
from Boulogne for Hurst, to ‘drift’ towards Sandgate _on the eastward
stream_?
2. The reader is already familiar with the subject of the tidal
streams, in so far as it relates to the present discussion.[3230] As
we have seen,[3231] Caesar may have landed in Britain on the 26th of
August, 55 B.C.; and on that day high water should have occurred at
Dover at 6.21 a.m. I say ‘should have occurred’, because observations
have shown that high tide sometimes occurs a few minutes earlier or
later than the time predicted in the Admiralty _Tide Tables_.[3232]
Therefore, _accepting the general rule laid down by Admiral Beechey
and Surveyor Calver_,[3233] the stream off the Dover cliffs would have
turned to the west some time between 10.21 and 11.9 a.m., and again to
the east at 5.24 p.m.
But Caesar, we are assured by Airy and Lewin, weighed anchor at 3
p.m.; and at 3 p.m. the stream would still have been running towards
the west. The argument has imposed upon weak minds: the reader will
see that it has not the slightest force. There is no evidence that
Caesar weighed anchor at 3 p.m. What he says is simply that he awaited
at anchor the arrival of the rest of the ships--the ships which had
failed to keep pace with the leading division of the fleet--until
the ninth hour. The ninth hour in the latitude of Dover lasted on
the 26th of August from 2.20 till 3.30 p.m.[3234] Therefore Caesar,
assuming that his statement was literally correct, may have waited
at anchor for the arrival of the laggard ships until 3.30 p.m. Now,
as the reader will remember, I have demonstrated, from the evidence
to which Airy appeals--the evidence supplied by Admiral Beechey and
Surveyor Calver--that on the day of Caesar’s landing the tidal stream
may have turned eastward earlier than 3.54 p.m.;[3235] and if it turned
twenty-five minutes earlier, it turned in the ninth hour.
Hitherto we have assumed that Caesar’s statements of the hour up
to which he awaited the arrival of his overdue ships was literally
correct. But now let me beg any one who still feels a doubt whether
his narrative agrees with the hypothesis that he sailed eastward from
his anchorage, to use his common sense and to remember that he has a
sense of humour. Airy, Lewin, Mr. Malden, and the rest argue in this
strain:--Caesar waited at anchor till 3 [or 3.30] p.m., and not a
minute later: the stream was then running westward; therefore Caesar
sailed towards the west.--_Q.E.D._ This is the sort of argument that
might have been expected, not from an Astronomer Royal, or from a
barrister like Lewin who knew the world, but from a clever schoolboy.
Yet not a single commentator has ever pointed out its absurdity. Had
Airy forgotten the discrepant statements that were made by officers
who had watches in their pockets as to the hour at which this or that
episode occurred in the campaign of Waterloo?[3236] Did Airy or Lewin
imagine that Caesar had a Dent’s chronometer on board his galley, and,
the moment after he weighed anchor, noted down in his diary the words,
_Hora nona ancorae sublatae sunt?_ It is possible that he may have had
a water-clock (_clepsydra_)[3237] on board, which would have enabled
him, if it had been duly corrected for the latitude of Dover, and if
the sea had been so smooth that the ship was motionless, to tell the
time approximately; but surely it is probable that he roughly estimated
the time from his observation of the altitude of the sun?[3238] And
is it not equally probable that he trusted not to a diary but to his
memory? His estimate may have been right: but also it may have been
wrong; and anyhow it is folly to stake the whole argument upon its
accuracy.
Nor, again, is it even certain that Caesar did weigh anchor at the
time which he called _horam nonam_. As he says that he waited for the
arrival of his overdue ships till the ninth hour, it may be presumed
that they did not arrive earlier. When they arrived, their captains
had, I suppose, to receive instructions, as the generals and military
tribunes had done already. As Heller[3239] and de Saulcy have argued,
we have no right to infer from the words _in ancoris exspectavit_
that when the period of waiting was over, Caesar ceased to remain at
anchor.[3240] And, even if he gave no instructions to the captains
of the laggard ships, but left them to their own devices, it remains
certain that to get the ships into order, to give the signal for
starting, and to weigh anchor, consumed an appreciable time.
But we need not insist upon this argument. We may rest satisfied
with the knowledge that the stream may have turned earlier than 3.54
p.m.[3241] We may be assured that Caesar had no means of knowing
exactly at what time he weighed anchor; and therefore, even if he
intended to convey that he weighed anchor in the ninth hour, we are
not compelled to assume that he did so before 3.30 p.m. We know that
_Caesar was too wise to start for a seven miles’ sail on the last of
the ebb tide, when the current was slowest, and when he would have
had no certainty that it might not turn against him before he had
completed his voyage_; and we are confirmed in this conviction by his
own words, which tell us that he started when he had got wind and tide
in his favour. Finally, _we have proved that it is not improbable but
impossible that he landed either at Pevensey or on any part of Romney
Marsh_.[3242] Thus the question of the direction in which the tide
was running when Caesar sailed from his anchorage, which in itself
would be doubtful, is settled by other considerations. There is but
one conclusion to which we can come, and that conclusion is absolutely
certain: when Caesar weighed anchor off the Kentish cliffs, he sailed
towards the north-east.[3243]
3. It will be remembered that Caesar, in describing the final stage of
his first voyage, says that he ‘moved on’ (_progressus_[3244]), seven
miles from his anchorage. Both Long[3245] and Heller[3246] regard the
word _progressus_ as a proof that Caesar must have landed on the coast
of East Kent. Had he anchored off East Wear Bay, and sailed thence to
Hythe or to Lympne, he would not, says Heller, have continued _in a
straight line_ the direction of his voyage from Gaul to Britain; but
he would have done so if he had anchored off the South Foreland and
sailed thence to Deal. I do not commit myself to absolute agreement
with this argument, as it stands, although every one who is familiar
with Caesar’s use of the word _progredi_[3247] will admit that it would
apply much better to a run from the Dover cliffs to Walmer, made in
continuation of a voyage from Boulogne towards the South Foreland, than
to a run from East Wear Bay or from a point off Folkestone to Hythe or
Lympne.
4. Dion Cassius says that Caesar, in sailing from his anchorage to
the place where he landed, rounded a promontory.[3248] I attach some
importance to these words for the following reasons. Although Dion is
no authority in regard to such matters as the details of a battle,
and although, from carelessness or love of meretricious ornament,
he constantly misunderstood or misused his authorities, it is not
conceivable that he should have made so definite and simple a statement
as this without authority, unless he had invented it. I am sure that
every one who is capable of weighing the credibility of an historical
writer will agree with me that this is not such a statement as Dion
would have invented, and that it is such a statement as the most
careless and rhetorical of writers, if he had found it in an authority,
would have followed correctly. I therefore believe that Dion took it
from some authority which is now lost, and that it is true. If so, the
promontory which Caesar rounded can only have been the South Foreland.
Lewin[3249] admits that the statement, ‘if taken literally, looks as
if he went round the South Foreland; but,’ he adds, ‘I am satisfied
that if he had done so, Caesar would have mentioned so remarkable a
promontory’. This observation only shows that Lewin was not familiar
with Caesar’s style. Caesar did not trouble himself about picturesque
details, however remarkable they might be, the mention of which was not
essential to the clearness of his narrative. ‘If,’ continues Lewin,
‘the descriptive words of so late a writer as Dion are to have any
weight, I should interpret them as meaning only that Caesar sailed
round the bend of the precipitous shore between Folkestone and Sandgate
... or else that Caesar arrived at first off Eastweir Bay ... and then
sailed round the cliff which shuts in the bay on the west.’ I doubt,
however, whether either ‘the bend’ or ‘the cliff’ could fairly have
been described as ‘a projecting headland’ (ἄκραν προέχουσαν); and Lewin
virtually admits that neither would have been worth mentioning. But if
any one gainsays this argument, we can well afford to dispense with it.
5. If Volusenus deserved the confidence which Caesar reposed in him,
there cannot be the faintest doubt in the mind of any unprejudiced man
who has studied military history or even Caesar’s _Commentaries_, and
has taken the trouble to observe the features of the Kentish coast, as
to the landing-place which he would have selected. He would not have
wasted his time by cruising down the coast of Sussex: the first sight
of the lofty hills which hem in East Wear Bay, of the cliffs which
extend from Folkestone to Sandgate, and of the heights which back the
coast from Shorncliffe to Lympne and beyond, would have warned him
not to advise the great captain whom he served to land beneath them;
but, as his galley glided past Kingsdown and neared Walmer, he saw,
stretching away towards the neighbourhood of Sandwich, the open coast,
offering easy access into the interior, of which he was in search. Here
and here only, if Dover Harbour were held by an enemy, it would be safe
to land. Here and here only it would be possible to follow up a victory
by an effective cavalry charge.
6. Assuming that Caesar landed in East Kent, his narrative of the
adventures of his cavalry transports and of the shipwrecks in 55 B.C.,
which, as we have seen,[3250] is inexplicable on any other theory,
presents no difficulty. The transports which returned to the port
whence they started would have been laid to on the port tack, and would
have been carried back to Ambleteuse by the same wind which drove
their sister ships westward down the Channel.[3251] This wind, which
could not have driven ashore, in the immediate neighbourhood of their
anchorage, vessels anchored off Lympne or Hythe, would inevitably have
driven ashore, once they had parted their anchors, vessels lying off
the coast between Walmer and Deal.[3252]
7. Finally, Caesar sailed on his second voyage to Britain with a
south-west wind; and a south-west wind would obviously have been much
more favourable to a voyage either from Boulogne or from Wissant to
Deal or to any point on the coast of East Kent than to a voyage from
Boulogne to Lympne or even Hythe.
It remains to consider objections.
1. I have already refuted Airy’s criticism of the view that Caesar
anchored off the cliffs of Dover; and we have seen that Airy is
compelled by his own argument to identify the cliffs which Caesar
describes as ‘precipitous heights’, and Cicero as ‘astonishing masses
of cliff’[3253] with cliffs ‘ten to thirty feet high’.[3254] He
maintains that our interpretation of the words _angustis montibus_
‘must be guided by consideration of the character of place under which
an officer would think of attempting to land’, and ‘must also depend
upon the possibility of aiming a javelin from the heights’. ‘Both
considerations,’ he insists, ‘exclude such lofty cliffs as those of
Dover and Folkestone.’[3255] One might have expected that a man so
clever as Airy would have perceived that Caesar never intended to land
under _angusti montes_ at all, whether they were 300 or, as Airy will
have it, 10 feet high. He intended to land in the gap between the
_angusti montes_, that is to say, in Dover Harbour.[3256] Airy, indeed,
contends that ‘neither Caesar nor Volusenus would think for a moment
of pushing his boats into a creek whose defenders could attack them on
both sides’;[3257] but he forgets that Caesar had reason to expect that
his landing would not be opposed.[3258] As a matter of fact, Caesar
says nothing about javelins; but if Airy had stood on the beach at the
foot of Dover cliffs and allowed an army standing above to pelt him
with missiles, he would have speedily realized that it was possible
to take aim from those ‘lofty cliffs’; and, if he had survived the
experiment, he would have been a wiser and a sadder man.
2. Lewin[3259] says that ‘if we assume that Caesar was wholly ignorant
of the British coast ... he could not have discovered the level at
Deal’.
But what is the use of making absurd assumptions? As we have already
seen, it is certain that before Caesar set foot in Britain he knew
everything about the coast of East Kent that Volusenus could tell
him.[3260]
3. It has been objected that the distance from Dover to Walmer
exceeds the seven miles which separated Caesar’s anchorage from his
landing-place. But no sensible man maintains that Caesar anchored
exactly opposite Dover Harbour. He anchored off the cliffs east of
Dover. He says that he sailed ‘_about_ seven miles’ (_circiter milia
passuum VII_[3261]) to his landing-place. The distance by sea from off
Dover to a point just north of Walmer Castle is 7½ English miles, or
a little less than 8⅛ Roman miles; from off the South Foreland to the
same point 4⅞ English miles, or a little more than 5¼ Roman miles.
Accordingly, if we assume that Caesar’s landing-place extended for
about one mile north of Walmer Castle, and that his anchorage extended
eastward for about one mile towards the South Foreland from a point
about one mile east of Dover, the requirements of the _Commentaries_
are satisfied absolutely; and even if the ship on the left of the line
anchored just east of the harbour, off the Castle cliff, Caesar’s rough
estimate, which he qualified by the word ‘about’ (_circiter_), is
hardly violated. Surely the difference between ‘about seven’ and 8⅙ is
not worth cavilling over.[3262]
4. Lewin[3263] maintains that the beach at Deal does not correspond
with Caesar’s account of his disembarkation. The Romans, he argues,
evidently landed on a gradually shelving shore; whereas ‘at Deal the
beach ... descends so steeply that with a three hours’ flood transports
can come up to the water’s edge’.[3264] Again, remarking that Caesar
describes the shore on which he landed as ‘open’ (_apertum_) and
‘level’ (_planum_), he says that ‘between Walmer and Deal ... the
ground is uneven, and cannot be called flat’. Lastly, he recalls the
witnesses whose evidence he had cited in support of his own theory.
‘Caesar, Dion Cassius, Plutarch, and Valerius Maximus, all ... refer
to the _marshes_ at the place of landing ... who has ever heard of a
marsh at Deal.’[3265] And again, ‘Valerius Maximus speaks of _two small
islands_ at the landing-place.... It was never suggested that islands
did exist or could have existed at Deal.’[3266]
Now, to begin with, Lewin assumes that the beach between Walmer and
Deal has undergone no change, and was as steep 2,000 years ago as it is
to-day. In a previous article[3267] I have shown that this assumption
is untenable. Secondly, Lewin misunderstands Caesar’s narrative. As
some of the Britons threw their missiles from the shore,[3268] it is
evident that the deep water[3269] in which the Roman ships grounded was
within the range of a sling or of an arrow, that is to say, quite close
to the shore. Thirdly, no shore is or could conceivably be ‘level’: the
shore between Walmer and Deal is, as anybody may satisfy himself by
the evidence of his own eyes, free from obstructions[3270] (_apertum_)
and, speaking generally, evenly shelving (_planum_)[3271]. Caesar
applied these epithets to the shore on which he ran his ships aground,
not to ‘the ground’ behind it. As to the arguments which Lewin bases
upon the statements of Plutarch, Dion Cassius, and Valerius Maximus,
I have already shown[3272] that they are worthless; but if the story
told by Valerius Maximus were worth anything, it would not support, but
destroy Lewin’s theory. For, as we have seen, Valerius Maximus[3273]
speaks not of ‘two small islands’ but of one large island (_Britannica
insula_), and a rock (_scopulus_); and there are no rocks off Hythe or
Lympne.[3274] Moreover, although the fact is of no consequence, there
_are_ rocks, called the ‘Malms’, which are visible at low water, during
spring tides, opposite Deal;[3275] and in the time of Caesar there were
marshes behind the sand-hills north of Deal.
5. General Creuly,[3276] referring to Caesar’s description of the storm
by which some of his cavalry transports, after they were descried
from his camp in 55 B.C., were driven further down the coast,[3277]
maintains that the only point to which they could have been driven was
Dungeness. It follows, he says, that the camp could not have been at
Deal; for its distance from Dungeness is far too great.
The answer to this curious argument is, first, that it is plainly
impossible to indicate the exact point to which the ships were driven;
secondly, that it was certainly not Dungeness, for Dungeness did
not exist in Caesar’s time;[3278] thirdly, that there is nothing
in Caesar’s narrative to show how far the point to which the ships
were driven was from his camp; and, fourthly, that if the camp was
at or near Deal, there is nothing in his narrative to show that the
ships could not have run before the gale as far as the longitude of
Dungeness, or even a good deal further. From Deal to Dungeness is only
about 28 nautical miles; and if the ships approached the British coast
in the morning,[3279] they would have had the greater part of the day
in which to make the run.
6. General Creuly[3280] calls attention to the passage, which I have
already more than once quoted, in which Caesar tells us that at
daybreak, on his second voyage, he ‘saw Britain lying behind on the
port-quarter’. If, says the general, Caesar had steered for Deal, he
would have had the coast of Britain on the port side throughout the
voyage, and there would have been no point in the words _sub sinistra_.
He insists that these words are simply the correlative of _longius_:
Caesar saw Britain on the left because the flood had carried him _too
far_.
It will be remembered that Appach used this passage to prove that
Caesar landed in the (assumed) Bay of Appledore.[3281] Creuly uses it
to prove that Caesar landed near Hythe. I have shown the futility of
Appach’s argument; and to answer Appach is to answer Creuly. I may
remark, however, that Caesar does not merely say that he saw Britain
‘on the left’ (_sub sinistra_): he says that he saw it ‘_lying behind_
on the left’ (_sub sinistra relictam_). The coast could not have been
described as ‘lying behind on the left’ until after Caesar had passed
the South Foreland;[3282] and, although he was steering not for Hythe,
but for some point on the coast of East Kent, the flood tide did carry
him ‘too far’.
7. Many commentators have argued that Caesar’s account of the last
stage of his second voyage is inconsistent with the theory that he
landed near Deal. It will be remembered that, after telling us that
‘he saw Britain lying behind on the port quarter’, he goes on to say
that he then followed the turn of the tide, and that all his ships
reached the landing-place by rowing towards midday. The tide which he
followed was of course the westward stream: strictly speaking, its
direction, if he had drifted to some point east of the Goodwin Sands,
was south-west[3283] (magnetic), or between south-west by south and
south-south-west (true). It is very doubtful, Lewin thinks, whether,
with a current running at the rate of 3¾ miles an hour, the fleet
could, by the mere use of oars, have reached Deal at all; and it is
certain that, in order to do so, it would have been necessary to steer
‘across, if not actually against the current’. Caesar ‘could not’,
Lewin concludes, ‘be said to follow the tide when he was steering
athwart it. Besides, as it must necessarily have been almost low water
when the tide turned, had he held on for Deal he would infallibly have
struck on the Goodwin Sands.’[3284] Airy, on the other hand, asserts
that Caesar ‘must have been cast upon the Goodwin Sands’ during the
drift.[3285]
Now the reader will have already perceived that if Lewin’s argument
tells against the view that Caesar landed near Deal, it is fatal to
the view which Lewin himself defends. For Lewin’s theory compels him
to assume that Caesar had drifted no further than a point off the
South Foreland:[3286] in order to reach Hythe he would have had to
row less than thirteen nautical miles, with the stream throughout;
and it is therefore not easy to understand why his rowers should have
been called upon to make any extraordinary efforts. This point he
ignores. Again, he admits, or rather insists, that Caesar must have
drifted as far as the South Foreland; but it is easy to demonstrate
that if Caesar had been steering for Hythe, he could not have drifted
so far. For, as Lewin himself says, the length of the drift must, in
that case, have been not less than twelve nautical miles.[3287] Now
the drift only lasted from about midnight till daybreak; and, assuming
that it lasted four hours--a liberal estimate--the stream actually
travelled, at the most, nine miles:[3288] of course the ships would not
have travelled so far if they had merely drifted,[3289] but the faint
breeze, without which they would not have had steerage-way,[3290] may
have made up the deficit. But, in order to give Lewin every chance, let
us accept the most favourable of three estimates with which he himself
supplies us. He says[3291] that ‘the greatest velocity of the tide is,
according to the Tidal Tables, 3·3 knots an hour.... The drift would,
of course, be less than the velocity.... From midnight till daybreak at
4 a.m., would, therefore, give a drift of twelve miles’. But Caesar’s
voyage took place on or about the 7th of July;[3292] and daybreak was
about 3.15 a.m. This consideration alone compels us to reduce Lewin’s
estimate to ten miles and a half; and, moreover, he forgets that the
tide never runs for four consecutive hours, much less for the last four
hours, at its greatest velocity.[3293] Thus the argument upon which
he relies to prove that Caesar must have landed at Hythe turns and
pulverizes his already shattered theory.
On the hypothesis that Caesar landed anywhere between Walmer and
Sandwich, the statement that he ‘followed the turn of the stream’
presents no difficulty unless he meant that from the time when the
tide turned until the time when he reached Britain his men were
rowing hard exactly in the direction of the stream. This is what
Lewin assumes. But Caesar says no such thing. What he says is that,
having followed the turn of the tide, he rowed hard in order to gain
the desired landing-place. So long as the tide served, hard rowing
was obviously unnecessary,--if the Goodwin Sands existed. In that
case the true explanation is a modification of that offered by C.
Schneider,[3294] who says, ‘As long as it was possible to follow the
turn of the tide, rowing was unnecessary. But after they had reached
a point where they could do so no longer without being carried past
their destination, they took to rowing.’ Of course they would not have
trusted to the current alone at any time; but, supposing that the
Goodwin Sands then existed or that an island occupied their site, they
travelled south-westward with the current until they had turned the
obstacle, and then rowed hard in a north-westerly direction, across the
current,[3295] till they reached the landing place.[3296]
The question of the Goodwin Sands has been discussed in an earlier part
of this book.[3297] Either they did not exist in the time of Caesar,
the substratum on which they rest being covered by the sea; or they did
exist, but had not accumulated to their present height, or perhaps to
their present extent; or they were virtually identical with the present
sands, though their limits, which are not constant, may not have been
the same as they are now; or, finally, as Sir Charles Lyell suggested,
their place may have been occupied by an island. The question cannot be
positively settled; but, for reasons which I have already given, I am
rather inclined to believe that either Sir Charles Lyell’s suggestion
was right, or the sands had accumulated sufficiently to be visible,
or at all events dangerous, at certain points at low water. I shall,
however, presently take account of the possibility that neither of
these alternatives is true.
Much depends upon the answer which is to be given to the question,
To what point had Caesar drifted when he saw the coast of Britain?
Heller argues that this point must have been about nine miles due
east of Ramsgate; but, as I have shown in the previous article, his
reasoning is unsound.[3298] If Caesar had drifted to the point which
Heller indicates, his course to Deal, where, according to Heller, he
disembarked, would have been nearly south-west, that is to say, nearly
identical with the direction of the Gull Stream, which is described in
the Admiralty Tide Tables as SW. ½ W. (magnetic), or, approximately,
SW. by S. true.[3299] But, on this hypothesis, it would be inexplicable
that his soldiers were obliged to row hard. Heller, indeed, conjectures
that Caesar steered for the nearest point of the coast, that is to
say, nearly due west, intending to keep close inshore until he found
the landing-place; and he remarks that this would explain why his men
were obliged to use their oars instead of committing themselves to
the stream alone.[3300] But Caesar must have known the whereabouts of
his landing-place; and Heller’s explanation seems to be far-fetched.
Besides, as I shall presently show, Caesar, on his second expedition,
did not land between Walmer and Deal, but in the neighbourhood of
Sandwich.
For reasons which I have given in the article on the Portus Itius[3301]
I think we must conclude with Napoleon the Third,[3302] that Caesar
could hardly have drifted much further than a point on the latitude of
Deal and east of the Goodwin Sands. When the tide turned soon after
daybreak--about 4.30 a.m., if, as is probable, the day was the 7th of
July[3303]--he would have dropped down with the ebb as I have already
explained. If, after he had passed the sands or the island, he had
waited till about 9.30 a.m., the stream would have turned, and have
begun to flow NE. ½ N.[3304] magnetic, or, approximately, NNE. true:
if he had not waited, he would have had to row hard, as I have shown
above,[3305] athwart a stream which was flowing at a rate varying from
three to two knots, until it turned about 9.30.
The objection that, during the drift, Caesar ‘must have been cast upon
the Goodwin Sands’ is as groundless as the objection, which has just
been met, that if he had attempted to row to Deal [or to the coast
between Sandown Castle and Sandwich] ‘he would infallibly have struck
upon the Goodwin Sands’.[3306] Captain Iron, the harbour-master of
Dover, traced out upon the chart in my presence the course which the
Roman flotilla would naturally have steered from Boulogne, and showed
that, after the south-west wind dropped, it would have drifted east
of the Sands. If, as is probable, the flat-bottomed vessels had made
so much lee-way that, even before the wind dropped, they had got a
little out of their course, they would have drifted still further
eastward. It may also be objected that if Caesar, after he had followed
the tide south-westward, had turned the sands or the island which
may have occupied their place, he would have mentioned the fact. The
objection would be quite natural if it came from a writer who had
merely ‘got up’ so much of Caesar’s narrative as he thought would be
necessary to enable him to study the question; but every one who is
really familiar with the _Commentaries_ knows that Caesar often omitted
to mention matters, especially geographical, which a modern historian
would feel bound to record. There remains the possibility--perhaps
the probability--that neither the Goodwin Sands nor the hypothetical
island then existed. In this case Caesar would have had to row across
the current: still he might fairly have said that he followed the turn
of the tide. He was bound for Britain, and could not begin to row
until the tide began to set towards Britain, though in a different
direction from his: what other expression could he have used than
_aestus commutationem secutus_? Lewin doubted whether he could have
reached Britain by rowing at all; but Lewin did not understand what he
was writing about, and ought to have consulted a treatise on practical
navigation.[3307] On the other hand, it might possibly be objected
that he would not have taken till noon to reach his destination: that
depends upon the exact direction of the current, which often varies
from the direction indicated in the _Admiralty Tide Tables_,[3308]
and upon the rate at which the vessels could have been rowed in still
water. What he says is that _all_ his ships reached Britain by about
noon; and doubtless there were stragglers. Of course it may be argued
that there were not, and that all the ships were actually rowed for
seven hours. But if any one thinks that the possible objection which I
have anticipated is valid he will find himself confronted by another
which is absolutely insuperable. For he must needs accept Lewin’s
alternative theory, to which the objection would apply with redoubled
force,--that Caesar took seven hours to row from a point off the South
Foreland (though he could not have drifted so far) to Hythe; in other
words, that _by rowing hard Caesar could only manage to travel two
knots an hour with the stream_; and that _he took twice as long to
row less than thirteen knots with the stream as he had taken to drift
twelve knots without rowing_!
8. Airy,[3309] remarking that it is evident from the _Commentaries_
that ‘there were forests and cornfields near’ the Roman camp,
maintains, first, that if Caesar had landed near Deal ‘he would have
had for seven miles all round his camp bare chalk-downs, on which in
those days there probably was neither a tree nor a ploughed field’;
secondly, that a night march, such as that which Caesar made after he
landed in 54 B.C., can only be made upon good roads; that ‘the roads
in a woodland and clay-ground country are almost invariable’; that
accordingly the roads of East Kent ‘are in the very same tracks as in
the days of Julius Caesar’; and that Caesar’s night march, the length
of which was 12 Roman miles, would have brought him to the marshes of
the Stour, whereas, if the Britons had been posted on that river, he
would have crossed it ‘at the sound ground of Canterbury or above it,
and would have attacked their flank’; and thirdly, that if Caesar’s
march to the point where he crossed the Thames had begun near Deal,
‘his course would have been all the way parallel to the Thames, and the
expression “ad Tamesin”[3310] could scarcely have been used.’
The first of these objections is summarily disposed of by Long,[3311]
who points out that at Worth, between Deal and Sandwich, there is ‘some
of the best wheat land in England’; and by Dr. Guest,[3312] who remarks
that ‘the uplands round Deal are every autumn white with corn’;[3313]
and that, as many of the great forests which once existed in England
have disappeared, the absence of woods in the neighbourhood of Deal is
no proof that there were none there in Caesar’s time. But, as a matter
of fact, there are no less than five woods at distances varying from
about a mile to three miles and a quarter from Upper Deal;[3314] and
Caesar only speaks of one wood as having existed in the neighbourhood
of his camp, and implies that it was a considerable distance off.[3315]
The second objection is valid against the theory that Caesar landed
between Walmer and Deal _on his second expedition_, unless he
encountered the Britons on the Little Stour; but I shall presently
show that on that occasion he landed near Sandwich, and that his march
of ‘about twelve miles’ did bring him either to ‘the sound ground of
Canterbury or above it’, or to Fordwich or Sturry below Canterbury, but
of course not to ‘the marshes of the Stour’. The third objection, from
the point of view of Airy, according to whom Caesar landed at Pevensey,
may to some minds appear plausible; but the view that Caesar landed
at Pevensey is out of the question. But the same objection has been
urged by the advocates of Hythe; and they hardly deserve an answer.
Supposing Caesar’s march had been nearly parallel with the Thames, what
then? If he had landed at or near Hythe, he must have first encountered
the Britons at Wye on the Stour; and from Wye to Brentford[3316] his
march would have been hardly less parallel (if the expression may
be pardoned) to the Thames than from the neighbourhood of Sandwich.
In writing the words _ad Tamesim_ he simply intended to indicate
approximately the distance from his naval camp, either to the point
where he crossed the Thames or to the nearest frontier of the territory
of Cassivellaunus; and the direction of his march is nothing to the
purpose. Whether that direction was nearly parallel to the Thames or at
right angles to it, the distance was about 80 Roman miles.
9. It will be remembered that at the close of Caesar’s second campaign
his camp was attacked by the four chieftains of Kent.[3317] General
Creuly argues that if the camp had been at Deal, Caesar, when he was
marching to the place where he crossed the Thames, must have traversed
the country of the four chieftains without having first subdued them.
If, on the other hand, says the general, he had started from Hythe, he
would have marched not through the heart of their territory, but close
to their frontier; and for this very reason they would not have thought
it necessary to submit.[3318]
Heller[3319] has taken the trouble to answer this nebulous argument.
He points out that Caesar, having defeated the chieftains in the
engagements which immediately followed his arrival, evidently did not
think them sufficiently dangerous to wait until he had secured their
complete submission. Indeed, if their territory comprised the whole
of Kent, or even that part of it which lies east of Maidstone, it is
evident that Caesar, marching northward from Hythe to the Stour, and
then turning westward or north-westward, would have traversed the heart
of their country. Moreover, as Heller might have added, it would have
been just as hazardous for Caesar to leave the chiefs unsubdued if he
had marched from Hythe as if he had marched from the neighbourhood
of Deal or of Sandwich. Furthermore, he had no time to spare; and
unless he had completely laid waste their country, and treated their
people with the ruthless severity with which he afterwards treated the
Eburones[3320]--and to do this would have required the greater part of
the time which he had to spend in Britain--it would have been utterly
impossible for him to subdue them so thoroughly as to prevent them from
attacking his camp in his absence. Think of the Boers!
10. Lastly, it has been objected[3321] that Caesar could not have
landed near Deal, or indeed at any point on the coast of East
Kent, because, if he had marched against Cassivellaunus from that
neighbourhood, he must have passed through tracts abounding in
beech-woods, whereas he says expressly that there were no beech-trees
in Britain.[3322] But Dr. Guest[3323] disposed of this objection by
pointing out that ‘at whatever point on the south coast Caesar landed
... he must have crossed the North Downs on his way to the Thames,
and so have passed through “tracts abounding in beech-woods”’. Mr.
Mackinder,[3324] indeed, asserts, without giving any authority, that
the beech was introduced into this country by the Romans; but it
has been found in submerged forests and in deposits of the Bronze
Age.[3325] If by the word _fagum_ Caesar meant the beech, his statement
was incorrect.[3326]
XII. THE THEORY THAT CAESAR LANDED AT RICHBOROUGH OR SANDWICH
The commentators who believe that Caesar landed in the neighbourhood
of Sandwich are not agreed among themselves. Napoleon III, who holds
that he landed between Walmer and Deal in 55, and at or near Sandwich
in 54 B.C., argues that the disaster which befell his ships on the
night of the full moon in August, 55 B.C., must have taught him the
danger to which they would be exposed on the beach near Deal, and
that accordingly he must have selected a better landing-place ‘some
kilometres further north’.[3327] Others, like the late George Dowker,
maintain that he landed near Sandwich on both occasions.
Dowker assumes that Caesar’s own ship, if not the rest of his fleet,
anchored in 55 B.C. off the South Foreland; and he goes on to say that
‘from the South Foreland ... seven miles would bring him near the mouth
of Sandwich Haven’. He decides for Sandwich instead of Deal because, in
his opinion, the _Commentaries_ show that Caesar landed ‘at or near a
point whence he could get his long vessels on the flank of an enemy’,
and at Deal ‘no such bay existed’, whereas at Sandwich the very bay
which he wanted was formed by the mouth of the Stour.[3328]
That Caesar did ‘get his long vessels on the flank of an enemy’[3329]
is unquestionable: but he does not say that he placed them in a bay
or in the mouth of the Stour or any other river; nor is it easy
to understand why a bay or the mouth of a river should have been
necessary for his purpose. The object of placing the ‘long vessels’
on the enemy’s right flank was that the artillerymen, slingers, and
archers who manned them might drive away the enemy who were trying to
stop the disembarkation; and some of the enemy were standing on the
shore, while the rest were wading, or mounted on horseback, or perhaps
standing in their cars in the sea close to the water’s edge.[3330]
Why should not the ‘long vessels’ have been in the sea too? What was
to be gained by sending them into the mouth of a river? When Dowker
said that a run of 7 miles would have brought Caesar from the South
Foreland nearly to ‘the mouth of Sandwich Haven’, his eagerness to
prove his point prevented him from making an accurate measurement.
From the South Foreland to the place which was once the mouth of
Sandwich Haven, as measured within half a mile from the shore on
Sheet 290 of the One Inch Ordnance Map, is just over 11 statute, or
12 Roman miles. Nor does Battely contribute much to the argument when
he pleads that _VIII milia passuum_ ‘does not occur invariably in all
the editions’, and that Caesar may have made a mistake. We are not
concerned with ‘the editions’, but with the _MSS._; and _VIII milia
passuum_ does not occur in any of them, but _VII_ (or _septem_) _milia
passuum_ in all.[3331] It would be strange if Caesar had not made a
slight mistake; but it would be stranger still if he had mistaken
twelve miles for seven. Battely[3332] argues that he must have landed
at Richborough, (_a_) because he says that Cantium, where the Gauls
generally landed, has an easterly aspect, whereas Dover looks south;
(_b_) because Dion’s description of the landing-place, ‘which, as to
the nature of the shore, directly contradicts Caesar’s narrative,’ is
applicable to Richborough, where there ‘was a marshy and muddy shore,
on which Caesar’s soldiers ... could not keep their footing’;[3333]
and (_c_) because ‘all the time the Romans were masters of our island,
Rutupiae ... was the only port where they disembarked’. Now Caesar,
who never talks nonsense, does not say that the whole of Cantium,
or even that part of it in which the Gauls used to land, faces the
east. He merely says that of the side of Britain which faces Gaul
‘one corner, by Kent--the part which almost all ships from Gaul make
for--has an easterly ... aspect’ (_huius lateris alter angulus,
qui est ad Cantium, quo fere omnes ex Gallia naves adpelluntur, ad
orientem solem ... spectat_[3334]). Besides, nobody would argue that
Caesar landed at Dover; and the coast between Walmer and Deal has an
easterly aspect no less than Richborough. Secondly, when Battely says
that Dion’s description of the landing-place ‘directly contradicts’
Caesar’s narrative, and then elects to believe the inaccurate and
rhetorical Greek, who wrote two hundred years after the event, rather
than the eye-witness, he shows that he is incapable of serious
criticism. Besides, it is not true that Dion’s description of the
landing-place[3335] contradicts Caesar’s narrative either directly or
indirectly; and neither of them says that the shore was either ‘marshy’
or ‘muddy’.[3336] Thirdly, Rutupiae was not ‘the only port’ where the
Romans disembarked after they had become masters of the island. It is
certain that Dover Harbour was in use during the Roman occupation of
Britain, for it is mentioned in the _Itinerary_ of Antonine;[3337]
inscribed tiles found at Dover prove that it was one of the stations
of the _Classis Britannica_,[3338]--the Roman ‘Channel Fleet’; and
the mere fact that two disembarkations after the time of Caesar are
recorded to have taken place at Rutupiae[3339] does not prove the
contrary.
The conclusion is that Caesar, on his first voyage, did not land
either in the neighbourhood of Sandwich or at Richborough, and that he
did land between Walmer and Deal. The disembarkation must of course
have taken place along a front of considerable extent; and the most
southerly point at which it would have been easily practicable is quite
close to Walmer Castle.
In the following year, however, the fleet must have made the land
somewhere between the site of Deal Castle and the latitude of
Sandwich. For the Romans, as we have seen, on the morning after their
disembarkation, fought a cavalry action on the banks of a river, at
a spot about twelve miles from the camp which Caesar had constructed
near the place of landing: the river, as we shall afterwards see,[3340]
was the Stour; and if the length of the march was estimated with
tolerable accuracy, the camp must have been in the neighbourhood of
Sandwich.[3341] Besides, Caesar tells us that ‘he felt little anxiety
for the ships, as he was leaving them at anchor on a nice open
shore’ (_eo minus veritus navibus, quod in litore molli atque aperto
deligatas ad ancoras relinquebat_[3342]). The meaning of the epithet,
_mollis_, has been already explained;[3343] and, moreover, although
no commentator has noticed the fact, it does not need much acumen to
see that Caesar was here excusing himself for having left his ships at
anchor, in spite of the severe lesson which the storm of the previous
year had given him, by the plea that he had selected a more favourable
anchorage.[3344]
* * * * *
I began this inquiry early in 1900 with a mind absolutely unbiassed,
resolved to do one of two things,--either to solve the problem, or, if
that could not be done, to show, once for all, that it was insoluble.
The reader knows that I have not neglected any means of ascertaining
the truth; and I have provided him with the means of controlling every
statement which I have made. I have set down fully and fairly the
arguments of those from whom I differ; and I have kept back nothing, I
have called attention to everything, that might appear to tell against
the conclusion to which the evidence inevitably led. I need not say
anything by way of recapitulation, for no man who has read this article
attentively can be lacking either in patience or in intelligence;
and I am sure that the reader is by this time convinced of these
things:--that it has been demonstrated that Caesar did not land at
Pevensey, or anywhere in Sussex; that it has been demonstrated that he
did not land at Hythe, or anywhere in Romney Marsh; and that it has
been demonstrated that he did land both in 55 and in 54 B.C. in East
Kent,--in the former year between Walmer Castle and Deal Castle, in the
latter north of Deal Castle. That some will still for a time dispute
these conclusions is likely enough; but not those whose judgements
count. For them the problem is solved.
NOTE.--The following is a transcript of the report of Messrs. Doak,
Hudson, and Sprigge, sent to me from the Nautical Almanac Office,
and alluded to on page 610, _supra_:--
‘The calculations have proved somewhat more lengthy and complicated
than was at first anticipated, since it was found on examination
that no approximate process would give results of a satisfactory
degree of accuracy. In consequence the following work has been
done:--
1. Twelve complete places of the Moon were determined from Hansen’s
“Tables de la Lune”, embodying all the inequalities. Longitude,
Latitude, and Parallax were thus obtained.
2. The Sun’s Longitude, the Obliquity of the Ecliptic and the
Sidereal Time were then computed from Newcomb’s Tables for seven
successive Greenwich Mean Noons. A slight shortening was possible
in the case of the Longitude, but the resulting error cannot, in
the opinion of Professor Newcomb, exceed ±30 seconds of arc, and is
probably about ±12 seconds.
3. The Moon’s position was then converted from Longitude and
Latitude to Right Ascension and Declination.
4. The Greenwich Mean Time of Moon’s Transit was computed for
twelve transits.
5. The times of High Water at Dover were obtained by applying the
proper quantities from the Admiralty Tidal Curve for Dover to the
times of Moon’s Transit.
6. From the Longitudes of Moon and Sun the time of Full Moon was
determined.
7. The whole of the calculations were then examined and duplicated
where desirable.
With the one exception of the Sun’s Longitude the calculations
have been rigorous, and, so far as the computing is concerned,
are of the same degree of accuracy as those published annually in
the Nautical Almanac. A very slight divergence from the truth is,
however, possible owing to the fact that the tables of the Moon and
Sun are used for an epoch nineteen-and-a-half centuries ago; but it
is very unlikely that this is large enough to affect the times of
high water or of full moon.
4th October, 1902.’
THE CREDIBILITY OF CAESAR’S NARRATIVE OF HIS INVASIONS OF BRITAIN
I have already published in _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_ an essay
upon the credibility of Caesar’s _Commentaries_; but, as it only
deals incidentally with the invasions of Britain, I intend in this
place to examine certain charges which have been made against that
section of Caesar’s narrative. It has been objected, perhaps justly,
to the essay by competent critics in this country (though not on the
Continent[3345]) that it devotes an undue amount of space to the
refutation of inferior writers; but at all events those who have read
it will believe that the charges which I leave unnoticed in the present
article may safely be disregarded.
I agree with Dr. F. Vogel that, apart from internal evidence,
virtually the only authority by which we can test the _Commentaries_
is the correspondence of Cicero; and the opinion which I have
already expressed of Dion Cassius[3346] is supported by the German
scholar.[3347]
1. Dr. Vogel points to a passage in one of Cicero’s letters to
Atticus,[3348] which, he says, has not yet received due attention
or been correctly explained:--_Britannici belli exitus exspectatur;
constat enim aditus insulae esse #muratos#[3349] mirificis
molibus; etiam illud iam cognitum est, neque argenti scripulum esse
ullum in illa insula neque ullam spem praedae nisi ex mancipiis_, &c.
The following translation will be generally accepted as accurate:--‘The
result of the British war is a source of anxiety. For it is notorious
that the approaches to the island are ramparted by astonishing
masses of cliff; and, besides, it is now known that there isn’t a
pennyworth of silver in the island, nor any hope of loot except from
slaves.’ But Dr. Vogel insists that the words _Britannici belli exitus
exspectatur_ ‘can only mean “the end of the British war is expected”,
that is to say, it is expected that the war, being too hazardous and
too unremunerative, will be entirely abandoned’.[3350] The letter in
question was written, as Dr. Vogel remarks, before the 3rd of July,
A.U.C. 700, that is to say, before the 8th of June of the Julian
calendar.[3351] He goes on to say that for some time afterwards it
must have continued an open question whether the expedition was not
to be given up; for in a letter written after the 15th of July,[3352]
Cicero says to his brother, ‘I wish that you could come at the time you
arranged’ (_cuperem te ad id tempus venire quod dixeras_). But, says
Dr. Vogel, Caesar says not a word to show that the proposed expedition
was almost abandoned. Not a word directly: but Dr. Vogel believes that
he can detect a significant hint in the _Commentaries_. Caesar relates
that, before he sailed for Britain, he was obliged to march into the
country of the Treveri, who were said to be preparing for rebellion.
Soon after the legions entered the country, Indutiomarus, the leader
of the malcontents, finding that resistance would, for the time being,
be hopeless, sent envoys to Caesar to assure him of his loyalty and
to make excuses for not having come in person to pay his respects.
On which Caesar remarks, ‘Caesar was aware of his motive for saying
this, and of the circumstances that deterred him from prosecuting the
design which he had formed: still, in order to avoid having to waste
the summer in the country of the Treveri after having made all his
preparations for a campaign in Britain, he told Indutiomarus to present
himself with two hundred hostages’ (_Caesar, etsi intellegebat qua de
causa ea dicerentur quaeque eum res ab instituto consilio deterreret,
tamen, ne aestatem in Treveris consumere cogeretur omnibus ad
Britannicum bellum rebus comparatis, Indutiomarum ad se cum ducentis
obsidibus venire iussit_[3353]). Now, says Dr. Vogel, although Caesar
is silent as to his real motive, we may divine from the words ‘in order
to avoid having to waste the summer in the country of the Treveri after
having made all his preparations for a campaign in Britain’ that he
hesitated for some time to carry out his resolve of making a second
British expedition.[3354]
This charge rests upon a mistranslation.[3355] The words _Britannici
belli exitus exspectatur_ will certainly bear the interpretation which
I have put upon them: why, then, suggest another interpretation,
which, even if it could be got out of the Latin, would necessitate
the assumption that Caesar did not know his own mind, and that, after
he had kept his army busy for six months building six hundred ships,
he told his staff that, all things considered, it would be better not
to make use of them, and presently changed his mind again, and did
make use of them? Again, in his quotation from Cicero’s letter to
Quintus, Dr. Vogel leaves out the important part. The passage runs as
follows:--_Qua re suavitatis equidem nostrae fruendae causa cuperem
te ad id tempus venire quod dixeras, sed illud malo tamen, quod putas
magis #e re tua; magis# ... illa etiam magni aestimo_, ἀμφιλαφίαν
_illam tuam et explicationem debitorum tuorum_. Read Professor
Tyrrell’s translation:--‘Wherefore I should indeed wish that you could
come at the time you arranged, for the sake of our pleasure in each
other’s society; but yet I desire more that you should do what you
think your interests demand [and stay in the camp of Caesar]; still
more do I value other considerations, your being in easy circumstances,
and free from embarrassments.’ Professor Tyrrell goes on to point out
that ‘the words printed in italics [#e re tua; magis#], or some
such words, must, as Wesenburg suggested, have fallen out’,[3356] &c.
As for Caesar’s words, _ne aestatem in Treveris consumere cogeretur
omnibus ad Britannicum bellum rebus comparatis_, I confess that my
powers of divination are not equal to those of Dr. Vogel. I am unable
to infer from these words that Caesar hesitated for a moment to carry
out his matured resolve.
Dr. Vogel then calls our attention to the well-known letter in which
Cicero complained that he had had no news either from Quintus or from
Caesar for more than fifty days, by which he meant that the last
letters which he had received were _dated_ more than fifty days before
the time at which he was himself writing.[3357] Caesar’s last letter
had been written on the 1st of September, and Quintus’s apparently
a few days earlier.[3358] On the 25th of September they both wrote
again.[3359] Dr. Vogel admits that from the 1st to the 25th Caesar
and Quintus were engaged in operations against Cassivellaunus. But,
he says, this does not satisfactorily explain the long break in the
arrival of letters. In order to understand it, one must take into
account a circumstance which Caesar himself relates,[3360] but the
importance of which he minimizes, namely, that while he was campaigning
on the north of the Thames, the four kings of Kent made an attack
on his naval camp. It is true, says Dr. Vogel, that the attack was
repulsed; but what did the Roman success amount to? All that Caesar
can say for his troops is that they returned from their sortie unhurt.
How long, owing to this outbreak in Kent, the communication between
his army and his fleet was interrupted he tries to conceal by the
meaningless expression, ‘while the operations above mentioned were
going on in this district’ (_Dum haec in his locis geruntur_[3361]).
As he goes on to say that Cassivellaunus, owing to the failure of the
attack on the naval camp, sent envoys, one may read between the lines
of his narrative that it was the action of the four kings which induced
him to accept the embassy, even if he did not actually invite it.[3362]
To ‘read between the lines’ is always easy: the only difficulty is to
avoid reading what is not there. The reason for ‘the complete break
in the arrival of letters’ to which Dr. Vogel refers is intelligible
to any reader who is not determined to convict Caesar of _suppressio
veri_: the reason is either that, as I have elsewhere shown, Caesar
was engaged, first in marching back from the coast into the interior,
after a temporary visit to his naval camp, then in negotiations with
Cassivellaunus, and, finally, in leading his army back to the sea;
or, if he remained in his naval camp from the 1st to the 25th of
September,[3363] that he saw no reason for writing to Cicero, or did
not think it worth while to send a ship to Gaul for the sole purpose of
conveying a letter. What Dr. Vogel calls ‘the meaningless expression’,
_Dum haec in his locis geruntur_, is one of a class of expressions,
all containing the words _dum haec geruntur_, which Caesar uses
thirteen times:[3364] like our ‘meanwhile’, it is doubtless wanting in
chronological precision, but it is not meaningless. Dr. Vogel asserts
that ‘the complete break in the arrival of letters’ was due to ‘the
outbreak in Kent’ on the part of the four kings. Yet he admits that the
attack which the four kings made on the naval camp was repulsed; and
Caesar adds that the garrison killed many of the enemy, and captured
their leader, Lugotorix. In other words, their success was complete.
All that they had to do was to beat off an attack, and this they
effectually did. Even assuming that ‘the complete break in the arrival
of letters’ was due to the action of the four kings, what then? It was
not Caesar’s business to chronicle postal irregularities, but simply to
describe his campaign.
To the very end of the narrative Dr. Vogel continues to read between
the lines. ‘Thoroughly characteristic,’ he tells us, ‘is the way
in which Caesar describes the results of the expedition. It is
true that his account[3365] substantially tallies with what Cicero
writes to Atticus,--“On the 24th of October I received letters from
my brother Quintus and from Caesar, dated from the nearest coasts
of Britain on the 25th of September. They had settled affairs in
Britain, received hostages, and imposed tribute, though they had got
no booty.” (_A Quinto fratre et a Caesare accepti a. d. IX Kal. Nov.
litteras, datas a littoribus Britanniae proximis a. d. VI Kal. Octobr.
Confecta Britannia, obsidibus acceptis, nulla praeda, imperata tamen
pecunia_,[3366] &c.). But what about Cassivellaunus? How did Caesar
balance accounts with him?’ Dr. Vogel reminds us that Caesar’s words
have led Mommsen to believe that Cassivellaunus promised to pay tribute
and to give hostages. But, says Dr. Vogel, Caesar nowhere says this:
he only leads the reader to imagine it. What he says is this:--‘On
receiving news of the action [namely, the repulse of the four kings],
Cassivellaunus, who was greatly alarmed by the defection of the
tribes, following the numerous disasters which he had sustained and
the ravaging of his country, availed himself of the mediation of the
Atrebatian, Commius, and sent envoys to Caesar, to propose surrender.
Caesar had resolved to winter on the Continent because disturbances
had broken out suddenly in Gaul: not much of the summer remained; and
the enemy, as he knew, could easily spin out the time. Accordingly
he ordered hostages to be given, and fixed the tribute which Britain
was to pay annually to the Roman People, at the same time expressly
forbidding Cassivellaunus to molest Mandubracius or the Trinovantes.’
(_Cassivellaunus, hoc proelio nuntiato, tot detrimentis acceptis,
vastatis finibus, maxime etiam permotus defectione civitatum, legatos
per Atrebatem Commium de deditione ad Caesarem mittit. Caesar, cum
constituisset hiemare in continenti propter repentinos Galliae motus
neque multum aestatis superesset atque id facile extrahi posse
intellegeret, obsides imperat et quid in annos singulos vectigalis
populo Romano Britannia penderet constituit; interdicit atque imperat
Cassivellauno ne Mandubracio neu Trinovantibus noceat._[3367])
Now, observes Dr. Vogel, in the first sentence _Cassivellaunus_ is
grammatically the subject, and in the last the object; but the reader
involuntarily supposes him to be the object in the intermediate
sentence as well. In other words, the reader takes for granted that
Cassivellaunus was ordered to give hostages, though Caesar does not
say so. Moreover, the first sentence, taken by itself, leads one to
suspect Caesar’s good faith. For how came Caesar’s understrapper,
Commius, to be with Cassivellaunus? Is it not clear that Caesar had
sent Commius to Cassivellaunus as his envoy? In other words, that,
whereas Caesar represents Cassivellaunus as having been driven by a
series of reverses to offer submission, Caesar had in reality himself
made overtures to Cassivellaunus?[3368]
If I were Caesar’s advocate I should merely reply that as Cicero
states, on the testimony of his brother, hostages were given. But, as
Caesar was undoubtedly not incapable of misrepresentation, Dr. Vogel’s
suspicion is possibly not groundless. Caesar may have sent Commius to
Cassivellaunus with an offer of terms; and if so, his narrative is
so far misleading. On the other hand, Cassivellaunus may first have
signified his willingness to submit; and Caesar may then have employed
Commius as his agent.
Dr. Vogel’s general conclusion is that, although Caesar’s narrative
is not expressly contradicted by Cicero’s letters, yet it was, from
first to last, written for effect. Always literally true, it is
often substantially false. His most effective weapon is the apparent
clearness and candour of his style, which puts the reader off his
guard, and prevents him from noticing how very ambiguous many of
the statements are. He conceals essential facts and exaggerates the
importance of trivial successes; and he prevents the unwary reader
from noticing the slowness of his progress in Britain by inserting in
the twelfth and the two following chapters of his Fifth Book a general
description of the country and its inhabitants, from which point of
view this otherwise very inartistic interpolation must be regarded as a
masterpiece of ingenuity.
My general conclusion is that the charges which Dr. Vogel has brought
against Caesar’s narrative for the most part break down, but that in
the one instance which I have noted he may have detected a flaw.
2. Thomas Lewin, who was a writer of considerable ability, remarked, in
regard to Caesar’s narrative of the events that immediately preceded
his departure from Britain in 55 B.C., that ‘it is easy to see,
notwithstanding the veil attempted to be thrown over the transaction,
that he wanted only a plausible pretext for transporting himself and
his army back to Gaul’.[3369]
Caesar’s account runs as follows:--‘On the same day the enemy sent
envoys, who came to Caesar to sue for peace. Caesar ordered them to
furnish twice as many hostages as before and take them across to the
Continent; for the equinox was near, and, as his ships were unsound,
he did not think it wise to risk a voyage in stormy weather. Taking
advantage of favourable weather, he set sail,’ &c. (_Eodem die legati
ab hostibus missi ad Caesarem de pace venerunt. His Caesar numerum
obsidum quem ante imperaverat duplicavit eosque in continentem
adduci iussit, quod propinqua die aequinoctii infirmis navibus hiemi
navigationem subiciendam non existimabat. Ipse idoneam tempestatem
nactus ... naves solvit_,[3370] &c.). Where is ‘the veil attempted to
be thrown over the transaction’? Dion’s account,[3371] so far as it
goes, confirms that of Caesar. ‘From Dion,’ remarks Lewin,[3372] ‘we
learn that negotiations were opened by the intervention of some Morini
who were friends of the Britons.’ Evidently he had not read Dion with
due attention: the negotiations of which Dion speaks[3373] were opened
immediately after Caesar had, in spite of British resistance, effected
his landing; and Lewin forgets to add that the Britons induced the
Morini to intervene. The truth of Caesar’s narrative is confirmed by
the humorous frankness with which he avows that the Britons did not all
obey his orders. After describing his return to Gaul, he says, ‘Two
British tribes and no more sent hostages: the rest neglected to do so’
(_Eo duae omnino civitates ex Britannia obsides miserunt, reliquae
neglexerunt_[3374]).
But I am not concerned to maintain that Caesar’s object was to tell
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.[3375] The most
serious omission in his account of his British campaigns has passed
almost unnoticed. In the section of this book which deals with the
chronology of his operations I have demonstrated that either he passed
over in silence a hurried temporary visit to his naval camp which he
made just before the 1st of September (the 5th of August of the Julian
calendar), 54 B.C., or, if he remained in the camp from that day until
his final departure from Britain, his account of his negotiations
with Cassivellaunus and of the return march of his army to the coast
is misleading.[3376] Moreover, as I have pointed out in the seventh
chapter,[3377] there is reason to suspect that he and his officers may
have known more than he would admit about the connexion between the
tides and the moon’s age. But he told the truth, so far as he could
ascertain it, when he had no solid motive for falsification; and when
he wrote the _Commentaries on the Gallic War_, he could generally
afford to be true.
THE DISEMBARKATION OF THE ROMANS IN 55 B. C.
‘The men ... weighed down with their heavy cumbrous armour, had to
leap down from the ships and keep their foothold in the waves,’ &c.
(_militibus autem ... magno et gravi onere armorum oppressis simul et
de navibus desiliendum et in fluctibus consistendum_, &c.[3378]) This
passage has occasioned needless perplexity to commentators who forgot
that the ships’ bows may have projected considerably, and also that
when they were run aground they would necessarily have been buried for
a considerable depth.[3379] Thus it would have been possible to jump
into four feet six inches or five feet of water from the bow of a ship
whose draught was a good deal more.
THE SITE OF CAESAR’S CAMP IN 55, AND OF HIS NAVAL CAMP IN 54 B. C.
I have proved in an earlier article that Caesar landed in 55 B.C.
between Walmer Castle and Deal Castle, and in the following year
between Deal Castle and Sandwich.[3380] Camden,[3381] who assumed that
Caesar landed at the same place on both his expeditions, remarked that
‘for a considerable length under this shore [in the neighbourhood of
Deal] are a number of heaps like banks which some suppose to have
been blown up by the wind; but’, he added, ‘I rather take them for
the fortifications or defences for ships which Caesar was ten days
and nights throwing up.’ If Camden was referring to the sand-dunes
between Sandown and Sandwich, it is of course unnecessary to discuss
his conjecture. Hasted[3382] thought that the camp of 55 B.C. might be
represented by ‘remains of entrenchments still visible’, (1) ‘close
to the shore between _Deal_ and _Walmer Castle_’, or (2) ‘within the
country round _Walmer Church_’, or (3) ‘upon a rise ... between _Deal_
and _Upper Deal_’. But these are mere guesses; and Professor Flinders
Petrie, in his ‘Notes on Kentish Earthworks’,[3383] says nothing which
can support either Hasted or Camden, except that ‘there is said to be
a fosse around Walmer Church’. I can only add that nobody will learn
anything by going to look for it. Dowker,[3384] who deluded himself
into the belief that Caesar had landed near Sandwich in 55 as well
as in 54 B.C., held that he had encamped in the first year between
Sandwich and Worth, in the second on Richborough Hill. But Dowker
himself maintained that Richborough Hill was isolated at spring tides;
and would Caesar have omitted to mention that he had sailed into the
Rutupian estuary? I am inclined to believe that he encamped in 54 B.C.
on the gently rising ground near Worth.
Last year (1902) I spent two days in examining the coast between
Kingsdown and Sandown.[3385] The conclusion to which I came was that
in 55 B.C. Caesar must have encamped either on the plateau between
Walmer Castle and Kingsdown, or, much more probably, on the rising
ground north-west of the plateau which is now covered by part of the
town of Walmer. On returning to London, I opened the second volume of
Napoleon’s _Histoire de Jules César_, and found on pages 160 and 161
that Colonel Stoffel had adopted the latter alternative.
THE WAR-CHARIOTS OF THE BRITONS
‘Chariots,’ says Caesar,[3386] ‘are used in action in the following
way. First of all the charioteers drive all over the field, the
warriors hurling missiles; and generally they throw the enemy’s ranks
into confusion by the mere terror inspired by their horses and the
clatter of the wheels. As soon as they have penetrated between the
troops of cavalry the warriors jump off the chariots and fight on foot.
The drivers meanwhile gradually withdraw from the action, and range the
cars in such a position that if the warriors are hard pressed by the
enemy’s numbers, they may easily get back to them. Thus they exhibit
in action the mobility of cavalry combined with the steadiness of
infantry; and they become so expert from constant habit and practice
that they will drive their horses at full gallop, keeping them well
in hand, down a steep incline, check and turn them in an instant, run
along the pole, stand on the yoke, and step backwards again to the
car with the greatest nimbleness’ (_Genus hoc est ex essedis pugnae.
Primo per omnes partes perequitant et tela coiciunt atque ipso terrore
equorum et strepitu rotarum ordines plerumque perturbant, et cum se
inter equitum turmas insinuaverunt, ex essedis desiliunt et pedibus
proeliantur. Aurigae interim paulatim ex proelio excedunt atque ita
currus conlocant ut, si illi a multitudine hostium premantur, expeditum
ad suos receptum habeant. Ita mobilitatem equitum, stabilitatem peditum
in proeliis praestant, ac tantum usu cotidiano et exercitatione
efficiunt uti in declivi ac praecipiti loco incitatos equos sustinere
et brevi moderari ac flectere et per temonem percurrere et in iugo
insistere et se inde in currus citissime recipere consuerint_).
M. G. Lafaye[3387] gathers from this description that the object of
the warrior in running along the pole was to jump down in order to
throw his javelin and to avoid being impeded in his movements by the
proximity of the driver. M. Lafaye assures us that certain coins
represent warriors moving on to the poles of their chariots in order to
hurl their javelins: but they do not represent them as about to jump
down;[3388] and Caesar says that the warrior, after he had run along
the pole, stepped back again on to the car.
Caesar[3389] tells us that, after he had crossed the Thames in 54
B.C., Cassivellaunus dismissed the whole of his forces except 4,000
_essedarii_. Most commentators have inferred, I think rightly, from
this statement that Cassivellaunus had 4,000 chariots; but it seems
possible that by 4,000 _essedarii_ Caesar may have meant 2,000 warriors
and 2,000 drivers.[3390] Napoleon the Third,[3391] on the other hand,
assumes that there were ‘six _essedarii_ par char’. It is unnecessary
to make any assumptions; for, according to Diodorus Siculus,[3392] who
derived his information from Posidonius, every Gallic chariot carried
a driver and one warrior. Furthermore, a coin of the Hostilian family,
which was struck between 49 and 46 B.C.,[3393] depicts a chariot drawn
by two horses, and driven by a charioteer, who is accompanied by one
warrior, armed with an oblong buckler.
Professor E. B. Tylor,[3394] referring to Pomponius Mela,[3395]
Lucan,[3396] and Silius Italicus,[3397] argues that the Britons used
chariots armed with scythes: Tacitus,[3398] who derived his information
from Agricola, says that the British army which encountered the
latter in the Grampians included _covinnarii_, who, according to
Pomponius Mela, were warriors who fought in scythed chariots;[3399]
and Jornandes[3400] says that the chariots of the Britons were armed
with scythes: but if the Britons whom Caesar encountered had used such
chariots, he would certainly have mentioned the fact;[3401] and no
scythes are to be seen on the Roman coins which depict war-chariots.
Moreover, of the numerous interments of warriors with chariots that
have been discovered in the department of the Marne not one showed any
traces of scythes;[3402] nor have any such traces ever been found in
Great Britain.[3403]
I have remarked in my narrative of Caesar’s second invasion[3404]
that very few chariot-burials have been found in this country. It is
noteworthy that of the whole number--not more than a dozen--all but
two were in Yorkshire, and not one in Scotland; and also that whereas
in many of the Gallic interments the chariot was placed in the grave
entire, only the wheels and other detached parts were buried in
Britain. The most famous of these discoveries was made nearly a century
ago in a barrow on Arras Farm, close to the road between Beverley and
York. Here in a large round grave in the chalk was found the skeleton
of a man, inclining from which, one on each side, were two wheels, each
two feet eleven inches in diameter.[3405] ‘Under and adjoining to each
wheel,’ writes Thurnam,[3406] ‘were the remains of the skeletons of two
small horses, neither of them exceeding thirteen hands.’[3407]
In the paragraph in which Caesar describes the tactics of the
charioteers he says that ‘as soon as they have penetrated between
the troops of cavalry, the warriors jump off the chariots and fight
on foot’ (_cum se inter equitum turmas insinuaverunt, ex essedis
desiliunt et pedibus proeliantur_). The editors generally assume that
_equitum turmas_ means ‘the _hostile_ troops of cavalry’; but von
Göler,[3408] with whom Napoleon III[3409] agrees, rejects this view.
He argues that in Caesar’s first campaign in Britain, in his account
of which the passage in question occurs, the Britons were not opposed
by any cavalry, for Caesar had none with him; and that the paragraph
is not to be regarded simply as a general description of the tactics
of the charioteers, but also as an explanation of the tactics which
they had pursued in the combat described in the preceding paragraph.
Moreover, he insists that if the warriors had jumped off their chariots
when they had penetrated between troops of hostile cavalry, and had
then allowed the drivers to turn round and move back, it would have
been impossible for them to get on to the chariots again in case of
need: hostile cavalry which allowed them to do this would have been
worthless. ‘According to my interpretation,’ von Göler concludes, ‘we
are to understand by _et cum se inter equitum turmas insinuaverunt_
that the warriors had penetrated within the intervals of _their own_
cavalry ... the moment of jumping down, always hazardous, was protected
by their own cavalry, just as nowadays cavalry protect the limbering up
and unlimbering of the horse-artillery associated with them.’ See also
pp. 136-7, and Taf. vii, fig 7, of von Göler’s book, and pp. 688-91,
_infra_.
THE OPERATIONS OF THE BRITONS DURING THE LAST FEW DAYS OF CAESAR’S
FIRST EXPEDITION
After describing how he rescued the 7th legion, which had been sent out
on a foraging expedition and surprised by a British force, Caesar tells
us that he led this legion and the force with which he had marched to
its assistance back to camp. ‘Meanwhile,’ he continues, ‘our people
were all busy, and the Britons who were still in their districts moved
off’ (_dum haec geruntur, nostris omnibus occupatis, qui erant in agris
reliqui discesserunt_[3410]). The words ‘the Britons who were still in
their districts’ (_qui erant in agris reliqui_) evidently refer back
to two passages in the thirtieth and thirty-second chapters of the
Fourth Book of the _Commentaries_. In the former we read that after
the storm which wrecked several of Caesar’s ships the British chiefs
who had disbanded their levies and come into the Roman camp ‘renewed
their oaths of mutual fidelity, and began to move away one by one from
the camp and _to fetch their tribesmen secretly from the districts_’
(_itaque rursus coniuratione facta, paulatim ex castris discedere et
suos clam ex agris deducere coeperunt_). In the thirty-second chapter
Caesar says that, just before the 7th legion was attacked, ‘some of
the natives _still remained in the districts_’ (_pars hominum in
agris remaneret_). Evidently, then, the meaning of the passage which
I quoted at the beginning of this note is that during and after the
attack on the 7th legion, and while the Roman soldiers were employed
in various duties, those Britons who had not yet left their respective
districts in order to rally round their leaders did so. However, the
meaning which is obvious to the ordinary mind does not satisfy von
Göler,[3411] who insists that the _MS._ reading, _nostris omnibus
occupatis, qui erant in agris reliqui discesserunt_, yields no
satisfactory sense, and offers in place of it one of his conjectural
emendations:--(nostris omnibus occupatis,) _#quae erant in agris
relicta#_ (discesserunt). After a few moments of bewilderment
the reader suddenly apprehends von Göler’s meaning. He fancied that
_occupatis_ meant ‘having been taken possession of’, and was ignorant
that _nostris omnibus_ in Caesarian Latin could not mean ‘all our
belongings’; so he persuaded himself that Caesar intended to convey
that the Britons, ‘having appropriated all our property, which had been
left in the fields, made off’! ‘The Romans,’ he explains, ‘had not only
not been able to convey into camp the corn which they had cut, but, on
account of the surprise, they must even have abandoned their tools for
cutting and gathering the corn.’
Comment is needless.
WHERE DID CAESAR ENCOUNTER THE BRITONS ON THE MORNING AFTER HIS SECOND
LANDING IN BRITAIN?
‘Caesar disembarked the army, and chose a suitable spot for a camp.
Having ascertained from prisoners where the enemy’s forces were
posted, he marched against them about the third watch.... After a
night march of about twelve miles he descried the enemy’s force.
Advancing with their cavalry and chariots from higher ground towards
a river,[3412] they attempted to check our men, and forced on an
action. Beaten off by the cavalry, they fell back into the woods and
occupied a well-fortified post of great natural strength, which they
had apparently prepared for defence some time before with a view to war
with their neighbours; for all the entrances were blocked by felled
trees laid close together’ (_Caesar exposito exercitu et loco castris
idoneo capto, ubi ex captivis cognovit quo in loco hostium copiae
consedissent ... de tertia vigilia ad hostes contendit ... ipse noctu
progressus milia passuum circiter XII hostium copias conspicatus est.
Illi equitatu atque essedis ad flumen progressi ex loco superiore
nostros prohibere et proelium committere coeperunt. Repulsi ab equitatu
se in silvas abdiderunt locum nacti egregie et natura et opere munitum,
quem domestici belli, ut videbatur, causa iam ante praeparaverant: nam
crebris arboribus succisis omnes introitus erant praeclusi_[3413]).
Such is the description which Caesar gives of his first encounter with
the Britons in 54 B.C. The question of the site is closely connected
with the question of the place where he landed. I have proved that
this place was between Walmer and Sandwich.[3414] It is clear,
therefore, that Caesar could not have encountered the Britons either at
Robertsbridge on the Rother, where Airy believed that he had discovered
the battle-field,[3415] or at Wye on the Great Stour, the site adopted
by Lewin.[3416] It is certain, however, that the battle was fought
either on the Great Stour or on the Little Stour.
1. Napoleon the Third[3417] asserts that the river mentioned by Caesar
was ‘unquestionably the Little Stour’; and he maintains that the left
bank in the neighbourhood of Barham and Kingston corresponds with the
description of the combat. The rising ground on this bank is not,
he remarks, too uneven to have prevented war-chariots and cavalry
from acting, and, as the text of the _Commentaries_ requires, the
Britons would have occupied a commanding position (_locus superior_)
on the gentle slopes which terminate at the water’s edge. We may
safely conclude, he adds, from Caesar’s narrative that the combat was
unimportant, and that his cavalry crossed the river without difficulty.
Lewin[3418] dismisses this view with the remark that the Little
Stour is ‘too insignificant to have been designated by Caesar as a
river’; but the Emperor, who had anticipated this objection, replied
that Caesar used the same word (_flumen_) to denote the Oze and
the Ozerain,--the two rivulets which encompass Mont Auxois in the
Côte-d’Or, where Vercingetorix made his final stand.[3419] No one,
however, who has seen the Little Stour at Kingston, the Oze, and the
Ozerain, will admit that the Kentish ‘nailbourne’ deserves to be
treated as respectfully as the two Burgundian streams.
On the 1st of May, 1902, I walked along the Little Stour from Barham
to Bekesbourne. There was not so much as a teaspoonful of water in the
channel; and a policeman whom I met near Kingston told me that it had
been dry for the last five years. On the other hand, an old labourer,
who had lived in the valley for sixty-four years, remarked that he
could remember a time when the rivulet often overflowed its banks: on
the 18th of April of this year (1904) I myself saw it running past
Barham with a strong stream; and a porter at Barham station said,
‘Yes, and it isn’t half as strong as it was a month ago.’ Moreover,
Bryan Faussett,[3420] writing between 1767 and 1773, said that the
Little Stour about a mile below Kingston was ‘seldom or never dry’; and
Philippott,[3421] speaking of Bekesbourne, affirms that in the reign
of Edward the Third ‘there was a small navigation out of the river of
Stoure up to this place’.
There need be no difficulty, then, in believing that the Little Stour,
in Caesar’s day, was a running stream, which he might perhaps have
called a _flumen_, though it must not be forgotten that both in 55
B.C. and in the following year, the summer, at all events in Gaul, was
exceptionally dry.[3422] Nevertheless, it is certain that the Britons
did not encounter Caesar on the Little Stour. Consider the meaning of
his words:--_illi equitatu atque essedis ad flumen progressi ex loco
superiore nostros prohibere et proelium committere coeperunt_.[3423]
At one time I thought that this passage meant, ‘Advancing towards
a river with their cavalry and chariots, they attempted from their
commanding position (_ex loco superiore_) to check our men,’ &c.: but a
passage in the twenty-third chapter of the Second Book of the _Gallic
War_--_alia in parte diversae duae legiones, XI et VIII, profligatis
Viromanduis, quibuscum erant congressae, ex loco superiore in ipsis
fluminis ripis proeliabantur_--in which the words _ex loco superiore_
unquestionably belong to _profligatis_, leads me to believe that the
former of the alternative translations which I have given--‘Advancing
with their cavalry and chariots from higher ground towards a river,
they attempted to check our men,’ &c.--is to be preferred. At all
events the _locus superior_ was not without tactical significance,
and was either the left bank of the stream or high ground in close
proximity to the left bank. Now between Barham and the northern end of
Charlton Park, which is below Kingston, the depth of the channel of
the Little Stour does not exceed 18 inches; and even at Bekesbourne it
is only about two feet. Therefore, unless the depth of the channel was
considerably greater in 54 B.C. than it is now, and unless the water
flowed considerably below the level of the banks, the words _locus
superior_ could not have been applied to the bank itself anywhere
between Barham and Bekesbourne.[3424] Moreover, although there are
well-defined heights on the left bank between Barham and Bridge, the
lowest slopes, except opposite Kingston and for a very short space on
either side of it, are at a considerable distance from the channel.
Assuming that Caesar crossed the Little Stour at or near Kingston, the
Britons could have opposed him more effectually when he was ascending
Barham Downs than by attempting to defend the passage of the rivulet.
And, since he would in any case be obliged to cross the Stour itself,
is it not obvious that they would have waited for him behind the river
which might fairly be called an obstacle rather than on the banks of
the streamlet which an active lad could have jumped over?
2. If Napoleon’s view is inadmissible, it is difficult to characterize
that adopted by the Reverend Francis Vine.[3425] He assures us that
Caesar ‘descried the British forces ... lining the crest of the hill
(described in the ‘Commentaries’ as “superior locus”) from Garrington
(near Littlebourne) on his right hand, to probably the part of Barham
Downs opposite Bridge and Bishopsbourne on his left. This was the
best position which the Britons could possibly have chosen for the
purpose of arresting the progress of an army marching upon Caer Caint
(Canterbury)’. In other words, Mr. Vine holds that the Britons awaited
Caesar’s approach not on the further but on the nearer side of the
river! ‘That the Britons were traditionally reported to have opposed
Caesar’s progress _before he reached_ the river, rather than after
passing it, may,’ he says, ‘be inferred from the following passage from
Pomponius Sabinus, out of Seneca: “And in the night marching twelve
miles up into the country, Caesar finds out the Britons, who _retreated
as far as the river_, but gave him battle there.”’ So we are to prefer
the authority of Seneca to that of the general who fought the battle!
Besides, Mr. Vine fails to see that the passage which he quotes (and
which is not to be found in Seneca) need only mean that the Britons,
when Caesar descried them, had retreated from the seashore to the banks
of the river. Why Pomponius Sabinus, an Italian scholar who was born
1,470 years after Caesar died, should be summoned as a witness it is
not easy to understand. The only inference which can be deduced from
Caesar’s narrative--the only inference which has ever been deduced from
it by any scholar--is that the Britons, when Caesar descried them, were
on the further side of the river, and that they advanced to its left
bank in order to dispute his passage.
Mr. Vine’s view[3426] of the route which Caesar followed appears to be
partly based upon ‘traces of encampments which still remain’. But who
made them? Certainly not these Britons, who, only a few hours before
Caesar began his night march, had retreated from the coast into the
interior in order to oppose his progress, and whose stronghold was not
on the right but on the left bank of the river. Certainly not Caesar,
who, in marching from the coast to encounter the Britons, made no camp
at all. The tumuli which have been opened on Kingston Down were, as
Roach Smith says, ‘neither more nor less than those of Saxons.’[3427]
Mr. Vine[3428] asserts that ‘there were probably two large oblong
castra [constructed by Caesar], the one extending along Barham Downs
opposite Charlton, the other at the western extremity of the Downs
extending over part of Bridge Hill, Bourne Park, and perhaps the
grounds of Higham’. But without excavation it would be impossible to
prove that any ‘castra’ had been erected on Barham Downs by Caesar;
and without going to this trouble any man who can understand the
_Commentaries_ may conclude that he certainly did not construct two.
3. Lyon, the author of the _History of the Town and Port of
Dover_,[3429] maintains that the combat took place near Littlebourne,
about two miles lower down than Bekesbourne; but this place is on
the road from Sandwich to Canterbury, and barely nine miles from
the former. If Caesar marched along the line of this road, he must
have encountered the Britons on the Great Stour near Canterbury.
Assuming that he marched from the neighbourhood of Deal, Lyon’s view
might perhaps be defended if there were any reason to believe that
on the left bank of the Little Stour near Littlebourne there was a
stronghold;[3430] but in a former article[3431] I have given cogent
reasons for believing that in 54 B.C. Caesar encamped some miles north
of Deal.
It may, then, be regarded as morally certain that the river on which
the Britons encountered Caesar was the Great Stour. It has, indeed,
been objected that the least distance of the Great Stour from Deal is
not twelve, but fifteen miles; but while this argument may be valid
against the theory that Caesar landed in 54 B.C. at Deal, the position
that he defeated the Britons on the Great Stour remains unshaken.
4. The Reverend R. C. Jenkins[3432] holds that the scene of the
encounter was Chilham, about six miles above Canterbury, on the Ashford
road. ‘The only obstacle,’ he pleads, ‘is the increased distance, which
is sixteen, instead of twelve miles ... a difference which the loss
of a single stroke might account for [the scribe being supposed to
have written XII instead of XVI], if, indeed, it is not sufficiently
explained by the possible miscalculation of the time of the march ...
everything else falls into perfect harmony with the narrative--the high
wooded ground at the back, the steep banks, the wide and rapid stream,’
&c. And again, ‘Let us remember that the journey was during the night,
when the ground would be rapidly passed over, and the actual distance
would be less apparent ... the space traversed is only described as
“milia passuum _circiter_ duodecim”, and even then the position of the
enemy was merely discerned afar off ... here we have ancient mounds
and earthworks, which give silent testimony to the fact that Chilham
was a military position of the highest importance even during the
British period.’[3433]
These arguments have no weight. When numbers attested by the consensus
of the _MSS._ are not manifestly wrong, we have no right to distort
them into agreement with our own preferences. The distance, in a
straight line, from the nearest point on which Caesar could have
encamped, if he had landed near Sandwich,[3434] to Chilham, is about
20 Roman miles; from the place where he would have encamped if he had
landed near Deal,[3435] approximately 16; and the actual distance
which he would have had to march is of course considerably longer. Why
he should have marched more rapidly by night than by day it would be
difficult to explain;[3436] and the remark that ‘the position of the
enemy was merely discerned afar off’ is a pure invention. If ‘we have
ancient mounds and earthworks’ at Chilham, they prove nothing about
Caesar;[3437] and we have them also at other places near the course of
the river. Besides, why should Caesar have made a forced march in order
to cross the Stour at Chilham when, by making an ordinary march of 12
miles, he could have crossed it near Canterbury?[3438]
Our search for the site is now confined within narrow limits. Below
Fordwich, the Stour, in Caesar’s time, would certainly have been
impassable in the face of an enemy; for it flowed through a broad
morass.[3439] Between Canterbury and the bridge above Sturry the river
is virtually flush with its banks. It appears to me, then, that Caesar
must have crossed it either between Fordwich and Sturry, or in the
neighbourhood of Thanington, just above Canterbury, or possibly at
Canterbury itself. Above Canterbury it flows through nearly level
meadows: its width is about 15 or 16 yards: the banks are about 2 feet
high; and the depth of the water at present is apparently about 2
feet. The bottom at the bridge above Thanington is sandy and gravelly.
Opposite this point and at a distance of, say, 600 yards, the ground
begins to rise into wooded heights. Opposite Thanington, and east of
it, the heights are considerably nearer the river; but they gradually
sink as they approach Canterbury.
At Sturry the lower slopes of the low hills which extend along the
northern side of the valley approach very close to the river, say
to within 100 yards; but opposite Fordwich they are much further
away. Just below the mill at Sturry the Stour is from 15 to 20 yards
wide: the banks are 3 or 4 feet above the water: the average depth
is apparently from about 18 inches to 2 feet; and the bottom is sand
mixed with stones. At Fordwich the depth of the water, as seen from the
bridge, is about 5 feet: the banks are 4 or 5 feet above the water; and
the bottom from this point downwards is mud.
5. The eminent geographer, Major Rennell,[3440] believed that Caesar
crossed at the place where ‘the western road intersects the course
of the Stour’; but he gave no reasons for preferring this site to
Fordwich, Sturry, or Thanington.
6. Von Göler[3441] and Guest[3442] maintain that the battle was fought
at or near Sturry; and Heller[3443] appears to agree with them. So
does Roach Smith,[3444] who, at Guest’s request, made ‘a survey of
the vicinity of Grove Ferry’, which survey, I presume, extended as
far up the river as Sturry. ‘There,’ he says, ‘I found the river with
the high bank ... the woods and _oppidum_,’[3445] &c. Napoleon[3446]
argues that the banks at Sturry are so steep that the Roman cavalry
could not have forced a passage without great difficulty, whereas it
would appear from Caesar’s account that they crossed easily; and also
that Sturry is 15, not 12 miles from Deal. The latter objection may be
disposed of at once. Napoleon himself maintains that Caesar’s anchorage
in 54 B.C. was ‘some kilometres’ north of the spot where he had landed
in the preceding year;[3447] and this spot he rightly fixes between
Walmer and Deal. Therefore the place from which Caesar descried the
Britons just before they advanced to the bank of the stream was not
12 miles from Deal, but, as I have shown in a previous article,[3448]
from a point in the neighbourhood of Sandwich. Certainly it would have
been more difficult to force the passage of the Stour at Sturry than of
the Little Stour near Kingston; but, as we have seen, the latter would
practically have presented no obstacle at all. Airy,[3449] who holds
that if the Britons had been posted on the Stour at all, ‘Caesar would
have crossed at the sound ground of Canterbury or above it,’ observes
that ‘the place had been selected by the Britons as a defensive post at
least two days previously, and may therefore be presumed to have had
the qualifications necessary for a defensive post, namely that it could
not be turned, and that enemies could attack it in front only at a
disadvantage’; and, remarking that ‘there can scarcely be a doubt that
Canterbury existed then as an important town’, he adds that ‘of this
there is no mention in Caesar’. But why should Caesar have mentioned
Canterbury? It was not a strategical point: there was nothing to be
gained by attacking it except perhaps a little plunder; and anything
worth plundering would certainly have been removed into the stronghold
which he did attack. ‘The place [on the banks of the river] had been
selected [or, at all events, occupied] as a defensive post’ not two
days but one day previously; and, generally speaking, to select a
defensive post on a river which cannot be turned is impossible.[3450]
The stronghold to which the Britons retreated was probably, as Mr.
George Payne holds,[3451] and as I have shown in my narrative,[3452]
the British _oppidum_ in Bigberry (or Bigbury) woods, about a mile and
a half west of Canterbury, of which traces still exist; and it seems
most likely that the passage of the river took place at some point
between Canterbury and Thanington.
CAESAR’S EARLIER OPERATIONS IN 54 B. C. (_B. G._, V, 9-11)
Caesar’s account of the events which occurred on the day after his
first encounter with the Britons in 54 B.C. has been interpreted in
several different ways; and yet his narrative is so clear that one
would have thought it impossible to misunderstand it. After describing
the first encounter, he proceeds, ‘Caesar, however, forbade them [the
legionaries] to pursue the fugitives far, partly because he had no
knowledge of the ground, partly because the day was far spent and he
wished to have time for entrenching his camp. On the following morning
he sent a light division of infantry and cavalry, in three columns,
to pursue the fugitives. They had advanced a considerable distance,
the rear-guard being still in sight, when some troopers from Quintus
Atrius came to Caesar with the news that there had been a great storm
on the preceding night, and that almost all the ships had been damaged
and gone ashore.... On receiving this information, Caesar recalled
the legions and cavalry, ordering them to defend themselves as they
marched, and went back himself to the ships.... Although it involved
great trouble and labour, he decided that the best plan would be
to have all the ships hauled up and connected with the camp by one
entrenchment. About ten days were spent in these operations, the
troops not suspending work even in the night.’ (_Sed eos fugientes
longius Caesar prosequi vetuit, et quod loci naturam ignorabat, et
quod magna parte diei consumpta munitioni castrorum tempus relinqui
volebat. Postridie eius diei mane tripertito milites equitesque in
expeditionem misit, ut eos qui fugerant persequerentur. His aliquantum
itineris progressis, cum iam extremi essent in prospectu, equites a
Q. Atrio ad Caesarem venerunt, qui nuntiarent superiore nocte maxima
coorta tempestate prope omnes naves adflictas atque in litus eiectas
esse.... His rebus cognitis Caesar legiones equitatumque revocari atque
in itinere resistere iubet, ipse ad naves revertitur ... Ipse, etsi
res erat multae operae ac laboris, tamen commodissimum esse statuit
omnes naves subduci et cum castris una munitione coniungi. In his rebus
circiter dies X consumit ne nocturnis quidem temporibus ad laborem
militum intermissis._[3453])
The camp for the construction of which Caesar wished to allow time was
of course quite distinct from the one for which, on the previous day,
he had selected a site near his landing-place,[3454] and was to be in
the neighbourhood of the place where he had beaten the enemy, that is
to say, twelve Roman miles or more from the sea.[3455] Next morning he
dispatched three flying columns in pursuit of the fugitives; and his
rear-guard was just visible when the messengers arrived with the news
of the shipwreck. He sent a galloper to recall the pursuing columns;
and, as their retreat would naturally encourage the fugitives to rally
and return to the attack, they were to offer the best resistance they
could as they marched back to the coast.
C. Schneider[3456] misunderstands the passage as far as
misunderstanding is possible. He holds that _cum iam extremi essent
in prospectu_ means ‘when the rear _of the enemy_ was just in sight’.
But Caesar was not with any of the three pursuing columns, for he
tells us that he sent them in pursuit: therefore, if Schneider were
right, we should be forced to believe that he learned afterwards
that the enemy’s rear had been just in sight. But why resort to this
fanciful explanation, seeing that Caesar could by no possibility have
ascertained that the rear of the fugitives was just visible to his
troops at the very moment when he himself, separated from the troops,
received the news of the shipwreck; and, further, that _extremi_ must
grammatically refer to _his_, that is to say, the pursuing columns? It
has been objected that if _extremi_ meant the Roman rear-guard, _iam_
would not have its proper meaning, ‘already’ (ἤδη). But _iam_ of course
often means ‘by this time’, or ‘at length’ (nearly _tandem_). In the
passage in question its sense may, I think, be illustrated by a clause
in _B. G._, vii, 83, § 7,--_cum iam meridies adpropinquare videretur_
(‘at length when it was evidently near noon’). Caesar meant to say that
his pursuing columns had advanced so far that by the time when the
news of the shipwreck reached him the rear-guard only was in sight.
Again, Schneider takes the words _in itinere resistere iubet_ to mean
that Caesar ordered his troops ‘to stop in their march and halt where
they were’. But, as Long[3457] points out, ‘if this is so, he returned
to his ships himself (“ipse”), leaving his men in the country doing
nothing for ten days. But he tells us that his soldiers were employed
in making his “munitio”, and therefore they must have come back to the
camp.’
So far Long is quite right; but he too makes a great mistake. He
actually believes[3458] that the words _munitioni castrorum tempus
relinqui volebat_ (‘he wished to leave time for entrenching his camp’)
refer to the camp near the seashore, for which he had selected a site
immediately after the disembarkation. In other words, he believes that
Caesar compelled his troops, who had already made a night-march of
twelve miles, beaten the enemy on the banks of the Stour, stormed the
stronghold to which the beaten enemy had retreated, and then pursued
the fugitives for some distance, to march back all the way to the
camp by the seashore, entrench it, and next morning march back again
twelve miles or more into the interior, and then start in pursuit of
the fugitives! The legionaries were hardy fellows; but if they did all
this, they must have been as breathless as the reader will be when
he has got to the end of the preceding sentence. And what had the
fugitives been about? If Long is right, they must have got such a start
that to pursue them would have been a wild-goose chase indeed. Needless
to say, what Caesar meant was simply this:--when the Britons had been
dislodged from their stronghold, he would not allow his troops to
pursue them far because he wished to leave time for the construction of
the temporary camp in which he intended to pass the night.
Von Göler[3459] needlessly quarrels with the text of the
_Commentaries_, and makes matters worse by an absurd emendation. ‘The
reading _legiones equitatumque revocari atque in itinere resistere
iubet_ (_B. G._, v, 11, § 1),’ he says, ‘is obviously corrupt.
_Atque_ requires that the following clause should involve a climax’
(_Steigerung_). But so it does:--Caesar ‘orders the legions and
cavalry to be recalled, and [not only to come back but also] to defend
themselves upon the march’. In this literal translation a climax is as
evident as in the emendation, to be quoted presently, which von Göler
offers; and any one who is not familiar with the _Commentaries_ will
find in Meusel’s _Lexicon Caesarianum_ abundant evidence that _atque_
in the passage which von Göler brands as corrupt is in accord with
Caesar’s _usus loquendi_.
‘As finally,’ continues von Göler, ‘one may conclude with certainty
from the later substance of the narrative that all the legions returned
to the shore, but the necessary express mention of the march thither is
nowhere to be found in the _Commentaries_, I believe that the passage
originally ran as follows:--_legiones equitatumque revocari atque
in itinere persistere iubet ad naves, ipse revertitur_.’ If we may
‘conclude with certainty’ that ‘the legions returned’, why should the
‘express mention’ of their return be necessary? Heller[3460] has taken
the trouble to show that the text is above suspicion.
CAESAR’S SECOND COMBAT WITH THE BRITONS IN 54 B. C.
There is a passage in Caesar’s account of his second combat with
the Britons in 54 B.C. which has greatly exercised the minds of the
commentators; and editors have put upon it an interpretation which
soldiers will not accept. The passage runs as follows:--‘Throughout
this peculiar combat, which was fought in full view of every one and
actually in front of the camp, it was clear that our infantry, owing
to the weight of their armour, were ill fitted to engage an enemy of
this kind; for they could not pursue him when he retreated, and they
dared not abandon their regular formation: it was clear too that the
cavalry fought at great risk, because the enemy generally fell back
on purpose, and, after drawing our men a little distance away from
the legions, leaped down from their chariots and fought on foot with
the odds in their favour. [On the other hand, the mode in which their
cavalry fought exposed the Romans, alike in retreat and in pursuit,
to an exactly similar danger.[3461]]’ (_Toto hoc in qenere pugnae cum
sub oculis omnium ac pro castris dimicaretur, intellectum est nostros
propter gravitatem armorum, quod neque insequi cedentes possent neque
ab signis discedere auderent, minus aptos esse ad huius generis hostem,
equites autem magno cum periculo proelio dimicare, propterea quod
illi etiam consulto plerumque cederent et, cum paulum ab legionibus
nostros removissent, ex essedis desilirent et pedibus dispari proelio
contenderent._ [_Equestris autem proelii ratio et cedentibus et
insequentibus par atque idem periculum inferebat_[3462]])_._ It is the
last sentence which has caused all the trouble.
1. ‘After describing the difficulties of the infantry,’ says
Long,[3463] ‘Caesar explains the danger to which the cavalry was
exposed, when they pursued the “essedarii”, for the Britanni quitted
their “esseda” and fought on foot among the Roman “equites”.... This
was an unequal kind of fighting (“dispar proelium”) for the Roman
“equites”. Caesar adds, that on the other hand (“autem”) the British
mode of fighting from the “esseda” (“equestris proelii ratio”) was
equally dangerous to his cavalry and legions in the pursuit and the
retreat. This is Schneider’s explanation, and I believe that it is
right. The Britanni had no cavalry: they had only “essedarii”, to
whom Caesar (iv, 33) applies the term “perequitant”. It follows that
“equites hostium essedariique” (c. 15) are no more than the “essedarii”
(iv, 24) [in other words that Caesar, who was not a prolix writer, used
four words when one would have sufficed.] In iv, 34, however, Caesar
says, “peditatus equitatusque.”’ Yes, he does; and the reader will
please note the significance of this admission.
The assumption upon which Long’s explanation rests, namely, that ‘the
Britanni had no cavalry’, is unsupported by any evidence, and is wholly
inadmissible. Caesar says that in his first campaign in Britain a party
of Roman foragers were surrounded by _equitatu atque essedis_.[3464] If
these words do not mean ‘cavalry _and_ chariots’, what do they mean?
Warriors on horseback are depicted on ancient British coins;[3465] and
the Britons certainly had cavalry as well as chariots in A.D. 61[3466]
and in the time of Agricola.[3467] Besides, as von Göler points
out,[3468] the charioteers could not have fought with effect unless
they had been supported by cavalry. And when Long says that, according
to Caesar, ‘the British mode of fighting from the “esseda” ... was
equally dangerous to his cavalry and legions in the pursuit and the
retreat,’ his explanation refutes itself. Caesar himself says that the
legions could not pursue the charioteers; and, on the other hand, it is
evident that they were not pursued by the charioteers.
2. According to von Göler,[3469] ‘by _cedentibus et insequentibus_
the chariot-fighters only can be meant’ (_Unter den_ ‘cedentibus et
insequentibus’ _können nur die Wagenstreiter verstanden werden_); and,
placing a comma after _par_, he translates the passage thus:--‘The mode
of fighting of the [British] cavalry corresponded with that of their
charioteers, whether they retreated or pursued, and brought the Roman
cavalry into precisely the same danger’ (_Der Gefechtsmechanismus der_
[_britischen_] _Reiterei war aber der Fechtweise ihrer Wagenstreiter,
ob sie wichen oder verfolgten, entsprechend_ [par] _und brachte die
römische Reiterei gerade in jenes nachtheilige Verhältniss_[3470]). But
no Latin scholar would admit that a comma could be placed after _par_,
which would of course make it necessary to supply the word _erat_.
3. According to Dittenberger-Kraner,[3471] the words _equestris autem
proelii ratio_, if they are genuine, can only mean, in opposition to
_ex essedis ... contenderent_, the mode of fighting of the charioteers,
which, while it was dangerous to the Romans when they pursued, was no
less dangerous to them when they retreated. I confess that I cannot
understand this comment.
4. Doberenz-Dinter[3472] also insist upon the opposition between
_equestris autem proelii ratio_ and _ex essedis ... contenderent_, and
maintain that the former refers to ‘a regular cavalry combat (on the
part of the Romans)’,--_ein regelrechtes Reitertreffen (von Seiten der
Römer)_. Now in the passage which ends with the words _ex essedis ...
contenderent_ Caesar describes a combat between the Roman cavalry and
the British charioteers, who were supported by cavalry. Therefore the
editors (if I have succeeded in grasping their meaning) suppose that
the ‘regular cavalry combat’ to which they allude was fought between
the Roman cavalry and the British cavalry alone. This must, I think,
be what they intend to convey; for, according to Mr. Peskett,[3473]
who may have followed them, ‘Caesar means that when the British and
Roman cavalry were engaged, the danger was equalized [_equestris autem
proelii ratio et cedentibus et insequentibus par atque idem periculum
inferebat_], whereas when they used chariots the Britons were at an
advantage.’ But if Caesar simply meant that the British cavalry and the
Roman in the (hypothetical) ‘regular cavalry combat’ were each exposed
to the same danger, what is the point of the words _et cedentibus et
insequentibus_? Surely retreating cavalry are in greater danger than
the cavalry which has forced them to retreat and is pursuing them! I do
not see how Mr. Peskett’s explanation can be got out of the Latin. And
who will believe that the Britons would have used their cavalry alone
when, by associating them with chariots, they ‘were at an advantage’?
5. It might possibly be suggested that the words _equestris ...
inferebat_ refer to a cavalry combat between the Romans and the
Britons, distinct from the combat between Roman cavalry and the
British charioteers, in which the British cavalry, like that of the
Germans,[3474] were associated with light infantry. But there is no
evidence that the Britons had cavalry of this kind; and, as we have
seen, it is certain that their cavalry acted in support of their
charioteers.
6. Köchly and Rüstow[3475] offer the following explanation:--‘As the
enemy were also supported by their cavalry, our men [the Romans] were
exposed to the same danger, whether they advanced or retreated’ (_Da
aber der Feind auch die Unterstützung seiner Reiterei hatte, so war
für die unsrige die Gefahr immer dieselbe, mochte sie vorgehen oder
zurückgehen_).
7. Napoleon the Third[3476] explains the matter thus:--‘Un désavantage
plus grand encore existait pour les cavaliers. Les Bretons, par une
fuite simulée, les attiraient loin des légions, et alors, sautant à bas
de leurs chars, engageaient à pied une lutte inégale; car, toujours
soutenus par leur cavalerie, ils étaient aussi dangereux dans l’attaque
que dans la défense.’ These words, which appear to be virtually
identical in sense with those of Köchly and Rüstow, undoubtedly give
an accurate account of what took place. Apparently Köchly, Rüstow, and
Napoleon do not take _par atque idem periculum_ as meaning ‘an exactly
similar danger’ (to that which Caesar described in the preceding
sentence, _Toto hoc ... contenderent_), but as meaning that the danger
which beset the Romans was the same whether they pursued or retreated.
Now the Roman infantry, as Caesar says, did not pursue; obviously
therefore _et cedentibus et insequentibus_ can only refer to the Roman
cavalry. I suppose then that what Köchly, Rüstow, and Napoleon meant
was this:--if the Roman cavalry pursued the Britons, they were attacked
by the charioteers, who jumped off their cars and fought as infantry:
as soon as they retreated they were pursued by the British cavalry,
and if they turned to bay the charioteers had time to mount their cars
again, come up, and engage them anew. If this was what Caesar meant by
_equestris ... inferebat_, his language was not lucid.
The words _equestris proelii ratio_, if they were really written by
Caesar, must refer either to a combat between the Roman and the British
cavalry or to a combat between the Roman cavalry and the combined
British charioteers and cavalry. There is, as we have seen, no reason
to suppose that a purely cavalry combat took place; and if it did, the
idea that the Roman cavalry was as much in danger when it pursued as
when it retreated is absurd. If we accept the other alternative, the
meaning of the passage must be either (as Köchly, Rüstow, and Napoleon
explain) ‘_On the other hand_, the mode in which the British _cavalry_
fought (in co-operation with the charioteers) exposed the Romans,
alike in retreat and in pursuit, to exactly the same danger’; or ‘_In
fact_ the nature of the combat of horse [that is to say, the combat
between the Roman cavalry and the combined British charioteers and
cavalry] exposed the Romans’, &c. In the former case _autem_ would be
an adversative, in the latter merely a connecting particle. The passage
is not in the _editio princeps_ of the _Commentaries_, and is bracketed
in Meusel’s edition; and perhaps it is an interpolation.
THE COMBAT BETWEEN TREBONIUS AND THE BRITONS
‘At midday Caesar having sent three legions and all his cavalry on a
foraging expedition under one of his generals, Gaius Trebonius, they
[the enemy] suddenly swooped down from all points on the foragers, not
hesitating to attack the ordered ranks of the legions’ (_Sed meridie
cum Caesar pabulandi causa tres legiones atque omnem equitatum cum
C. Trebonio legato misisset, repente ex omnibus partibus_ [hostes]
_ad pabulatores advolaverunt, sic uti ab signis legionibusque non
absisterent_[3477]). To a plain man these words are perfectly
intelligible; and no military commentator, so far as I know, has ever
found any difficulty in them: but Kraner[3478] must needs rewrite
the last clause. This is what he makes of it:--_sicubi ab signis
legionibusque absisterent_. So, according to Kraner, the enemy attacked
the foragers at every point where they were separated from the legions.
The unpractical fellow fails to perceive that, as the foragers could
not forage while they were in their ranks, there was no point where
they were not separated from the legions. The legions, or rather a
due proportion of the cohorts which composed them, were there to
protect the foragers; and of course what Caesar means is that the
enemy, flushed with their easy success in driving off the foragers and
compelling them to rejoin their respective cohorts, had the temerity to
attack the cohorts themselves.
WHERE DID CAESAR CROSS THE THAMES?
The only indications which Caesar gives as to the place where he
crossed the Thames are these. At an early stage of his narrative he
tells us that ‘the chief command and the general direction of the
campaign had been entrusted by common consent to Cassivellaunus,
whose territories are separated from those of the maritime tribes
by a river called the Thames, about eighty miles [or seventy-three
English miles] from the sea’ (_summa imperii bellique administrandi
communi consilio permissa Cassivellauno, cuius fines a maritimis
civitatibus flumen dividit, quod appellatur Tamesis, a mari circiter
milia passuum LXXX_[3479]). In a later chapter he describes his
passage of the river. ‘Having ascertained the enemy’s plans, Caesar
led his army to the Thames, into the territories of Cassivellaunus.
The river can only be forded at one spot, and there with difficulty.
On reaching this place, he observed that the enemy were drawn up in
great force near the opposite bank of the river. The bank was fenced
by sharp stakes planted along its edge; and similar stakes were fixed
under water, and concealed by the river. Having learned these facts
from prisoners and deserters, Caesar sent his cavalry on in front, and
ordered the legions to follow them speedily; but the men advanced with
such swiftness and dash, though they only had their heads above water,
that the enemy, unable to withstand the combined onset of infantry
and cavalry, quitted the bank and fled.’ (_Caesar, cognito consilio
eorum, ad flumen Tamesim in fines Cassivellauni exercitum duxit; quod
flumen uno omnino loco pedibus, atque hoc aegre, transiri potest. Eo
cum venisset, animadvertit ad alteram fluminis ripam magnas esse copias
hostium instructas. Ripa autem erat acutis sudibus praefixisque munita,
eiusdemque generis sub aqua defixae sudes flumine tegebantur. Eis rebus
cognitis a captivis perfugisque, Caesar praemisso equitatu confestim
legiones subsequi iussit. Sed ea celeritate atque eo impetu milites
ierunt, cum capite solo ex aqua extarent, ut hostes impetum legionum
atque equitum sustinere non possent ripasque dimitterent ac se fugae
mandarent_).[3480]
When Caesar says that the Thames was only fordable at one spot, he
evidently means that there was only one ford available for his purpose,
that is to say, only one by which he could cross the river into the
territories of Cassivellaunus. When he says that these territories
were separated from those of the maritime tribes by the Thames, about
80 miles from the sea, he means, I suppose, that it was 80 miles from
the place where he landed to the eastern frontier of Cassivellaunus;
but, according to some commentators, he reckoned the distance from
the place where he landed to the point at which he crossed the river.
Heller[3481] insists that his statement of the distance was based upon
hearsay: I am inclined to believe that it was a rough estimate based
upon the number of the marches which he made.
1. The view which has gained most adherents is that Caesar crossed the
Thames at ‘Coway Stakes’, about a furlong west of Walton Bridge. It has
been said that this view is based upon a ‘tradition which has certainly
prevailed for many ages’;[3482] but I can find no evidence that the
tradition existed before the publication of Camden’s _Britannia_;
and I believe that it was created by him. Camden[3483] referred, in
support of his conjecture, to a well-known passage in Bede;[3484]
but Bede did not mention Coway Stakes at all. He merely said that,
at the point of the river where the enemy had planted their stakes,
the stakes were still to be seen, and that they were as thick as a
man’s thigh and cased with lead. S. Gale[3485] affirms, in support
of Camden’s view, that there is ‘a large Roman encampment ... about
a mile and a half distant from the ford’. This camp, which is on St.
George’s Hill, is really about two miles and three-quarters[3486] from
the place where the ford is assumed to have been. It is not Roman, but
British; but even if it were Roman, the fact would throw no light upon
the question which we are discussing unless the camp could be proved
to have been constructed by Caesar. Daines Barrington, an antiquary of
the eighteenth century, made an attempt, which, at first sight, would
appear completely successful, to demolish Camden’s theory.[3487] A
fisherman of Shepperton, he tells us, rowed him across the river in the
line along which the stakes had been planted. He illustrated his story
by a sketch-plan, which shows that the stakes were at right angles with
the river-banks; and, he argues, ‘such stakes could not possibly have
obstructed the passage of an army.’ In reply it has been asserted that
‘the line of the ford was not transversely straight across the stream,
but formed a curve nearly in a semi-circle, so that ... the stakes
must have twice intercepted the passage’;[3488] but who will believe
that Caesar would have attempted the passage of the river, which, as
he tells us, was barely practicable, by a ford so intricate as this? A
more effective answer might be based upon the fact, attested by Lord
Wolseley,[3489] that fords ‘almost always run diagonally across the
river’: if the ford by which Caesar crossed was no exception, stakes
planted in the direction indicated by Barrington would obviously have
obstructed the passage. Dr. Guest has made another and most ingenious
attempt to remove the difficulty.[3490] He believes that the stakes
which impeded Caesar’s advance had not been planted for the purpose
of stopping him, but had existed for many years. ‘I think,’ he says,
‘the stakes formed part of what may be called a fortified ford, and
were distributed so as to stop all transit ... save along a narrow
passage, which would bring the passenger directly under the command
of the watch, stationed on the northern bank to ... receive the toll.
The shallow at Coway was probably of considerable extent, and through
its whole length must have extended the line of stakes which Caesar
observed on the northern bank. But there must also have been two other
lines of stakes across the river to ... define the passage.’[3491]
The stakes to which Barrington referred were, in Guest’s opinion,
the remains of these. ‘The remaining portion,’ he continues, ‘of
the shallow was, no doubt, covered with the short stakes that were
“concealed by the river” ... that such was really the disposition of
the stakes may, I think, be gathered, not only from the reports of the
fishermen, but also from Caesar’s narrative. When he saw the Britons
ranged along the northern bank with the stakes in front of them, he
ordered the cavalry to pass the river, and the legions to follow them.
How could either cavalry or infantry cross the river if the stakes
were ranged as our antiquaries assume them to have been? ... Besides,
what were the Britons doing while the Roman soldiers were removing the
stakes? ... Caesar says not a word about taking the Britons in flank,
nor about removing the stakes.’[3492]
It may, perhaps, be thought that Guest has succeeded in showing that
the particular objection which Barrington raised against Camden’s
theory is not necessarily insuperable. If, however, the stakes to which
Barrington referred were the remains of those which had served, on
Guest’s theory, to ‘define the passage’, the ford in question was an
exception to the rule that fords ‘almost always run diagonally across
the river’. Again, Guest argues that because ‘Caesar says not a word
about ... removing the stakes’, therefore the Romans did not remove
them. But it is needless to insist that they must have removed them,
unless at the particular part of the ‘shallow’ by which they crossed
there were none to remove. Guest, therefore, is obliged to make the
incredible assumption that the Britons, having left intact the stakes
which ‘defined the passage’, and having thus pointed out to the Romans
the best way of crossing the river, were so obliging as to plant no
stakes to bar this passage either in the bed of the river or on the
bank, while they planted them everywhere else.
Guest undertakes to prove not only that Coway Stakes may, but that
it must have been the spot at which Caesar crossed the Thames. ‘From
the Coway Stakes,’ he says, ‘the ground rises gradually for about
three miles, and then dips almost precipitously into the valley of
the Wey. On the top of the hill [St. George’s Hill] is an ancient
British stronghold which commands the whole valley, and as the valley
certainly belonged to the Atrebates, I infer that ... this people
constructed the fortress. Aubrey tells us that “a trench” went from
this fortress to Walton, and gave that village its name. A dyke still
runs from the ramparts towards Walton. I have traced it for more than
one-third of the distance, and I have no doubt that it once reached the
village ... _The ditch is towards the river_. For what purpose could
this dyke have been made? The only object for which I can conceive
it was made, was to bar progress along the trackway which led from
the Coway Stakes eastward to the maritime states. If such were its
object, we have another strong proof that the great means of access
to the country of Cassivellaunus was at the spot where Camden placed
it.’[3493] Nor is this all. ‘From Hurleyford,’ says Guest, ‘to the sea,
a distance of nearly 100 miles, taking into account the windings of
the river, there is but one place on the banks of the Thames bearing
a name which indicates a ford over it.[3494] This solitary place is
Halliford, at the Coway Stakes. Caesar says there was but one ford on
the Thames--meaning, of course, the lower Thames, with which alone he
was acquainted, and we now have but one place on its banks, the name of
which points to the existence of a ford. Our topography is in perfect
agreement with his statement; and, to my mind, this coincidence is
almost decisive of the question.’[3495] We shall see.
2. Colonel Stoffel, by whose advice Napoleon was mainly guided in
his attempts to solve the topographical problems presented by the
_Commentaries_, was informed by the Thames boatmen whom he consulted
that between Shepperton and London there were eight or nine fords,
the most favourable of which was at Sunbury; and here accordingly the
Emperor concluded that Caesar had crossed the river. Still he (or the
colonel) was sagacious enough to doubt. ‘La seule chose,’ he wrote,
‘qui nous paraisse evidente, c’est que l’armee romaine n’a point passe
en aval de Teddington.’[3496]
But even this conclusion rested upon a rotten foundation. The Emperor,
as Guest[3497] observes, ‘reasons from the present to the past without
taking any note of the changes that have occurred during 2,000 years.
In the time of Caesar the river ran ... to the sea uninterruptedly.
_Now_, from Teddington westward it is a canal, crossed every two or
three miles by weirs and locks ... as the lock [at Teddington] did not
exist in the time of Caesar, any inference drawn from the fact that
the tide now ends there, is beside the question.’ And, to quote Guest
again, ‘the shallow at Sunbury is a mere consequence of Sunbury weir.
Remove the weir, and Caesar’s ford at Sunbury would be swept away in a
twelvemonth by the natural scour of the river.’ Guest[3498] thought it
probable that ‘when the river was in its natural state, spring-tides
ran up the river eight or nine miles further [than they do now]--in
other words, to Coway: and that the deposit which they now leave at
Teddington then contributed to form the shallow over which Caesar
passed.’ Mr. F. C. J. Spurrell, on the other hand, has given reasons
for believing that ‘the estuary did not reach so far west as at the
present day’.[3499]
3. Von Goler[3500] peremptorily decides that the ford was ‘undoubtedly
at Kingston’. An English engineer, he tells us, informed him that the
depth of the water there was only from 3½ to 4½ feet; and he remarks
further that Kingston is just 80 Roman miles from the sea. If the
engineer whom he consulted could have informed him that the depth of
the water at Kingston was the same in 54 B.C. as at the time when he
sounded it, his information would have been more valuable. Assuming
that the tide in Caesar’s time, as now, did not flow beyond Teddington,
W. H. Black may have been justified in saying that Kingston ‘presents
geographically the most favourable place for crossing the Thames’ to
an invader coming from the neighbourhood of Deal.[3501] But we must
not assume that Caesar crossed the Thames at the place which was
‘geographically the most favourable’: he could not pick and choose; he
had to cross where there was a ford, and there was only one.
It has been shown that the Thames has, at various times and at
certain states of the tide, been fordable at Westminster,[3502] at
Chelsea,[3503] at Old Brentford,[3504] and at Petersham;[3505] and the
claims of these places have been advocated by zealous antiquaries: but,
with one exception, which I shall notice presently, I do not recommend
students of the _Commentaries_ to read what they have written. As Guest
points out, ‘the name of Brentford had no reference to a ford over the
Thames; it certainly designated the ford over the Brent by which the
Roman road from London to Staines crossed the latter river.’[3506]
Moreover, the fact that the Thames has occasionally been crossed on
foot at various points near London proves nothing: these cases, as
Guest truly says, were exceptional, and were recorded because they
were exceptional; ‘Caesar,’ he concludes, ‘knew the river in its
natural state, and had ... adequate means of acquiring knowledge ... he
tells us distinctly that the Thames was passable on foot only in one
place.’[3507]
The claims of Brentford have, however, recently been advocated by Mr.
Montagu Sharpe in a pamphlet which contains some real evidence. From
information supplied by Messrs. W. S. Bunting and W. Benell of the
Thames Conservancy, and by Conservancy Inspector G. J. Rough, he shows
that a line of stakes, of which some still remain ‘for about 400 yards
below Isleworth Ferry,’ extended thirty years ago for about a mile up
the river from ‘Old England’, opposite the mouth of the Brent; and that
‘no other ancient stakes have been discovered in the lower river during
dredging operations’.[3508]
Except Coway Stakes and Brentford, there is no spot in the Thames
valley for the identification of which with the scene of Caesar’s
exploit a shred of real argument has been advanced. Guest’s arguments
are of very unequal value; but the one which he founds upon the name
‘Halliford’ is worth considering, though it would be going too far to
say that it is ‘almost decisive of the question’. The claim which Mr.
Sharpe makes for his own discovery rests upon somewhat better grounds.
[See Addenda, p. 742.]
CAESAR’S PASSAGE OF THE THAMES
The excessively laconic chapter in which Caesar describes how he
crossed the Thames in the face of a British force seems at first sight
hard to explain. He tells us that ‘the river can only be forded at
one spot, and there with difficulty’. ‘On reaching this place,’ he
continues, ‘he observed that the enemy were drawn up in great force
near the opposite bank of the river. The bank was fenced by sharp
stakes planted along its edge; and similar stakes were fixed under
water and concealed by the river. Having learned these facts from
prisoners and deserters, Caesar sent his cavalry on in front, and
ordered the legions to follow them speedily; but the men advanced
with such swiftness and dash, though they only had their heads above
water, that the enemy, unable to withstand the combined onset of
infantry and cavalry, quitted the bank and fled’ (_quod flumen uno
omnino loco pedibus, atque hoc aegre, transiri potest. Eo cum venisset,
animadvertit ad alteram fluminis ripam magnas esse copias hostium
instructas. Ripa autem erat acutis sudibus praefixisque munita,
eiusdemque generis sub aqua defixae sudes flumine tegebantur. His rebus
cognitis a captivis perfugisque Caesar praemisso equitatu confestim
legiones subsequi iussit. Sed ea celeritate atque eo impetu milites
ierunt, cum capite solo ex aqua extarent, ut hostes impetum legionum
atque equitum sustinere non possent ripasque dimitterent ac se fugae
mandarent_).[3509]
Von Göler[3510] explains the passage as follows:--‘he first sent his
cavalry against the enemy, making them swim across the adjacent part
of the river, which, though deeper, was not barricaded, and by their
attack so effectually protected the passage of the infantry, which
was begun immediately afterwards, that they gained time to remove
the stakes’; and in a note[3511] he says, ‘Only in this way can the
expression _praemisso equitatu confestim legiones subsequi iussit_ be
understood, for the cavalry could by no possibility swim across or
disregard the stakes or the palisade.’ This explanation, as far as it
goes, is substantially identical with that of Turpin de Crissé,[3512]
who supposes, further, that while part of the Roman infantry cut down
the stakes in the river, they were supported by their comrades in the
rear, who discharged missiles against the enemy, and, he might have
added, by the auxiliary troops,--slingers and archers. Napoleon the
Third[3513] hardly differs from his predecessors in suggesting that
the cavalry were sent ‘_à une certaine distance en amont ou en aval_’.
Mr. A. G. Peskett[3514] objects to Napoleon’s explanation on the ground
that it involves a mistranslation of the word _praemittit_, which, he
insists, ‘must mean that Caesar sent the cavalry across the river,
ordering the infantry to follow them.’ Mr. Peskett evidently means
that the infantry crossed directly in the rear of the cavalry. But, as
any soldier would tell Mr. Peskett, the operation which he supposes
would have been absolutely impossible; and, moreover, his rigidly
literal interpretation of the word _praemisso_, which is not shared
by that competent Caesarian scholar, C. Schneider, is irreconcilable
with the word _sed_, which opens the next sentence. This word, as
Schneider[3515] remarks, is intended to show that the infantry, in
their ardour, outvied the cavalry, and crossed the river before them.
The use of the word _praemisso_ may surely be defended if the cavalry
were sent into the water before the infantry. Similarly it will be
evident to any one who carefully reads the last two sentences in the
twenty-fifth chapter of Caesar’s Fourth Book[3516] that the word
_subsecuti_ cannot there mean ‘following directly in rear’. For in that
case ‘the nearest ships’ (_proximis navibus_), the troops in which
jumped into the sea and followed (_subsecuti_) their comrades, would
have been drawn up in a second line _behind_ the other ships. If so,
being in deeper water, they evidently could not have been run aground;
and the soldiers who descended from them would have been drowned.
THE SITE OF CASSIVELLAUNUS’S STRONGHOLD
The indications which Caesar gives as to the geographical position
of the stronghold of Cassivellaunus are of the vaguest kind. After
describing his passage from the southern to the northern bank of the
Thames, which brought him into the territory of Cassivellaunus, he
gives the following account of his operations:--
‘Cassivellaunus, abandoning, as we have remarked above,[3517] all
thoughts of regular combat, disbanded all his forces, except some four
thousand charioteers, watched our line of march, and, moving a little
away from the track, concealed himself in impenetrable wooded spots,
and removed the cattle and inhabitants from the open country into the
woods in those districts through which he had learned that we intended
to march. Whenever our cavalry made a bold dash into the country to
plunder and devastate, he sent his charioteers out of the woods (for
he was familiar with every track and path), engaged our cavalry to
their great peril, and by the terror which he thus inspired prevented
them from moving far afield. Caesar had now no choice but to forbid
them to move out of touch with the column of infantry, and, by ravaging
the country and burning villages, to injure the enemy as far as the
legionaries’ powers of endurance would allow.
‘Meanwhile the Trinovantes--about the strongest tribe in that part of
the country--sent envoys to Caesar, promising to surrender and obey his
commands. Mandubracius, a young chief of this tribe, whose father had
been their king and had been put to death by Cassivellaunus, but who
had saved his own life by flight, had gone to the Continent to join
Caesar, and thrown himself upon his protection. The Trinovantes begged
Caesar to protect Mandubracius from harm at the hands of Cassivellaunus
and to send him to rule over his own people with full powers. Caesar
sent Mandubracius, but ordered them to furnish forty hostages and grain
for his army. They promptly obeyed his commands, sending hostages to
the number required and also the grain.
‘As the Trinovantes had been granted protection and immunity from
all injury on the part of the soldiers, the Cenimagni, Segontiaci,
Ancalites, Bibroci, and Cassi sent embassies to Caesar and surrendered.
He learned from the envoys that the stronghold of Cassivellaunus,
which was protected by woods and marshes, was not far off, and that
a considerable number of men and of cattle had assembled in it. The
Britons apply the name of stronghold to any woodland spot, difficult
of access and fortified with a rampart and trench, to which they are
in the habit of resorting in order to escape a hostile raid. Caesar
marched to the spot indicated with his legions, and found that the
place was of great natural strength and well fortified: nevertheless he
proceeded to assault it on two sides. The enemy stood their ground a
short time, but could not sustain the onset of our infantry, and fled
precipitately from another part of the stronghold.’ (_Cassivellaunus,
ut supra demonstravimus, omni deposita spe contentionis, dimissis
amplioribus copiis, milibus circiter IIII essedariorum relictis,
itinera nostra servabat paulumque ex via excedebat locisque impeditis
ac silvestribus sese occultabat, atque iis regionibus quibus nos iter
facturos cognoverat pecora atque homines ex agris in silvas compellebat
et, cum equitatus noster liberius praedandi vastandique causa se in
agros eiecerat, omnibus viis notis semitisque essedarios ex silvis
emittebat et magno cum periculo nostrorum equitum cum iis confligebat
atque hoc metu latius vagari prohibebat. Relinquebatur ut neque longius
ab agmine legionum discedi Caesar pateretur, et tantum agris vastandis
incendiisque faciendis hostibus noceretur quantum labore atque itinere
legionarii milites efficere poterant._
_Interim Trinovantes, prope firmissima earum regionum civitas, ex qua
Mandubracius adulescens Caesaris fidem secutus ad eum in continentem_
[Galliam] _venerat, cuius pater in ea civitate regnum obtinuerat
interfectusque erat a Cassivellauno, ipse fuga mortem vitaverat,
legatos ad Caesarem mittunt pollicenturque sese ei dedituros atque
imperata facturos: petunt ut Mandubracium ab iniuria Cassivellauni
defendat atque in civitatem mittat qui praesit imperiumque obtineat.
Iis Caesar imperat obsides XL frumentumque exercitui, Mandubraciumque
ad eos mittit. Illi imperata celeriter fecerunt, obsides ad numerum
frumentumque miserunt._
_Trinovantibus defensis atque ab omni militum iniuria prohibitis,
Centimagni, Segtontiaci, Ancalites, Bibroci, Cassi legationibus missis
sese Caesari dedunt. Ab iis cognoscit non longe ex eo loco oppidum
Cassivellaumi abesse silvis paludibusque munitum, quo satis magnus
hominum pecorisque numerus convenerit. Oppidum autem Britanni vocant,
cum silvas impeditas vallo atque fossa munierunt, quo incursionis
hostium vitandae causa convenire consuerunt. Eo proficiscitur cum
legionibus; locum reperit egregi natura atque opere munitum; tamen
hunc duabus ex partibus oppugnare contedit. Hostes paulisper morati
militum nostrorum impetum non tulerunt seseque alia ex parte oppidi
eiecerunt._[3518])
1. Many commentators have identified the stronghold with Verulam, or
Verulamium, which was situated immediately west of St. Albans.[3519]
The arguments which can be adduced in support of this view are that
marshes might have been formed by the river Ver; that Verulamium,
under Tasciovanus, who began to reign not later than 30 B.C., was the
chief town of Catuvellauni; and that the territory of the Catuvellauni
belonged to Cassivellaunus.
2. Others point to Cassiobury in Hertfordshire.[3520] Cassiobury, they
argue, evidently preserves the name of the Cassi,[3521] who were as
evidently subject to Cassivellaunus.
3. Von Göler[3522] remarks that, ‘judging from the configuration and
nature of the terrain,’ the _oppidium_ ‘may be the hill lying on the
south-western side of Wendover’. May be, or may be not; for Caesar’s
vague description of ‘the configuration and nature of the terrain’
would apply to other sites as well.
4. The most interesting theory is that of T. Lewin,[3523] who
maintains that the _oppidium_ was no other that London, that is to
say, the settlement which many writers believe to have existed long
before the Roman conquest, in the neighbourhood of Ludgate Hill. As
Cassivellaunus, he argues, had conquered the Trinovantes,[3524] ‘whose
western border was the Lea,’ we may assume that his dominions extended
westward from that river, and comprised Middlesex and Hertford. As
Caesar says that he prohibited his soldiers from plundering the
Trinovantes, it is clear that, after crossing the Thames, he marched
into Essex. There he learned that the _oppidum_ of Cassivellaunus was
not far off; and ‘this situation answers to London’. Moreover British
London, which was situated on the rising ground between Ludgate and
Dowgate, and protected on the south by the marshes of the Thames, on
the west by the marshes of the river Flete, and on the east by the
marshes of the river Wallbrook, was just such a stronghold as Caesar
described.
Who would not accept such an attractive theory if he could only give
rein to his imagination? But unhappily the very existence, in 54 B.C.,
of British London is matter of inference and conjecture, however
reasonable.[3525] And is it reasonable to assume that if the stronghold
which Caesar captured had been situated on the banks of the Thames he
would have neglected to mention the fact?
5. W. H. Black[3526] argues that the _oppidum_ was most probably
somewhere in ‘the woody lands about Pinner, Harrow, and Cashiobury
Park.’
6. The Reverend H. Jenkins[3527] maintains that it was in Essex; for,
he argues, in order to fulfil the compact which he had made with the
Trinovantes, Caesar’s ‘chief object, after he had crossed the Thames,
must have been to lead his army into Essex’. Certainly Caesar’s army,
or a part of it, must have entered the country of the Trinovantes;
for, as we have seen, he would not allow his soldiers to plunder that
people. Jenkins’s theory is demolished by Caesar’s statement that the
stronghold belonged to Cassivellaunus, which shows that it was not in
the territory of the Trinovantes. And since, immediately after the
sentence in which he tells us that he prohibited his soldiers from
plundering the Trinovantes, he goes on to say that the stronghold of
Cassivellaunus was not far off, it is fair to conclude that it was near
the common frontier of the Trinovantes and of Cassivellaunus.[3528] Of
the places which fulfil this condition more can be said for Verulam
than for any other; but its identity with the _oppidum_ in question has
not been proved.
DID _LONDINIUM_ EXIST IN CAESAR’S TIME?
The earliest mention of London occurs in the _Annals_[3529] of
Tacitus, who, describing the events of the year 61, speaks of it as a
busy centre of commerce. It has been argued[3530] that a settlement
existed there before the Roman conquest of Britain, because the name
_Londinium_ is Celtic. Lewin[3531] maintains further that if London had
been founded by the Romans, it would have been a strong military post,
whereas in 61, eighteen years after the invasion of Britain by Aulus
Plautius, it was attacked by the Iceni and Trinovantes because it was
defenceless and wealthy.[3532] ‘It must,’ he insists, ‘have attained to
this height of prosperity, not under the Romans, who did not patronise
it, but by the silent progress of trade, a work that could not ... have
been accomplished in ... 19 years.’ ‘We know,’ he continues, referring
to Dion Cassius,[3533] ‘that Camulodunum was a flourishing British city
before the ... time of Plautius, and, if so, London, which enjoyed far
greater advantages, must also have been a British city.’ Lewin holds
that this city stood upon the hill between the river Flete and the
Wallbrook. On the west was _Lud_gate, the name of which is Celtic: on
the east Dowgate,--‘a corruption of the Celtic Dwrgate or water-gate.’
The river Flete, or Fleet, entered the Thames just below the site of
Blackfriars Bridge; while at Dowgate, about 1,000 yards to the east,
was the mouth of the Wallbrook.[3534]
Mr. W. J. Loftie[3535] finds the site of British London on the western
side of the Wallbrook. In his _History of London_,[3536] however, he
affirmed that the British settlement stood ‘on the eastern hill [that
is to say, on the gently rising ground east of the Wallbrook], if
anywhere’. Canon Isaac Taylor[3537] asserts that the British hill-fort
was ‘formed by Tower Hill, Cornhill, and Ludgate Hill, and effectually
protected by the Thames ... the Fleet ... the great fen of Moorfields
and Finsbury’, &c. Seeing that it has been proved that ‘the great fen’
did not exist in Roman times,[3538] and that the very existence of the
British hill-fort can as yet only be inferred, it is plainly useless to
attempt to determine its site.
Dr. Guest[3539] holds that ‘the notion ... that a British town
preceded the Roman camp [of Aulus Plautius] has no foundation ...
and is inconsistent with all we know of the early geography of this
part of Britain.’ ‘Such town,’ he adds, ‘could not have belonged to
the Trinobantes, for it lay beyond their natural limits, nor to the
settled district of the Catuvellauni, for then Caesar’s statement
that the Thames divided their country from the maritime states “about
eighty miles from the sea” would be grossly inaccurate.’ I cannot
see the force of these arguments. ‘The notion that a British town
preceded the Roman camp’ _has_ a foundation,--the solid foundation of
etymology. _London_ is indisputably a Celtic name;[3540] and if London
had been founded by the Romans, why should it have had a _purely_
Celtic name[3541] at all, and why should its Celtic name have outlasted
_Augusta_,--the name which the Romans gave to their London? Assuming
that Caesar’s statement is to be interpreted in the sense which Dr.
Guest attaches to it, the distance by road of British London from
Sandwich, in the neighbourhood of which Caesar landed,[3542] is 67
English miles, or nearly 73 Roman miles. Is the difference between 73
and ‘about 80’ so great as to justify the use of the words ‘grossly
inaccurate’?
More recently John Richard Green has endeavoured to disprove the
existence of British London.[3543] ‘Much,’ he says, ‘has been made
of its name, but “Llyn-dyn” ... is as likely to be the designation
of a spot as of a town on it. An almost conclusive proof, however,
that no such town existed west of the [river] Fleet may be drawn from
the line of the old British road from Kent (the predecessor of the
Watling Street), which, instead of crossing the river as in Roman and
later times at the point marked by London Bridge, passed, according to
Higden, to a point opposite Westminster ... (Loftie, “Roman London”,
Archaeological Journal, volume xxxiv, page 165) ... the rise of such a
town [Roman London] is the best explanation of the later change in the
line of this road.’
‘According to Higden!’ According to the monk of the fourteenth century
who wrote the _Polychronicon_! And Higden does not so much as mention
‘the old British road from Kent’,--a road the very existence of which
can only be conjectured. What he says is that ‘Watlingstrete’ crossed
the Thames west of Westminster;[3544] and Mr. Loftie, to whom Green
appeals, affirms that he is ‘driven to the conclusion that there was a
British town’.[3545] Accepting the statement of Higden, he argues that
the ‘Watlingstrete’ which is said to have crossed the Thames west of
Westminster was a pre-Roman road and followed the line of Park Lane and
Edgware Road. I will only add that, having failed to discover any paper
worth reading about the direction of Watling Street in that part of its
course which passed through or by Roman London, I consulted Professor
Haverfield. ‘I know nothing satisfactory,’ he replied, ‘about the line
of Watling Street, and nothing to suggest that it existed before A.D.
43.’
The very large number of palaeolithic implements which have been
found in London and its environs prove that in the earliest times
it was a centre of population;[3546] but it would hardly be safe to
infer from the discoveries of bronze and iron tools and weapons and
of British coins[3547] that the Romans found a town on the site. If
there was such a town, it certainly had little political importance;
for while numerous British coins issued from the mints of Verulamium
and Camulodunum, not one has been discovered which bears the name of
Londinium.[3548] Nevertheless it may reasonably be affirmed that London
existed before the Roman conquest: first, because the same advantages
that attracted the traders of Rome would also have commended themselves
to those of Britain; and secondly, I repeat, because it is improbable
that a Celtic name would have been given to a town which the Romans had
built upon a virgin site.[3549]
THE JULIAN CALENDAR AND THE CHRONOLOGY OF CAESAR’S INVASIONS OF BRITAIN
I. The chronology of Caesar’s first invasion of Britain is simple
enough, so far as it can be ascertained, and requires no knowledge
of the intricacies of the Roman calendar. I have shown in an earlier
article that the disembarkation took place on the 26th or 27th of
August, 55 B.C.[3550] After describing the storm which occurred on the
night of August 30-31, and the consequent loss of many of his ships,
Caesar goes on to say that the Britons endeavoured to protract the war
by cutting off his supplies, and that he had corn brought in daily from
the open country into his camp, and ordered the materials necessary
for the repair of those ships which were only partially damaged to
be fetched from the Continent. While the ships were being repaired
an attack was made upon the 7th legion, which was engaged in cutting
corn. This attack evidently took place several days after the 31st of
August; for the field in which the legion was reaping was the only one
accessible from the camp in which the corn had not been cut. The day on
which the legion was attacked was followed by several days of stormy
weather, during which all military operations were suspended. At the
end of this time the Britons attacked the camp unsuccessfully, and on
the same day sued for peace, which Caesar granted on condition of their
giving hostages. Instead of waiting for the arrival of the hostages
he ordered the British chiefs to send them over to the Continent,
‘because the equinox was at hand, and he did not think it wise to
expose his unseaworthy ships to a voyage in stormy weather.’[3551] The
equinox occurred on the 26th of September.[3552] Our data, then, are
as follows:--the attack on the 7th legion occurred several days after
the 31st of August; and Caesar returned to Gaul several days after the
attack on the 7th legion, but before--probably several days before--the
26th of September.[3553] Let us say that he returned about the middle
of the month. Napoleon, to whom indefiniteness was an abomination,
fixed the 12th of September as the date.[3554]
II. If we were to believe certain writers of high reputation, we
should be deterred from attempting to fix any dates for the second of
Caesar’s expeditions; for our principal sources of information are
dates mentioned by Cicero in his letters; and, as everybody knows,
the Roman calendar, before Caesar’s reform, was often in disagreement
with the Julian calendar. The writers of the article CALENDARIUM in
Smith’s _Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities_[3555] affirm
that ‘it is very difficult or rather quite impossible to determine
the actual dates which correspond to the nominal dates of any events
before the Julian reform of the calendar’. But for the period comprised
between the beginning of the year 696 (58 B.C.), just after Caesar
became Governor of Gaul, and his reform of the calendar, which took
effect in 709 (45 B.C.), this view is quite incorrect. Every date in
Cicero’s correspondence which relates to the subject of this essay
can be reduced, if not with absolute precision, at all events with a
possible error of not more than one day, to its corresponding date in
the Julian calendar. First of all, however, we must find out the nature
of the reform which Caesar initiated, and understand the chronological
disturbances which made reform necessary.
Every scholar knows that, after the period of the Decemvirate, the
Roman year consisted of 355 days only, and that every other year an
additional month, consisting alternately of 22 and 23 days, was, or
rather ought to have been, intercalated after the 23rd of February.
January, April, June, August, September, November, and December each
contained 29 days; February 28; and March, May, July, and October
31. If I may remind the general reader of what he learned at school,
the first day of every month was called the Kalends; the fifth day
of January, February, April, June, August, September, November, and
December was called the Nones; and the thirteenth day of each of those
months was called the Ides. But in March, May, July, and October the
Nones were on the seventh, and the Ides on the fifteenth day. In
mentioning dates the Romans described any given day as occurring so
many days before the Kalends, Nones, or Ides, as the case might be;
and in so doing they adopted the inclusive method of reckoning. Thus
the last day of December was called ‘the day before the Kalends of
January’, _pridie Kalendas Ianuarias_, or shortly _prid. Kal. Ian_.
But the 27th of December was called, not the third, but the fourth day
before the Kalends of January, _ante diem quartum Kalendas Ianuarias_,
or shortly _a. d. IV Kal. Ian_.
To return to the month which was or ought to have been intercalated
every other year. As the ordinary year contained 355 days, and the
solar year was believed to contain 365¼ days, it is obvious that to
intercalate a month of 22 and 23 days alternately every other year
was to make an excessive correction, the excess amounting to 4 days
in every period of 4 years. Macrobius[3556] tells us that in order to
remedy this error, 24 days were omitted from every twenty-fourth year.
For various reasons, however, this regulation, if indeed it ever really
took effect,[3557] was not always properly carried out; and accordingly
in the year of the city 563, or 191 B.C., a reform was introduced,
the college of pontiffs being authorized to intercalate or to omit
intercalations at their discretion.[3558] But this innovation, as we
learn from Cicero, Censorinus, and other writers, only made matters
worse. Speaking of the pontiffs, Censorinus complains that ‘most of
them, either from hatred or from favour, to cut short or to extend the
tenure of office, or that a farmer of the public revenue might gain or
lose more by the length of the year, by intercalating more or less at
their pleasure, deliberately made worse what had been entrusted to them
to set right’.[3559]
III. In 708 (46 B.C.), which is generally called ‘the year of
confusion’, Caesar intercalated a certain number of days, in order to
bring the calendar into harmony with the solar year before inaugurating
the reformed calendar in 709. It is expressly stated by Asconius, whose
testimony is unanimously accepted, that there was an intercalary month
in 702;[3560] and it is admitted by all chronologists that there was no
other intercalary month in the seven years between 700 and 708.[3561]
There is no doubt that the Kalends of January, 709, corresponded either
with the 1st or the 2nd of January, 45 B.C. It is clear, therefore,
that when we have ascertained how many days were intercalated in
708, we shall be able, by reckoning backwards, to ascertain the
correspondence of any given date in the summer of 700, the year of
Caesar’s second expedition, with the Julian calendar,--with a possible
error of one day only. This error will be removed if we can ascertain
whether the Kalends of January, 709, corresponded with the 1st or the
2nd of January, 45 B.C.
All German scholars who have written upon Roman chronology are agreed
that ‘the year of confusion’ contained 445 days, in other words,
that 90 days, amounting to four ordinary intercalary months, were
intercalated; and they hold that these 90 days were actually composed
of three months, namely the _Mercedonius_, which, in the ordinary
course, should in that year have been intercalated immediately after
the 23rd of February, and two extraordinary months, amounting to
67 days, which were intercalated between the last day of November
and the 1st of December. This view is supported in every detail by
Censorinus,[3562] who wrote about 240 A.D. The principal dissentients
are De La Nauze, Napoleon the Third and his collaborator, the famous
astronomer, Le Verrier, who held that 67 days only were intercalated in
708, and Colonel Stoffel, who, in his _Histoire de Jules César--Guerre
civile_, published in 1887, reaffirmed the same view, but who does not
appear to have informed himself of what any of the Germans, except
Ideler, had written on the subject. Moreover, the theory of Napoleon,
Le Verrier, and Colonel Stoffel is frequently referred to by scholars
in terms which imply that they regard the question as still open. The
reason which Le Verrier[3563] gives is that in 700 Caesar re-embarked
his troops for the return voyage from Britain to Gaul ‘because the
equinox was at hand’ (_quod aequinoctium suberat_[3564]); that the
equinox actually took place on the 26th of September of the Julian
calendar; and that Caesar informed Cicero on the sixth day before the
Kalends of October (which corresponded, on Le Verrier’s theory, with
the 21st of September) that he was on the point of bringing back the
army.[3565] He remarks that, on the theory of Ideler (who, like all
other German scholars, held that 90 days were intercalated in 708), the
sixth day before the Kalends of October, 700, would have corresponded
with the 30th of August, 54 B.C.;[3566] and he argues that this theory
must be wrong because Caesar would not have troubled himself about the
approach of the equinox 27 days before it occurred. He also remarks
that, although the view that 90 days were intercalated in 708 is
supported by Suetonius[3567] and Censorinus,[3568] Dion Cassius[3569]
affirmed that 67 days were intercalated, and that Dion expressly
added that other writers had asserted that a greater number had been
intercalated, but that his own statement was true; and he insists that
Dion derived his information from authentic sources.[3570]
It will be shown presently that if Le Verrier was right in his
interpretation of Dion’s words, Dion made a mistake. G. F. Unger[3571]
holds that he misunderstood the authority from whom he borrowed his
statement, and ‘who, like Suetonius, unquestionably regarded the
month intercalated in February as an _ordinary_ intercalary month’.
Von Göler,[3572] on the other hand, holds that Dion was quite right;
that he was referring, not to the ordinary intercalary month, but only
to the two extraordinary months intercalated between November and
December, which amounted to 67 days; and therefore that his statement
tallies with that of Censorinus. Be this, however, as it may, it is
absolutely certain that more than 67 days were intercalated in 708.
For on the 16th of May, 705, Cicero wrote from Cumae, ‘At present the
equinox is delaying us, which has been very stormy’ (_Nunc quidem
aequinoctium nos moratur, quod valde perturbatum erat_[3573]). Now, on
Le Verrier’s theory, the 16th of May, 705, corresponded with the 16th
of April, 49 B.C. of the Julian calendar; but the equinox occurred on
the 24th of March. In order to dispose of this difficulty, Le Verrier
is obliged to have recourse to flagrant special pleading: ‘l’équinoxe,’
he says, ‘était passé depuis 21 jours,[3574] et les troubles
atmosphériques pouvaient durer encore. Était-ce d’ailleurs autre chose
qu’un prétexte pour Cicéron’?[3575] A very thin pretext, one would
say,--a pretext which a man of Cicero’s intelligence was hardly likely
to resort to.[3576]
But this is not the only proof of the unsoundness of Le Verrier’s
theory. The argument which he bases upon Caesar’s words, _quod
aequinoctium suberat_, shows that he completely misunderstands both
Caesar’s narrative and the letter of Cicero to which he appeals. Cicero
writes, ‘On the 24th of October I received letters from my brother
Quintus and from Caesar, dated from the nearest coasts of Britain on
the 25th[3577] of September ... they were on the point of bringing back
the army’ (_a Quinto fratre et a Caesare accept a. d. IX Kal. Nov.
litteras, datas a litoribus Britanniae proximis a. d. VI Kal. Octobr.
... exercitum_ [_e_] _Britannia reportabant_[3578]). The letters to
which Cicero refers were written, according to Napoleon and Le Verrier,
on the 21st of September of the Julian calendar; and, they triumphantly
remark, this tallies with Caesar’s statement, that he hurried on his
departure from Britain ‘because the equinox was at hand’.[3579] But
there is one fact which they overlook. Caesar had a large number of
hostages and prisoners, and some of his ships had been lost. He was
therefore obliged to transport the hostages, prisoners, and troops to
Gaul in two successive trips. Only a few of the ships which made the
first trip ever returned to Britain, almost all the rest having been
driven back to Gaul by adverse winds. Caesar tells us that he waited
for these ships ‘a considerable time (_aliquamdiu_) in vain’. Then,
and not till then, he made the second trip, being obliged to crowd
the soldiers into the few ships that he had, and not daring to wait
any longer, ‘because the equinox was at hand.’[3580] The letters to
which Cicero refers were evidently written before the first trip; for
neither Caesar nor Quintus had written to Cicero for a long time;[3581]
and they would naturally have dispatched their letters by one of the
ships which made the first voyage. It is clear, therefore, that the
letters in question were written, not on the 21st of September of the
reformed calendar, but ‘a considerable time’ before that day. In fine,
if Le Verrier and Napoleon were right, the letters would have been
written not from Britain but from Gaul, and Cicero would have written
not _reportabant_ (‘they were on the point of bringing back’) but
_reportaverant_ (‘they had brought back’[3582]).
Another fact, which Napoleon, Le Verrier, and Colonel Stoffel appear
to have overlooked, alone proves that not 67 days only but 90 days
were intercalated in that year. The word _nundinae_ is familiar to
many readers of Cicero’s letters. To quote the authors of the article
NUNDINAE in Smith’s _Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities_,[3583]
‘the Romans had a system of eight-day weeks, which, like our seven-day
weeks, ran on from one month to another and from one year to another
without breaking.’ Every eighth day was a market-day, and was called
_nundinae_. Thus, if the 1st of January was a market-day, the next
was the 9th, the next the 17th, and so on. We learn from Dion
Cassius[3584] that the Kalends of January, 702, was a market-day; the
same writer says that, in order to prevent the Kalends of January,
714, from falling on a market-day--a coincidence which was regarded as
ill-omened--a day was intercalated extraordinarily in 713;[3585] and it
follows that, if there had been no intercalation in 713, the number of
days that elapsed from the Kalends of January, 702, to the last day of
December, 713, would have been a multiple of 8. Now, on the theory of
Napoleon the Third, Le Verrier, and Colonel Stoffel this number would
have been 4,401; on the theory that the year 708 contained 445 days,
4,424. The latter number is divisible by 8; the former is not.
There has never been any question but that the number of days
intercalated in 708 was either 67 or 90; and the former number has been
proved to be wrong.
IV. In order to obtain an absolutely firm foundation for the chronology
of Caesar’s second expedition, one more question remains to be
answered. In this country it is generally taken for granted that the
Kalends of January, 709, the year in which Caesar’s reform of the
calendar came into operation, corresponded with the 1st of January, 45
B.C. Various German scholars have, however, attempted to prove that
the Kalends of January, 709, fell on the 2nd of January of the Julian
calendar.
Let us first see what there is to be learned from the ancient writers.
Pliny[3586] says that when the error in the execution of Caesar’s
reform was discovered, it was corrected by the omission of intercalary
days during twelve successive years.
Solinus[3587] tells us that Caesar’s reform was vitiated by the
pontiffs; for, whereas it had been enjoined that a day should be
intercalated on the completion of the fourth year, they made the
intercalation at the beginning of the fourth year, not at the end.
Thus, Solinus continues, twelve days were intercalated in thirty-six
years, whereas only nine ought to have been intercalated.
Suetonius[3588] says that the calendar, as reformed by Caesar, was
thrown into confusion by ‘negligence’, and rectified by Augustus; also
that Caesar made the calendar year consist of 365 days, so as to bring
it into harmony with the solar year, and, abolishing the intercalary
month, ordered that one day should be intercalated every fourth
year.[3589]
According to Censorinus,[3590] Caesar directed that, in order to
compensate for the quarter of a day by which the solar exceeded the
calendar year, one day should be intercalated at the end of every
quadriennial cycle, after the Terminalia [that is to say, after the
23rd of February].
According to Macrobius,[3591] Caesar directed that one day should be
intercalated every fourth year. Macrobius then makes substantially the
same charge against the pontiffs as Solinus, and goes on to say that,
after the error for which they were responsible had continued for
thirty-six years, Augustus corrected it by ordering that twelve years
should pass without any intercalation.
Now it is absolutely certain that of the first five years during which
the reformed calendar was in force, namely 709, 710, 711, 712, and
713, not one only but two contained an intercalary day.[3592] For, as
we have already seen,[3593] Dion Cassius[3594] states that the Kalends
of January, 702, was a market-day, and also that, in order to prevent
the Kalends of January, 714, from falling on a market-day, a day was
intercalated extraordinarily (παρὰ τὰ καθεστηκότα[3595]) in 713;[3596]
and, as I had occasion to remark before, it follows that, if there had
been no intercalation in 713, the number of days that elapsed from the
Kalends of January, 702, to the last day of December, 713, would have
been a multiple of 8. This would have been the case if one of the four
years 709, 710, 711, and 712 had contained an intercalary day, but not
otherwise.[3597] Which was it?
The year 711 may be set aside at once: nobody has ever argued that it
was a Leap Year; and no reason can be given to show that it was.
1. Wilhelm Soltau,[3598] the author of a valuable work on Roman
chronology, maintains that 709 was the first Leap Year of the
reformed calendar. He argues that Matzat’s theory, according to
which an intercalation occurred in 710, must be wrong, because it is
inconceivable that Caesar, who was then alive, should have allowed an
intercalation to take place in the second year of his calendar, in
defiance of his own edict, that the intercalation should be made every
fourth year (_quarto quoque anno intercalandum esse_). The theory that
the first intercalation was in 712 is, Soltau continues, based only
upon the statements, derived from the same source, of Solinus and
Macrobius. If, says Soltau, they are right, the Leap Years, before
Augustus rectified the error which had been made in carrying out
Caesar’s intentions, would have been 712, 715, 718, 721, 724, 727,
730, 733, 736, 739, 742, and 745. But Dion’s statement, that 713 was
an intercalary year, proves that this cannot have been the case. The
series must, therefore, have been 709, 713, 716, 719 ... 743. Soltau
holds that the twelve years during which intercalation was, by the
order of Augustus, suspended, lasted from 745 to 756; that Augustus
disapproved of Caesar’s (assumed) anticipatory method of reckoning,
that is to say, of his having intercalated a day in the first year
of his calendar instead of after the conclusion of the fourth; that
accordingly the next intercalation, which would naturally have taken
place in 757, was omitted; and that the first intercalation after the
reform of Augustus occurred in 761. Thus, like other writers[3599] who
differ from him on points of detail, Soltau identifies the Kalends of
January, 709, with the 2nd of January, 45 B.C.
It will presently be shown that the statements of Macrobius and Solinus
do not _necessarily_ lead to the conclusion which Soltau condemns.
Meanwhile I may remark that Soltau’s theory is irreconcilable with
the very passage in Dion Cassius to which he refers.[3600] Dion says
that a day was intercalated _extraordinarily_ (παρὰ τὰ καθεστηκότα)
in 713, in order to prevent New Year’s Day in 714 from falling on a
market-day,[3601] and that subsequently an intercalary day was struck
out.[3602] It is therefore obvious that the intercalation of 713 took
place earlier than had been contemplated; and consequently that the
previous intercalation must have occurred later than 709; for if, as
Soltau maintains, the previous intercalation had taken place in 709,
the intercalation of 713 took place at the proper time. If, on the
other hand, Dion’s words, παρὰ τὰ καθεστηκότα, mean ‘contrary to the
regulations erroneously attributed to Caesar by the pontiffs’, that is
to say, contrary to the triennial cycle which they themselves followed,
the intercalation, on Soltau’s theory, took place a year too late; for,
if the first intercalation had occurred in 709, the object which Dion
mentions could have been attained by intercalating in 712.
2. Let us now examine the theory of Matzat,[3603] namely, that the
first intercalation took place in 710. This writer believes that
Caesar’s reason for intercalating in 710 was to prevent the Kalends
of January in the following year from falling on a market-day.[3604]
He holds that Dion’s words, παρα τα καθεστηκοτα mean ‘contrary to the
actual regulations of Caesar’; and accordingly he believes that those
regulations were at the time understood. He maintains, however, that,
after 713, the pontiffs intercalated every three years,--namely in
716, 719, 722 ... 743; but he insists that they did this simply for
the same reason which had prompted the intercalation in 713, namely to
prevent the Kalends of January in each following year from falling on
a market-day. The statement of Dion, that, in order to compensate for
the day extraordinarily intercalated in 713, another intercalary day
was omitted, he takes to mean that the next intercalation, which, on
his theory, ought to have occurred in 714, was left out. Finally, he
believes that the three superfluous days which had accumulated during
the twelve triennial cycles were compensated for by the omission of all
intercalations in the years 745-756; and that the first intercalation
under the reform of Augustus occurred in 757. On this theory the
Kalends of January, 709, corresponded with the 1st of January, 45 B. C.
I have already mentioned the objection which Soltau has brought against
Matzat’s theory;[3605] but that objection is inconclusive. It is not
true that if Caesar had allowed an intercalation to take place in
710, he would have done so ‘in defiance of his own edict, that the
intercalation should be made every fourth year (_quarto quoque anno
intercalaretur_)’. If, according to his scheme, the next intercalation
was to take place in 714, the next in 718, and so on, the intercalation
would still be made every fourth year. Provided it took place every
four years, what difference would it make whether it took place
first in 709, 710, 711, 712, or 713? Holzapfel[3606] blames Matzat
for disregarding the testimony of Solinus and Macrobius. But Matzat
does not disregard their testimony: he simply refuses to admit that
they make any definite statement as to the year in which the _first_
intercalation of the Julian calendar occurred. The only statement
which would appear to support Holzapfel’s criticism is contained in
the words of Solinus, that, ‘whereas it had been enjoined that they
[the pontiffs] should intercalate one day in the fourth year, and
this ordinance ought to have been carried out on the completion of
the fourth year ... they intercalated at the beginning of the fourth
year, not at the end’ (_nam cum praeceptum esset, anno quarto ut
intercalarent unum diem, et oporteret confecto quarto anno id observari
... illi incipiente quarto intercalarunt, non desinente_). If by ‘the
beginning of the fourth year’ Solinus meant the fourth year of the
Julian calendar, that is to say, 712, and if he had original authority
for his statement, then Holzapfel is right. But observe the looseness
with which Solinus expresses himself. Immediately after saying that
the intercalation ought to have taken place ‘_in_ the fourth year’,
he says that it ought to have taken place ‘on the completion of the
fourth year’. To state the facts correctly required extraordinary
precision and nicety of expression; and this requirement he failed
to satisfy. His meaning may have been that, in whatever year of the
Julian calendar the first intercalation took place, the next ought, by
Caesar’s ordinance, to have taken place four years later, and so on.
If it be objected that I have suggested an arbitrary interpretation
of his meaning, I reply that this interpretation is dictated by the
passage in which Dion Cassius states that the intercalation of 713 was
‘contrary to the regulations’ (παρὰ τὰ καθεστηκότα). Holzapfel[3607]
says that these words, _taken by themselves_, may mean one of two
things. They may mean that the intercalation of 713 was contrary to the
actual regulations of Caesar; or they may mean that it was contrary
to the regulations adopted by the pontiffs in misunderstanding or in
contravention of Caesar’s regulations. The question, says Holzapfel,
can only be settled by other evidence; and the only other evidence
is that of Solinus and Macrobius, which shows that the pontiffs
misunderstood Caesar’s regulations. As a matter of fact, their
evidence does not show this, unless misunderstanding is connoted by
the words _vitium_ and _error_. Matzat[3608] contends that such a
misunderstanding would have been impossible, for Caesar must have made
his intentions clear. Holzapfel replies that Caesar would no doubt
have done so if he had foreseen his own imminent death; but, as he
certainly intended, in his capacity as Pontifex Maximus, to superintend
the execution of his own arrangements, and thus establish the rule
of intercalation which he contemplated, the regulation _ut quarto
quoque anno intercalaretur_ might seem sufficient. But Dion Cassius,
if his testimony may be accepted, settles the question. Immediately
after saying that a day was extraordinarily intercalated in 713, he
adds that ‘of course an intercalary day was in turn omitted, _in
order that the calendar might be brought into harmony with Caesar’s
intentions_’ (καὶ δῆλον ὅτι [ἡμέρα ἐμβόλιμος] ἀνθυφῃρέθη αὖθις, ὅπως
ὁ χρόνος κατὰ τὰ τῷ Καίσαρι τῷ προτέρῳ δόξαντα συμβῇ). Now these
words, as Matzat[3609] unanswerably argues, prove that by παρὰ τὰ
καθεστηκότα Dion meant ‘contrary to the regulations’ actually made by
Caesar.[3610] Holzapfel,[3611] however, tries to explain away Dion’s
remark by the argument that the authority whom he followed may have
been a contemporary who shared the misconception of the pontiffs; and
this I cannot gainsay. Moreover, although I have argued that the words
of Solinus _may_ be interpreted in a sense different from that which
Holzapfel ascribes to them, I admit that the conclusion which they
suggest is that Caesar intended to make his first intercalation in 713,
and that the pontiffs made it in 712.
Secondly, it is expressly stated by Macrobius[3612] that the Kalends
of January in the year of the _Lepidianus tumultus_ fell on a
market-day; and if, as Holzapfel maintains, this statement refers to
the Lepidus who, as one of the Triumvirs, revived Sulla’s policy of
proscription in 711, it proves that no intercalation occurred either
in 710 or in 709.[3613] Matzat, however, maintains that the words
_Lepidianus tumultus_ designate the outburst of Lepidus in 676 (78
B. C.).[3614] Unger,[3615] who agrees with Holzapfel, maintains that
the official recognition of the superstitious dread with which the
Roman populace contemplated the coincidence of the Kalends of January
with a market-day, was due to the acts of Lepidus in 711. But, replies
Matzat,[3616] for this ‘official recognition’ the approbation of the
Pontifex Maximus was necessary. Now in 713, as in 711, the Pontifex
Maximus was Lepidus himself; and, according to Macrobius, it was the
_Lepidianus tumultus_ which strengthened the popular belief that
whenever the Kalends of January fell upon a market-day, the whole year
would be darkened by ill-omened events. If, then, says Matzat, we are
to believe Unger, Lepidus described the deeds which he had himself done
in 711, and by which the joint supremacy of himself and the other two
Triumvirs had been established, as a _tumultus_,--the most horrible
events of a year full of horrors! This argument is clever, but I think
that it is hardly fair. Lepidus was not obliged to describe anything.
Assuming that the Kalends of January, 711, had fallen on a market-day,
it is surely intelligible that he should have recognized the wisdom of
allaying superstitious fears, even though they had been roused by his
own acts, when he could do so by the simple expedient of intercalating
a day in 713. I agree with Unger that there does not appear to
have been anything very alarming in the affair of 677, even though
Lucan[3617] describes it as _truces Lepidi motus_; and, judging the
question without bias on its own merits, I can only conclude that the
_tumultus Lepidianus_ was most probably the outbreak of 711. If so, the
first intercalary year of the Julian calendar cannot have been either
709 or 710, but must have been 712.
Thirdly, Holzapfel[3618] points out that, if Matzat is right, the
intercalary cycle introduced by Augustus did not correspond with that
of Caesar. For after the reform of Augustus the intercalary years were
odd years, 761, 765, 769, and so on; while Caesar’s first intercalary
year is supposed by Matzat to have been 710. Or, if we reckon the
quadriennial cycles contemplated by Caesar from the year 709, the
intercalations, according to his regulation, would, on Matzat’s theory,
occur in the second, those made by Augustus in the first year of each
successive cycle.
All this is perfectly true: but what does it matter? The one really
important point, namely, that the intercalation should take place every
four years, was duly secured by Augustus. Whether it took place in the
first, the second, the third, or the fourth year of the cycle, mattered
not a jot. Holzapfel’s objection is purely academic.
Fourthly, says Holzapfel, if, as Matzat maintains, Caesar’s only reason
for intercalating in 710 was to prevent the Kalends of January in the
following year from falling on a market-day, it is difficult to believe
that Caesar should not have foreseen that for the same reason it would
be necessary to intercalate in 713, 716, and so on, that is to say,
every three years; in other words, that it would be impossible to carry
out the arrangement which he had himself made.[3619]
This is certainly a reasonable objection, and Matzat has not, so far
as I know, attempted to remove it: but it is perhaps conceivable that a
man so busy as Caesar should have failed to look far ahead.
Holzapfel[3620] argues, further, that Matzat’s theory, according to
which the calendar, as reformed by Augustus, was inaugurated on the
1st of January, 757 (A.D. 4), rests upon the assumption that the first
day of the intercalary cycle coincided with the first day of the civil
year, whereas it was really the day after the _Terminalia_, that is to
say, the sixth day before the Kalends of March. This, he maintains, is
proved (_a_) by the place which Caesar gave to his intercalary day;
(_b_) by the fact that the two months intercalated between November
and December of 708 were called respectively _mensis intercalaris
prior_ and _mensis intercalaris posterior_, and also by the fact that,
according to Dion Cassius, the number of days intercalated in that
year was only 67, whereas the number of days intercalated in _the
civil year_ 708 was 90; (_c_) by the fact that, according to Macrobius
and Solinus, Caesar ordained that the intercalary day [which followed
the 23rd of February] should be inserted at the end of the fourth and
before the fifth year of the Julian calendar.[3621]
Matzat[3622] summarily replies to these arguments. Referring to
Macrobius,[3623] he observes (_a_) that the place which Caesar gave to
the intercalary day was identical with the place which the intercalary
day, whenever it occurred, had occupied before his reform; and (_b_)
that the two intercalary months known as _mensis intercalaris prior_
and _mensis intercalaris posterior_ were added to the year 708 in order
that the calendar year 709 might begin on the Kalends of January, and
thus coincide with the consular year. If it be asked why they were
called _prior_ and _posterior_ although another intercalary month
had preceded them, the answer is easy: the other month ought in any
case to have been intercalated in that year, whereas the _prior_
and _posterior_ were extraordinarily intercalated. The passages in
Macrobius and Solinus on which Holzapfel relies have been already
explained; and it has been shown that they do not necessarily bear the
meaning which he ascribes to them. One fact alone appears to me to
dispose of his contention, that the Julian calendar did not come into
operation until the sixth day before the Kalends of March, 709: if it
did not, why did January in that year contain 31 days, whereas in every
previous year it had contained only 29?
Holzapfel also invokes the support of Böckh,[3624] who remarked that
it would have been unnatural for a reformer to correct the error
caused by the difference of a quarter of a day between the civil and
the solar year until the error required correction. The conclusion
appears to Holzapfel inevitable that Caesar intended to make his
first intercalation as soon as, and not before, the error should
have amounted to one day, that is to say, in 713. Matzat,[3625] on
the contrary, maintains that logically the proper place for the
intercalary day would have been immediately after the second year of
the quadriennial cycle. But he does not believe that Caesar cared for
such academic considerations. He undoubtedly fixed the place of the
intercalary day in the year not on astronomical grounds, but according
to usage. Why, then, asks Matzat, should it be considered improbable
that he fixed the place of the intercalary year in the quadriennial
cycle on the same principle?
3. Holzapfel[3626] holds, as we have just seen, that the Caesarian
cycle began on the day after the _Terminalia_ of 709, that is to say,
on the sixth day before the Kalends of March; that Caesar intended that
the first intercalation should take place in 713; that the pontiffs,
misunderstanding his directions, made the first intercalation at
the beginning of the fourth year, that is to say, in 712; that, as
Dion says, a day was extraordinarily intercalated in 713; that, to
compensate for this extraordinary intercalation, a day was omitted
in 714, which accordingly comprised 364 days only; that the pontiffs
thenceforth intercalated every three years, namely in 715, 718, 721
... 745; that, to compensate for the three superfluous days which had
been intercalated in consequence of the misunderstanding of Caesar’s
regulations, the intercalations which ought to have occurred in 749,
753, and 757, were omitted; and that the first intercalation after the
reform of Augustus took place in 761.
This theory, as the reader will have already seen, cannot stand unless
the evidence of Dion Cassius is to be rejected. Indeed it cannot
stand even then. Holzapfel is not justified in assuming that in order
to compensate for the extraordinary intercalation of 713, a day was
omitted in 714; for, on his own theory, 714 was an ordinary year.
Matzat[3627] points out that, in the passage in which Dion[3628]
describes the omission of a day to compensate for the extraordinary
intercalation--καὶ δῆλον ὅτι ἀνθυφῃρέθη αὖθις, ὅπως ὁ χρόνος κατὰ τὰ
τῷ Καίσαρι τῷ προτέρῳ δόξαντα συμβῇ--the words ἡμέρα ἐμβόλιμος (an
intercalary day) must necessarily be supplied, as the subject of the
verb ἀνθυφῃρέθη, from the preceding sentence. Holzapfel retorts that
his view does not involve the assumption of a change of subject. ‘One
can very well translate,’ he says, ‘“an intercalary day was inserted,
and self-evidently in turn omitted”’ (Man kann sehr wohl übersetzen:
‘es wurde ein Schalttag eingelegt und selbstverständlich wiederum in
Abzug gebracht’[3629]). This is not a satisfactory answer; for, on
Holzapfel’s own showing, the omitted day was _not_ an intercalary day.
There is no evidence that a day was ever withdrawn from an ordinary
year in the Roman calendar; and, as Matzat[3630] points out, the
best proof that such a proceeding would have been regarded as out of
the question is supplied by the procedure of Augustus. Instead of
correcting the error of the pontiffs by withdrawing three days from one
ordinary year, he omitted three intercalary days in three intercalary
years, thus taking twelve years to accomplish a reform which, according
to modern notions, might have been accomplished in one. If Dion’s
words are interpreted in their natural sense, they evidently mean
that the next intercalary day which would have occurred, according
to Caesar’s regulations, was omitted. Thenceforth, accordingly, if
the first intercalation occurred in 710, the intercalary years were
716, 719, 722 ... 743. Or if, as Holzapfel insists, Dion’s words,
παρὰ τὰ καθεστηκότα, mean ‘contrary to the regulations as erroneously
interpreted by the pontiffs’, and if, as he also insists, the year in
which they first intercalated was 712, then the next year in which
they would naturally have intercalated was 715: the extraordinary
intercalation of 713 must have been compensated for by the omission
of an intercalary day in 715; and the following series of intercalary
years must have been 718, 721, 724 ... 745.
Again, Holzapfel’s theory compels him to disregard silently the
testimony of Solinus, on whose authority he lays such stress.
Solinus[3631] says that twelve days were intercalated in the first
thirty-six years of the Julian calendar: according to Holzapfel,
thirteen were intercalated.
Lastly, if we accept Holzapfel’s view, that the first day of the
Julian calendar was the sixth day before the Kalends of March, 709, we
find that a day _was_ intercalated immediately after the end of the
fourth year of the cycle, namely, after the _Terminalia_ of 713. But
Holzapfel assures us that, according to Macrobius and Solinus, this was
not the case.
But I am not arguing against Holzapfel’s theory as regards the first
intercalary year of the Julian calendar; and what appears to tell most
strongly in favour of it, besides the probability that the _Lepidianus
tumultus_ occurred in 711,[3632] is the statement of Macrobius,[3633]
that Augustus enacted that the intercalation should take place ‘every
fifth year’ (_quinto quoque anno_), that is to say, according to
our reckoning, every four years. These words seem to imply that the
pontiffs had actually misunderstood Caesar’s regulation. On Matzat’s
theory, however, the pontiffs who intercalated παρὰ τὰ καθεστηκότα
in 713 deliberately set that regulation aside in order to avoid the
dreaded coincidence of the Kalends of January with a market-day. But,
says Matzat, every three years this troublesome necessity recurred; and
thus ultimately, as he suggests, the erroneous view might prevail that
Caesar had himself intended to intercalate every three years ([anno]
_quarto non peracto sed incipiente_[3634]). But what right have we to
assume that after 713 the pontiffs took any account of the nundinal
superstition? At all events, if Holzapfel is right in maintaining that
the first intercalary year of the reformed calendar was 712, there can
be no doubt that the subsequent intercalary years were 713, 718 ...
745; and it is therefore impossible for him to reconcile his view,
that the first intercalation under the reform of Augustus occurred in
761, with the statement that Augustus allowed twelve years to pass
without any intercalation. Augustus’s first intercalation undoubtedly
took place in 757; for in that year, if Caesar’s regulation had been
observed, the twelfth intercalation would have occurred.
Opinions may differ as to whether Matzat’s theory or the modification
of Holzapfel’s which I have just suggested is the more probable. As,
according to the latter, the series of intercalary years must have been
712, 713, 718, 721, 724, 727, 730, 733, 736, 739, 742, 745, it implies
that after 713 the pontiffs thought it safe to disregard the nundinal
superstition. So far my suggestion may be objectionable. On the other
hand, it fits in with all the statements of the ancient writers, except
that one remark of Dion Cassius which, as Holzapfel suggests, he may
have made on erroneous information;[3635] and particularly it fits in,
as no other series which has been suggested does, with the statements
that twelve days were intercalated in the first thirty-six years of the
Julian calendar,[3636] and that Augustus allowed the next twelve years
to pass without any intercalation. However, the difference between
Matzat’s theory and mine (which is purely tentative) is unimportant;
for they agree in the main point,--that the Kalends of January, 709,
corresponded with the 1st of January, 45 B.C.
V. We have now gained the knowledge which will enable us to
investigate the chronology of Caesar’s second invasion of Britain.
We have ascertained that the Kalends of January, 709, fell on the
1st of January, 45 B.C.; that 90 days were intercalated in 708,
which accordingly consisted of 445 days; that a month of 23 days was
intercalated in 702, which accordingly comprised 378 days; and that
701, 703, 704, 705, 706, and 707 were ordinary years, each comprising
355 days. It follows that the last day of 700, the year in which
Caesar made his second expedition to Britain, corresponded with the
30th of November, 54 B.C., and that the sixth day before the Kalends
of October, the day on which he wrote to tell Cicero that he was on
the point of bringing back his army from Britain to Gaul, corresponded
with the 29th of August. From these data it will be easy to ascertain
the correspondence of any date in the year 700 which we find in our
authorities with the Julian calendar.
After quitting Cisalpine Gaul, Caesar returned to his army, which had
wintered in the country of the Belgae. He made a tour of inspection,
visiting the various camps, which were of course in the immediate
neighbourhood of the yards where the legionaries had been building
the ships for his intended expedition, that is to say, at the Portus
Itius (Boulogne), and probably on the estuaries of the Canche, the
Authie, the Somme, and the Seine.[3637] After ordering all the ships
to assemble at the Portus Itius, he started with four legions in
light marching order and 800 cavalry for the country of the Treveri,
which, roughly speaking, comprised the greater part of the province
of Luxembourg, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, and the southern part
of Rhenish Prussia.[3638] Two chiefs of this people, named Cingetorix
and Indutiomarus, were struggling for supremacy. Cingetorix at once
presented himself before Caesar, and promised fidelity. Indutiomarus
collected levies, and prepared to fight. Many of the leading men,
however, came into Caesar’s camp and made terms for themselves.
Indutiomarus found that he had miscalculated his strength, and hastened
to excuse himself. Caesar, who had no time to spare, contented himself
with taking hostages for his good behaviour and returned to the Portus
Itius. About 25 days after his arrival, having meantime been detained
by contrary winds, he sailed for Britain.[3639]
The exact date of Caesar’s departure from Cisalpine Gaul is uncertain.
On the 2nd of June, that is to say, the 9th of May of the Julian
calendar, Cicero received at Rome a letter from his brother, written
at Placentia;[3640] and on the following day he received another
letter from his brother, written at Blandeno, a town near Placentia,
the exact site of which is not known,[3641] and also a letter from
Caesar, written apparently at the same place.[3642] Napoleon,
erroneously maintaining that the second and the third of these letters
were received by Cicero on the 5th, instead of the 3rd, of June, and
assuming (‘pour trouver le temps voulu’, as he naïvely remarks) that,
in consequence of accidental delays, they took 13 days to reach Rome,
concludes that Caesar quitted Blandeno on the 23rd of May, which he
identifies with the 22nd[3643] of the same month, but which really
corresponded with the 29th of April of the Julian calendar. T. Bergk,
on the contrary, maintains that if there had been any delay in the
transmission of the letters, Cicero would have mentioned it in his
reply; and he supposes that Caesar and Quintus Cicero started on their
journey for Transalpine Gaul on the 2nd of June, that is to say, on
the 9th of May of the Julian calendar.[3644] All that can be safely
said is that, if the letter-carrier travelled at the usual rate, namely
between 40 and 50 Roman miles a day,[3645] the two letters were written
about the 30th of April or the 1st of May of the Julian calendar; and
therefore we have no right to assume that Caesar quitted Blandeno
before the former day.
It is possible, as we shall presently see, to fix the date of Caesar’s
arrival at the Portus Itius and of his voyage to Britain within a
day or two; but it is plainly impossible to make any satisfactory
calculation of the dates of his movements from the time when he left
Blandeno to the time when he left the country of the Treveri and
marched for the Portus Itius; and the minute computations of Napoleon
and others are simply elaborate trifling.[3646] For, although Caesar’s
_average_ rate of travelling may be estimated approximately, we do not
know how far he penetrated into the extensive country of the Treveri;
and it is waste of time to guess how long he stayed there. This much
only can be said with certainty:--he did not let the grass grow
under his feet.[3647] For he left Blandeno about the 30th of April:
he arrived, as we shall presently see,[3648] finally at the Portus
Itius about the 11th of June; and in those 43 days he travelled from
Blandeno across the Alps and across Gaul to the English Channel; moved
along the coast to various points between Boulogne and the mouth of
the Seine; and marched from Boulogne to the neighbourhood of Sedan, or
further--at least 180 miles--and back again.
On the 27th of July, that is to say, on the 2nd of July of the Julian
calendar, Cicero wrote to Atticus, ‘Judging from my brother Quintus’s
letters, I imagine that by this time he is in Britain’ (_ex Q. fratris
litteris suspicor iam eum esse in Britannia_[3649]). It would be
very rash, however, to infer from this that Caesar landed in Britain
before, or even as early as, the 2nd of July; for, as we have seen, his
embarkation was delayed by the long continuance of adverse winds. The
first letter which announced the arrival of the expeditionary force
in Britain was referred to by Cicero in a letter to Quintus, in which
he says, ‘How I rejoiced at your letter from Britain! I was nervous
about the sea and the coast of that island’ (_O iucundas mihi tuas de
Britannia literas! Timebam Oceanum, timebam litus insulae_[3650]).
This letter is undated; but it must have been written some time after
the one which Cicero wrote to Atticus on the 27th of July; for in the
letter to Atticus we find the words, ‘I have undertaken to defend
Messius.... After that I have to prepare myself for Drusus, and then
for Scaurus’ (_Messius defendebatur a nobis ... Deinde me expedio
ad Drusum, inde ad Scaurum_[3651]); while in the letter to Quintus
Cicero wrote, ‘The day I write this Drusus has been acquitted.... The
_comitia_ have been put off to September. Scaurus’s trial will take
place immediately’ (_Quo die haec scripsi, Drusus erat ... absolutus
... Comitia in mensem Septembrem reiecta sunt. Scauri indicium statim
exercebitur_[3652]). Asconius[3653] tells us that the last day of
Scaurus’s trial was the 2nd of September; and Cicero’s remark that ‘the
_comitia_ have been put off to September’ makes it evident that he
wrote in August; while from his saying that ‘Scaurus’s trial will take
place immediately’ we should naturally infer that when he wrote the 2nd
of September was not far off. Letters from Britain generally reached
Rome in about 27 days;[3654] and accordingly we may conclude that the
letter in which Quintus Cicero announced his arrival in Britain was
written about the end of July; that is to say, about the 6th of July
of the Julian calendar.[3655] Now Caesar says that the tide [in the
Straits of Dover] turned westward soon after daybreak on the morning of
his arrival in Britain;[3656] and this statement proves that he landed
either _about_ the time of full moon or _about_ the time of new moon.
There was a full moon on the 21st of July, 54 B.C.; and the previous
new moon occurred on the 7th of July. Napoleon[3657] insists that the
landing must have taken place on the day of full moon, arguing that
without moonlight Caesar could not have undertaken the march which he
made on the night following his arrival. But, as we have already seen,
Napoleon argues on the erroneous assumption that Caesar intercalated
only 67 days in the year 708, and accordingly he fixes all the dates
of the unreformed calendar which occur in Cicero’s letters of 700
twenty-three days too late. His argument that Caesar could not have
made a night march except by the light of the moon is worthless. It
must be remembered that, in the first half of July, there is no real
night over any part of the British Isles; and no one familiar with the
records of night marches would deny that Caesar could have marched on a
clear night at that time of the year. Long[3658] says that ‘of course
he had also the moon on the night on which he sailed from the Gallic
coast’. There is no ‘of course’ in the matter. Caesar sailed from Gaul
to Britain in 55 B.C. after midnight, on the 26th or 27th of August,
that is to say either five or four days before the full moon;[3659] and
the moon set soon after midnight both of August 25-26 and of August
26-27. Moreover, according to Napoleon himself, Caesar sailed from
Britain to Gaul in 55 B.C. on the 12th of September,[3660] that is to
say, on a moonless night: as new moon occurred on the 14th, and he
did not sail until after midnight, he could not have had the benefit
of moonlight unless he had deferred his voyage until the date of the
equinox; and I am assured by Captain Iron, the harbour-master of Dover,
that on a fine night, especially in July, there would not have been
the least difficulty in sailing without a moon. As a matter of fact,
William the Conqueror sailed to England on a dark night. ‘The moon,’
says Mr Freeman,[3661] ‘was hidden and the heavens were clouded over.
The Duke therefore ordered every ship to bear a light.... The ships
were to keep as near together as might be, and to follow closely after
the beacon-light of his own ship.’ If, then, we decide that Caesar
landed in Britain on the day of new moon, the 7th of July, 54 B.C., we
shall not be more than one day wrong; but to fix the date with absolute
precision is impossible.[3662]
As Caesar landed about the 7th of July, it follows that he had reached
the Portus Itius, where he was delayed about 25 days, about the 11th of
June.
On the day after he landed Caesar encountered a British force 12 miles
from his camp on the coast. On the following day, while his troops
were pursuing the fugitives, he was recalled to the coast by the
news that a large number of his ships had been damaged by a storm.
He then proceeded to construct a naval camp, and, as soon as it was
finished, returned to the point from which he had started.[3663] As the
construction of the camp occupied ‘about ten days’ (_circiter dies
X_), we shall not be far wrong if we say that it was finished 12 days
after the landing, that is to say, about the 19th of July of the Julian
calendar.
We now come to a date the significance of which has hardly been
appreciated. At the close of one of his letters to Quintus, Cicero
writes, ‘Caesar wrote me a letter from Britain on the 1st of
September... in which, to prevent my wondering at not getting one
from you, he tells me that you were not with him when he reached
the coast’ (_Ex Britannia Caesar ad me K. Septembr. dedit litteras
... quibus, ne admirer, quod a te nullas acceperim, scribit se sine
te fuisse, cum ad mare accesserit_[3664]). This passage proves that
Caesar had returned from the interior of Britain to the coast on or
before the 1st of September, that is to say, the 5th of August of
the Julian calendar. But we have already seen that he did not quit
the coast after the construction of his naval camp until about the
19th of July, and that on the 29th of August he was still in Britain,
‘on the point of bringing back the army,’ and did not sail for Gaul
till several days later.[3665] We have to decide, then, between
two alternatives. Either Caesar had finished the campaign against
Cassivellaunus by the 5th of August of the Julian calendar, and
thereafter remained on the coast until the 29th of August, when he
was able to announce that he was ‘on the point of bringing back the
army’; or he made a hurried temporary visit to the coast, the object
of which remains unexplained. The latter view is not supported by the
_Commentaries_. Caesar’s narrative certainly leaves the impression
that, immediately after the completion of his naval camp, he resumed
the military operations which had been interrupted by the shipwreck,
and did not again return to the coast until the time came for him
to prepare for his voyage to Gaul. He tells us that Cassivellaunus,
after the failure of the attack which had been made by his orders
upon the naval camp, and in consequence of the reverses which he had
suffered, sued for peace; that he ordered Cassivellaunus to furnish
hostages;[3666] and that, ‘on receiving the hostages, he led back
the army to the sea, where he found the ships repaired’ (_Obsidibus
acceptis exercitum reducit ad mare, naves invenit refectas_[3667]).
‘When they were launched,’ he continues, ‘he determined to take the
army back in two trips’ (_his deductis ... duobus commeatibus exercitum
reportare instituit_[3668]). Certainly there is not a word in this to
support the view, which is advocated by Vogel, that the visit to the
coast which Caesar made on the 1st of September (the 5th of August of
the Julian calendar) was purely temporary, and took place _before_
he began to march towards the country of Cassivellaunus; and the
motive which Vogel[3669] suggests for the visit--that Caesar wished
to inspect the camp once more and to give the necessary instructions
before marching against Cassivellaunus--is hardly adequate, unless we
grant Vogel’s assumption, that when Caesar returned to the sea the
campaign had advanced no further than the stage which he describes in
the 17th chapter of his Fifth Book, where three legions under Trebonius
inflicted a decisive defeat on the enemy; in other words, that Caesar
returned from a point within a day’s march of the sea. But this
affair, according to the _Commentaries_, took place on the very day
after Caesar quitted his naval camp in order to resume the campaign;
whereas he returned to the sea, on Vogel’s own showing, about 17 days
after he quitted the camp. If, on the other hand, we adopt Napoleon’s
view[3670]--that Caesar, after he returned to the sea on the 1st of
September, remained there until he sailed for Gaul--how are we to
account for the 24 days which elapsed before he wrote to tell Cicero
that he was on the point of bringing back the army? What was he doing
all that time? Napoleon,[3671] indeed, maintains that, on the day on
which he wrote this last letter, he actually sailed for Gaul, and Bergk
that he had already arrived in Gaul; but it has already been shown that
both these assumptions are untenable. Moreover, in order to account for
Caesar’s having arrived at the sea so early, Napoleon and Bergk are
forced to strain the words of the _Commentaries_ (_exercitum reducit ad
mare_),--to assume that Caesar hurried on in advance of his army, and
that it did not reach the coast until several days later.[3672]
Although the problem cannot be definitively solved, I have no doubt
but that Vogel’s solution is wrong. Not only does it give the lie to
Caesar’s narrative, but it requires us to believe that Caesar had
failed for about 17 days to make any headway against the Britons, and
had been held in check by them within a dozen miles of the sea. Yet
Caesar states that, in consequence of the defeat which Cassivellaunus
suffered at the hands of Trebonius on the day after he left the
newly-constructed naval camp, the British infantry levies dispersed;
and in the same breath he goes on to say that he forthwith marched
for the country of Cassivellaunus.[3673] If, as Vogel implies, this
statement had been false, surely Quintus Cicero would have informed his
brother, in one of the five letters which he wrote before the 1st of
September, of the real state of affairs! On the other hand, I find it
difficult to believe that Caesar used the words _exercitum reducit ad
mare_ loosely, and that he remained on the coast from the 1st to the
25th of September, without once writing to Cicero between those two
dates,[3674] and then remained several days longer before embarking.
This view, indeed, would compel us to assume that he left Trebonius
or one of his other generals to carry on the negotiations with
Cassivellaunus which are described in the 22nd chapter of his Fifth
Book.
Napoleon, it is true, believes that Caesar did not leave his army and
hurry on in advance of it to his naval camp until the negotiations were
completed and he had received his hostages from Cassivellaunus.[3675]
But on this assumption what motive could he have had, first, for
hurrying on in advance of his army, and, secondly, for delaying its
re-embarkation until after the lapse of several weeks? I am inclined,
therefore, to believe that he made a hurried temporary visit to his
naval camp, escorted probably by a small column, and then, having
accomplished his purpose, returned to the main army in order to conduct
or to complete the negotiations with Cassivellaunus. The motive of
his visit may have been connected with the attack which the Kentish
chieftains made upon the naval camp.[3676]
The date of Caesar’s return to Gaul can only be given approximately.
We have seen that on the 25th of September (the 29th of August of the
Julian calendar) he wrote to Cicero, saying that he was on the point
of bringing back the army.[3677] Vogel[3678], remarking that, after he
reached the coast, his ships had to be launched and loaded, and that he
did not sail with the second detachment of troops until he had waited
a long time in vain for the return of the ships which had carried
the first, concludes that he did not return to Gaul until about 20
days after he wrote to Cicero, that is to say, not until the 15th of
October. This date corresponds with the 17th of September of the Julian
calendar; and Vogel maintains that it agrees with Caesar’s statement
of the reason which led him to hurry on his return, namely, that the
equinox was at hand. But it is impossible to estimate, from Caesar’s
statement, how many days he waited for the return of his ships. Let us
examine the attempts which have been made to gain a clue from Cicero’s
correspondence.
Vogel[3679] points out that Cicero,[3680] in a letter written just
after the 23rd of November--the 26th of October of the Julian
calendar--referred to two letters which he had received from Quintus,
and also to a third, which Quintus had handed to Labienus for
transmission the day before he dispatched the earlier of the other two,
but which had not yet arrived. Now Labienus had remained in Gaul during
the invasion of Britain.[3681] It is clear, therefore, that these three
letters were not written until after Quintus had returned to Gaul. On
the other hand, they would seem to have been the first letters which
Quintus wrote to his brother after his return. For Cicero, in the
letter in which he referred to them, said, ‘where your Nervii dwell and
how far off, I have no idea’ (_Ubi enim isti sint Nervii et quam longe
absint, nescio_[3682]). The Nervii were the tribe in whose country
Quintus, with his legion, was to pass the winter.[3683] Evidently
Quintus, when he wrote the two letters which Cicero received, had not
yet reached the country of the Nervii; for otherwise he could not, on
the previous day, have been with Labienus, who was to winter in the
country of another tribe. Probably, as Vogel concludes, he wrote from
Samarobriva, or Amiens, where Caesar had his head quarters and where
the arrangements for the distribution of the legions were made.[3684]
Again, in the letter which has been already quoted, Cicero wrote to
Quintus, ‘Pray be careful to let me know to whom I am to give the
letter which I shall then send you,--to Caesar’s letter-carriers, for
him to forward it direct to you, or to those of Labienus?’ (_Tu velim
cures ut sciam quibus nos dare oporteat eas quas ad te deinde litteras
mittemus, Caesarisne tabellariis, ut is ad te protinus mittat, an
Labieni_[3685]). Vogel remarks that ‘this question is only intelligible
on the hypothesis that Quintus was only just beginning to take up his
quarters in Gaul’ at the time when he wrote the two letters which
Cicero had just received. Now a letter would have required about 25
days for transmission from Samarobriva to Rome;[3686] and accordingly
the letters to which Cicero referred, assuming that he replied to them
promptly, would have been written about the end of October. Vogel,
who thinks that they must have been written within a fortnight after
Quintus and Caesar returned to Gaul, infers that they cannot have
returned earlier than the 15th of October, the 17th of September of
the Julian calendar. His reasoning is ingenious; but unfortunately we
do not know exactly how soon after the receipt of his brother’s second
letter Cicero wrote, or how many days intervened between the arrival of
the first and of the second.
On the whole, it appears to me that all we can say for certain
regarding the date of Caesar’s return is this. It cannot be fixed
earlier than several days after the 29th of August of the Julian
calendar,--the date of the letter in which he informed Cicero that he
was on the point of bringing back the army. Bearing in mind that it
occurred when ‘the equinox was at hand’, we may place it about the
middle of September.
TOPOGRAPHICAL NOTES
On April 25, 1902, I observed more carefully than I had ever done
before the coast between Sandgate and West Hythe. To speak of the hills
between Sandgate and Hythe as _angusti montes_ is sheer nonsense.
Caesar would never have attempted to force a passage inland at any
point between Lympne and Sandgate;[3687] nor would the Britons have
abandoned these _loca superiora_, which lay ready to hand. There are,
indeed, depressions in the line of hills--(1) just west of Sandgate
railway station, (2) nearly opposite the Seabrook (now Imperial)
Hotel, and (3) west of Hythe, just west of the point where the road
diverges from the military canal; but if Caesar had attempted to force
these gaps, he would have found himself entangled in the hills behind.
27.4.02.
* * * * *
Quite recently I explored the easternmost and the westernmost of the
three valleys which partially break the continuity of the hills behind
Hythe. Neither would have been [reasonably] practicable for an invading
army [in the conditions of ancient warfare]. The road leading through
the former, which branches off from the road [running from Sandgate]
to Hythe, is level for the first 120 yards, and then ascends rapidly
for a short distance. Then it is tolerably level until about 100 yards
before one gets to the cross-road which turns off to the left, when it
ascends rapidly for a long way. A column moving along it would have
been exposed to attack from the hills on either side, and particularly
on the west. 3.9.03.
* * * * *
On the return voyage from Boulogne [September 5, 1903] I most carefully
scrutinized the whole coast-line between Sandgate and the Foreland, as
I had often done before on land. Caesar’s description of the _angusti
montes_ is applicable only to Shakespeare’s Cliff and the cliffs which
extend from the Castle Hill to the neighbourhood of Kingsdown. It is
not applicable even to the imposing heights which bound East Wear Bay,
because, although they might fairly be called _angusti montes_, the
missiles of which Caesar speaks could only have been thrown on to the
beach from the precipitous but low chalk cliffs which form the lowest
part of these heights; whereas he plainly means that the missiles would
[or rather, could] have been thrown by the enemy who were standing _in
omnibus collibus_; and if he anchored off East Wear Bay, the _colles_
were a quarter of a mile or more from the sea. The low chalk cliffs
of East Wear Bay would never have been called _montes_, although
they are the lowest part of a range of _montes_. The notion that the
cliffs between East Wear Bay and Folkestone Harbour, or the cliffs on
which the ‘Leas’ stand, as seen from a vessel half a mile from the
shore, would have been called _angusti montes_ or _montes_ at all is
simply ludicrous. No! It is absolutely certain that Caesar’s _angusti
montes_ were the cliffs of Dover,--the cliffs between [and including]
the Castle Hill and the Foreland. And as for Airy’s theory, how could
cliffs ‘ten to thirty feet high’ have been called _angusti montes_
by an observer standing on the deck of a ship five nautical miles
away?[3688]
[Cicero’s description (_Att._, iv, 16, § 7) of the cliffs which ‘walled
in the approaches to the island’--_mirificis molibus_--is applicable
only to the heights behind East Wear Bay and the cliffs of Dover.]
* * * * *
The following notes were jotted down on September 15, 1902, on the deck
of a steamer running from Dover to Deal:--
Six _colles_ at present visible off Dover Harbour, i.e. on east of old
[pre-Roman and Roman] harbour: one on left, not counting Shakespeare’s
Cliff.
Eight from off the Foreland. Nothing could be more appropriate than
the expressions _in omnibus collibus expositas_ [hostium copias] and
_montes angusti_. In the various ‘dips’ the _hostium copiae_ would have
been very conspicuous.
* * * * *
Behind the low rampart between Kingsdown and Walmer Castle the ground
rises. Caesar might have encamped [in his first expedition] on this
rising ground or on the rising ground which extends behind the castle
towards the church.
Just after passing Deal Castle one turns to the left down Gilford Road,
and, after walking about 300 yards, passes under a railway bridge, and
then, very gradually ascending for a few paces, walks along a path,
which crosses fields. It seemed to me just possible that C. might have
encamped on these fields, but very--to the last degree--unlikely.
The only suitable camping-grounds that I can see anywhere are those
mentioned above. 16.9.02.
* * * * *
Walked over the cliffs from St. Margaret’s to Walmer.... After walking
for a short distance along the edge of this [natural] rampart [south
of Walmer Castle], I struck inland along a fence, and came to a path
which traverses a rolling chalk plateau, and runs exactly in a straight
line with the tower of St. Mary’s Church, Walmer. There is splendid
camping-ground on this plateau. The camp would have commanded the
approaches from every point of the compass; and the descent from the
plateau on the west or landward side is steep. Beyond the valley which
bounds the plateau on this side the ground rises again fairly rapidly.
The plateau extends northward to a point just south of Walmer Castle,
which it commands. If Caesar encamped on the plateau, the camp could
be discovered by excavation: but if he encamped on the gently rising
ground north-west of the plateau, the camp could not be discovered; for
this ground is covered by buildings. (I assume of course that he did
not encamp on the high ground west of the plateau or on the ground on
which the windmill stands; for both sites are too far from the sea.)
17.9.02.
ADDENDA
PAGE 122. ‘There was certainly a Copper Age ... Ireland.’ Professor
Gowland (_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxvi, 1906, pp. 26-7) deprecates the
use of the expression ‘Copper Age’, remarking that ‘the so-called
Copper Age possesses no characteristics which are not common to the
Neolithic Age, except the imitations and limited use of stone forms in
metal’, &c. The question seems to be purely verbal.
PAGE 140. ‘It is worthy of remark ... not pure.’ The proportion of
lead in Scottish bronze implements appears to have been remarkable;
but Professor Gowland (_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxvi, 1906, p. 30)
observes that lead is ‘found in small quantities in nearly all bronze
implements’. See, however, J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, p. 417.
PAGE 148. ‘All the open ones ... sand.’ Professor Gowland (_Journ.
Anthr. Inst._, xxxvi, 1906, p. 36) affirms that ‘moulds of sand or
loam were undoubtedly of later times [in the Bronze Age], as there are
considerable mechanical difficulties in preparing them’.
PAGE 194, note 3. To the list of counties in which drinking-cups have
been found must now be added Kincardineshire (_Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._,
xl, 1906, pp. 304-6).
PAGE 205, note 4. To the list of papers on cup- and ring-markings may
be added _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xl, 1906, pp. 318-27.
PAGE 208. ‘Stone circles ... Kincardineshire.’ A circle in
Stirlingshire is described in _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xl, 1906, pp.
301-4.
PAGE 211, note 2. To the list of papers on Scottish stone circles may
be added _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xl, 1906, pp. 164-206, 245-54.
PAGE 221. ‘They told him ... ankle-bones.’ This statement rests upon
the reading ἀστραγάλων in Diodorus Siculus, v, 22, § 2. Professor
Ridgeway (_Folk-Lore_, i, 1890, p. 83, n. 1) suggests that the true
reading may be ἀστραβῶν (saddles).
PAGE 237. ‘Coral ... later period.’ M. S. Reinach (_Rev. arch._, 4^e
sér., vi, 1906, pp. 309-10) argues that the development of enamelling
in Gaul was due to the growing dearness of coral, the price of
which rose because large quantities were bought for exportation to
India after the conquests of Alexander the Great. This view leaves
unexplained the continued use of coral in Britain long after it had
fallen into disuse in Gaul.
PAGE 259, note 3. In a recent article on vitrified forts (_Proc. Soc.
Ant. Scot._, xl, 1906, pp. 136-50) Lieut.-Col. A. B. McHardy suggests
that some of them may have been built in the time of the Vikings, and
argues that the vitrifaction was probably never intentional, because
(1) ‘in various forts ... the loose stones below the vitrification
(_sic_) are supported by ordinary masonry, which apparently might have
been carried up the whole way had the builders so desired,’ and (2)
the greatest amount of vitrifaction is generally found ‘where a strong
parapet is least needed’. He also thinks that the forts were used for
signalling, and that the vitrifaction was produced by smouldering
beacon fires.
PAGE 288, note 1. Canon Greenwell, in a paper to which I have already
referred (p. 676, n. 6), states that in the ‘Danes’ Graves’ ‘by far
the larger number [of bodies] were laid on the left side, and ...
about one-third had the head pointing to north-east. It does not
seem, however,’ he adds, ‘that the dead were laid with the face turned
towards the sun.’ He also observes that ‘the presence of charcoal in
close proximity to an unburnt body, so universal a feature in the
graves of the Bronze Age [on the Yorkshire Wolds] was not noticed
except in a few cases, at the Danes’ Graves, and in these it may only
have been there accidentally’.
PAGE 379, note 3. I omitted to mention Professor Karl Pearson’s method
of estimating stature. Dr. Beddoe, who has criticized it in _Journ.
Roy. Inst. Cornwall_, xv, 1902, pp. 163-71, thinks that it ‘probably
underestimates the stature of tall men’, and observes that in one case,
where the actual height of living men had been ascertained, Professor
Pearson’s calculations erred considerably more than his own or M.
Manouvrier’s.
PAGE 408, note 4. See also _Biometrika_, iii, 1904, pp. 243-4.
PAGE 490, note 5. Further evidence of tin mining in the Scilly Islands
will be found in _Memoirs Geol. Survey,--The Geology of the Isles of
Scilly_, 1906, pp. 10, 11.
PAGES 504-5. ‘Is he not aware ... distinguished.’ C. Müller, in his
edition of Ptolemy’s _Geography_ (p. 106), argues that Pliny’s Vectis
cannot be the Vectis which was the Isle of Wight, because he mentions
it among the islands between England and Ireland. But if this argument
is sound and Pliny did not blunder, it remains true that there is no
evidence in Pliny or any other writer for identifying Ictis with Vectis.
PAGE 527, note 9. Mr. Spurrell has proved that a slight subsidence has
taken place in the London district since the Roman occupation. See also
p. 566, _supra_.
PAGES 581-3. ‘There is one passage ... anchorage.’ The argument in
this paragraph depends upon the assumption that the ships which were
‘carried back’ (_referrentur_) in 55 B.C. to the port from which they
had started were laid to, and that they could not lie within less than
four points and a half of the wind, or, if, with Falconer and James
Smith, we allow six points for leeway, within less than two and a
half. It may not perhaps be impertinent to explain that when a ship is
laid to her head is brought as close to the wind as possible without
losing way, under little sail. In these circumstances the helm is often
lashed, and the ship then has a tendency to yaw, that is, to fall off
the wind and come up again alternately. An experienced seaman with
whom I have recently discussed the matter believes, however, that it
might have been practicable for the captains of the ships in question
to adopt the plan of ‘head reaching’, that is, working to windward
under comparatively low sail but still enough to enable the steersmen
to keep the ships under control, to luff up to dangerous seas, and to
make considerable headway. As he remarked, the difference between lying
to, when the helm is not lashed, and ‘head reaching’ is simply one of
degree: in ‘head reaching’ the vessel carries a little more sail; and,
judging from illustrations of ancient ships, he thinks that Caesar’s
would have been able, when ‘head reaching’, to lie within two points
of the wind. Allowing five points for leeway, he holds that they could
have made good a course within seven points; and he insists that an
ancient ship with its sails properly trimmed could have gone as near
the wind as a modern lugger!
This, I need hardly say, is rank heresy, and I do not believe that any
one who is conversant with the literature of ancient navigation will
accept it. Besides, we do not know whether Gallic ships were rigged
exactly like those of the Mediterranean. James Smith (_The Voyage and
Shipwreck of St. Paul_, 1880, pp. 75, 127, 215) may or may not have
been right in maintaining that an ancient ship could not make good a
course in moderate weather within less than about seven points of the
wind; but numerous passages prove that ancient ships, if they could
work to windward, could not do so without difficulty. If my heretical
friend is right, why were Caesar’s cavalry transports windbound in the
_ulterior portus_, less than eight miles from the port which their
captains wished to make, and why were they obliged by contrary winds
to put back, even in moderate weather, after they first started from
the _ulterior portus_? M. Jules Vars, indeed (_L’art nautique dans
l’antiquité_, 1887, pp. 181 ff.), apparently doubts whether ancient
ships could work to windward at all; but a passage which James Smith
quotes from one of Cicero’s letters (_Fam._, xiv, 5, § 1)--_cum sane
adversis ventis usi essemus tardeque et incommode navigassemus_--and
another in Livy, which I am obliged to quote at second hand--_hinc
atque hinc ad ventos obliqua transferre vela_--suggest, if they do
not prove, that they could. I hope to discuss the question soon in
another place. Meanwhile it is enough to say that if Caesar’s cavalry
transports could not work to windward, they could neither ‘head-reach’
nor lie to; and those which were carried back to their port of
departure must have fetched it by sailing with the wind nearly abeam.
But those which were ‘driven down in great peril to the lower and
more westerly part of the island’ (_ad inferiorem partem insulae quae
est propius solis occasum magno suo cum periculo deicerentur_) were
evidently scudding; and while the word _referrentur_ (‘were carried
back’), which is strongly contrasted with _deicerentur_, suggests
that the others were laid to, Caesar’s words show that they were
comparatively in little danger, though, if they had not been brought
close to the wind, they would evidently have run as great a risk as
the others. A distinguished admiral suggests to me that they did sail
with the wind nearly abeam, and disposes of the question of danger by
assuming that Caesar exaggerated its force. But, with due deference, I
would ask whether, since it was strong enough to drive ashore and wreck
ships which were riding at anchor, and since the ships that ran before
it were ‘in great peril’, ships sailing with it nearly abeam would
not have been in peril equally great. It is universally admitted that
ancient ships could sail with the wind abeam: it seems hardly credible
that the discovery should not have followed that Gallic ships, which
were not shallow, _could_ also make headway within less than eight
points of the wind; and I therefore believe that, however rare, from
one cause or another, tacking may have been, ships were occasionally
laid to in bad weather.
Anyhow, my argument remains unshaken. If the ships which were carried
back to the _ulterior portus_ neither lay to nor ‘head-reached’, it is
self-evident that they could not have fetched Sangatte, and therefore
that the _ulterior portus_ was Ambleteuse: if they sailed with the
wind abeam, they could not have fetched any port east of Wissant: if
they were laid to, they could not have fetched Sangatte; nor could
they have done so even if they ‘head-reached’ unless they possessed
a capacity for working to windward with which few modern ships and
no ancient ship can be credited. Indeed they could not have done so
even then; for it would evidently have been impossible for them to
beat across the Channel in a single tide: the flood (see p. 583) would
hardly have helped them; and the ebb, prolonged and strengthened by the
north-easterly gale, would have carried them far out of their course.
The foregoing remarks apply of course to other passages in which I have
mentioned the cavalry transports. By no means could they have returned
either from near Hythe or Lympne to Ambleteuse or from near Pevensey to
the mouth of the Authie.
PAGE 680. ‘Therefore, unless ... Bekesbourne.’ Mr. George Barrow of
the Geological Survey, whom I have consulted, thinks that there is no
reason to suppose that the relative level of water and banks in the
Little Stour above Littlebourne was appreciably different in 54 B.C.
from what it is now.
PAGE 698. ‘The claim ... better grounds.’ Mr. F. H. Baring (_Eng.
Hist. Rev._, October, 1907, pp. 726-8) argues that Caesar crossed
the Thames by ‘an undoubted ford just above tidewater at Hampton’,
which was mentioned by Lord Lumley in 1685. He argues that, owing to
the tides, Brentford would only have been available for ‘five or six
hours out of twelve’; that ‘this important fact would surely have been
mentioned’; and that the stakes which have been found at Brentford are
fifteen inches round and therefore too large. I am not sure that he
is referring to the stakes described by Mr. Montagu Sharpe, whom he
does not mention; but surely the stakes would not have answered their
purpose worse for being strong. I do not believe that Caesar would have
mentioned the presence of tides at Brentford if they had not affected
his passage; but, as we have seen (p. 696), Mr. Spurrell has argued
that the tides did not reach Brentford. If there was a ford at Hampton
before the days of locks and weirs, there was another, if the evidence
of the name _Halliford_ is trustworthy, at or near Coway Stakes. Are
we entitled to assume that either existed in the time of Caesar? The
reader will have understood that I do not pin my faith to Mr. Sharpe’s
theory: I only think that it is less feebly supported than any other.
PAGE 712, note 2. W. Sternkopf (_Hermes_, xl, 1905, p. 37) rejects
Boot’s emendation, _proximis_, and conjectures that Cicero wrote
_proxime_, meaning that the letter in question was the most recent of
several which had arrived together.
INDEX
[Only such references to authors are included as seemed likely to be
useful.]
Abbeville, 4.
Abercromby, J., 6, 168 n. 1, 182 n. 2, 185 n. 2, 192 n. 1.
Aberdeenshire, 81, 151, 194 n. 3, 361 note;
stone circles of, 208-10;
brachycephalic skeletons found in, 426;
ethnological observations in, 442.
Abnoba, 272.
Abydos, 123 n. 1.
Acton, 40 n. 2.
Addedomaros, 363 n. 6.
Adriatic, 243.
Adzes, 75.
Aedui, 331-3.
Aegean Sea, 9.
Africa, 5, 9, 30, 66-7, 82, 123, 197, 205, 211, 251 n. 1, 263 n. 2.
_Africus_, 555.
Agricola, 226.
Agricultural implements, 76, 89.
_See_ Ploughs.
Agriculture, in Neolithic Age, 89-91;
in Bronze Age, 151-2;
in Early Iron Age, 252-4.
Ain, 296, 410-1.
Airy, Sir G., 558-63, 616-8, 645-8, 652, 655, 659.
Aisne, 110 n. 1.
Akerman, R. Y., 5.
Alderbury, 27.
Aldington Knoll, 639-40.
Allen, J. Romilly, 6, 149 n. 5, 232 n. 2.
‘Alpine’ race, 127-8, 437, 455.
Alprech, 306, 570, 572-3.
Altars, 274, 280;
of Paris, 276, 279 note;
of Sarrebourg, 281.
Amber, 131;
cup, 159 n. 1;
ornaments, 162-3, 167-70, 183, 469;
trade, 218, 357;
amber coast visited by Pytheas, 220, 223-4.
Ambidexterity (alleged), 82 n. 5.
Ambleteuse,
cavalry transports sailed from, in 55 B.C., 313, 318-9, 587-8, 593,
616, 639;
not identical with Portus Itius, 552, 563-4.
Ambresbury Banks, 137 n. 4.
America, 4, 31, 51, 78, 93-4, 125, 205.
Amesbury, 189.
Amiens, 4.
Ammianus Marcellinus, 273.
Amminus, 370 note.
Amulets, 92-3, 116, 205, 260.
Ancalites, 346, 700.
Ancestor-worship, 116, 283-4.
Ancyra, 363-4, 368.
Andate, 297.
Anderson, J., 7, 135 note.
Andred (Anderida), 501, 507, 614.
Anglesey, 107, 139, 160, 194 n. 3;
hut-circles in, 154;
Druids, 292.
Animals, worship of, 55, 284;
domestication, 55-7;
interment, 114, 203, 288;
sacrifice, 202-3, 288.
Animism, 50-1.
Antedrigus, 370.
Anthropology, 8, 234;
methods of, 376-9, 457 n. 4.
‘Anthropomorphic ape,’ 48;
designs in Late Celtic art, 236.
Anthropomorphism, 286.
Anvils, 79.
Appach, F. H., 314 n. 2, 639-44.
Appledore, 533-4, 538-43, 545-6, 549-50, 552, 604, 638, 640, 643.
_See_ Rother.
Apollo, 275, 280.
Aquae Calidae, 232 n. 3.
Aquitaine, 40.
Aquitani, 304.
Arbois de Jubainville, H. d’, 228, 281, 291 n. 2, 292 note, 407-8,
410-2, 415 note, 416 n. 6, 421-3, 446-7.
Arbor Low, 476 n. 3.
_Archaeologia_, 3.
Archaeology, caution needed in, 7;
as an aid to ethnological inquiry, 375-6.
Archers, 313, 316, 331, 346, 698.
Arctic animals, 20-1, 40;
plants, 15, 19.
Arctic Circle, 225-6.
Argentocoxos, 423, 450.
Argyllshire, 102, 107-8, 185 n. 5, 194 n. 3, 205, 208.
Ariovistus, 300-1.
Armorica, 501, 507.
Arran, 115 n. 8, 208;
cairns, 108;
skulls, 394.
Arras, interments, 234 n. 1;
torque, 241 n. 1;
skeleton, 436 note;
chariot-burial, 676.
Arreton Down, 145, 182 n. 5.
Arrow-heads, 3, 80-2;
bronze, 132 note.
Artabri, 484-5, 487-8, 492.
Artillery, in Caesar’s army, 313, 347.
Artists, palaeolithic, 35, 47, 83.
Aruntas, 53, 199, 463.
Aryans, 153, 272, 275.
Asia, 4, 125, 205;
Asia Minor, 31.
Astronomy, 10;
astronomical theory of Stonehenge, 216-7, 472-6, 480-1;
of other stone circles, 481-2.
Atecotti, 448.
Atkinson, J. W., 5.
Atrebates, 232, 235, 347, 366, 451-2, 454, 695;
of Gaul, 300, 309, 364-6.
Atrius, 336, 338, 686.
Atticus, 329, 333, 350.
_Augusta_, 255, 704.
Augustus, 306, 357, 361, 363, 366-7, 369.
Aulus Plautius, 362 n. 7, 371.
Aurochs (_urus_), 68, 88.
Aurunculeius Cotta, 314, 324.
Austen, Godwin, 4.
Australia, 49, 51, 58, 72, 116, 197, 199, 206, 377, 463.
Austria, 199.
Authie, 306, 327, 558, 613.
Avebury, 209, 213, 240.
Avebury, Lord, 45.
_See_ Lubbock.
Avienus, Festus, 218, 490-2, 512.
Avon (Hampshire), 25, 27.
Awls, bone, 42;
stone, 80;
bronze, 140, 182.
Axe-hammers, 78.
Axes, stone, 3, 73, 131;
bronze, 144;
engravings of, 205;
iron, 253.
Aylesford, 5;
bucket, 237;
pottery, 242-4;
interments, 287-8;
Caesar may have crossed Medway at, 344.
Babylonia, 125.
Badbury Rings, 134, 137.
Balbus, 328.
Balearic islanders, 111.
Baltic, 14.
Banffshire, 194 n. 3;
stone circles of, 208-9.
Baoussé-Roussé, 34, 382.
Barbed arrow-heads, 80-1, 477 note.
Bards, 266.
Barham, 679-82.
Barrows, 3, 6, 8, 11.
_See_ Long barrows, Round barrows.
Barton Mere, 154.
Basket-work, 197.
Basques, 94, 399-400, 455;
Basque language, 407, 420.
Bateman, T., 5, 6 n. 1.
Bath, 207.
_Bâtons de commandement_, 48 n. 1.
Batten Promontory, 397.
Battersea, 158.
Battle-axes,
stone, 78, 131;
bronze, 132 note, 145.
Baumes-Chaudes, 93, 401.
Beads, lignite and shale, 92;
amber, 163, 167, 469;
glass, 162 n. 1, 167-8, 170, 183, 241, 357, 469;
jet, 167.
Beansale, 260 n. 1.
Bear, brown, 30, 68;
grizzly, 30, 68.
Beavers, 68.
Beddoe, J., 8, 385-6, 393-6, 425-6, 434, 437, 440-1, 445, 448.
Bedford, 40 n. 2.
Beech, 600, 661-2.
Beechey, Sir F. W., 607, 608 n. 3, 612 n. 6.
Beehive huts, 65, 155, 262.
Beer, 224, 261.
Bekesbourne, 679-80.
Belerium, 221, 499, 502 n. 8, 507.
Belgae, 232-6;
not identical with ‘round-heads’ of Bronze Age, 429-30;
date of their invasion of Britain, 233-4, 434, 445-6, 456, 459-60;
theory that they were Goidels, 449-54;
British tribe of that name, 232, 454, 460;
of Gaul, 250, 300-1.
‘Belgic ditches,’ 11.
Belgium, 30, 38, 82.
Belisama, 281.
Bell barrows, 175, 176 n. 1, 185 n. 3, 470.
‘Bell-pits,’ 516-7.
Bellovaci, 365.
Beltout, 97.
Bere Regis, 162.
Bericus, 370-1.
Berkshire, 36, 101, 130, 134, 138, 153 n. 9, 194 n. 3, 235, 240, 251,
267 n. 3, 347.
Bertrand, A., 9, 438 n. 3.
Berwickshire, 194 n. 3, 262.
Bexhill, 619.
Bibracte, 237, 283, 286 n. 2, 584-5.
Bibroci, 346, 700.
Bigbury, 256-7;
stormed by 7th legion (?), 337, 685.
Bill-hooks, 253.
Birdlip, 435 n. 1.
Bits, horses’, 152, 238, 264-5.
Blancnez, Cape, 306, 565.
Blandeno, 329, 727.
Blashenwell Farm, 63.
Bleasdale, 179.
‘Blue-stones,’ 214, 470, 479-80.
Boadicea, 269, 296-7, 347.
Boars, 68, 88, 202, 357, 407;
worshipped, 284.
Boduni, 362 n. 7.
Bognor, 19.
Boissier, G., 277.
Bokerly Dyke, 260 n. 1.
_Bol_, 451 n. 2.
Bone implements, 5, 42, 82, 158, 160.
Bonnington, 604, 639-40, 642.
Bononia, 591 n. 1.
Borreby, 430, 441.
_Bos longifrons_, 88.
Boudicca.
_See_ Boadicea.
Boulder clay, 15, 18, 20, 22-3.
Boule, Monsieur M., 14 n. 1, 29, 30 n. 3.
Boulogne, 306, 552-3, 557, 572-7, 579, 584;
identical with Portus Itius, 585-95, 643, 652, 658.
Bournemouth, 25, 32.
Bowl barrows, 175, 176 n. 1, 185 n. 1, 470.
Bracelets, 158, 163, 165;
Late Celtic, 241.
Brachycephalic invaders.
_See_ Round-headed invaders.
Brandon, 23, 44. 69-70.
Brassempouy, 198, 383 n. 2.
Breeches, 264-5.
_Breithyn_, 460.
Brentford, Caesar may have crossed Thames at, 344, 661, 697-8, 741.
_Bretain_, 460-1.
Bridge, 680-1.
Brigantes, 269, 359, 360 n. 2.
Brigantia, 280.
Brigit, 280.
Bristol Channel, 20, 62, 224.
Britain, materials for ‘prehistory’ of, 1-12;
continental during part of Pleistocene Period, 19-22;
origins of civilization neolithic, 63-4;
geography of neolithic, 64;
comparative backwardness of bronze culture, 171;
political and social conditions of, compared with those of Gaul, 270-1;
ties between Britons and Gauls, 299-300;
how Britons were affected by Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul, 300;
Caesar’s invasions of, 301-54;
history of, between Caesar’s departure and A.D. 43, 355-72;
Roman conquest of, 372.
Britanni (Gallic tribe), 235, 459-60.
_Britanni_, the name, 459-61.
British Association, 4.
British Isles identified with Cassiterides, 491, 493-4, 497-8.
British Museum, 9, 12 n. 1, 70, 158, 217 n. 1.
_Brittani_, 459-60.
Brittany, 19, 65, 109, 111, 155 n. 1, 171, 185, 194, 200, 212.
_Brittones_, 459-60.
Brixham Cave, 37.
Broad Down, 159 n. 1.
Broca, P., 9, 93, 376-7, 381, 430, 437-9.
Brochs, 7, 262, 464.
Bronze Age, 6-7, 121-230;
period of its commencement, 126-7;
no apparent interval between, and Roman occupation at Cranborne Chase,
267;
origin of bronze, 9, 124-6;
of British bronze culture, 126;
bronze implements used for centuries in Britain before Iron Age, 123-4;
social organization of invaders, 128-9;
their settlements, 129-31;
coins, 249, 358;
implements and weapons, 140-9;
hoards, 149-50;
ornaments, 158, 161-7;
backwardness of culture in Britain, 171.
_See_ Transition.
Brooches, 183 n. 6, 232, 240, 264.
Brutus, Decimus, 304.
Bruyos, islands of, wrongly identified with Cassiterides, 488.
Bryce, T. H., 7, 435 n. 1.
Brythonic, 421-3.
Brythons, 228-9, 232-6, 409-12;
date of their invasion of Britain, 233-4, 445-6;
religion, 274;
did they hold aloof from Druidism? 290-1;
not identical with early round-headed invaders, 428-40;
ethnology of, 444-53, 456, 458-61.
Buckets, 237, 246.
Buckinghamshire, 36, 153, 194 n. 3.
Buckland, W., 4.
‘Bulb of percussion,’ 44.
Bulford, 183.
Bull, wild, 48.
‘Bull-roarers,’ 49.
Bulverhythe, 604, 621 n. 3.
Burghead, 259.
Burial customs, 8;
neolithic, 110-2, 114-5;
of Bronze Age, 173, 184-91, 200-5;
of Early Iron Age, 286-8.
Bury St. Edmunds skull, 33, 380, 455.
Bute, 94 note, 110, 185.
Buttons, 161-2, 189;
gold, 131, 162;
stone, bone, wood, and jet, 161;
with V-shaped holes, 161-2;
bronze and ivory, 162;
in interments, 189.
Caddington, 25, 39, 44, 60.
Cae Gwyn, 23.
Caermarthenshire, 35.
Caesar, Gaius Julius, his limited knowledge of Britain, 1-2;
mentions no Gallic invaders of Britain except Belgae, 232-3;
wrote to Q. Cicero in Greek characters, 266;
on Britons of the interior, 267;
on social and political conditions of Gaul and Britain, 268-71;
on Gallic religion, 274-8, 281-2, 285;
on Druids, 289-90, 292-6, 298 n. 6;
how his Gallic campaigns affected Britons, 300;
first invasion of Britain, 301-25;
landing-place, 309-12, 315-6, 595-665;
disembarkation, 316-7, 673;
sites of his camps, 317, 335, 673-4;
credibility of his narrative, 319, 349 n. 3, 666-72;
forces passage of Stour near Canterbury and storms a British fort,
337, 678-85;
his earlier operations in 54 B.C., 337-8, 685-8;
second combat with the Britons, 339-41, 688-91;
crosses the Thames, 345-6, 692-9;
storms Cassivellaunus’s stronghold, 347, 699-702;
results of his invasions, 355-72;
his reform of the calendar, 707-26.
_See_ Table of Contents.
‘Caesar’s Camp’ (Folkestone), 134 n. 12.
Cairns, 67.
_See_ Chambered barrows, Horned cairns, Round barrows.
Caithness, chambered cairns of, 102, 106;
brochs, 262;
skulls, 394.
Calais, not Portus Itius, 306, 552, 565;
coast between, and Somme, 517-8.
Caledonians, 361 note, 416-8.
Calendar, of Coligny, 296;
Julian, 707-26.
Caligula, 369.
Callernish, 207, 209, 215 n. 3.
Calleva, 255, 366;
inscription found at, 451-2.
Calver, E. K., 607-10.
Cambrian Archaeological Association, 5.
Cambridgeshire, 36, 194 n. 3.
Camden, W., 2, 12, 213, 345.
Camps, 7, 11, 156-7.
_See_ Hill-forts.
Camulodunum, 255, 278, 299 n. 5, 359, 362.
Camulogenus, 342.
Camulus, 278, 454 n. 4.
Canche, 306, 324, 327, 518, 586.
Cann, 267 n. 2.
Cannibalism, 113-4, 268 n. 1.
Canoes, 61.
Canterbury, 253, 336-7, 339, 344, 660, 682-5.
Cantii, 255, 366, 454.
Cantium, 663.
Cantonal organization, 233 note.
Caractacus.
_See_ Caratacus.
Caratacus, 370-1.
Cardiganshire, 139.
Carl’s Wark, 135.
Carn Brea, 134, 258.
Carnarvonshire, 66 n. 3, 184, 194 n. 3, 205, 295 n. 1.
Carse of Stirling, 62.
Cartailhac, E., 9.
Carthaginians, Atlantic trade of, 220, 491, 496 n. 5, 512;
trade inherited by Veneti, 303.
Cartismandua, 269.
Cassi, 346, 700-1.
Cassiobury, 701.
Cassiterides, 483-98, 514.
_Cassiteros_, 494.
Cassivellaunus, his opposition to Trinovantes, 300, 327;
elected commander-in-chief against Caesar, 339;
his military operations, 341-7, 669;
sues for peace, 349-50, 670-1;
distance of his country from the sea, 692-3, 704;
site of his stronghold, 699-702.
See also 731-3.
Castle Law, 258-9.
Cattedown Cave, 380, 455.
Catti, 360.
Cattle, 57 n. 2, 88, 151, 354, 357, 406.
Catuvellauni, 232, 235, 299 n. 5, 354, 361-2, 701, 704;
oppose Trinovantes, 300, 309;
Commius tries to check, 365;
their territory, 454.
Cauldrons, 158.
Cavalry, Gallic, raised by Caesar, 301, 313, 331;
Caesar feels want of, in 55 B.C., 317, 320, 324, 635-6;
operations of British, in 55 B.C., 316, 321;
in 54 B.C., 336, 339-40, 342-3;
Caesar’s, fail to reach Britain in 55 B.C., 318-9;
service rendered by Commius’s, 323;
operations of Caesar’s, in 54 B.C., 335-7, 339-46, 616, 686-91, 698-9;
how British fought in conjunction with chariots, 674, 676-7, 688-91;
British depicted on coins, 689.
_See_ Transports.
‘Cave-men,’ 22, 38, 383-5.
Caversham, 32.
Caves, exploration of, 4-5;
frescoes in Pyrenaean, 35 n. 3;
implements found in, 36, 42;
inhabited in Palaeolithic Age, 37, 46;
implements compared with those of drift, 38-40, 383-5;
neolithic relics in, 67;
inhabited and used as sepulchres in Neolithic Age, 100;
and in Bronze Age, 178;
still inhabited in Early Iron Age, 261;
neolithic skeletons found in, 393-6.
_See_ Brixham, Creswell Crags, Heathery Burn, Kent’s Cavern, Rains
Cave, &c.
Cavities under barrows, 202 n. 3.
Cefn, 395.
Celtac, 430, 436, 438-9, 444.
Celtic languages, 8, 127-8, 433.
_See_ Brythonic, Goidelic.
‘Celticans,’ 413, 445.
Celts, not identical with earlier round-headed invaders, 127-8, 428-40;
date of their invasion of Britain, 128, 229, 233-4, 432-3, 445-52, 455;
ethnology of, 433-40, 444-54, 456-8.
_See_ Brythons, Goidels, ‘P’ Celts, ‘Q’ Celts.
Celts, stone, 69, 75-7;
bronze, 140-1, 144;
socketed, 126, 141, 144, 148-9;
celts in interments, 181 n. 3, 183;
as amulets, 205;
bronze socketed celt associated with silver coins, 267 n. 2.
Cemeteries, of Bronze Age, 178-9;
of Early Iron Age, 287-8.
_See_ ‘Danes’ Graves’, Scorborough Park.
Cenimagni, 346-7, 700.
Cenotaphs, 180-1, 212.
Cephalic index, 396-8.
Cereals, 64, 89, 407.
_See_ Corn.
Cerne Giant, 206 n. 5.
Cernunnos, 282 n. 2, 284.
Chalk, used for manure, 253, 515-7;
chalk downs, prehistoric settlements on, 68, 130;
cultivated, 90, 660 n. 4.
Chambered barrows, compared with dolmens, 65-6;
chambered long barrows, 101-6, 173-4;
round, 101-2, 107-8, 173;
chambered cairns of South-Western Scotland, 108-9;
interments in chambers, 112, 173.
_See_ Bleasdale, Horned cairns, Ronsay, Wor Barrow.
Chambers, subterranean, 87.
Chancelade, 35, 382, 385 n. 1, 455.
Chanctonbury Rings, 97.
Channel, English, 16, 19 n. 1, 32, 300, 303, 311, 334, 372.
Channel Islands, 19, 102, 194, 196, 222, 501.
Chariots, 312, 328;
oppose Caesar’s landing, 316, 597, 642-3;
operations of, in 54 B.C., 339-45, 352-3, 689-92, 699;
general account of, 674-7.
Chellean implements, 39 n. 1, 41 n. 3.
Cherbury, 138.
Cheshire, 16, 208, 235, 252, 279.
Chevron, 149, 162, 197-9, 236.
Chiefs, barrows erected in honour of, 100-1, 114, 117, 177-9.
_See_ Kings.
Chifflet, J., 2.
Chilham, 682-3.
Chinese may have been the first to use bronze, 125.
Chipping of tools, 44, 73-5.
Chisels, stone, 75, 77;
bronze, 140-1, 144.
Chishull, E., 363.
Christison, J., 7, 87 n. 1, 259 n. 3.
Chronology, palaeolithic, 31-2;
neolithic, 32 n. 1, 62-4;
of the Bronze Age, 126-7, 432-3;
of round barrows, 181-4, 476 n. 1;
of Caesar’s invasions of Britain, 706-7, 726-35.
_See_ Calendar.
Chrysoister, 262 note.
Church, British, 372.
Church Hole, 45 note.
_Churingas_, 199.
Cicero, M. Tullius,
his friendship with Diviciacus, 275;
on Deiotarus, 297;
his correspondence about Caesar’s invasions of Britain, 327-9, 333,
335, 348-50, 707, 728, 731-5;
in relation to credibility of Caesar’s narrative, 666-8.
Cicero, Quintus, 266;
with Caesar in Britain, 328-9;
his correspondence, 333, 335, 667-8, 728, 731, 734-5.
_Cicht_, 414.
Cinerary urns, 180, 182 n. 5, 185-7, 190, 193-4, 288, 467;
Late Celtic, 242-3, 288.
Cingetorix, 330, 370.
Circles, concentric, on shields, 146;
on bronze celts and spear-heads, 149;
on an incense cup, 183;
symbolical of sun-worship, 198-200, 206-7;
on cists and rocks, 205-6;
concentric stone circles, 177;
megalithic, 209.
Cisalpine Gaul, 326-7, 726-7.
Cissbury, 7;
flint mines, 69, 71;
date of fort, 98;
entrances, 138 n. 1;
fort described, 256;
implements of palaeolithic type at, 387.
Cists, 8, 173, 177, 179, 186-7, 205.
Civil jurisdiction exercised by Druids, 293-4.
_Civitates_, 269.
Clans, 52-5, 118, 128, 269, 271.
_See_ Intertribal war.
_Classis Britannica_, 545, 589 n. 1, 664.
Claudius Caesar, 239, 249, 357-9, 371, 589.
Claverdon, 260 n. 1.
Cleveland, 184-6.
‘Cliff-castles,’ 135, 136 n. 1.
Climate in Palaeolithic Age, 25 n. 3.
Clothing, of palaeolithic man, 47;
neolithic, 91;
in Bronze Age, 156, 160-2;
corpses interred in clothes, 189;
Late Celtic clothing, 264-5.
Clwyd, Vale of, 23.
Clyde, 62.
Coast, between Calais and the Somme, 517-8;
of Kent in Caesar’s time, 518-52.
Cock-fighting, 264.
Coffey, G., 169 n. 2, 170 n. 1, 172 n. 2, 198 n. 3.
Coffins, 159 n. 1, 173.
Coins, British, 5, 11;
Dumnonii had none, 222, 501;
probably first struck in Britain by Belgae, 233-4;
general account of British, 248-50;
inscribed, show knowledge of writing, 266;
religious significance of, 273;
as materials for British history, 357-70;
found near Sandown Castle and at Stonar, 520-1;
and at Deal, 524;
chariots depicted on, 675;
also mounted warriors, 689.
Colchester, 255;
inscription, 415.
_See_ Camulodunum.
Coles, F. T., 7, 476.
Coligny, calendar of, 296.
Collignon, R., 377, 399-400, 431 n. 1, 439 n. 1.
Columba, 421.
_Commentaries_, Caesar’s, 2, 10, 267, 298 n. 6, 339, 342, 348, 659;
credibility of, 666-72;
certain passages in, discussed:--
_quod inde ... traiectus_ (iv, 31, § 3), 554, 571;
_tertia fere vigilia_ (iv, 21, § 3), 615;
_montibus angustis_ (iv, 23, § 3), 597 n. 2, 613-4, 641-2, 652;
_ad horam nonam ... exspectavit_ (iv, 23, § 4), 597, 648-9;
_aliae ad inferiorem ... deicerentur_ (iv, 28, § 2), 636;
_quo ex portu ... continenti_ (v, 2, § 3), 558, 562, 619;
_sub sinistra conspexit_ (v, 8, § 2), 575-7, 616, 643, 655;
_aestus commutationem secutus_ (v, 8, § 3), 657;
_summa tranquillitate_ (v, 23, § 6), 617-9.
_See_ Mollis.
Commius, opposes Cassivellaunus, 300;
sent by Caesar to Britain, 309, 597;
arrested, 318;
service performed by his cavalry, 323;
accompanies Caesar to Britain (54 B.C.), 333;
negotiates for Cassivellaunus, 349, 670-1;
his dynasty, 361;
rebels against Caesar, 364-5;
his conquests in Britain, 365-6, 371.
Comparative method, 8.
Concubines, 270 n. 2.
‘Continuance Theory,’ 295.
Contorted drift, 25, 39, 60.
Contracted position, 110-1, 187, 287.
Cooking, 46, 89, 155.
Copper Age, 121-2, 739;
mining, 139, 251;
metallurgy, 139-40;
coins, 249, 358, 362;
imported into Britain (?), 252 n. 1;
stain of, at Stonehenge, 470.
Coracles, 247.
Coral, 237, 240, 265, 739.
Corbilo, 221, 500-1, 507-8, 512.
Cores, 149.
Corinium, 255.
Coritani, 235, 390-1, 452.
Corn, not grown in Palaeolithic Age, 46;
ear of, sculptured in cave at Lourdes, 57;
grown on chalk downs, 90, 660 n. 4;
cultivated in Bronze Age, 151-2, 224;
how threshed, 224;
cultivated largely in Early Iron Age, 253-4, 260;
remains of, at Hunsbury, 267;
reaped by 7th legion, 321;
supplied by Trinovantes, 346;
exported in Strabo’s time, 357.
Cornavii, 235.
Cornwall, 20, 101-2, 115 n. 8, 130, 134, 140, 152, 154, 174, 205, 239,
250, 359-60;
identified with Cassiterides, 493, 497;
cairns, 107 n. 8, 108;
hill-forts, 135;
mining, 139, 249, 502-3 n. 8, 509-11;
huts, 153-5, 261;
poor in relics, 168, 200;
interments, 184;
peculiar pottery, 195 note;
megalithic monuments, 208, 209 note, 211 n. 1;
trade, 218, 501-2, 504-7, 509-11.
_Corus_, 555 n. 2.
Cosmas Indicopleustes, 226.
Côte-d’Or, 436.
Cotentin, 304.
Cotswold Hills, 176, 210.
Councils, 270, 330, 332.
_Couvade_, 94-5, 407 n. 6.
Coway Stakes, 693-7.
Cowlam, 183 n. 6, 231.
Cow’s tooth, 203.
Cranborne Chase, 103 n. 2, 105, 138, 175 n. 4, 177 n. 2, 179, 201
note, 267.
_See_ Bronze Age, Handley Down, Handley Hill Camp, Martin Down Camp,
Rushmore, South Lodge Camp, Wor Barrow, Woodcuts.
Cranbrook Castle, 135 note.
Cranial forms, 378.
Craniology, 3.
_See_ Cephalic index, Cranial forms, Ethnology.
Crannogs, 263 n. 2, 463.
Crassus (the triumvir), 334.
Crassus, Publius (consul of 95 B.C.), 494.
Crassus, Publius (son of the triumvir), 303-4, 485, 488-9, 493-7.
Crayford, 42, 44.
Credibility of Caesar’s narrative, 349 n. 3, 666-72.
Cremation in Neolithic Age, 110, 401;
in Bronze Age, 184-90, 229;
religious significance of, different from that of inhumation (?)
204-5, 465-6;
practised by Belgae, 234 n. 1, 286;
Sergi’s views on, 400-1.
Creswell Crags, 35, 37, 39, 47, 382.
_See_ Church Hole, Robin Hood Cave.
Crete, 5.
Criminal jurisdiction, 293-4.
Crinan, 177 n. 4.
Crocodiles in London Clay, 14.
Croham Hurst, 85.
Croll, James, 31.
Cro-Magnon, 382, 397 n. 8.
Cromer, 23.
Cromlechs, 65 n. 3.
Croydon, 85, 87.
Cruthni, 411-2, 418-9.
Cumberland, 101, 194 n. 3, 205, 247 n. 3.
Cumbrian mountains, 14.
Cunnington, W., 3, 186 n. 4, 188 n. 6, 469 n. 7, 480.
Cunobeline, 361-3, 366, 368-70, 372.
Cup-markings, 205-6.
Currency-bars, 250-1.
Curvilinear decoration, 236-9.
Cyprus, 198 n. 3.
Daggers, 82, 131, 182;
flint, 80;
bone, 82;
bronze, 131, 140, 145, 147;
decoration of, 149;
with handles of amber and ivory, 162;
in interments, 182, 201;
carved dagger-handles (?) 35;
Late Celtic sheath, 239.
Dalmatia, 367, 442.
Dananns, 391 n. 5.
‘Danes’ Graves,’ 288 n. 1, 435 n. 1, 739.
Danube, 170.
D’Anville, J. B. B., 2, 634.
_See_ _Stadia_.
Darent, 25.
Dartmoor, 6, 96;
hut-circles, 154-6;
kistvaens, 189 n. 1;
stone rows, 208, 212;
‘blue-stones’ fetched from (?), 214;
tin, 503 note.
Darwin, Sir G., 606.
Daventry, 110 n. 12.
David, Félicien, 275.
Davis, J. B., 5, 8, 394.
Dawkins, W. Boyd, 5, 23 n. 7, 40 n. 2, 45 note, 84 n. 2, 125 n. 2,
129 n. 2, 383-90, 400 n. 3, 406-7, 429, 465-6.
_Dea Arduinna_, 272.
_Deae matres_, 283.
Deal, amber found at, 168;
reconnaissance of, by Volusenus, 311;
Caesar’s landing at, 316;
ancient topography of, 519, 521-4;
Caesar drifts to latitude of, 575;
theory that Caesar landed at, in 55 B.C., 604-5, 626-7, 632,
641 n. 1, 644-62, 664-5;
distance between, and Great Stour, 682;
castle, 521-3, 525, 604, 664.
Deer, 68, 88, 91, 113.
Deer-horn implements, 74, 158, 160.
_See_ Picks.
Deiotarus, 297.
Demeter, 210 n. 5.
Denbighshire, 35, 184, 188 n. 2, 194 n. 3.
Dene-holes, 253, 515-7.
Denmark, 66, 77, 89, 105 n. 2, 127, 144, 172, 194.
Derbyshire, 5, 35, 37, 68, 83, 102, 110 n. 5, 129-30, 135, 165, 167,
175-6, 194 n. 3, 208, 235;
chambered cairns of, 108;
poor in ornaments, 169;
interments in, 184, 185 n. 3, 188 n. 2.
Derwent Moor, 108.
Desjardins, A. E. E., 562 n. 2, 573 n. 2, 583, 586, 589-90, 591 n. 1.
Deux-Sèvres, 410-1.
Devonshire, 20, 35, 117, 130, 133, 135, 155, 162, 174, 194 n. 3, 208,
359-60;
cists in, 179;
interments, 184.
Devonshire Association, 6.
Dew-ponds, 138.
Dewlish, 27 n. 5.
Dilston Park, 192 n. 1.
Diodorus Siculus, 1, 111, 219, 223, 265, 294, 358.
Diogenes Laertius, 289, 291 n. 2.
Dion Cassius, 1, 360 n. 4, 628, 630-1, 650-1.
Dis Pater, 281-3, 296.
Disk barrows, 175-6, 183 n. 1, 189, 208;
near Stonehenge, 469;
near Rollright Stones, 470.
Disks, bronze, 158;
gold, 167;
symbolical of sun worship, 207.
Diviciacus, 299-300, 454 n. 4.
Diviciacus (the Druid), 275, 298 n. 6, 332.
Division of labour, 83.
Dobuni, 255, 362, 370.
Dogger Bank, 22.
Dogs, not domesticated in Palaeolithic Age, 46;
used for hunting and eaten in Neolithic Age, 88;
interment of, 114.
Dolmens, 8;
evidence of, as to origin of later neolithic invaders of Britain,
65-7, 402-5.
Dolo, 644 n. 2.
Domestic animals, introduced into Britain by neolithic immigrants, 64,
88-9;
largely eaten in Bronze Age, 151;
bones of, in barrows, 202;
European origin of, 406-7.
Domestication of animals, 55-7.
Domnoveros, 360 n. 2.
Dorchester (Oxfordshire), 246.
Dorsetshire, 27 n. 5, 32 n. 2, 96, 101, 116, 130, 133-4, 151, 156,
160, 162, 177 n. 2, 178, 194 n. 3, 205, 208, 242, 251;
absence of chambered barrows in, 102;
bowl and disk barrows, 175-6;
interments, 184, 187-8, 190, 203;
incense-cups rare, 196.
Dover, 336, 604, 616, 641;
Straits of, in Ice Age, 16, 22;
time of high tide at, on Aug. 26-8, 55 B.C., 609-10;
inscribed tiles found at, 664.
Dover Castle, 32, 311, 315, 530 note, 653.
Dover cliffs, 315, 627, 642;
erosion of, 528-30;
Airy denies that Caesar anchored off, 631-4, 652.
Dover harbour, 310, 314, 530-1, 597 n. 2;
Caesar hoped to land in, 314, 645-6, 651-2.
Downs, The, 526-7, 665 n. 3.
Dowris, 152.
Dress.
_See_ Clothing.
Driffield, 240.
_See_ ‘Danes’ Graves.’
Drinking-cups, 6, 97 n. 2, 109 n. 2, 179, 191-2, 194-5, 288, 443, 467.
Druidesses (?), 296-7.
Druids, opposed to anthropomorphism, 83 n. 3, 286;
dolmens erected by (?), 114-5;
wore ornaments, 163;
may have worshipped in stone circles, 210;
wrote in Greek characters, 265;
political power of, 271, 298 n. 6;
influence on Celtic religion, 276, 298;
general account of, 289-98.
‘Drums,’ 199.
_Dryades_, 297 note.
Dubnoreix, 331, 360 n. 2.
Dubnovellaunus, 363, 366-9.
Duck Marsh, 547-8.
Duelling, 261.
Du Fresne, C., 2.
Dumbuck, 463-4.
Dumnonii, 359 n. 12, 447, 501;
of Scotland, 447-8.
Dumnorix, 269, 331-3, 358, 360 n. 2.
Dumnovellaunus, 360 n. 2.
_See_ Dubnovellaunus.
Dunbuie, 463-4.
Dungeness, 536, 632, 654.
Durham, 101, 130, 133 note, 194 n. 3, 267 n. 1, 359.
Durotriges, 133, 359.
Durovernum, 336.
_See_ Canterbury.
Dwellings, exploration of, needed, 11;
palaeolithic, 46;
neolithic, 84-7;
of Bronze Age, 153-60;
of the rich in Early Iron Age, 254;
of Early Iron Age generally, 256-7, 259-64.
_See_ Beehive huts, Caves, ‘Earth-houses,’ Hut-circles, Hut-clusters,
Lake-dwellings, Mound-dwellings, ‘Picts’ houses,’ Weems.
Dymchurch, 532, 534-6, 538, 551.
Each End, 519.
Early Iron Age, 5, 7, 9, 230-300.
_See_ Iron, ‘Late Celtic’ Period.
Earrings, 165-6.
‘Earth-houses,’ 7. 391.
Earthworks, 7, 11, 98 n. 3, 157 n. 2.
_See_ Camps, Flamborough Head, Hill-forts.
East Ham skull, 395, 397.
East Runton, 23.
East Wear Bay, 310, 532, 635, 646, 650-1.
Eceni, 235.
_See_ Iceni.
Eggardun, 84 n. 2, 96, 153.
Egypt, 9, 82, 122-5, 171 n. 3.
Ehenside Tarn, 76.
Elephant, 23 n. 7, 48, 386 n. 5;
straight-tusked, 37, 40;
_elephas meridionalis_, 27 n. 5.
Elevation of land, in Pleistocene Period, 15-7, 19-22;
in Neolithic Age, 20, 62.
Elginshire, 165, 170 n. 1, 194 n. 3.
Elks, 30, 68.
Elton, 178.
Ely, Isle of, 254.
Emporiae, 248 n. 2.
Enamelling, 237-8, 246, 265.
Eoliths, 25-30, 46;
eolithic man (?), 379-80.
Epaticcus, 361-2.
Epona, 278-9, 284 n. 5.
Eppillus, 365-6, 452 n. 3.
Equinox, 323, 350;
chronological arguments based upon mention of, 709 n. 2, 710-3, 734.
Eratosthenes, 219, 223.
Esk, 134.
Eskimos, 42, 48 n. 1, 102, 388-9.
Essex, 36, 137 n. 4, 235, 242, 253-4, 346, 363 n. 6.
Esus, 276, 278.
Ethnography, 8-9;
ethnographic census, 375 n. 1.
Ethnology, 10, 375-458.
_See_ Celts, ‘Iberian’ race, Long Barrow race, Mediterranean race,
Picts, Pygmies, Round-headed invaders, Skeletons.
Etruria, 158.
Evans, A. J., 5, 9, 171 n. 3, 233, 288, 468-70, 476-8.
Evans, Sir J., 4-5, 7 n. 1, 21 n. 5, 23, 24 note, 26, 28 n. 2, 32 n. 2,
40 n. 2, 59, 74, 126, 232 n. 3, 360, 370 n. 4, 386-8, 432.
Excavation, 6-8, 11, 96, 134 n. 12.
Exogamy, 53.
Extended position, 110 n. 11, 188, 287.
Eyford, 114.
‘Fabricators,’ 74.
Fairlight, 310.
‘Fairy-darts,’ 3.
Falkirk, 62.
Falster, 127, 430, 441.
Fens, 77-8.
Fernacre, 211 n. 1.
Fernworthy. 212 n. 2.
Fetichism, 116.
_Fibulae._
_See_ Brooches.
Fifeshire, 174, 186, 190 n. 9, 194 n. 3.
Finns, 441.
Fir-Bolg, 451 n. 2.
Fire, how produced in prehistoric times, 46, 80;
worshipped, 282, 462.
Fish-hooks, 151.
Fisherton, 84 n. 2.
Five Wells, 108.
Flagon, bronze, 246.
Flakes, flint, 41, 44, 73-4, 79-80, 82;
in interments, 115;
chips in cinerary urns, 204, 288.
Flamborough Head, earthworks near, 157 n. 2, 441.
Flint quarries, 7, 73.
_See_ Cissbury, Grime’s Graves.
Flintshire, 162, 252.
Flower, Sir W., 4.
Folkestone, 531-2, 650, 652;
harbour, 310, 634-5, 645-6;
theory that Caesar landed at, 604.
Folk-lore, 8-10, 94, 375;
of Rollright Stones, 213.
Folkton Wold, 199, 464.
Fontenay, 401.
Food-vessels, 191, 193-4, 196, 467;
food-vessel (?) found in Stonehenge, 467.
Fordwich, 660, 683-4.
Forest Bed, 23.
Forests, submerged, 20, 62-3;
obstruct settlers, 68, 130;
difficulty of clearing, 90-1;
gradually cleared, 151, 253;
worshipped, 272;
Forest of Dean, 251.
_See_ Andred, Wealden Forest.
Forfarshire, 167, 194 n. 3.
Forgers, 358.
Forth, 62.
Fowls, 55, 264.
Fox, bones of, in urn, 203.
France, 9, 28, 35, 47, 56, 63, 65 n. 3, 82, 96, 105 n. 2, 109-10, 113,
115, 119, 141, 144, 151, 168, 171, 205, 211-2, 259.
Franks, Sir A. W., 6.
Frazer, J. G., 58 n. 2, 277, 463.
Frere, John, 3-4.
Friar’s Heel, 214, 472, 474-6.
Funeral feasts, 113-4, 202.
Fyvie, 81.
Gades, 485, 497, 511-2.
Gaelic, 227, 229.
‘Galates,’ 438 n. 3.
Galicia, headlands of, identified with Cassiterides, 489.
Galleys, in war with Veneti, 302-5;
in Caesar’s first invasion of Britain, 313, 316-8;
wrecked, 320.
See also 335, 338, 554-5, 596-9, 662.
_Galli_, senses in which Caesar used the word, 290, 438 n. 3.
Games, 264.
Gard, 200.
Garrowby Hill, 181 n. 1.
Garson, J. G., 8, 379 n. 2, 382 n. 2, 385, 394-6, 408.
Garton-on-the-Wolds, 385 n. 7.
Gaul, 1, 65, 67, 128, 148, 218;
British bronze culture indebted to, 126;
bronze imported from, 144;
trade with, 172 (_see_ Merchants);
Gallic coins in Britain, 250;
how Britons were affected by Caesar’s campaigns in, 300.
Gav’r Inis, 171, 200.
Geese, Britons forbidden to eat, 55;
goose interred in a long barrow, 114.
Geikie, Sir A., 31.
Gelderland, 194.
Geminus, 219, 225.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, 362, 369.
Geologists, 8.
Germanicus, 369.
Germany, 60-1, 66, 68, 105 n. 2, 110, 115, 140, 145, 194, 205, 211;
German influence on British bronze culture, 126;
cavalry, 354, 690.
Gesoriacum, 306, 583-4, 586, 588 n. 1, 589-91.
Glamorganshire, 35, 37, 134, 168, 194 n. 3, 203, 208, 426.
Glass beads, in Bronze Age, 162 n. 1, 167-8, 170, 183;
in Early Iron Age, 241, 357;
in barrows near Stonehenge, 469.
Glastonbury, 7, 241-2, 251, 263-4;
skeletons, 435 n. 1.
Gloucestershire, 8, 92, 101, 106, 110 n. 10, 112, 114, 184, 208, 251.
Gloves, 47, 388.
Glutton, 20, 47.
Goats, 71, 88, 113, 406.
Goidelic Celts, 234, 291, 409-14;
not identical with early round-headed invaders, 195, 428-40;
had they invaded Britain before Caesar’s time? 228-9, 445-52, 455;
religion of, 274, 281;
language, 420-4, 444-53, 455-6, 458;
inscriptions, 446-7, 449, 451-2.
Gold, worn and used for decoration by wealthy in Bronze Age, 131,
162-3, 165;
associated with tin, 139;
sources of, 168, 249;
exported from Ireland, 168;
comparative abundance of relics in Scotland, 168;
and in Wiltshire, 168-70, 469;
ornaments in Scottish cemeteries, 179;
rare in Early Iron Age, 241;
coins, 248-50, 358;
ornaments imported in Strabo’s time, 357.
_Golden Bough_, 10.
Goodwin Sands, 312, 334, 525-8, 655-9.
Gop, 178.
Gouges, stone, 75, 77-8;
bronze, 140-1, 144.
Gower, 107.
Gowland, W., 6, 140 n. 1, 251, 739.
Grannos, 280.
Gravels, 4, 21 n. 5, 25, 30, 36.
_See_ Alderbury, Eoliths, High-level drift, Plateau gravels.
Graves, moundless, 178-9, 208, 232 n. 2, 287.
Gray’s Inn Lane, 4.
Great Orme’s Head, 66 n. 3.
Great Pyramid, 123 n. 1.
Great Stour, Caesar defeats Britons on banks of, 336, 353, 660-2, 664,
678-9, 682-5.
_See_ also 339, 687, Chilham, Fordwich, Sturry, Thanington, Wye.
Greeks, 204, 217-8;
Greek letters, 266.
Greenhill, 186.
Greenland, 17, 94.
Greenwell, W., 5, 26, 103 n. 2, 109 n. 2, 181 n. 3, 184 n. 6, 185 n. 5,
231, 232 n. 2, 409, 434.
Grenelle race, 405, 431 n. 2, 438 n. 3, 443, 455-6, 458.
Grime’s Graves, 69, 471.
Grimspound, 155.
Grimthorpe, 436 note.
Grinding of stone implements, 73.
Grisnez, Cape, 2, 32, 306, 319, 565-6;
erosion of, 528;
identical with Itian promontory (?), 570, 572-4.
Grove Ferry, 684.
Grovehurst, 85.
Guest, E., 11, 565-6, 569, 571-4, 577-8, 605, 694-8, 704.
_Gutuater_, 293 n. 2.
Haddon, A. C., 8, 431 n. 2, 432 n. 5.
Hagbourne Hill, bronze and iron objects associated at, 153 n. 9, 267;
Late Celtic pins, 240.
Halberds, 145.
Halliford, 345, 696, 698.
Hallstatt, 8 note, 124;
glass beads, 168, 241;
bronze objects of Hallstatt period, 182 n. 2;
amber necklaces, 183, 469;
chronology of period, hardly represented in Britain by iron objects,
229, 231;
connexion of Late Celtic culture with, 236.
Hamitic dialects, 67, 405-6.
Ham Marshes, 63, 395.
Hammeldon Down, 162.
Hammersmith, 240.
Hammer-stones, 42, 44, 73-5, 79.
Hammers, stone, 78, 149;
bronze, 149.
Hampshire, 25, 32, 36, 85, 130, 138, 194 n. 3, 232 n. 3, 235, 251,
347, 365.
Hamy, E. T., 9, 385-6, 436.
Handles, of palaeolithic tools, 44;
of neolithic, 76-8;
of bronze celts, 141;
of daggers, 145, 147;
of Late Celtic swords, 238.
Handley Down, 144 n. 10;
moundless interments, 178.
Handley Hill Camp, 156.
Hanging Grimston, 85.
Hangman’s Wood, 515-7.
Hares, Britons forbidden to eat, 55;
used in divination, 297.
Harpoons, 37, 42, 63.
Harrison, B., 25, 28.
Hartland, S., 58 n. 2, 204 note, 416.
Hastings, 82 n. 6, 530.
Hastings (the pirate), 540 note, 638-9.
Hatchets, stone, 69-70, 74-7;
bronze, 144.
Haverfield, F. J., 7, 139 n. 3, 250 n. 8, 254, 298 n. 6, 347 note,
371 n. 3, 422 n. 2, 483, 509-11.
Hawkins, E., 5.
Hayes Common, 85-6.
Hearn, Lafcadio, 275.
Heathery Burn Cave, 157-60;
skeletons, 444;
pottery, 467.
Hebrides, 191, 198, 262.
Heller, H. J., 553, 557 n. 4, 564, 569, 574-8, 592-3, 636, 643 n. 3,
647 n. 1, 648 n. 4.
Helmets, 238.
Helvetii, 300-1, 332, 342, 432, 439.
Hercules, 362, 513 n. 3.
Herefordshire Beacon, 259 n. 3.
Herne Bay, 37.
Herodian, 1, 418-9.
Hertfordshire, 36, 235.
Hervé, G., 9, 400 n. 3, 431 n. 2.
‘Hiatus’ (?), 11, 13, 59-61, 385-90.
Hicks, H., 23.
Highfield, 84 n. 2.
High-level drift, 24, 27, 30-2, 37, 39.
Highlands, Scottish, 14.
Hill-forts, of Neolithic Age, 95-6;
of Bronze Age, 132-9;
of Early Iron Age, 255-9, 337.
Himilco, 218, 490, 512.
Hinduism, 275 note.
Hinks, A., 217 n. 1., 472-3.
Hipparchus, 219.
Hippopotamus, 30, 40 n. 2, 48.
Hissarlik, 191, 198 note, 199-200.
Hitcham, 153.
Hitchin, 20 n. 3.
‘Hoar Rock in the Wood,’ 504.
Hoards, 126, 140, 149-50, 181 n. 3, 252 n. 1;
of gold ornaments, 165.
Hoare, Sir R. C., 3, 113, 159 n. 1, 162, 189-90, 215, 288 n. 1.
Hod Hill, 7, 240, 251, 255, 260.
Holderness, 87, 130, 154, 263.
Holed stones, 8, 115-6, 403;
at Aylesford, 288.
Holland, 119.
Hollingbury, 134.
Holyhead, 154.
Homer, 190, 218.
Homme Mort, 401.
_Homo primigenius_ (?), 34
_Homo sapiens_, 14, 34.
Horace, 84, 367.
Horned cairns, 106-7, 394, 403.
Horses, 47;
semi-domestication of, in Palaeolithic Age, 56;
rare in long barrows, 113 and n. 8;
eaten in Britain, 113, 152;
small size of British, 152, 343, 676;
well-bred, imported by Gauls, 342.
Horse-trappings, 152, 251, 264-5.
Hove, 159 n. 1.
Hoxne, 3, 20 n. 3, 22.
Hudan Fleot, 541, 542 n. 1.
Human sacrifice, in Neolithic Age, 112-3;
in Bronze Age, 203-4;
by Druids, 288, 293, 297-8.
Hünebedden, 403.
Hungary, 122, 126, 170.
Hunsbury, 7, 94 note, 137 n. 4, 238, 253, 259-60, 267.
Hunting, 46, 88, 151.
‘Hurlers, The,’ 481-2.
Hurleyford, 345.
Hurst, 604;
theory that Caesar landed at, 638-9, 646-7;
theory that Caesar landed between, and Kennardington, 639-44.
Hurstbourne, 84 n. 2.
Hut-circles, 6-7, 154-6, 263-4.
Hut-clusters, 262 note.
Huxley, T. H., 8, 34, 377, 381, 396-7, 430.
Hydrography, 10.
Hyena, 30, 37, 40, 48.
Hythe, 310, 532-3, 836-40, 547-9, 604-5;
theory that Caesar landed at, 622-37, 640-2, 650, 652, 655-7, 659-61;
Hythe harbour, useless to Caesar, 310, 632-3;
conformation of, 532, 536, 547-9, 622-4;
as described by Appach, 535 n. 5, 641.
‘Iberian’ race, 65, 398-401, 406-7, 455-6.
Ice Age, 14-25, 30-1.
Iceland, 223, 225.
Iceni, 235, 269, 347, 358, 370.
Icht, 413.
Ictis, 221-3, 246, 413, 499-500, 511;
not Thanet, 500-1;
nor the Isle of Wight, 501-7;
must be identified with St. Michael’s Mount, 502-7.
Ightham, 25.
Ilkley, 207.
Illyricum, 303, 327.
Immortality of the soul, 50, 117, 201-4, 274-6.
Incense-cups, 183, 191, 194, 196, 467, 477.
India, 31, 65, 82, 123, 177, 211.
Indo-European language, 127, 433;
‘Indo-European _p_,’ 410, 450-2.
Indutiomarus, 330, 333, 370, 667.
Infanticide, 128.
Infants, interment of, 128;
cremation of, 190.
Inhumation, in Palaeolithic Age at Mentone, 49, 204, 389, 460;
in Neolithic Age in Britain, 110-2;
in Bronze Age, 173, 184-9;
religious significance of, different from that of cremation (?),
204-5, 465-6;
on Arras Farm, 234 n. 1;
in Early Iron Age, 286-8;
Sergi’s views on, 400.
Inscriptions, 10;
as materials for history of Celtic religion, 273-4, 277-82;
at Colchester, 415-6;
‘Pictish,’ 420-1, 423;
Goidelic, 446-7, 449, 451-2.
Interglacial period (?), 15-6, 18, 20, 23.
Intertribal war, 68, 81, 95, 101, 119, 129, 131-2, 268-9.
Inverness, 17.
Inverness-shire, 102, 115 n. 8, 194 n. 3, 208.
Ipswich, 42.
Ireland, in Ice Age, 16;
dolmens in, 66, 403, 405;
pygmy flints, 82;
chambered cairns, 108;
well-worship, 116;
Copper Age, 122;
spearheads, 148;
cauldrons, 158;
gold, 168;
spiral ornament, 171;
only two drinking-cups found in, 195;
food-vessels and incense-cups frequent in, 196;
disks, 207;
‘bluestones,’ 214;
position of, indicated by Pytheas, 223, 352,
and Caesar, 352;
vitrified forts, 259;
crannogs, 263 n. 2;
cannibalism, 268 n. 1;
skulls of Long Barrow type found in, 398;
‘Pictish succession’ in, 415;
no ‘characteristic’ Round Barrow skulls found in, 432;
Goidelic invaders of, 446, 449;
Irish invaders of Britain, 448;
Ireland colonized by Belgae (?), 451 n. 2.
_See_ Dowris, Lough Crew, New Grange, and 108, 205, 432.
Irish Sea, in Ice Age, 16.
Iron implements not used in British Bronze Age, 123-4;
date of their introduction into Britain, 126, 231-2;
probably introduced by Brythons, 232;
iron pyrites, 46, 80;
mines, 230, 251, 260, 357.
_See_ Axes, Bill-hooks, Currency bars, Hallstatt, Mirrors, Noreia,
Ploughs, Sickles, Swords.
Ischalis, 232 n. 3.
Islay, 108.
Italy, 9, 21, 211;
probably a Copper Age in, 122;
British bronze culture connected with, 126.
Itchen, 32.
Ἴτιον, 556, 570-1, 577 8.
Itius.
_See_ Portus Itius.
Jade, 69 n. 1.
Japan, 66, 478.
Javelin-heads, 80.
Jet, 161, 167.
Jewellery, origin of, 92;
of Bronze Age, 163-70;
sham, 167;
Late Celtic, 241.
Julia, 348.
Julian calendar, 707-26.
Jullian, C., 226 n. 3, 273 n. 1, 277, 278 n. 2, 286 n. 6, 292 note,
298 n. 6.
‘Julliberrie’s Grave,’ 683 n. 6.
Jupiter, 275-6, 279-83, 285.
Kabyles, 416.
Κασσίτερος, 433, 453, 494.
Keiss, 396.
Kellythorpe, 162, 189.
Kennardington, 639-40, 643.
Kent, 5, 30, 33, 36, 67, 96 n. 3, 101, 130, 133, 194 n. 3, 235, 242, 254;
poor in ornaments, 170;
prototype of British coins frequent in, 249;
dene-holes, 253;
survival of old sepulchral rites, 268;
kings of, attack Caesar’s naval camp, 346.
_See_ Aylesford, Caesar, Coast, Commius, Cunobeline, Deal, Dover,
Great Stour, Landing in Britain, North Foreland, South Foreland,
Walmer, &c.
Kent’s Cavern, 4, 37, 42, 244.
Khasis, 214, 478.
Kilmartin, 205.
Kilts, 265.
Kimmeridge shale beads, 92;
cups, 159 n. 1;
bangles, 241.
‘Kimris,’ 438-9.
Kincardineshire, 208-9, 739.
Kings, 269-71;
of Kent, attack Caesar’s naval camp in 54 B.C., 353, 360, 669-70.
Kingsdown, 311, 334, 523, 651, 674.
Kingship, origin of, 58, 100-1, 117.
Kingston-on-Thames, 696-7.
Kingston (on the Little Stour), 679-80.
Kinross-shire, 194 n. 3.
Kirkcudbright, 135.
Kirkwall, 268 n. 1.
Kistvaens, 65 n. 4, 96, 189 n. 1.
Kit’s Coty House, 66 n. 3.
Knives, of flint, 75;
of bronze, 182.
Krapina, 381.
Kymri, 449-51.
Laberius Durus, 340, 683 n. 6.
Labienus, sent to country of Treveri, 304;
punishes Morini, 324, 593;
left in command in Gaul (54 B.C.), 334;
Caesar applies to, for shipwrights, 338;
warns Caesar of danger in Gaul, 349;
builds ships, 350, 584;
orders assassination of Commius, 365.
Lake barrow, 167, 469.
Lake District, 16.
Lake-dwellings, 7;
of Holderness, 87, 153-4;
of Switzerland, 87, 157.
_See_ Barton Mere, Crannogs, Glastonbury, Munro.
Lakes glacial origin of, 15;
worshipped, 116, 272.
La Madelaine, 46, 99, 383.
_Lamiis tribus_, 272.
Lamps, 70, 258.
Lancashire, 82 n. 6, 171, 179, 205, 267.
Lance-heads, 82.
Landing in Britain, place of Caesar’s, 309-12, 315-6, 595-665.
Land’s End, 135;
Pytheas lands near, 221;
skull found near, 396;
Ictis located off, by Müllenhoff, 502 n. 8.
Lang, A., 49 n. 7, 52 n. 6, 53 n. 4, 198 note, 206 n. 4, 463-4.
Langbank, 463-4.
Language, 48;
neolithic, 67, 405-6.
_See_ Brythonic, Celtic, Goidelic, Philology.
Lapps, 102.
Largie, 109 n. 2.
‘Late Celtic’ Period, 5-6;
art, 9, 84 n. 2, 236-46, 372.
_See_ Early Iron Age.
La Tène, cauldrons, 158 n. 2;
culture named after settlement of, 236, 241;
swords, 238;
brooches, 240.
Lathe, 159 n. 1.
_See_ Potter’s wheel.
Latin, known by some of the Britons, 266, 368, 372.
Laugerie Basse, 35, 382.
Lea, 60, 347, 702.
Lead, in bronze, 140, 739;
leaden celts, 148-9, 252;
lead mines, 252.
Leaf-shaped arrow-heads, 80-1;
swords, 146;
spears, 148.
Ledbury, 396-7.
Lee way, 326, 582, 613, 625, 634, 656, 659, 740.
Legions, 301;
10th, 313, 316;
7th, 313, 321, 337, 343, 636, 677.
_Lepidianus tumultus_, 719-21, 725.
Lewes, 7, 256.
_See_ Mount Caburn.
Lewin, T., 533, 535-6, 542, 546-9, 563, 587, 607-11, 622-38, 648,
649 n. 1, 650-9, 701-3.
Lewis, 207-8, 262.
Liane, 306, 314, 324, 331, 571, 594;
ancient depth and extension of estuary, 586-7.
Life, duration of in Neolithic Age, 91;
in Bronze Age, 152-3.
Ligurian coast, 61;
language, 296 n. 4, 408.
Limen, 535, 538-43, 545.
Lincolnshire, 35, 82 n. 6, 130, 194 n. 3;
round barrows in, 187.
Lions, 30, 48.
Littlebourne, 680, 682.
Little Stour, 660, 679-82, 685.
Littleton Drew, 105.
Livy, 285.
Llandebie, 395.
Llandudno, 139.
Llangorse, 263 n. 2.
Loch Etive, 107.
Lockyer, Sir N., 216-7, 472-6, 480-2.
Loire, tin shipped from Ictis to, 221, 223, 246, 500-1, 505-9;
ships built in, and lent by tribes near, for war with Veneti, 302-4;
Strabo on passage from, to Britain, 577.
Lomea, 526.
Londinium, 255;
name of, does not appear on any British coin, 359;
was it pre-Roman? 703-5.
London, palaeolithic implements found in, 39;
topography of, in Caesar’s time, 255;
road from, to Durovernum, 336;
Cassivellaunus’s stronghold wrongly located at, 701-2.
Long, G., 567-9, 571, 577-8, 590-3, 603 note.
Long Barrow race, ethnology of, 64-7, 393-407, 455-6, 458.
Long barrows, 101-3, 173;
orientation of, 103;
construction, 103-5.
_See_ Chambered barrows.
Long Hole Cave, 37.
Lord’s Down, 188-9.
Lorthet, 99.
Los Murciélagos, 100.
Lossio Veda, 415.
Lough Crew, 206.
Lourdes, 57.
Lower Greensand, 26-7.
Lozenge pattern, 197, 198, n. 3, 239.
Lozère, 35.
Lubbock, Sir J., 4.
_See_ Avebury, Lord.
Lucan, 279, 285 n. 8, 355, 628, 630.
Lucretius, 50, 124 n. 5.
Lug, 277.
Lugotorix, 348.
Lugudunum, 277, 283.
Lunettes, 165.
Lutcombe Castle, 134.
Lyall, Sir A., 10, 204 note, 275, 277
Lydd, 535, 536 n. 1, 538, 543.
Lydney, 280-1.
Lyell, Sir C., 4, 45, 223.
Lympne, 309-10, 532-3, 538-45, 547, 551-2;
theory that Caesar landed at, 622-37, 642, 650-2, 656.
_Mabinogion_, 274.
Mabon.
_See_ Maponus.
Macbain, A., 420-3.
MacEnery, J., 4.
Magi, 297 n. 3.
Magic, 47-8, 57-8, 92 n. 6, 117;
connexion of, with religion, 58, 461-2.
Maiden Bower Camp, 97.
Maiden Castle, 134, 137.
Mainland, 226.
Malden, H. E., 539 n. 7, 556, 607, 615 n. 1, 619-20, 638-9, 646-7.
Malvern Hills, 68.
Mammoth, 4, 21, 30, 35, 40;
teeth of, found _in situ_ in peat, 386 n. 5.
Man, Isle of, 180, 205.
_See_ _Monapia_.
Mandubracius, 327, 333, 339, 361, 700.
Manonvrier, 9, 379 n. 2.
Μάντεις, 297 note.
Mantes, 29.
Maoris, 77.
Maponus, 280.
Mark Antony, 365.
Marliano, R. de, 2.
Marlborough bucket, 237, 246.
Marne, cremation in, in Neolithic Age, 110 n. 1;
‘owl-heads’, 200;
Caesar builds ships on river (?), 327;
skeletons of Early Iron Age, 436;
chariot-burials, 676.
Marriage, 128, 269-70.
Marrow, 46-7.
Mars, 275, 277-9, 282-3.
Marshes (?) near Caesar’s landing-place, 628, 630-2, 653-4.
Martial, 368.
Martin Down Camp, 156-7, 467.
Mas d’Azil, 48, 49 n. 7, 61;
painted pebbles, 99, 263, 464.
Massilia, British trade with, 172, 218, 499-501, 507-8;
Pytheas calculates latitude of, 219;
date of foundation, 511;
Massilians introduce coins into Gaul, 248;
import tin from Spain (?), 495-6.
Matlock, 252.
Matriarchy, 52 n. 6, 94-5, 351;
among the Picts, 414-7.
Mediterranean, 200, 218, 231, 307, 326;
‘Mediterranean race,’ 65, 398, 400-1, 406-7, 455.
Mêdûm, 125.
Medway, 25;
crossed by Caesar, 344.
Megalithic monuments, 5-6, 177.
_See_ Menhirs, Stone circles, Stone rows.
Menapii, 302, 314, 324.
Mendip Hills, 252.
Menhirs, 114, 208, 285.
Mentone, 34, 49, 204, 382.
Merchants, of Gaul, 1, 307-8, 310, 331.
Mercury, 274, 277-8, 282-3, 285.
Merionethshire, 171, 184, 205, 242.
‘Mesolithic’ implements, 59, 387, 388 n. 1.
Mesopotamia, 122, 125 n. 1.
Metallurgy, 121, 139-40.
Metempsychosis, 293, 295-6.
Mexico, 125.
Mice, bones of, in urn, 203.
Mictis, 500.
_See_ Ictis.
Midacritus, 485, 514.
Middlesex, 36, 235.
Midlands, 14, 16.
Midnight sun, 225-6.
Midsummer festivals, 280, 475.
Military history, 10, 352, 595-6.
Millfield, 85.
Minerva, 275, 280-2.
Mining, of flint, 69-71;
of copper, 139 n. 1, 502-3 n. 8;
of iron, 231, 251;
of lead, 252.
_See_ Tin.
Mirrors, 239-40, 264.
Mistletoe, 298.
Mitchell, Sir A., 6, 203 n. 4, 248.
Moel Tryfaen, 17 note.
Mold, 162.
Mole, bones of, in urn, 203.
_Mollis_ (B. G., v, 9, § 1), 628-30.
Mommsen, Th., 355-6, 715 n. 6.
_Monapia_, 450-1.
Monarchy.
_See_ Kings.
Mongoloid tribes, 51.
Monmouthshire, 194 n. 3, 360.
Montelius, O., 9, 123 n. 1, 402, 432, 476 n. 1.
Monzie, 153.
Moon, worshipped, 116, 282;
influence of, on tides, announced by Pytheas and Posidonius, 219,
319, 336;
year computed by revolutions of, in ancient calendars, 296, 475, 707;
full moon of Aug. 31, 55 B.C., 319, 600-3;
exact time of, 610, 665-6;
new moon of Jan. 2, 45 B.C., 722 n. 2;
Caesar sailed for Britain in 54 B.C. about day of new moon, 728-9.
Moravia, skeletons found at, 34, 381;
interment practised in, in Palaeolithic Age, 49.
Morayshire, 165.
Morbihan, 110 n. 1, 205, 302-4.
Moredun, 435 n. 1.
Morini, 133, 302;
Caesar’s campaign against, 305-6;
envoys from, proffer submission, 133, 312;
Cotta, 314;
attack Romans, punished, 324, 593-4;
shortest passage to Britain from their country, 554, 571, 596, 619;
Caesar sails from their country, 558-63;
Strabo on passage to Britain from, 555-6, 577-9;
_portus Morinorum Britannicus_, 589;
induced by Britons to mediate with Caesar (?), 672.
Mortars, 79.
Mortillet, G. de, 38, 39 n. 1.
Mortimer, J. R., 5, 101 n. 3, 157 n. 2, 174 n. 1, 177 n. 6, 181 n. 1,
186 n. 4, 195 n. 5, 197 n. 1, 393 n. 4, 425 n. 4.
Moulds, 148-9.
‘Mound dwellings,’ 390-2.
Mountains worshipped, 272.
Mount Caburn, 256.
Mountfield, 165.
Mousterian implements, 40-1, 384.
Moustier, Le, cave of, 40.
_Muir n’ Icht_, 572.
Müller, S., 9, 402.
Mullers, 79, 90.
Munro, R., 107 n. 2, 263 n. 2, 463-5.
Muskham, 396-7.
Mycenaeans, 204.
Myres, J. L., 9, 378 n. 6, 402.
Napoleon III, 602 n. 5, 603.
Narbo, trade with, 499-500, 508.
Naval camp, constructed by Caesar in 54 B.C., 338, 686-7;
attacked by Kentish kings, 346-8, 661;
Caesar’s unexplained visit to, 348-9, 669, 672, 731-3;
site of, 673-4.
Neanderthal skull, 33-4, 380-2;
race, 385, 397, 455.
Necklaces, 47;
amber, 163, 167, 169;
jet, 167.
Needles, of bone, 37, 42.
Needles, The, 32.
Neolithic Age, 11, 62-120;
early immigrants of British, 62-3;
British civilization originated in, 63-4;
later invaders of, 64-7;
ethnology of inhabitants, 64-7, 393-409;
settlements, 67-9;
implements, 71-83;
specialization of industries, 83;
implements used after introduction of bronze, 132.
_See_, Dwellings, Agriculture, Clothing,
Cookery, Hill-forts, Religion, Transition, &c.
Nervii, 330, 342, 352, 734.
Nether Swell, 105.
New Grange, 170, 200, 478.
Nicholson, E. W. B., 410-1, 419-23, 449-53.
Nights, shortness of, 225-6, 351.
Nile, 30.
Nilsson, S., 102, 479.
Nobles, 271.
Nodons, 281.
Noreia, 231.
Norfolk, 18-20, 36, 85, 162, 194 n. 3, 253, 263 n. 2, 347.
Normanton, 162.
North Bavant, 97.
North Downs, 26, 662.
North Foreland, 309, 575-7, 657 n. 3.
North Sea, 14.
Northamptonshire, 36, 110 n. 11, 137 n. 4, 238, 251, 361.
Northumberland, 8, 133 n. 1, 154, 161, 167, 171, 179, 194 n. 3, 205,
208, 359;
hut-circles, 154-5;
cremation, 184;
drinking-cups, 192.
Norway, 126.
_See_ Scandinavia.
Novantae, 447-8.
_Nundinae_, 713 ff.
Oban, 62, 394.
Oestrymnides, 491.
Offa’s Dyke, 260 n. 1.
Oldbury, 46, 134.
Old Sarum, 259 n. 3, 481.
Ons, 483 n. 3, 487-8, 497.
Ordovices, 233 note.
Orientation of long barrows and chambered cairns, 103;
of skeletons in round barrows, 188;
of stone circles, 210-1, 481-2;
of Stonehenge, 216-7, 472-6, 480-1;
of skeletons in interments of Early Iron Age, 287-8, 739.
_See_ Hurlers.
Orkney, 87 n. 1, 97 n. 2, 109, 198, 208;
chambered cairns in, 102, 408;
holed stones, 115 n. 8;
amber necklace, 169;
barrows, 175;
brochs, 262.
_See_ Ronsay, Stromness, Unstan.
Ormiegill, 106.
Ornament, on pottery, origin of, 89, 198 n. 3;
on bronze weapons, 149;
on pottery of the Bronze Age, 197-200;
curvilinear, 236-9.
Ornaments, 92.
_See_ Jewellery.
Ortels, A., 2.
Osismii, 221.
Οὐάτεις, 297 note.
Ouse, 48.
Oval barrows, 105 n. 2, 108.
Oxfordshire, 36, 84 n. 2, 101, 183 n. 1, 194 n. 3, 208, 235, 239-40,
246, 248 n. 2.
‘P’ Celts, 227-8, 409-10.
Palaeolithic Age, 4, 13-61;
chronology of, 8, 31-2;
relation of palaeolithic man to Ice Age, 22-5;
environment of palaeolithic man in Britain, 30-1;
whence did he come?, 30-1;
skeletons, 33-5, 380-3;
races, 34-5, 383-5;
artists, 35;
range of hunters in Britain, 35-6;
implements, 3-4, 24, 38-42;
where implements have been found, 36-7;
‘Palaeolithic Floor,’ 39;
workshops, 42-4;
culture of inhabitants in Britain, 45-9;
religion, 49-51;
did palaeolithic man leave descendants in Britain?, 59-61, 385-90.
Palestine, 30.
Palms in London Clay, 14.
Palstaves, 141, 144;
of Scandinavia, 172.
Papa Westray, Holm of, 102.
Paris, altars of, 276, 279 note.
Parisi, 235, 360 n. 2, 450-1.
Park Cwm, 107.
Pasturage, 88, 150-1.
Paviland Cave, 168, 397 n. 8.
Peanfahel, 421-2.
Pebbles, painted, 49;
in brochs, 262, 464.
Peebles-shire, 257 n. 5.
_Peik-_, 414.
Pengelly, W., 223.
Pennine Range, 68.
Pennocrucium, 450.
Pentagram, 295.
Pentland Firth, 224.
Pen-y-Gaer, 257.
Peristaliths, 105, 208 n. 2.
Perthes, B. de, 4.
Perthi-Chwareu, 55, 395.
Perthshire, 153, 194 n. 3, 208, 361 note.
Peru, 125.
Pestles, 75.
Petrie, W. Flinders, 9, 111 n. 3, 402, 479.
Pevensey, 558;
theory that Caesar landed at, 604-5, 611-21.
Peytrel, gold, 131, 163.
Philip of Macedon, 248.
Philology, 8;
as an aid to ethnological inquiry, 229, 375-6;
Celtic philologists differ on fundamentals, 453.
Phoenicians, 172, 219 n. 4, 221, 479, 489-91, 493-5. 497-8. 511-4.
_See_ Cassiterides, Tin.
Phrygians, 514.
Picks, deer-horn, 69, 71;
at Stonehenge, 215, 470-1.
_Pict_ (the name), 412-4, 419.
Pictones, 419.
Picts, 351, 391 n. 5;
the ‘Pictish question’, 409-24, 456;
Pictish inscriptions, 420-3.
‘Picts’ houses,’ 102 n. 4, 261, 391.
Piette, E., 9, 99.
Pigs, 88, 407;
interment of, in barrows, 203.
Pilgrim’s Way, 247, 256, 337.
Pins, of Bronze Age, 161;
Late Celtic, 240.
Pit-dwellings, 84-7, 153, 261.
Pits, in Hunsbury, Mount Caburn, and Worlebury forts, 256, 260.
Pitt-Rivers, A., 6-7, 71, 84 n. 2, 97 n. 7, 123 note, 136, 138,
144 n. 10, 175 n. 4, 176 n. 1, 179, 197, 201 note, 202 n. 3,
212, 215, 256-7, 267, 441.
Placard Cave, 99.
Placentia, 329.
Plas Newydd, 107.
Plateau gravels, 25-8, 36.
Pleistocene Period, 4, 11, 14, 27.
_See_ Ice Age.
Pliny, 219, 224, 296, 592-3.
Ploughs, 152 n. 2, 253.
Plutarch, 628, 630-1.
Plymouth, 33.
_See_ Cattedown Cave.
Polished stone implements, 73.
Polyandry, 351, 414-7.
Polybius, 219-20, 226 n. 3, 285.
Polytheism, 51, 276, 282.
Pomponius Mela, 1, 295 n. 1.
Pont Newydd, 40 n. 2.
Port Erin, 180.
Portsdown Hill, 20.
Portugal, 194, 263 n. 2;
Portuguese neolithic chambers, 87.
_See_ Los Murciélagos.
Portus Itius, Caesar sails from, to Britain, 306-7, 312, 327, 330;
dispatch vessels ply between, and Britain, 348;
question of its site, 552-95.
_See_ Ambleteuse, Boulogne, Calais, Somme, Wissant.
Portus Lemanis, 533, 538-41, 543-9, 551-2, 622.
Portus Ritupis, 519.
Posidonius, on tides, 219 n. 4, 319;
on Gallic banquets, 261;
on tin trade, 484, 499;
no evidence that he visited Britain, 499 n. 2.
Potter’s wheel, 191, 242.
Pottery, not made in Palaeolithic Age, 46;
at Hurstbourne and Highfield, 84 n. 2;
neolithic, 89, 96-7, 108, 109 n. 2;
domestic, of Bronze Age, 159, 467;
of Early Iron Age, 244;
sepulchral, of Bronze Age, 191-9, 467;
Late Celtic pottery, 242-4, 288;
‘Samian,’ 372;
potsherds in barrows, 113-4, 203-4;
at Stonehenge, 469 n. 7.
_See_ Cinerary urns, Drinking-cups, Food-vessels, Incense-cups.
Prah Sands, 36 note.
Prasutagus, 358;
the name, 450, 452.
Prayer, 117, 290, 297.
Prehistoric ages, indefiniteness of, 72.
Prehistoric Britain, how our knowledge of it has been obtained, 1-12.
Prehistoric Room (British Museum), 9, 70, 217 n. 1.
Prestwich, Sir J., 4, 23, 26-7.
_Pretani_, 411-3, 459.
Pretanic island, 227-8, 411-3, 459.
Πρετανικαὶ νῆσοι, 411, 459-61.
Promontory, rounded by Caesar in 55 B.C., 600, 650.
Property, private, in land, 252;
British women might own property, 269-70.
_Prydein_, 411, 413, 418-9.
Ptolemy, 235, 255, 422-3.
Puttenham, 137.
Pygmies, 390-3.
Pygmy flints, 82-3.
Pyrenees, palaeolithic artists of, 35 n. 3;
cave-dwellers, 47;
pottery of dolmens, 109;
misplaced by Strabo, 488.
Pythagoras, 294-5.
Pytheas, 152;
his voyage, 217-26;
his scientific and geographical work, 218-9, 221, 223, 351-2;
an authority on British ethnology, 227-9, 411-2, 445-6, 459;
discredited in Caesar’s time, 307;
on tides, 219, 319;
misunderstood by Professor Ridgeway, 495;
Diodorus Siculus ultimately derived description of Ictis from, 499.
_See_ Ictis, Moon, Thule.
‘Q’ Celts, 227-8, 409-10.
_Qicti_, 414.
Qrtanic, 228.
_Qrtanoi_, 412, 452, 459.
Quaternary Period, 14.
Quatrefages, A. de, 9, 385.
Querns, 253, 262, 264, 361 note.
Quiberon Bay, 304.
Quintus Cicero.
_See_ Cicero.
Rains Cave, 178.
Raised beach, 62.
Ramsgate, 519, 575, 577.
Ranke, J., 9, 439-40.
Rapier-shaped swords, 147.
Razors, 158, 160.
Read, C. H., 7, 134 n. 12, 182 n. 5, 217 n. 1, 430 note, 431, 505-6.
Reculver, 36-7, 336.
Red hair, 440.
Regni, 366, 617.
Reid, C., 19, 23, 27, 28 n. 2, 36 n. 1, 40 n. 2, 61 n. 3, 222, 503-7.
Reinach, S., 9, 47, 57 n. 5, 83 n. 3, 121 n. 1, 125 n. 4, 171 n. 3,
201 n. 3, 210, 277, 279, 292 note, 405 n. 7, 406 n. 6, 461-2,
493-4, 513-4.
Reindeer, 40, 68.
Religion, 10;
may have been a motive of palaeolithic art, 48;
and of geometrical decoration, 199 note;
religion of palaeolithic man, 49-51;
of neolithic man, 114-8;
in Bronze Age, 200-7;
Celtic, 271-90, 297-8;
the birthday of religion, 461-3.
_See_ Altars, Animism, Anthropomorphism, ‘Continuance theory,’
Druidism, Magic, Metempsychosis, Retribution, Sun worship,
Temples, Totemism.
_Reliquiae Diluvianae_, 4.
Remi, 299 n. 5, 454 n. 4.
Retribution, religious doctrine of, 296.
Rhee Wall, 535, 538-40, 542, 548;
built by Romans, 549-52.
Rhine, some of the brachycephalic invaders come from, to Britain, 128,
443;
Strabo on passage from, to Britain, 577.
Rhinoceros, woolly, 20;
big-nosed, 40.
Rhoda, 248 n. 2.
Rhonddha valley, 134.
Rhône, tin exported from Britain to mouth of, 222, 499, 513.
Rhosdigre, 395.
Rhys, Sir J., 228, 290, 291 nn. 1-2, 351, 367 n. 9, 390-2, 405 n. 8,
409-24, 429-30, 433 n. 4, 446-9, 453-4, 459-61, 500, 508-9.
Richborough, 336, 641;
topography, 519-20;
distance from Gesoriacum, 591-2;
theory that Caesar landed at, 604, 663-4;
that he encamped on, 674.
Ridgeway Hill, 203.
Ridgeway, W., 9, 188 n. 2, 204, 221 n. 3, 495, 500-1, 507-9, 569-70,
619-21.
Rillaton, 195 note.
Rings, 165, 167, 183 n. 1.
Rivers, worshipped, 116, 272.
River-bed skulls, 8, 396-7.
River-drift, 22, 36;
‘river-drift men,’ 38, 383-5.
_See_ Caves, High-level drift.
Riviera, 35, 67.
_See_ Baoussé-Roussé, Mentone.
Robertsbridge, 616, 678.
Robin Hood Cave, 35, 45 note.
Rochester, 344.
Rodmarton, 105, 401.
Rolleston, G., 8, 112, 377-8, 406, 425 n. 4, 426, 432, 441, 662 n. 3.
Rollright Stones, 210, 470.
Rome, thanksgiving service at, for Caesar’s first invasion of Britain,
325;
Roman troops _versus_ British chariots, 341-3;
growth of Roman influence in Britain, 356-8, 362-3, 368-72;
flight of British princes to Rome, 366.
Romney, 535, 537-9, 540 n. 2, 543, 547, 550.
Romney Marsh, 310;
ancient geography of, 532-52, 622-3, 638, 640;
Maistre Wace anticipated modern view that Caesar landed on, 644.
Ross-shire, 115 n. 8, 168, 194 n. 3.
Rother, ancient course of, 533, 537-43, 552;
Airy holds that Caesar defeated Britons on in 54 B.C., 616.
Rouge, 80, 264.
Round barrows and cairns, 6, 8, 107-8, 119-20, 173-6;
first erected in Neolithic Age, 119-20, 408-9;
ditches, banks, and stone circles belonging to, 175-7, 207-8;
not erected only in memory of chiefs, 177-9;
cenotaphs, 180-1;
chronology of round barrows, 181-4, 476 n. 1;
round barrows of Early Iron Age, 287.
_See_ Bell barrows, Bowl barrows, Disk barrows.
Round-headed invaders of Britain, 127-8, 424-44;
begin to arrive in Neolithic Age, 119, 127, 408-9;
of ‘characteristic’ type, 425-8, 444, 455;
of short stature (‘Alpine’ type), 426-8, 455;
earlier round-headed invaders not Celtic, 428-40.
Roundway Hill, 109 n. 3.
‘Row Grave’ skulls, 443 n. 5.
Royal Archaeological Institute, 5.
Royal Irish Academy, 5.
Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 5.
Rudstone, 201 n. 3.
Rufina, 368.
Rushmore, round barrows at, 201 note, 202 n. 3, 212 n. 2;
did not contain bronze, 215.
Rutupiae, distance from Gesoriacum, 591;
theory that Caesar landed at, 663-4.
_See_ Richborough.
Rye, 604.
Sabinus, 304, 314, 324.
Sabre-toothed tiger, 37.
Sacrifice, 118.
_See_ Animals, Human sacrifice.
Salisbury Plain, forts on, 133, 137 n. 4;
sarsens, 214;
Salisbury Spire, 217, 481.
Salmon, Ph., 9, 382 n. 2.
Sanson, N., 2.
Sandgate, coast between, and Dover, 531-2;
in connexion with question of Caesar’s landing-place, 627, 638,
640-2, 646-7, 651.
Sandown Castle, 312, 323;
coins found near, 520-1;
coast between, and Walmer Castle, 521-5.
Sandtun, 539, 541, 542 n. 1.
Sandwich, 311, 323;
Caesar lands near in 54 B.C., 335-6, 664-5;
coast between, and Sandown Castle, 519-20;
decay of port, 526;
theory that Caesar landed at, in 55 B.C., 604-5, 660-4.
See also 651, 657-8, 673-4, 683.
Sangatte, 306;
not Caesar’s _ulterior portus_, 581-3, 585, 619, 639, 740-1.
Sarrebourg, altar at, 281.
Sarsens, 214-5, 470-1, 479-80.
Saturn, 282.
Saws, flint, 41, 79, 132;
bronze, 132 n. 2, 140;
many flint saws in one barrow, 201 n. 3;
iron saws, 253.
Scabbards, 147;
Late Celtic, 237, 239.
Scaliger, J., 2.
Scandinavia, 9, 14, 66-7, 77, 102, 115, 168, 185, 195 note, 205-6,
211, 218, 404, 441;
trade, 170-1;
superiority of bronze culture, 172.
_See_ Thule.
Schneider, R., 557, 589.
Scilly Islands, chambered barrows in, 102;
people of, traded by barter, 359;
identified with Cassiterides, 486, 490-3, 497-8, 513.
Scorborough Park, 435 n. 1.
Scotland, in Ice Age, 16, 21, 24;
subsidence of, 62;
dolmens, 66, 403 n. 5;
axe-hammers, 79;
barbed arrow-heads, 81;
chambered cairns, 101, 107;
Bronze Age began late, 132;
lead in bronze, 140;
cauldrons, 158;
ornaments, 163, 165, 167-9;
cairns, 174;
cemeteries, 178-9;
interments, 185, 200;
drinking-cups, 192, 195 note;
stone circles, 207-8, 476;
only one interment of Early Iron Age, 232 n. 2;
Late Celtic pins, 240;
vitrified forts, 259 n. 3;
dwellings and brochs, 261-2;
crannogs, 263 n. 2;
no coins struck in, 359.
_See_ also 109, 129-30, 133, 141, 205, the counties, Ethnology, &c.
Scrapers, palaeolithic, 41;
neolithic, 79;
on Dartmoor, 156.
Sculptor, neolithic, 70.
Sculptured stones, 8, 177, 183, 205-7.
Scythians, use of breeches borrowed from, 265.
Seaford, hill-fort at, 98 note, 136, 137 n. 1.
Secondary interments, 112, 173, 186 n. 4, 188-9.
Segontiaci, 346, 361, 700.
Seine, 327;
Strabo on passage from, to Britain, 577.
Selgovae, 448.
Selsea, 19.
Senotigirnios, 360 n. 2.
Sepulchral pottery, of Bronze Age, 191-9, 467;
Late Celtic, 242-3, 288.
Sergi, G., 9, 377-8, 398, 400-2, 404 n. 6, 406.
Sevenoaks, 25-6, 254.
Sewing, 47.
Shakespeare, 204.
Shakespeare’s Cliff, 310, 532.
Sheep, 88, 151, 357, 406.
Shells, 11, 16-7;
shell-fish eaten, 63, 157.
Shetland, 67, 129 n. 4, 225-6, 262.
_See_ Thule.
Shields, 145-6;
Scandinavian, 172;
Late Celtic, 237, 244-5.
Ships, figured on Scandinavian rocks, 171 n. 3;
British, 246-7;
of the Veneti, 304;
Caesar’s, wrecked, 319-20, 338.
_See_ Galleys, Transports.
Shorncliffe, 532, 536, 622-4, 651.
Shropshire, 208, 359.
Sibbald, Sir R., 4.
Siberia, 60-1.
Sickles, stone, 80;
bronze, 144-5;
iron, 253.
Sidbury Hill, 216, 472-3, 481.
Silbury Hill, 180-1.
Silchester, 255;
inscription found at, 410, 451.
Silura, 359 n. 12.
Silures, 281, 359 n. 12, 398.
Silver coins, 249, 358, 362;
bronze celt found with, 267 n. 2.
_Simulacra_, 285.
Sion type, 429-30.
Siret, MM., 9.
Sitting posture, 188 n. 2.
Skeletons, 3;
palaeolithic, 33-5, 380-3;
neolithic, 64, 393-8;
of late Neolithic Age and Bronze Age, 127-8, 424-8;
of Heathery Burn Cave, 159-60, 444;
of Early Iron Age, 234, 434-6.
Skin, vessels of, 42;
clothing, 47, 91, 156, 161, 267.
Skulls, 11.
_See_ Skeletons.
Sling-bullets, 264, 268.
Slingers, in Caesar’s army, 313, 331, 346, 698.
Small Down Camp, 134.
Small Downs, 526, 665 n. 3.
Smertullos, 279 note.
Smith, C. Roach, 5.
Smith, W. Robertson, 203 n. 4, 252 n. 4, 277.
Smith, Worthington G., 44.
Smyth, Admiral W. H., 608.
Societies, archaeological, formation of, 5.
Society of Antiquaries, 3.
Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 5.
Socketed weapons, 141, 144-5, 148-9;
very rare in interments of Bronze Age, 181-4.
Solent, 32.
Solinus, 359.
Solutré, 39, 41, 383-4.
Solway Moss, 76.
Somaliland, 31;
did Mediterranean race originate in? 406.
Somersetshire, 5, 101, 133-4, 175, 194 n. 3, 208, 232 n. 3, 250-1,
359-60.
Somme, 4, 302-3, 306, 327;
coast between, and Calais, 517-8;
estuary of, not Portus Itius, 558-63, 617, 621.
Somme Bionne, 238, 243.
South Downs, entrenchments on, 96, 98;
settlements on, 130.
South Foreland, 2, 223, 311, 315, 319, 334, 575 n. 4, 582, 627, 642-3,
650, 653, 659, 662-3;
ancient configuration of cliffs, 528-30;
Caesar drifted past, in 54 B.C., 616, 620, 655-6.
South Lodge Camp, 156-7.
Spain, 9, 21, 65, 82, 111, 171, 194, 200, 211, 220-1, 263 n. 2, 327;
Copper Age, 122;
trade, 172;
tin obtained from, 512.
Spear-heads, palaeolithic (?), 41;
neolithic, 80, 147;
bronze spears, 131, 145-8;
socketed spear-heads not found in interments of Bronze Age, 181,
182 nn. 2, 5, 184.
Spettisbury, 251.
Spindle-whorls, 91-2, 156, 160, 264.
Spiral ornament, 170-1, 200, 239.
Spy, 33-4, 381.
St. Albans, 255, 347, 701.
St. David’s Head, fort on, 258.
St. George’s Hill, 694-5.
St. Keverne, 435 n. 1.
St. Leonards, 614, 617.
St. Margaret’s Bay, 311;
movements of shingle at, 523, 529 n. 3.
St. Michael’s Mount, 222-3, 502-3, 506-7, 513.
_See_ Ictis.
St. Valéry-sur-Somme, 243.
_Stadia_, 591-2.
Staffordshire, 82 n. 6, 129, 167, 194 n. 3, 203, 205, 208, 252.
Stalagmite, 59, 222, 386-7, 504.
Standard-bearer of 10th legion, 316-7.
Standards, military, 284.
Standlake, 84 n. 2, 183 n. 1.
Stannon, 211 n. 1.
Stanton Drew, 481-2.
Stars, worshipped, 116.
Statius, 114 n. 8.
Statues, 274, 279, 283-6;
statuettes at Brassempouy, 383 n. 2.
Stature, relative, of sexes in Neolithic Age, 91;
in Bronze Age, 152;
methods of estimating, 378-9, 740.
Steatopygous race, 383 n. 2.
Stokes, Whitley, 421-2, 450, 453.
Stonar, 519-20, 522 n. 6, 524 n. 2.
Stone Ages, 4.
Stone balls, 170.
Stone circles, 2 n. 1, 207-17, 285, 476-9;
within or enclosing barrows, 176-7;
solar temple theory, 210-1, 216-7, 478-9;
astral temples (?), 481-2.
Stonehenge, 5-6;
barrows near, 113-4, 167, 169-70, 174-5;
avenue, 209;
outlying stone, 210;
original form and construction, 213-4, 479-80;
date, 215-7, 468-77;
purpose of builders, 477-81.
_See_ Evans, A. J., Hinks, Lockyer, Webb.
Stone implements, purposely broken in barrows, 115.
_See_ Flakes, Neolithic Age, &c.
Stone rows, 208.
Stone Street, 543-4, 548-9.
Stones, engraved, 205-6.
Stoney Littleton, 105.
Stour (Hampshire), 25.
Stour.
_See_ Great Stour and Little Stour.
Strabo, 1, 219, 223-5, 234, 261, 302, 357-8, 368-9, 558, 569-71, 577-9.
Stromness, 87 n. 1.
Stukeley, W., 2, 12, 174, 210.
Sturry, 336, 660, 683-5.
Stutfall Castle, 336, 544-7, 622, 638-9.
Submerged forests.
_See_ Forests.
Submergence, in Ice Age, 16-7;
in Neolithic Age, 62-4.
Subsidence, in Neolithic Age, 64;
of SE. Britain and NE. Gaul since Roman times, 527, 566, 740.
Sucellos, 281 n. 8.
Suessiones, 299, 454 n. 4.
Suetonius, 1, 363.
Suffolk, 3. 22-3, 36, 69, 153, 194 n. 3, 263 n. 2, 347;
chisels, 77;
tankard, 241.
Sulpicius Rufus, 314.
Sunbury, 696.
Sunken Kirk, 212 n. 2.
Sun-worship, 116, 206-7, 210-1, 216-7, 280, 282, 472-6, 478, 480.
_See_ Concentric rings, Disks, Stone circles.
Surrey, 36, 82 n. 5, 97, 130, 137, 254, 362, 365.
Sussex, in Pleistocene Period, 19, 25;
terrace cultivation, 253.
_See also_ 36, 98 note, 130, 134, 165, 176, 194 n. 3, 232 n. 3, 256.
Sutherlandshire, 150, 194 n. 3, 361 note.
Swanscombe skull, 33, 380.
Swastika, 199 note, 207, 244.
Sweden, 77, 126.
_See_ Scandinavia.
Switzerland, 205.
_See_ Lake-dwellings.
Swords, 131, 145-7, 172;
not found in interments of Bronze Age, 181-2, 184;
Late Celtic, 238-9.
Syracuse, 248 n. 2.
Syria, 66, 211, 213.
Taboos, 54, 118, 201 n. 3.
Tacitus, 1, 161, 239, 249, 268, 286, 292, 355, 358, 375, 398-9, 415,
418 n. 1.
Taddington, 108.
Taexali, 448.
Tamesi, 399 n. 1, 453.
Tanarus, 279.
Tanged blades, 145, 147, 182 n. 5.
Tankards, 241-2.
Taplow, 147.
Taranis, 278-9, 281.
_See_ Tanarus.
Tarvos Trigaranus. 278, 284.
Tasciovanus, 361, 365, 368.
Tasmanians, 31, 44, 49 n. 5, 462.
Tattooing, 418-20.
Teddington, 696-7.
Teeth, of neolithic population compared with those of Bronze Age, 90,
152.
Temperate animals, 20-1, 383.
Temples, 284-6.
_See_ Stone Circles, Stonehenge.
Τενάγη, 631.
_Terminalia_, 722-3.
Tertiary man, 13-4;
deposits, 27.
Test, river, 32.
Textile fabrics, 89.
_See_ Clothing.
Thames, southern limit of glacial movement, 18, 36 n. 1;
implements found in drift, 22, 23 n. 7, 24, 26, 42;
level of, in Palaeolithic Age, 30, 32;
implements and weapons found in bed of, 124, 147, 158, 238-9, 244;
forded by Caesar, 345-6, 692-9;
his march to, 660-1.
Thanet, not to be identified with Ictis, 222, 500-2;
ancient configuration of, 519.
Thanington, 336, 683-5.
Thule, 223-6, 367;
confounded by Pliny with (M)ictis, 499 n. 5, 505.
Thurnam, J. T., 8, 97 n. 2, 102 n. 4, 112-3, 181 n. 2, 393-5, 401-2,
426 n. 5, 427, 429-30, 434.
Tiberius, 369.
Tidal currents, 10, 311, 315, 334-5, 595-6, 599;
question of, in connexion with Caesar’s invasions of Britain,
605-11, 612-3, 620-1, 625, 634, 638, 640, 641 n. 1, 645 n. 3,
647-9, 655-9.
_See_ Airy, Darwin.
Tides, Posidonius and Pytheas on, 219 n. 4, 319;
spring and neap, 601-2;
times of high tide at Dover on Aug. 26-8, 55 B.C., 610.
Tim...., 363-4.
Timaeus, 273, 351.
Timagenes, 294.
Tin, 121-2, 125;
early mining of, in Cornwall, 139, 502-3 n. 8;
smelting of, 140;
coins, 249;
produced in the Cassiterides, 483-6, 488-98;
British trade in, 218, 220-3, 251, 307, 358, 483-514;
had trade temporarily ceased in Caesar’s time? 509;
or before A.D. 50? 509-11;
did Phoenicians trade for, with Britain? 511-4.
_See_ Cassiterides, _cassiteros_, Ictis, κασσίτερος.
Tincommius, 364-9.
Titurius.
_See_ Sabinus.
Togodumnus, 370-1, 453.
Tongs, 157-8.
Torquay, 4, 37, 244.
Torques, of Bronze Age, 163;
Late Celtic, 93, 241.
Totemism, 51-7, 284.
Toutates, 278-9, 281-3.
Towyn-y-Capel, 396.
Trackways, 247-8, 344.
Trade, in Neolithic Age, 71;
in Bronze Age, 167-72;
Late Celtic, 246-8, 269;
of Veneti, 302;
trade stimulated by Caesar’s invasions, 308, 356-7, 371;
British, described by Strabo, 358.
_See_ Tin.
Transition between Palaeolithic Age and Neolithic Age, 13, 63;
from Neolithic to Bronze Age, 71-2, 120, 131-2, 139-40;
from Bronze to Early Iron Age, 230, 267.
_See_ Hiatus.
Transmigration of souls, 293.
_See_ Metempsychosis.
Transports, used by Caesar in 55 B.C., 313-20, 324, 554, 596;
constructed by him in 55-4 B.C., 326, 331, 555, 599;
constructed by Labienus, 350, 584;
transports which conveyed Caesar’s cavalry in 55 B.C., 313-4,
318-9, 554-6, 597-8;
could not have returned in gale of Aug. 30 from near Pevensey to
Authie, 558, 613;
or from near Walmer or Hythe to Sangatte, 581-3;
or from near Pevensey to Sangatte, 618-9;
or from near Hythe or Lympne to Ambleteuse, 624-5;
or from near Hurst to Sangatte or Ambleteuse, 639;
or from near Bonnington to Ambleteuse, 643;
some did return from near Walmer to Ambleteuse, 319, 588, 651;
day on which they sailed from Gaul, 601.
Trebatius, 328.
Trebonius accompanies Caesar to Britain in 54 B.C., 334;
defeats Britons, 341, 353, 692.
Trees worshipped, 272.
Trelan Bahow, 239.
Trent, skull found in, 63, 396.
Trepanning, 79, 93, 260.
Treveri, 330, 667-8.
Triads, 274.
Tribute, British tribes ordered by Caesar to pay, 350, 356, 670-1;
not levied by Augustus, 368.
Trinovantes, 235, 299 n. 5;
furnish grain to Caesar, 254, 339, 343, 346;
opposed to Catuvellauni, 300, 309, 327, 361;
Caesar enters their territory, 346-7, 702;
subdued by Cunobeline, 362;
by Dubnovellaunus, 363, 366.
Tropical animals, 20-1, 40.
_Triskele_, 242.
Trumpets, 172, 317.
Turner, J. M. W., 213.
Turner, Sir W., 8, 109 note, 375 n. 1, 377.
Tweezers, 160, 264.
Tyddyn Bleiddyn, 395.
Tylor, Prof. E. B., 10, 49 n. 5, 50, 277, 295 n. 1, 461, 463, 675.
Ty Mawr, 154, 155 n. 1.
Uley, 106-7.
_Ulterior portus_, 554, 556.
Unstan, 97 n. 2.
Uphill, 395.
Upper Greensand, 27.
Upper Swell, 106, 110 n. 11, 112.
Upton Lovel, 163.
Uxellon, 448.
Uxisama, 221.
V-shaped holes, 161, 162 n. 1.
Vacomagi, 448.
_Vada_, 631.
Varro, 286.
Vectis, 504-5, 740.
Veneti, 223;
Caesar’s campaign against, 302-5;
Strabo’s explanation of their hostility to Caesar, 308;
their trade, 506, 508-9.
Venta, 232 n. 3.
Vepogen, 415-7.
Vercingetorix, 353, 364-5
Vergil, 367.
Verica, 365-6.
Verulamium, 255;
perhaps the stronghold of Cassivellaunus, 347, 701-2;
its mint, 359, 361-2
Vesta, 286.
Vigo, islands near, identified with Cassiterides, 487-9, 494-6.
Virchow, R., 9.
Vitrified forts, 259 n. 3, 739.
Volisios, 360 n. 2.
Volusenus reconnoitres British coast, 308-10, 554, 596-7;
Caesar acts upon his report, 315;
attempts to assassinate Commius, 365;
various topographical inferences from Caesar’s account of his
reconnaissance, 613, 627, 639-40, 645-6, 651-2.
Votadini, 235.
Vulcan, 276.
Wagons, 152, 221, 247, 505.
Walbrook, 255, 703.
Wales, 5, 14, 24, 65 n. 3, 66, 86 n. 4, 101-2, 124, 129, 133, 135,
174, 208, 233, 259 n. 3, 263 n. 2, 359;
iron tools rare in, in pre-Roman times, 266.
See the counties.
Walmer, 253, 316, 321, 323, 519-21, 576, 604, 626-7, 674;
theory that Caesar landed at (and Deal) in 55 B.C., 644-62;
castle, 311, 521-5, 604, 653, 664, 674;
church, 311, 673-4.
_See_ Deal.
Walton-on-Thames, 693, 695.
Wandsworth, 239.
Wansdyke, 260 n. 1.
War Ditches, 454.
War, internecine, in Britain, 95, 129, 131, 133, 268-9, 339.
Warminster Downs, 90 n. 2.
Warne, C., 5.
Warren, The, 532.
Warwickshire, 131, 260 n. 1.
Water Eaton, 240.
Water supply, 138-9, 256.
Watling Street, 344, 704-5.
Weald, 26, 357.
Wealden Forest, 98, 253, 310, 615 n. 1.
_See_ Andred.
Wealth, 167, 269, 357.
Weaving.
_See_ Spindle whorls.
Webb, E. J., 474-6, 482.
Weems, 153. 391.
Wellesley, Sir A., 645-6.
Well-worship, 116, 272, 283.
Wendover, 701.
West Furze, 87.
West Hythe, 253-4;
ancient topography of, 539, 541, 544-5, 547-9, 622-3, 636, 639.
West Hythe Oaks, 533, 535-6, 542, 545-9, 552, 624.
West Indies, 76.
West Kennet, 97 n. 2, 103, 105, 403.
Westmorland, 101, 194 n. 3, 205. 212 n. 2, 359.
West Wickham, 81, 89 n. 8.
Weybourne, pit-dwellings at, 85;
theory that Caesar landed at, 604.
Wheel, god of the, 279-80.
Whetstones, 75.
Whit Tor, 96, 134, 155.
Wight, Isle of, 19, 27 n. 4, 32, 67, 145, 251;
wrongly identified with Ictis, 222-3, 501-7.
William the Conqueror, 314, 563, 614.
Wilson, D., 7.
Wiltshire, 27, 97, 109 n. 2, 130, 156, 160, 182 n. 5, 194 n. 3, 208,
215, 217, 232 n. 3, 250, 256, 287, 288 n. 1;
long barrows, 101-2, 105;
population subdued by Bronze Age invaders, 129;
ornaments, 162-3, 165, 167-70, 172;
round barrows, 175-8;
interments, 184, 187-91, 196, 203;
coins, 359, 362.
Wind shifted in Caesar’s first voyage to Britain, 314, 626-7;
dropped in second voyage, 334, 576 n. 1;
great influence of winds on tides, 595, 602, 608.
Windsor, 48.
Winkelbury, 169 n. 9, 256.
Winterbourne Stoke, 162 n. 1.
Wissant, 306-7, 552-3, 555 n. 2, 557-8;
not Portus Itius, 565-85, 588 n. 5, 589, 619, 652.
Witham, shield found in, 237, 284.
Wolds.
_See_ Yorkshire.
Wolseley, Lord, on warfare with savages, 354;
on range of vision, 612 n. 3;
on fords, 694.
Wolves, 68, 98.
Women, lot of, in Neolithic Age, 91;
in Bronze Age, 152;
in Early Iron Age, 269-70.
Woodcuts, 84 n. 2, 138, 261 n. 3.
Wooden tools, 42.
Woodnesborough, 519.
Woodwork, Late Celtic, 241-2.
Wookey Hole, 37.
Wor Barrow, 103 n. 2, 105, 111 n. 3, 179.
Worcestershire, 131, 134, 251, 360.
Workshops, 7;
palaeolithic, 42;
neolithic, 70, 85.
Worlebury, 253, 255-6, 434 n. 6.
Worth, 335, 660, 673-4.
Wright, Dr. W., 385 n. 7, 427-8.
Wrist-guards, 82, 162.
Writing, primitive, 99;
in Early iron Age, 265-6.
Wye, 633, 660-1, 678.
Yarhouse, 106.
Yarnbury, 137 n. 4.
_Ynys Prydein_, 411.
Yorkshire, 24, 35, 68, 101, 171 n. 3, 174 n. 5, 181 n. 1, 194 n. 3,
201 n. 3, 205, 231-2, 234 n. 1, 235, 241, 250, 264, 267, 288 n. 1;
chisels from Wolds, 77;
survival of _couvade_ in, 95;
cremation prevalent in, in Neolithic Age, 110;
cannibalism (?) in barrows, 113;
implements deposited in graves, 115 n. 4;
evidence from skeletons of commingling of races, 129, 427;
why Wolds were thickly peopled, 130;
rarity of bronze relics in Wolds barrows, 132, 181 n. 3, 183 n. 6;
large oxen reared on Wolds, 151;
poverty of people of Wolds, 156;
ornaments, 161, 165, 167, 169 n. 7;
barrows, 177;
interments, 184, 187-9, 191, 200.
Zeeland, 207.
Zeus, 217, 285.
Zimmer, Prof., 405 n. 8, 409, 411, 413-6.
Zoomorphic designs, 237.
Oxford: Printed at the Clarendon Press by HORACE HART, M.A.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Dr. Joseph Anderson (_Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and
Stone Ages_, 1886, p. 135) has pointed out that the subject of stone
circles was first treated in a scientific spirit in 1692--long before
Stukeley wrote--by Prof. Garden of Aberdeen (_Archaeologia_, i, 1770,
pp. 312-9).
[2] See A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 1898, p.
18 (preface), and cf. _Archaeol. Cambr._, 6th ser., vi, 1906, p. 72.
[3] xiii, 1800, pp. 204-5.
[4] Sir A. Mitchell, _The Past in the Present_, 1880, pp. 155-7; Sir J.
Evans, _Ancient Stone Implements ... of Great Britain_, 2nd ed., 1897,
pp. 56-61, 65, 362-8; _Rev. arch._, 4^{e} sér. 1, vii, 1906, pp. 239-59.
[5] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 363.
[6] None of these excavators, however, was so thorough as Pitt-Rivers;
and Bateman was often careless (see H. St. G. Gray’s _Index to
‘Excavations in Cranborne Chase’_, 1905, p. xvi). But it must
be remembered that to do such work properly, not only skill and
perseverance are needed, but also money.
[7] Pitt-Rivers remarks (_Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iii, 1892,
pp. x, 254) that a rampart almost always yields something, for example,
pottery, which throws light on the period of its construction; while
his experience shows the importance of ‘digging the whole of a camp
over, down to the undisturbed soil’ (_ib._, iv, 14 [preface]). He tells
us (_ib._, p. 4) that when he was excavating the earthwork called South
Lodge Camp, ‘in the first three sections little or nothing was found,
which shows what very false conceptions are liable to be formed by
merely digging one or two sections in a camp.’ See also vol. iii, pp.
xi, 13; vol. iv, pp. 46-8, 138, 144, 187; _Trans. Epping Forest ...
Naturalists’ Field Club_, ii, 1882, pp. 59-60; and _Report of ... the
Brit. Association_, 1904, pp. 691-700.
[8] _The Past in the Present_, 1880.
[9] The following passage from Sir John Evans’s _Ancient Bronze
Implements ... of Great Britain and Ireland_, 1880, pp. 25-6, is
instructive:--‘In company with Sir John Lubbock I was engaged in
opening a grave [at Hallstatt] in which we had come to an interment
of the Early Iron Age, accompanied by a socketed celt and spear-heads
of iron, when amidst the bones I caught sight of a thin metallic disc
of a yellowish colour which looked like a coin. Up to that time no
coin had ever been found in any one of the many hundred graves which
had been examined, and I eagerly picked up this disc. It proved to
be a “sechser”, or six-kreutzer piece, with the date 1826, which by
some means had worked its way down among the crevices in the stony
ground.... Had this coin been of Roman date it might have afforded an
argument for bringing down the date of the Hallstatt cemetery some
centuries in the chronological scale. As it is, it affords a wholesome
caution against drawing important inferences from the mere collocation
of objects when there is any possibility of the apparent association
being only due to accident.’
[10] See Mr. H. Balfour’s interesting introduction to Pitt-Rivers’s
_Evolution of Culture_, 1906, p. xiv.
[11] _Guide to the Antiquities of the Stone Age_ (Brit. Museum), 1902,
p. 76. See also _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxiii, 1903, p. 18.
[12] _Vict. Hist. of ... Sussex_, i, 1905, p. 22.
[13] _Proc. Dorset Nat. Hist. and Antiq. Field Club_, xxi, 1900, p. 75.
[14] See A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iii, p. xii;
iv, p. 28.
[15] _Ib._, iii, p. xiii.
[16] Mr. N.W. Thomas (_Man_, v, 1905, No. 25, pp. 47-8) points out
that ‘some five years ago the Berlin collections [of ethnographical
objects] from British possessions were seven times as large as those
in our national museum, and since then this disproportion has not
been decreased’, the reason being that ‘the men whom the nation pays
to perform certain duties [in national expeditions] are permitted to
retain the objects collected in the performance of those duties’. But
the nation is to blame as much as the Government.
[17] See pp. 61, 385-90, _infra_.
[18] Lafcadio Hearn, _Kokoro_, p. 290.
[19] ‘Comme paléontologiste,’ says M. Marcellin Boule, ‘je crois
fermement à l’existence de l’Homme tertiaire: je ne doute pas qu’on
trouvera un jour ses traces’ (_L’Anthropologie_, xvi, 1905, p. 267).
[20] Sir A. Geikie, _Text-book of Geology_, 4th ed., ii, 1903, pp.
1224-5, 1231.
[21] Sir A. Ramsay’s theory (_Physical Geol. and Geogr. of Great
Britain_, 6th ed., 1894, p. 269), that the basins of the Scottish and
Cumbrian lakes were scooped out of the rocks by glaciers, was held by
no British geologist a few years ago, except in a modified form. See A.
J. Jukes-Browne, _Student’s Handbook of Phys. Geol._, 2nd ed., 1892,
pp. 159, 624, 629-30; T. G. Bonney, _Ice-Work, Present and Past_, 1896,
pp. 80-94; and Sir A. Geikie, _Text-book of Geol._, 1903, i, 552; ii,
1323-4, 1385-6. Prof. W. M. Davis of Harvard has, however, recently
produced fresh evidence ‘in favour of the excavating power of glaciers’
(_Trans. Roy. Soc., Edinburgh_, xl, part ii, 1902, p. 457); and
Ramsay’s theory is ‘in no wise extinct’ (_Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._,
lxii, 1906, p. 166); but Prof. E. J. Garwood has recently investigated
the Alpine lakes near Airolo, and holds (_ib._, p. 190) that, with a
few possible exceptions, they ‘do not seem to be due to ice-erosion’.
[22] For instance, H. B. Woodward, _Geol. of England and Wales_, 2nd
ed., 1887, pp. 475-512; J. Prestwich, _Geology_, ii, 1888, pp. 453-4,
469; A. J. Jukes-Browne, _The Building of the Brit. Isles_, 1888, pp.
281, 289, 294-6; Sir A. C. Ramsay, _Phys. Geol. and Geogr. of Great
Britain_, 6th ed., 1894, pp. 229, 238, 242-3, 246-8, 252, 259, 263,
276; T. G. Bonney, _Ice-Work, Present and Past_, 1896, pp. 121, 277;
and Sir A. Geikie, _Text-book of Geology_, 1903, i, 169; ii, 1302-32.
[23] Mr. T. Mellard Reade, in an interesting paper (_Nat. Science_,
iii, 1893, pp. 423-35) has argued against the view that these shells
were carried up the hill of Moel Tryfaen by a glacier. See also, in
support of the theory of a period of extensive submergence, _Geol.
Mag._, 1893, pp. 35-7, 104-7; 1896, pp. 488-92; 1897, pp. 229-33.
[24] H. Carvill Lewis, _Papers and Notes_, &c., 1894, pp. 375-6;
_Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1893 (1894), pp. 483-514;
_Nature_, Aug. 16, 1906, p. 399; _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, lxii,
1906, pp. 33, 39. Mr. T. F. Jamieson, the author of the last-named
paper, suggests that the submergence may have been confined to the
northern part of Scotland.
[25] _Nat. Science_, iv, 1894, p. 472. Cf. _Trans. Roy. Soc.
Edinburgh_, xl, part i, 1904, p. 82.
[26] Clement Reid, _Origin of the Brit. Flora_, 1899, pp. 39-40.
[27] _Vict. Hist. of ... Hampshire_, i, 253; _Vict. Hist. of ...
Somerset_, i, 176.
[28] _Vict. Hist. of ... Sussex_, i, 25-6. See p. 19, _infra_.
[29] _Geol. Mag._, 1895, pp. 63-4.
[30] C. Reid, _Origin of the Brit. Flora_, p. 38.
[31] See Sir A. Geikie’s _Text-book of Geology_, ii, 1903, p. 1313. Cf.
_Nature_, Aug. 16, 1906, pp. 388-9, 399.
[32] See Sir A. Geikie’s _Text-book of Geology_, ii, 1903, p. 1313.
[33] _Proc. Geologists’ Association_, ix, 1887, pp. 111-2.
[34] _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, liv, 1898, pp. 197-227, especially
p. 209; _Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh_, xl, part i, 1904, p. 83; _Vict.
Hist. of ... Durham,_ i, 24. Professor Bonney, however (_Quart. Journ.
Geol. Soc._, lxii, 1906, pp. 491-2, 498), remains unconvinced.
[35] See Mr. G. W. Lamplugh’s opening address, delivered in Section C
of the British Association (_Nature_, Aug. 16, 1906, pp. 387-400). Mr.
T. F. Jamieson, in a valuable and interesting paper (_Quart. Journ.
Geol. Soc._, lxii, 1906, p. 23), observes that ‘although we have some
evidence of more than one recurrence of an ice-sheet in [Aberdeenshire]
... no evidence has hitherto been obtained of warm intervals, further
than that which may be inferred from the melting away of the vast mass
of ice which preceded and followed the deposition of the Red Clay and
the shell-bed at Clava and elsewhere. It must have taken a great deal
of heat to melt these enormous masses.’
[36] Is it certain that an elevation of seventy feet would not have
been enough to unite Britain with the Continent? For thousands of years
the scour of the tides must have been deepening the Channel. [On April
11, 1906, I submitted to Mr. Clement Reid, in a conversation which I
had with him at the Geological Museum, the gist of the argument by
which I endeavour to show (pp. 20-2, _infra_) that during some part of
the Palaeolithic Age Britain must have been continental. He virtually
admitted its force, remarking that an elevation of seventy feet would
have enabled animals to cross from Gaul to Britain, as the scour of the
tides had doubtless deepened the Channel.]
[37] _Origin of the Brit. Flora_, pp. 37, 38.
[38] _Ib._, p. 41; _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, xlviii, 1892, pp.
344-61. Cf. _Vict. Hist. of ... Hampshire_, i, 32.
[39] _Origin of the Brit. Flora_, p. 39. See also _Memoirs Geol.
Survey--The Geology of the Country around Cromer_, 1882, p. 90.
[40] _Vict. Hist. of ... Hampshire_, i, 33; _Vict. Hist. of ...
Sussex_, i, 22.
[41] _Vict. Hist. of ... Hampshire_, i, 33-4; _Origin of the Brit.
Flora_, pp. 42-3.
[42] _Report of the Brit. Association_, 1896, pp. 410-11. Cf. _Vict.
Hist. of ... Sussex_, i, 25-6. Mr. Reid has, however, concluded, from
an examination of the palaeolithic deposits at Hitchin (_Proc. Roy.
Soc._, lxi, 1897, pp. 40-9, and especially p. 46), as well as at Hoxne,
that before the time of the palaeolithic inhabitants of those districts
the land had again sunk.
[43] _Origin of the Brit. Flora_, p. 46. Cf. A. J. Jukes-Browne, _The
Building of the Brit. Isles_, pp. 291-2, 302.
[44] A. R. Wallace, _Island Life_, 1880, pp. 315-17; J. Prestwich,
_Geology_, ii, 1888, pp. 523-5. See p. 62, _infra_.
[45] W. Boyd Dawkins, _Cave-Hunting_, 1874, p. 124; _Quart. Journ.
Geol. Soc._, xxxv, 1879, pp. 139-42; liv, 1898, pp. xcv-xcvi.
[46] Mr. Reid tells us that there was no vegetation except dwarf
birches and willows and other Arctic plants. See _Nat. Science_, i,
1892, pp. 430, 432; C. Reid, _Origin of the Brit. Flora_, pp. 40, 42;
_Vict. Hist. of ... Hampshire_, i, 32-3.
[47] This fact seems to have escaped the notice of a writer who argues
(_Nat. Science_, iii, 1893, pp. 261-6) that ‘England was not restocked
by a land connexion from the Continent after glaciation’, and affirms
(p. 266) that ‘almost the only evidence of a post-glacial connexion
with the Continent is the supposed necessity of such to account for
our present fauna and flora’. The mammoth fed upon coniferous trees,
fragments of the wood of which have been found in the crevices of its
teeth (A. S. Woodward, _Outlines of Vertebrate Palaeontology_, 1898, p.
306).
[48] _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, xxxv, 1879, pp. 142-3.
[49] Sir Henry Howorth has written a series of articles (_Geol. Mag._,
1892, pp. 250-8, 396-405; _Nat. Science_, xii, 1898, pp. 261-70), in
which he claims to have proved that ‘in no instance, so far as we
know, does the drift actually underlie any land surface containing
the remains of the mammoth and of its contemporaries.’ Translated
into the language of geologists to whom the glacial period is not a
nightmare, this is tantamount to an assertion that the mammoth was
neither postglacial, nor interglacial, nor glacial, but preglacial. Mr.
A. J. Jukes-Browne (_Geol. Mag._, 1892, p. 575) replies that ‘gravels
containing mammoth remains occur in many other valleys [besides that
of the Great Ouse], which are generally considered to have been eroded
out of a widespread mantle of Glacial Drift’, and that ‘this conclusion
is not shaken by anything which Sir H. Howorth has written’; while Sir
John Evans (_Anc. Stone Implements_, 1879, p. 701) remarks that ‘in
some cases, as at Fisherton, the worked flints have been found below
the remains of mammoth’. Since the gravel at Hoxne, in which bones
of the mammoth and of extinct animals contemporary with the mammoth
were found (Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 573-5;
C. Reid, _Origin of the Brit. Flora_, p. 77; _Guide to the Ant. of
the Stone Age_ [Brit. Museum], p. 20), was shown by the committee who
excavated it (_Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1896, pp. 400-11)
to be later than the latest glaciation of the district, Sir Henry
naturally discredited their report; and he did so by declaring (_Nat.
Science_, xii, 1898, p 266) that the members of the committee were
‘already committed ... to the view that the implement-bearing deposit
at Hoxne was newer than the Drift. This,’ he continued, ‘was not very
promising.... It was, in fact, indecent.’
[50] Cf. _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, xxiii, 1867, p. 107, with _Geol.
Mag._, 1878, p. 98, and Boyd Dawkins, _Early Man in Britain_, 1880,
p. 149; and see also the same writer’s _Cave-Hunting_, 1874, p. 362.
Mr. H. B. Woodward states (_Vict. Hist. of ... Norfolk_, i, 23) that
‘the Dogger Bank is a remnant of old Pleistocene deposits; as Mr. Reid
suggests [_Memoirs Geol. Survey,--The Geology of the Country around
Cromer_, 1882, p. 122], a re-extension of the old Rhine estuary’. I
confess that I do not understand how Mr. Reid would reconcile this
suggestion with his belief that the Channel was formed in the earliest
part of the Ice Age.
[51] _Vict. Hist. of ... Hampshire_, i, 34.
[52] _Memoirs Geol. Survey,--The Geology of the Country around Cromer_,
p. 122; _Vict. Hist. of ... Norfolk_, i, 23.
[53] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 577, 683, 685,
697.
[54] See p. 21, n. 5, _supra_, and cf. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxv,
1905, pp. 308, 310.
[55] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxix, 1899, pp. 333-4; _Proc. Liverpool
Geol. Soc._, ix, 1901, pp. 18-19.
[56] _Memoirs Geol. Survey,--On the Manufacture of Gun-Flints_, 1879,
p. 68. Cf. S. H. Miller and S. B. J. Skertchly, _The Fenland_, 1878,
pp. 548-51.
[57] _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 568. See, however, _Proc.
Geologists’ Association_, ix, 1887, p. 126.
[58] _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, xliii, 1887, p. 117; liv, 1898, pp.
lxxxvi-lxxxix.
[59] _Ib._, lx, 1904, pp. 132-3.
[60] Professor Boyd Dawkins (_Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, xxiii, 1867,
pp. 91-109, and especially pp. 106-9) has argued that the Lower
Brick-Earths in the Thames Valley, under which implements have been
found, were preglacial,--locally, I presume. He observed that not one
of ‘the Post-glacial Arctic mammalia’, namely, the glutton, lemming,
marmot, musk-sheep, elk, and reindeer, is represented in this deposit,
and maintains that, on the other hand, the presence of _Elephas
priscus_ and the big-nosed rhinoceros (_Rhinoceros megarhinus_)
‘indicates the affinity of the [Brick-Earth] group to the Praeglacial
deposits of Norfolk’, &c. Prestwich, however (_ib._, xxviii, 1872,
p. 445), differed from the professor; and Sir John Evans (_ib._, p.
446) remarked that if the brick-earth were preglacial ‘there would be
a great difficulty in accounting for the presence of the high beds
at Shackleton and Highbury, as these, though in a valley confessedly
excavated by the river, and regarded as of more recent age than the
lower beds, would yet be at a far higher level’.
[61] Prof. P. F. Kendall maintains (_ib._, lx, 1904, p. 132) that even
the Hoxne implements ‘were of very late Glacial, perhaps the very
latest Glacial Age,’--not, as I understand, of the Hoxne district, but
of Britain as a whole. Cf. _Man_, iii, 1903, No. 31, p. 59.
[62] _Proc. Geologists’ Association_, ix. 1887, p. 129; J. Prestwich.
_Controverted Questions_, p. 45.
[63] See _Geol. Mag._, 1894, p. 79.
[64] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 580.
[65] _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, xxviii, 1872, p. 435; xxxv, 1879, pp.
142-3.
[66] _Memoirs Geol. Survey,--The Geology of the Country around
Bournemouth_, 1898, p. 10; C. Reid, _Origin of the Brit. Flora_, pp.
44-5; _Vict. Hist. of ... Hants_, i, 35; _Vict. Hist. of ... Sussex_,
i, 22.
[67] Worthington G. Smith, _Man, the Primeval Savage_, 1894, pp. 170,
173, 191, 217-8. Cf. H. B. Woodward, _Geol. of England and Wales_,
1887, pp. 510-12, and Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p.
698.
[68] The descriptions, based upon the remains of fauna in caves, that
have been given of the climate of Southern Gaul in successive periods
of the Palaeolithic Age, however true they may be, do not apply in
Britain. The little that is known of our climate suggests to Mr.
Clement Reid ‘extremes with sharp alternations of cold, drought, and
sudden floods’ (_Man_, iii, 1903, No. 29, p. 56, with which cf. _Proc.
Roy. Soc._, lxi, 1897, p. 46).
[69] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxiii, 1894, p. 275; B. Harrison, _Outline
of the Hist. of the Eol. Flint Implements_, 1904, pp. 9-10.
[70] _Nineteenth Century_, April, 1895, p. 623.
[71] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxi, 1892, p. 272.
[72] _Controverted Questions_, p. 77.
[73] _Ib._, p. 78. See also _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, liv, 1898, p.
298.
[74] The Rev. R. Ashington Bullen (_Nat. Science_, xii, 1898, p. 107)
says that he has found ‘worked flints of the plateau types’ in ‘valley
gravels’, but that they were ‘derived specimens’. See also _ib._, pp.
111-16. On the other hand, see p. 27, _infra_.
[75] _Nat. Science_, v, 1894, pp. 269, 271-2; _Nineteenth Century_,
April, 1895, p. 626.
[76] J. Prestwich, _Controverted Questions_, 1895, p. 54. Cf. _Quart.
Journ. Geol. Soc._, xlv, 1889, p. 295, and _Journ. Vict. Inst._,
xxxiii, 1901, p. 223.
[77] _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, xxviii, 1872, pp. 39-40; Sir J. Evans,
_Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 632; _Memoirs Geol. Survey,--The
Geology of the Country around Ringwood_, 1902, pp. 36, 39.
[78] As Mr. Clement Reid points out (ib., pp. 36-7), Prestwich’s
implement ‘was not found in place, but picked up among fallen
material.... The Alderbury gravel,’ he remarks, ‘judging from its
less elevation above the river, is probably newer than the supposed
Palaeolithic gravel north of Redlynch; yet it yields implements of
more ancient type.’ See also _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxv, 1905, p.
354, where Mr. H. Warren affirms that eoliths are associated with
palaeolithic implements in the drift of High Down, Isle of Wight; and
cf. _Man_, v, 1905, No. 80, p. 146.
[79] _Geol. Mag._, 1903, pp. 105-6. Mr. Reid thinks that the beds in
which these flints have been found are not necessarily of Pliocene
date, as they may have been _remaniés_. Eoliths are said to have been
unearthed from gravels at Dewlish in Dorsetshire side by side with
the bones of the extinct elephant known as _Elephas meridionalis_,
whose remains have never yet been met with in this island except in
preglacial beds (_Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, xliv, 1888, pp. 318-24;
lxi, 1905, pp. 35-8; _Journ. Vict. Inst._, xxxiii, 1901, pp. 212-3);
but these flints were so battered that Mr. Reid, who accepts many
eoliths as genuine tools and regards them as ‘bad palaeoliths’, was
obliged to reject them (_Memoirs Geol. Survey,--The Geology of the
Country around Ringwood_, p. 36).
[80] _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, liv, 1898, pp. 291, 293-4.
[81] _Association franç. pour l’avancement des sc._, 1903, 1^{re}
partie, pp. 246-7; _Nature_, lxxii, 1905, pp. 438-9; _Journ. Anthr.
Inst._, xxxv, 1905, p. 261. Are any of these flints identical in form
with the characteristic Kentish specimens?
Sir John Evans, who is unable to accept the authenticity of any
eoliths, nevertheless believes, or did believe in 1897 (_Anc. Stone
Implements_, pp. 608-9), that the palaeolithic implements which have
been found on the plateau belonged to a time when the ‘continuous slope
now extending from the neighbourhood of the Thames to the summit of the
chalk escarpment’ was ‘continued southward ... over a part of what is
now the Lower Greensand area, if not, indeed, into that of the Weald’.
In other words he believed that the palaeoliths were as old as the
eoliths, and therefore that the question of the authenticity of the
latter was unimportant. It is, however, now generally recognized that
this view was based upon a misconception. Mr. Harrison (_Outline of the
Hist. of the Eol. Flint Implements_, p. 17) states that ‘_palaeoliths
and eoliths have been found together only on the surface and never in
the drifts in situ_’. Cf. J. Prestwich, _Controverted Questions_, p. 64.
Mr. Clement Reid (_Vict. Hist. of ... Hampshire_, i, 34) sees no
reason for believing that any of the Kentish eoliths are older than
palaeolithic implements in general. In a conversation which I had with
him on April 11, 1906, he remarked that the patches of drift in which
the eoliths had been found were generally dominated by higher ground,
and that he could find no evidence that the flints had been washed
down from the Weald. Eoliths have, however, been found in a pit at
Terry’s Lodge ‘on the summit of the escarpment at a height of 770 feet’
(_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxv, 1905, p. 300. Cf. _Essex Naturalist_,
xiii, 1904, p. 332).
[82] _L’Anthropologie_, xvi, 1905, pp. 257-67.
[83] _Man_, v, 1905, No. 102, p. 179. Cf. No. 92, p. 165.
[84] _Ib._, No. 91, p. 165.
[85] _Ib._, No. 103, pp. 180-83. Cf. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxv, 1905,
p. 363, fig. 7.
[86] _Ib._, p. 361.
[87] Mr, Hazzledine Warren (_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxv, 1905, p. 358)
goes so far as to affirm that the mineral condition of some of Mr.
Harrison’s eoliths ‘shows that they ... are ... clearly as late as the
neolithic age’. There is a bibliography of eoliths in _Geol. Mag._,
1903, pp. 108-10, to which may be added, besides the works quoted in
this chapter, _Rev. de l’École d’anthr._, xiv, 1904, pp. 240-6.
[88] See p. 32, _infra_. It must of course be remembered that this
description applies only to one part of the Palaeolithic Age:
palaeolithic man was still here when the Thames had cut out its valley
to its present depth.
[89] See p. 40, n. 2, _infra_.
[90] M. Boule (_L’Anthr._ xiv, 1903, p. 533) regards the question
of the existence of a palaeolithic age in Egypt as unsettled; but,
as Mr. H. R. Hall observes (_Man_, v, 1905, No. 19, p. 34), ‘German
investigators ... have no doubt whatever that the Pitt-Rivers flints
from Thebes and those of palaeolithic type from the Wâdî esh-Shêkh
and elsewhere are in reality palaeolithic.’ See also A. Pitt-Rivers,
_Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv. 9-11 (preface), and _Association
franç. pour l’avancement des sc._, 1903, 2^{e} partie, p. 860.
Palaeolithic implements are also said to have been found in Patagonia
(_L’Anthr._, xvii, 1906, p. 255).
[91] Sir John Evans in _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1897
(1898), p. 14. Cf. _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 528-30, 650-54.
In regard to palaeolithic remains in America see also _Congrès
internat. d’anthr. et d’archéol. préhist._, 1900 (1902), p. 191.
[92] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxiii, 1894, p. 147. Cf. A. Pitt-Rivers,
_Evolution of Culture_, 1906, p. xvi.
[93] _Climate and Time_, 1885, pp. 327-8.
[94] _Geol. Mag._, 1868, pp. 249-54.
[95] J. Prestwich, _Controverted Questions_, pp. 22, 42; Sir J. Evans,
_Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 705-7.
[96] _Geol. Mag._, 1895, pp. 3-13, 55-65; A. Geikie, _Text-book of
Geology_, 1903, pp. 1326-7. See also _Nature_, lii, 1895, p. 594; liii,
1895-6, pp. 29, 196, 220, 269, 295, 317, 340, 388, 460; and _Quart.
Journ. Geol. Soc._, lviii, 1902, pp. 37-45.
[97] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 592, 708-9.
[98] Clement Reid in _Vict. Hist. of ... Hampshire_, i, 34;
_Archaeologia_, lix, part ii, 1906, p. 286, and _Memoirs Geol.
Survey,--The Geology of the Country around Ringwood_, pp. 31-2.
Sir John Evans (_Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 634-5, 690-93)
has argued that the implementiferous gravel which caps the cliff at
Bournemouth was deposited by the Solent river; but Mr. Clement Reid
thinks it ‘very doubtful whether it was a deposit formed by ordinary
river action’ (_Vict. Hist. of ... Hampshire_, i, 34); and (_ib._, pp.
27-8, 34) he is inclined to believe that the continuity of the Isle
of Wight with Hampshire and Dorsetshire was already interrupted in
late Pliocene times, though the Solent may perhaps have been merely an
estuary and not a strait even in the time of the so-called interglacial
estuarine deposits. See p. 20, _supra_.
[99] Dr. A. J. Evans (_Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1904
[1906], p. 721) calculates that the earliest settlement at Knossos in
Crete (which was _neolithic_) is about 12,000 years old; but he assumes
that in the western court of the palace ‘the average rate of deposit
was fairly continuous’. Prof. Montelius (_L’Anthr._, xvii, 1906, p.
137) argues from the stratigraphy of finds at Susa that the beginning
of the Neolithic Age in the East may be dated about 18,000 B.C. But
even if these calculations could be established, it would still remain
doubtful whether our Palaeolithic Age was not partly contemporary with
a neolithic civilization in more genial climates. Probably it was
(_ib._, p. 164). Against the theory which would minimize the antiquity
of the Palaeolithic Age, see _ib._, xv, 1904, p. 66, and _Quart. Journ.
Geol. Soc._, xliii, 1887, p. 410, and in favour of it _L’Anthr._, xvii,
1906, p. 27, n. 1.
[100] _Trans. Devon. Association_, xix, 1887, pp. 419-37. Neither of
the skulls could be removed intact, but one was photographed (_ib._, p.
433). The forehead recedes, but not excessively: the supraciliary ridge
is strong, but not abnormally developed.
[101] See p. 380, _infra_.
[102] _L’Anthr._, xvii, 1906, pp. 70-3. See pp. 380-1, _infra_.
[103] See pp. 380-1, _infra_.
[104] See p. 381, _infra_.
[105] See pp. 382-3, _infra_.
[106] See pp. 382-3, _infra_.
[107] Mr. C. H. Read (_Guide to the Ant. of the Stone Age_ [Brit.
Museum], pl. 1 and p. 49) has no doubt that they were dagger-handles;
but the abbé Breuil (_L’Anthr._, xvi, 1905, p. 632) affirms that it is
‘démontré qu’aucune des sculptures dont on a voulu faire des manches de
poignard n’ont eu ce rôle’.
[108] E. Lartet and H. Christy, _Reliquiae Aquitanicae, passim_;
_L’Anthr._, v, 1894, pp. 129-46; vi, 1895, p. 143; xiv, 1903, pp.
295-315; xv, 1904, pp. 129-76, 625-44. Among the palaeolithic
artists were not only carvers and engravers but also draughtsmen and
even painters. On the walls of caves in the Spanish Pyrenees are
many-coloured frescoes, depicting animals as well as objects the
meaning of which is still unknown. See _L’Anthr._, xv, 1904, p. 629;
xvi, 1905, pp. 437, 442; _Rev. de l’École d’anthr._, xiv, 1904, pp.
320-5; xv, 1905, pp. 150-5; and _Man_, vi, 1906, No. 63, p. 96.
[109] _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, xxxiii, 1877, p. 582.
[110] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 581; _Guide to
the Ant. of the Stone-Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 6. Mr. Clement Reid
(_Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, lx, 1904, pp. 106-12), has described
‘a probable Palaeolithic Floor [or old land surface] at Prah Sands,
Cornwall’; but in the discussion which followed the reading of the
paper he admitted that he ‘would not like to speak confidently as to
any one of the stones being an implement’.
[111] See _Nat. Science_, iii, 1893, p. 369; _Vict. Hist. of ...
Hampshire_, i, 35; _Mem. Geol. Survey,--The Geology of the Country
around Ringwood_, 1902, p. 48; _Man_, iii, 1903, No. 29, p. 56; and
_Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, lx, 1904, p. 130.
Mr. Clement Reid, as those who are familiar with his writings must have
seen, does not believe that many of the deposits classed as river-drift
(see Evans’s _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 662-709, especially
679) deserve that title. In a conversation which I had with him on
April 11, 1906, he remarked that he could see no reason to suppose that
palaeolithic man ‘was an aquatic animal’; that much of the so-called
river-drift would probably be found, under minute examination, not to
be due to fluviatile action; and that the geology of the Thames Valley,
which in the Glacial Epoch was on the edge of the ice, presented great
difficulties. See, however, Mr. H. B. Woodward’s article in _Vict.
Hist. of ... Buckingham_, i, 22.
[112] See, however, _Guide to the Ant. of the Stone Age_ (Brit.
Museum), p. 3.
[113] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 613-7.
[114] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 479, 488-525;
_Phil. Trans._, clxiii, 1874, pp. 553-70; _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._,
xxxii, 1876, pp. 240-58; xxxiii, 1877, pp. 579-612; xxxv, 1879, pp.
724-35.
[115] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 485.
[116] _Ib._, pp. 474-5.
[117] See pp. 383-5, _infra_.
[118] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 475, 483-5,
528, 530, 575-6: _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, lx, 1904, p. 132. In de
Mortillet’s classification the oldest type was the Chellean (called
after Chelles in the department of Seine-et-Marne): then followed
successively the types represented in the cave of Le Moustier, at
Solutré, and in the cave of La Madelaine. Dr. M. Hoernes (_Der
diluviale Mensch in Europa_, 1903, pp. 21, 63, 185-6, &c.) combines the
Chellean and Mousterian periods. (See also _Rev. mensuelle de l’École
d’anthr._, v, 1895, p. 407, and _L’Anthr._, xv, 1904, pp. 27, 196-8).
[119] _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, xxxii, 1876, pp. 252-3; Sir J. Evans,
_Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 522-3.
[120] Worthington G. Smith, _Man, the Primeval Savage_, pp. 215, 220.
[121] Worthington G. Smith, _Man, the Primeval Savage_, pp. 60-89,
96-175. Cf. _L’Anthr._, xvi, 1905, p. 27.
[122] Prof. Boyd Dawkins (_Early Man in Britain_, p. 192) says that,
except at Pont Newydd, ‘the association of traces of man with the
remains of hippopotamus has, as yet, not been observed in any bone
caves either in this country or on the Continent’. Sir John Evans,
who does not mention such remains in his notice of Pont Newydd (_Anc.
Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 521), records their discovery, without
associated implements, in the ‘mid-terrace gravels’ near Acton (_ib._,
p. 591), and in gravels of the same character as those which yield
implements, near Bedford (p. 533) and at Folkestone (p. 621). Evidently
(pp. 699-700, with which cf. Boyd Dawkins and W. Ayshford, _Brit.
Pleistocene Mammalia_, 1866, p. xxviii) he has no doubt that the
hippopotamus was contemporary in Britain with palaeolithic man; but
Mr. Clement Reid, in a conversation which I had with him on April 11,
1906, questioned whether its bones had ever been found together with
implements.
[123] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 528, 533, 536,
591; M. Hoernes, _Der diluviale Mensch in Europa_. 1903, p. 13. Readers
who are interested in the question which is raised by the discoveries
of Arctic in association with tropical mammalian remains should consult
_Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, xxviii, 1872, pp. 426-43; xxxv, 1879, p.
142; W. Boyd Dawkins, _Early Man in Britain_, pp. 113-14; E. Piette,
_La France préhist. par M. Cartailhac_, 1890, pp. 5-6; _Nat. Science_,
i, 1892, p. 432; iii, 1893, pp. 262-3; Lord Avebury, _Prehist. Times_,
6th ed., 1900, p. 290; _Guide to the Ant. of the Stone Age_ (Brit.
Museum), pp. 36-7; and R. Lydekker, _Mostly Mammals_, p. 269. See also,
in regard to the contrast between the intermingling of tropical and
Arctic animals in Britain and Northern Gaul and their succession in
South-Western Gaul, M. Hoernes, _op. cit._, p. 193, and _L’Anthr._,
xiii, 1902, pp. 305, 317.
[124] _Ib._, xv, 1904, pp. 57-8; xvi, 1905, p. 67.
[125] See p. 384, _infra_.
[126] _Man_, vi, 1906, No. 63, p. 94. Chellean implements have been
found at Le Moustier, evidently _in situ_, in the second layer from the
top, among those of the Madelaine period.
[127] _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1903, pp. 804-5.
[128] _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1904 (1905), p. 726;
_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxiv, 1904, p. 308.
[129] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 504-7, 512-7,
523, 565-6, 581, 640-9, 655-6; Worthington G. Smith, _Man, the Primeval
Savage_, pp. 110-11, 121, 248-9.
[130] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxxvii, 1880, pp. 294-9.
[131] Worthington G. Smith, _Man, the Primeval Savage_, pp. 113-4, 116,
142-3, 165.
[132] _Ib._, pp. 262-7; _Vict. Hist. of ... Hertford_, i, 224; Sir
J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 274. Cf. J. Prestwich,
_Controverted Questions_, pp. 76-7.
[133] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxiii, 1894, p. 145.
[134] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 645, 656;
Worthington G. Smith, _Man, the Primeval Savage_, p. 222; _Vict.
Hist of ... Hertford_, i. 224. Professor Boyd Dawkins (_Early Man in
Britain_, pp. 183-4) affirms that certain implements found in the
upper cave-earth of Church Hole and the Robin Hood Cave at Creswell
Crags ‘had obviously been let into a handle ... by which the edge of
one side had been protected, while the other was worn away by use’;
and in _Nature_ (May 22, 1902, p. 77) it is stated that a palaeolithic
implement, recently discovered near Ipswich, ‘shows signs of having
been worked for hafting.’
[135] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 645, 655.
[136] _Prehist. Times_, 1900, p. 332.
[137] See _Journ. Roy. United Service Inst._, xii, 1868, pp. 408-9.
[138] _Antiquity of Man_, 4th ed., 1873, p. 422.
[139] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 486, 657-8.
Traces of corn have been found in French palaeolithic caves, though
there is no evidence that it was cultivated. See _Congrès internal.
d’anthr. et d’archéol. préhist._, 1900 (1902), p. 408.
[140] E. Lartet and H. Christy, _Reliquiae Aquitanicae_, B. 1, pl.
ii, fig. 5. Prof. Boyd Hawkins (_Early Man in Britain_, p. 214) has
no doubt about the subject of the drawing: I confess that I am not so
certain.
[141] ‘It is doubtful,’ says H. E. Schoolcraft (_Indian Tribes of the
United States_, i, 1851, p. 433), ‘whether an area of fifty thousand
acres, left in the forest state, is more than sufficient to sustain by
the chase a single hunter.’ One may be allowed, however, to suspect an
exaggeration in this estimate; otherwise how could the communities who
dwelled at Caddington and Crayford (see pp. 39, 42-4, _supra_) have
escaped starvation? See also A. Lang, _The Secret of the Totem_, 1905,
pp. 6-7, 88-9, 151-2.
[142] See Mr. Lewis Abbott’s paper in J. Salmon’s _Guide to Sevenoaks_,
1905, pp. 120-1. Cf. _Archaeol. Journal_, xxxix, 1882, p. 17.
[143] _Life of Sir J. Prestwich_, 1899, p. 376.
[144] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, p. 501.
[145] W. Boyd Dawkins, _Early Man in Britain_, p. 211. I must
admit that I feel doubtful whether the illustration in _Reliquiae
Aquitanicae_ which Professor Dawkins reproduces really represents
gloves.
[146] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 657.
[147] _L’Anthr._, xiv, 1903, pp. 258, 263-5; _Comptes rendus ... de
l’Acad. des Sciences_, 1903, pp. 1536-7.
[148] E. Lartet and H. Christy, _Reliquiae Aquitanicae_, p. 209.
[149] _L’Anthr._, xv, 1904, p. 174.
[150] _Ib._, v, 1894, p. 146.
[151] _Bull. et mém. de la Soc. d’anthr._, 5^e sér. iii, 1902, p. 771.
It is remarkable that Ezekiel (viii. 10-11), speaking of seventy of
‘the ancients of the house of Israel’ who were worshipping in a court,
says that he saw therein ‘every form of creeping things, and abominable
beasts ... pourtrayed upon the wall round about’. These were ‘unclean’
animals, which were _not_ to be eaten. Cf. A. Lang, _Custom and Myth_,
2nd ed., 1885, p. 115.
M. Reinach also insists (_L’Anthr._, xiv, 1903, pp. 264-5) that
the so-called sceptres, or _bátons de commandement_--engraved and
perforated instruments of reindeer-horn--which have been found in
French palaeolithic caves, were used in magical ceremonies; whereas it
has been proved by Dr. O. Schoetensack (_ib._, xii, 1901, pp. 140-4)
that they were merely dress-fasteners similar to those which are used
by the Eskimos.
[152] See A. Lang, _Custom and Myth_, 1885, pp. 294, 296.
[153] _L’Anthr._, xvii, 1906, p. 293.
[154] See p. 34, _supra_.
[155] _L’Anthr._, xvi, 1905, p. 395. Cf. p. 321 of the same volume, and
vol. iv, 1893, p. 550.
[156] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxi, 1892, p. 297; xxiii, 1894, pp. 147,
151.
[157] _L’Anthr._, xvii, 1906, pp. 293-4. The Tasmanians ‘placed weapons
near the grave for the dead friend’s soul to use’ (E. B. Tylor in
_Ency. Brit._, xxv, 1902, p. 467). Cf. pp. 200-2, _infra_.
[158] See pp. 262-3, 464, _infra_.
[159] Mr. Andrew Lang (_Man_, iv, 1904, No. 22, p. 37), remarking that
in the cave of Mas d’Azil, in the department of the Ariège, there has
been found a pendeloque of bone which exactly resembles some Australian
‘bull-roarers’ (_L’Anthr._, xiv, 1903, pp. 655-60), infers that
‘palaeolithic and neolithic man ... probably had such religious ideas
as among savages are attached to bull-roarers’. There is an interesting
chapter on bull-roarers (which in this country are more familiar to
schoolboys than to scholars) in Mr. Lang’s _Custom and Myth_, 1885, pp.
29-44.
[160] See E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, 4th ed., 1903, i, 417-24.
[161] _Ib._, p. 424.
[162] See pp. 461-3, _infra_.
[163] It is said that totemism exists in New Guinea (_Man_, v, 1905,
No. 2) and on the Gold Coast (_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxvi, 1906, pp.
178-88).
[164] See A. Lang, _The Secret of the Totem_, pp. 2, 66.
[165] See W. Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_, 1901, p.
355.
[166] E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, ii, 1903, p. 237.
[167] See _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxviii, 1899, p. 146.
[168] _Ib._, p. 147.
[169] A. Lang, _The Secret of the Totem_, pp. 22-3. I confess that I
cannot understand why descent should have been reckoned in the female
line if, as Mr. Lang apparently holds, the master of each little
primitive group was the only sire in that group. [I am glad to find
that Dr. W. H. D. Rouse (_Folk-Lore_, xvii, 1906, p. 25) has argued in
the same sense.]
[170] E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, ii, 1903, p. 236; B. Spencer and
F. J. Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, 1899, pp. 73, 121;
_Man_, iv, 1904, No. 93, p. 143. See also No. 98, p. 150.
[171] _L’Anthr._, xiii, 1902, pp. 665-7.
[172] A. Lang, _The Secret of the Totem_, pp. 59-89, especially 66, 68,
70, 72-4, 89. See also pp. 7-8 in regard to the complex organization of
Australian tribes. The Aruntas (_ib._, pp. 17-18) do not inherit their
totems, which are ‘determined by _local_ accident’.
[173] _Ib._, p. 29. Mr. Lang conjectures (p. 114) that the master of a
small group, actuated by sexual jealousy, ‘expelled all his adult sons
as they came to puberty.’ Such a group, he remarks, would have been
‘necessarily exogamous in practice’, and then (_ib._, p. 143) would
have come the rule, ‘No marriage within the local group.’ But would it
have been to the interest of the master to expel sons who were useful?
What would have become of them? Would not the same sexual jealousy
that _ex hypothesi_ prompted their expulsion have prevented the master
of any other group from receiving them? And if the master was killed
in hunting after he had expelled his sons, what became of the other
members of the group?
In connexion with Mr. Lang’s book, see _Man_, vi, 1906, No. 17, pp.
27-8, No. 34, pp. 51-4, No. 87, p. 131, and No. 112, p. 182.
[174] A. Lang, _The Secret of the Totem_, pp. 116, 127-8, 153. Cf. Lord
Avebury’s _Origin of Civilisation_, 1902, p. 275.
[175] A. Lang, _The Secret of the Totem_, p. 125.
[176] _Archaeol. Rev._, iii, 1889, p. 220.
[177] _Ib._, p. 227.
[178] _Notes and Queries_, 3rd ser., iv, 1863, pp. 82, 158. These
passages, which are referred to by Mr. Gomme in vol. iii of _Archaeol.
Rev._, do not support the statement in the text about the geese of
Great Crosby, for which he is responsible.
[179] _Archaeol. Rev._, iii, 1889, p. 355.
[180] _B. G._, v, 12, § 6.
[181] M. S. Reinach’s explanation of this passage (_Rev. celt._, xxi,
1900, p. 275) was anticipated by Elton (_Origins of English Hist._, 2nd
ed., 1890, p. 288).
[182] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxviii, 1899, pp. 141, 143-4, 148. M.
Reinach seems to make this assumption when he says (see preceding note)
that we are justified in affirming that ‘chez certaines tribus au
moins de la Bretagne, le lièvre, l’oie et la poule étaient des animaux
sacrés, c’est-à-dire, des totems’. I am glad to find that M. Camille
Jullian (_Rev. des études anc._, iv, 1902, p. 274) also rejects M.
Reinach’s guess; but he continues, ‘Je suis, du reste, convaincu, avec
M. Reinach, que les Celtes ont connu le totémisme ... par exemple, si
_bran(n)os_ signifie ... “le corbeau”, une tribu gauloise avait pris
cet oiseau pour totem ... _Aulerci Brannovices_,’ &c. On the much
surer evidence of such names as Bull, Lamb, Herring, Roach, and many
others, M. Jullian might conclude that ‘les Anglais du vingtième siècle
connaissent le totémisme’. It is perhaps reasonable to conjecture that
the name _Brannovices_ may point to a remote age when the ancestors of
the historic Celts had totems: but it is quite certain that the Celts
of whom M. Jullian is thinking knew nothing about totemism; and the
superstitions which forbade the Britons to eat hares, geese, and fowls,
may have been absolutely unconnected with totemism. See Lord Avebury’s
_Origin of Civilisation_, 1902, p. 19. Miss Eleanor Hull (_Folk-Lore_,
xii, 1901, p. 49) observes that ‘there is one example of what appears
to be a true totemistic idea in those [Irish] stories.... It is in
Cúchulainn’s prohibition to eat the flesh of a hound because it was his
namesake.’
[183] W. Boyd Dawkins, _Cave-Hunting_, p. 165.
[184] Notably Dr. F. B. Jevons (_Folk-Lore_, x, 1899, pp. 374-5) and M.
S. Reinach (_Rev. celt._, xxi, 1900, pp. 283, 299, 305).
[185] See W. Ridgeway, _Origin ... of the Thoroughbred Horse_, 1905,
pp. 90-1, 479, and _L’Anthr._, xvii, 1906, pp. 27-53, especially 27,
29, and figs. 1 and 1_a_. If these illustrations, which purport to
reproduce late palaeolithic engravings of horses, are accurate, they
unquestionably depict halters, though M. Zaborowski (_Association
franç. pour l’avancement des sc._, 32^e sess., 1903, 2^{e} partie, p.
849) thinks that they only represent lassoes.
[186] See a very interesting review [by Mr. Andrew Lang?] in the
_Athenæum_, April 22, 1905, pp. 502-3, of M. Reinach’s _Cultes, mythes
et religions_, and also papers on the domestication of animals in the
numbers for April 29 (p. 533), May 6 (p. 565), and May 13 (p. 597).
[187] It is impossible to tell whether in Ancient Britain oxen were
at any time regarded as sacred, as they apparently were among the
early Phoenicians, the Libyans, the ancestors of the Greeks, and other
primitive peoples, their flesh being never eaten except in sacrificial
feasts, partaken of by the whole clan. See W. Robertson Smith, _The
Religion of the Semites_, 1901, pp. 296-311.
[188] _L’Anthr._, xiv, 1903, pp. 355-7. Cf. _Congrès internat. d’anthr.
et d’archéol. préhist._, 1900 (1902), pp. 408-9.
[189] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxviii, 1899, p. 148. Cf. _Man_, v, 1905,
No. 2, p. 6.
[190] _Chambers’s Ency._, vi, 1901, p. 795. M. S. Reinach (_L’Anthr._
xvi, 1905, p. 660) regards magic as ‘la mère de toutes les vraies
sciences’.
[191] J. G. Frazer, _Early Hist. of the Kingship_, 1905, pp. 37-9,
43-4, 77-8, &c.
[192] See _Man_, vi, 1906, No. 40, p. 62, No. 112, p. 189 (for
a criticism of Dr. Frazer’s ‘oil-and-water theory’ of magic and
religion), and Mr. Sidney Hartland’s most interesting presidential
address to the Anthropological Section of the British Association
(_Times_, Aug. 7, 1906, p. 11, cols. 4-6).
[193] _Folk-Lore_, xv, 1904, pp. 159-60.
[194] _L’Anthr._, xvi, 1905, pp. 574-5.
[195] _Ib._, p. 660.
[196] _Man_, v, 1905, No. 10, pp. 18-19.
[197] J. G. Frazer, _Early Hist. of the Kingship_, _passim_.
[198] See _Man_, vi, 1906, No. 29, p. 46.
[199] See A. Lang, _Custom and Myth_, 1885, p. 237.
[200] _Ib._, p. 242; J. G. Frazer, _Early Hist. of the Kingship_, pp.
2, 3, 36-7.
[201] See pp. 387-8, _infra_.
[202] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 704.
[203] See p. 20, _supra_.
[204] See p. 398, _infra_.
[205] _Vict. Hist. of ... Somerset_, i, 178.
[206] See pp. 382, 389, n. 6, _infra_.
[207] See p. 389, _infra_. M. L. Siret (_L’Anthr._, xvii, 1906, p. 127)
says the same for Spain.
[208] See pp. 385-90, _infra_. ‘The ... transition,’ says Mr. Clement
Reid (_Origin of the Brit. Flora_, p. 45), ‘from the Palaeolithic to
the Neolithic is, unfortunately, one of the most obscure, and I can
only suggest that the break is more apparent than real, and that one
follows the other in close succession.’ See also p. 93 of the same book.
[209] See Mr. Clement Reid’s chapter in _Vict. Hist. of ... Hants_, i,
35-6.
[210] See A. J. Jukes-Browne, _The Building of the Brit. Isles_, p.
300. Mr. Clement Reid (_Origin of the Brit. Flora_, p. 46) states that
in the early part of the Neolithic Age ‘the land stood ... some 60 or
70 feet above its present level’. Cf. p. 20, _supra_.
[211] _Journ. Ethn. Soc._, N. S., ii, 1870, pp. 141-5; J. Prestwich,
_Geology_, ii, 523-4; A. J. Jukes-Browne, _The Building of the Brit.
Isles_, pp. 300-2; Clement Reid, _Origin of the Brit. Flora_, p. 46.
[212] _Nature_, Jan. 6, 1898, p. 235; _Archaeol. Journal_, lv, 1898, p.
271.
[213] _Ib._, p. 272.
[214] _Archaeol. Journal_, lv, 1898, p. 270; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._,
xxix, 1895, pp. 223-7, 431-2, 438; R. Munro, _Prehist. Problems_, 1897,
p. 72.
[215] See _L’Anthr._, vii, 1896, pp. 319-24, and M. Hoernes, _Der
diluviale Mensch in Europa_, p. 185.
[216] _Proc. Dorset Nat. Hist. and Ant. Field Club_, xvii, 1896, pp.
67-75.
[217] See pp. 395-7, _infra_.
[218] See _Vict. Hist. of ... Hants_, i, 256.
[219] _Ib._, p. 37; _Vict. Hist. of ... Sussex_, i, 25.
[220] See _Vict. Hist. of ... Hertford_, i, 229, and _Archaeol.
Journal_, lv, 1898, p. 285. Dr. A. H. Keane’s extravagant estimates
of the length of the Neolithic Age in Europe, which vary between the
limits of ‘scarcely less than 60,000 years’ (_Ethnology_, 2nd ed.,
1896, p. 55) and ‘over 100,000 years’ (_ib._, p. 116), are based upon
obsolete calculations of the chronology of the Glacial Period. See pp.
31-2, _supra_.
[221] See pp. 126-7, _infra_.
[222] See _Rev. de l’École d’anthr._, xv, 1905, pp. 408-14, especially
p. 412.
[223] See pp. 398-407, _infra_.
[224] See pp. 427-8, 433, 443, _infra_.
[225] This use of the word ‘dolmen’, which obtains in France, although
megalithic chambers enclosed in tumuli are there sometimes called by
the same name (_Archaeol. Cambr._, 5th ser., xvii, 1900, p. 221), is
becoming common in this country; but in Wales dolmens are still known
as cromlechs, a name which in France is applied only to stone circles.
[226] See _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, p. 214. The kistvaens of Dartmoor
are really small dolmens.
[227] J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone
Ages_, 1886, p. 232; W. C. Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_, ii, 1897, pp.
461-2.
[228] _Archaeol. Cambr._, 5th ser., xvii, 1900, p. 222; W. C. Borlase,
_Dolmens of Ireland_, ii, 446.
[229] _Ib._, p. 426; _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., v, 1870-3, pp.
367-70; viii, 1879-81, pp. 287-9; _Dict. des sc. anthr._, 1883, pp.
388, 1078; _Archaeol. Cambr._, 5th ser., xvii, 1900, p. 221; B.C. A.
Windle, _Remains of the Prehist. Age_, pp. 174-7; _Rev. de l’École
d’anthr._, xiv, 1904, pp. 259-62. In the eighteenth century the famous
Kentish dolmen called Kit’s Coty House was still partly enclosed within
a sepulchral mound. The Rev. W. C. Lukis, in a letter to Mr. George
Payne _(Collectanea Cantiana_, 1893, p. 127), says, ‘I have a letter
written ... in 1723 by one Hercules Ayleway [in which] ... Kit’s Coty
is represented as being partly in a long barrow.’ See also Borlase,
_op. cit._, iii, 752-3.
Mr. A. L. Lewis (_Man_, vii, 1907, No. 26, p. 38) says that a dolmen on
Great Orme’s Head shows ‘that there certainly were dolmens that were
never buried, but were intended to be “free-standing”’.
[230] W. C. Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_, ii, 424-6, 612-3.
[231] In Pembrokeshire, Glamorganshire, Merionethshire, Carnarvonshire,
and Anglesey. Elsewhere they are almost entirely wanting, perhaps owing
to the lack of suitable stones (_Archaeol. Cambr._, 6th ser., iv, 1904,
p. 199).
[232] See pp. 402-5, _infra_.
[233] See pp. 405-6, _infra_.
[234] See p. 382, _infra_.
[235] See pp. 101-2, _infra_.
[236] _B. G._, vi, 28.
[237] _Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_, xxxiv, 1878, p. 351; W.
Boyd Dawkins, _Early Man in Britain_, pp. 257-62, 484; R. Munro, _The
Lake-Dwellings of Europe_, 1890, p. 488; _Archaeologia_, lv, 1897, pp.
130-1, 158.
[238] See _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, v, 1876, p. 359; the topographical
index in Sir J. Evans’s _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897; and the
_Victoria County Histories of Berks._ (i, 276), _Hants_ (i, 257),
_Lancs._ (i, 212), _Northampton_ (i, 139), _Sussex_ (i, 311, 313, 470),
and _Worcester_ (i, 180).
[239] Sir J. Evans, _Ancient Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 65-6,
104-6, 107-9, 129-30, 213, &c. Implements of jade and jadeite, which
are common in the lake-dwellings (F. Keller, _Lake Dwellings of
Switzerland_ [trans. J. E. Lee], i, 1878, pp. 72, 195-6, 215-6), are
very rare in Britain (Evans, _op. cit._, p. 109), and were doubtless
imported, as jade apparently does not exist _in situ_ in Europe, except
in Silesia and Styria _(Journ. Anthr. Inst._, x, 1881, p. 359; xx,
1890-1, pp. 332-42, especially 334 and 338; _Report of ... the Brit.
Association_, 1890, p. 971; _L’Anthr._, iv, 1893, p. 555).
[240] Similar lamps have been found in neolithic caves in France (_Ass.
franç. pour l’avancement des sc._, 32^{e} session, 1903, 2^{e} partie,
pp. 896-900), and are still used in China (_Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._,
xxii, 1888, p. 81). Cf. p. 258, _infra_.
[241] _Journ. Ethn. Soc._, N. S., ii, 1870, p. 430.
[242] _Ib._, p. 427.
[243] _Ib._, pp. 419-39; S. B. J. Skertchly, _Memoirs of the Geol.
Survey,--On the Manufacture of Gun-Flints_, pp. 39-41, 71, 74.
[244] _Journ. Ethn. Soc._, N. S., ii, 1870, p. 439.
[245] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, v, 1876, pp. 368-74. See p. 98, _infra_.
[246] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 80, 85-6; _Guide
to the Ant. of the Stone Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 79.
[247] See p. 214, _infra_.
[248] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, v, 1876, pp. 357-62, 382, 479;
_Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, pp. 59-60, 66, 68-9, 73-4; xlv, 1880, pp.
337-8, 340-7; _Guide to the Ant. of the Stone Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp.
69-70; _Vict. Hist. of ... Sussex_, i, 315.
[249] See J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone
Ages_, p. 306.
[250] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxii, 1902, p. 395.
[251] See pp. 131-2, 230, _infra_; E. B. Tylor, _Early Hist. of
Mankind_, 2nd ed., 1870, p. 194; A. Lang, _Custom and Myth_, 1885, p.
11; O. Schrader, _Prehist. Ant. of the Aryan Peoples_, 1890, p. 234;
and _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxiii, 1903, pp. 246-58.
[252] pp. 78-81, _infra_.
[253] _Nature_, Jan. 13, 1898, pp. 257-8.
[254] Traces of polishing are said to have been found on French
implements of late palaeolithic age (_Ass. franç. pour l’avancement des
sc._, 13^{e} sess., 1884, 1^{re} part., p. 212; _L’Anthr._, iv, 1893,
p. 550).
[255] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 73, 85-6, and
_Guide to the Ant. of the Stone Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 69-70. Much
depended upon the nature of the material. Certain hard stones, for
instance granite and diorite, were necessarily ground and polished. See
_L’Anthr._, iv, 1893, p. 550, and _Guide to the Ant. of the Stone Age_
(Brit. Museum), p. 69.
[256] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 276.
[257] _Ib._, pp. 28-9, 31.
[258] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 14-37, 43. Cf.
_15th Ann. Report American Bureau of Ethn._, 1893-4 (1897), p. 25.
[259] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 37-43, 412,
414-6; _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxiii, 1903, p. 47.
[260] J. A. H. Murray, _New Eng. Dict._, ii, 215. Cf. Sir J. Evans,
_Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 55.
[261] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 66, 107.
[262] _Ib._, pp. 71, 172, 205; _Proc. Suffolk Inst. of Archaeology_,
xi, 1903, p. 329.
[263] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 129, 235. See
also E. B. Tylor, _Early Hist. of Mankind_, 1870, pp. 205-6; _Prim.
Culture_, 1903, i, 65.
[264] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 136, 171.
[265] J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--The Bronze and Stone
Ages_, pp. 353-4.
[266] _Archaeologia_, xliv, 1873, pp. 281-3.
[267] F. Keller, _The Lake Dwellings of Switzerland_, i, 1878, pp.
21-2, 38, 57, 90, &c.
[268] An axe-hammer has, however, been found in the Liverpool Docks,
scored with a groove, along which a withy was perhaps twisted to serve
as a handle (Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 168-9;
_Vict. Hist. of ... Lancs_, i, 218).
[269] M. Hippolyte Müller (_L’Anthr._, xiv, 1903, pp. 424-6) has cut
down numerous trees with flint axes, which were uninjured by the
experiments. Two of the trees were felled in thirteen and fourteen
minutes respectively.
[270] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 79, 171-2, 195-6.
[271] _Ib._, pp. 175-6.
[272] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 178.
[273] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, iv, 1875, p. 403.
[274] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 183-4.
[275] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 215; _L’Anthr._,
iv, 1893, p. 489.
[276] See _Archaeologia,_ xliii, 1871, p. 409.
[277] J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone
Ages_, p. 246; _Archaeol. Cambr._, 6th ser., iii, 1903, p. 234; _Proc.
Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxviii, 1904, p. 355.
[278] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 183-4, 195, 215,
231.
[279] _Ib._, pp. 238-9, 245, 247-8, 250-2.
[280] _Ib._, pp. 275-6, 289. See pp. 92-3, _infra_.
[281] See _Anthr. Rev._, iii, 1865 (_Journ. Anthr. Soc._, p. lxvi);
_Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, pp. 229-30; and _Anc. Stone Implements_,
1897, p. 294. Dr. R. Munro. (_Prehist. Problems_, pp. 325-30, 359)
would refer all the British flint saws to the Bronze Age, on the ground
that ‘bronze saws have never yet been found in the British Isles’: but
this statement is inaccurate (see p. 132, _infra_); and, as we have
seen (p. 41, _supra_), serrated palaeolithic flints have been unearthed
in a gravel-pit at Swanscombe.
[282] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 299-300, 311-2.
[283] _Ib._, pp. 312-9; _Mem. Geol. Survey,--On the Manufacture of Gun
Flints_, p. 39.
[284] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 321.
[285] _Ib._, pp. 326-32, 356-7.
[286] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 360-1, 369-98;
_Man_, vii, 1907, No. 25, p. 37; No. 37, p. 56.
[287] See _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxiii, 1903, p. 54.
[288] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, p. 377.
[289] J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone
Ages_, p. 272.
[290] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxix, 1899, p. 131.
[291] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xi, 1876, p. 509.
[292] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 361.
[293] _Ib._, pp. 428-30; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxviii, 1904, pp.
355, 361.
[294] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, pp. 431, 433-4.
[295] Worthington G. Smith, _Man, the Primeval Savage_, p. 304. Messrs.
W. Johnson and W. Wright (_Neol. Man in N.-E. Surrey_, 1903, pp. 49,
169), who have been diligent in collecting tools from North-Eastern
Surrey, remark that ‘some were fitted for use in the right hand, and
others for the left’, and conclude that the people who used them were
ambidextrous. But surely the more natural conclusion would be that some
were left-handed!
[296] On the moors near Sheffield and in East Lancashire, in
Staffordshire and Lincolnshire, and at Hastings.
[297] Donegal.
[298] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 324-5; _Proc.
Roy. Irish Acad._, 3rd ser., vi, 1900-2, pp. 362-3; _Reliquary_, N. S.,
vii, 1901, pp. 123-6; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxv, 1901, pp. 98-101;
_Man_, ii, 1902, No. 15, pp. 18-22.
[299] See _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxix, 1899, p. 136.
[300] See _L’Anthr._, v, 1894, pp. 20-1, 146, and _Guide to the Ant.
of the Stone Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 77-8. M. Salomon Reinach (_Rev.
celt._, xiii, 1892, pp. 193-9) attributes the absence of such artistic
remains in France to the influence of Druids.
[301] _Carm._, ii, 15, 10-20.
[302] Professor B.C. A. Windle (_Remains of the Prehist. Age_, p. 257)
affirms that excavations in the stronghold of Eggardun in Dorsetshire
have proved that ‘pit-dwellings were in use in the Pre-metallic
period’; and he remarks (_ib._, p. 258) that there was ‘no trace of
any metallic object in the pits examined by Stevens at Hurstbourne or
in those at Standlake’ in Oxfordshire. It is shown on p. 97, _infra_,
that there is no sufficient reason for referring Eggardun to the
Neolithic Age: bronze was discovered at Standlake (_Archaeologia_,
xxxvii, 1857, p. 368), which, according to Pitt-Rivers (_Excavations
in Cranborne Chase_, i, 20-1), bore such an ‘exact resemblance to
the [Romano-British] Woodcuts village’, that, in his judgement,
‘further excavations would have proved it to have been of the Roman
or Late-Celtic period’: Romano-British pottery was found in the pits
at Hurstbourne; and Dr. Stevens himself (_Parochial Hist. of St. Mary
Bourne_, 1888, p. 34) only claimed that ‘the flint implements ...
establish that the site, if not the dwellings, was occupied by the
people of the Neolithic Age’. Professor Boyd Dawkins (_Vict. Hist. of
... Hants_, i, 262) rightly refers the dwellings to the Iron Age.
Bone weaving-combs, which were found in pit-dwellings at Highfield,
near Fisherton in Wiltshire, evidently belonged, like the querns with
which they were associated (J. Stevens, _Parochial Hist. of St. Mary
Bourne_, p. 25), to the Early Iron Age (cf. Sir J. Evans, _Ancient
Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 251, and _Reliquary_, N. S., vii, 1901, p.
115); and although Professor Boyd Dawkins (_Early Man_, &c., p. 268)
pleads that the pottery, which was ‘ornamented with incised curves’,
was ‘not turned in the lathe’, that does not prove that it was made in
the Neolithic or even the Bronze Age (see p. 244, _infra_); while the
‘curves’ suggest that it was Late Celtic.
[303] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xi, 1882, pp. 472-3.
[304] _Archaeol. Cant._, xiii, 1880, pp. 122-6.
[305] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxix, 1899, p. 128; _Vict. Hist. of ...
Surrey_, i, 237.
[306] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xii, 1887-9, pp. 258-63; xvii,
1897-9, pp. 216-21; _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxix, 1899, pp. 124, 127,
134.
[307] _Norfolk Archaeology_, iii, 1852, pp. 232-6; _Journ. Anthr.
Inst._, xxix, 1899, p. 127; _Vict. Hist. of ... Surrey_, i, 236. Cf.
_Archaeol. Cambr._, 6th ser., iv, 1904, p. 200.
[308] _Vict. Hist. of ... Hants_, i, 258-9.
[309] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxix, 1899, pp. 127, 139.
[310] _Ib._, p. 140. Stone mounds have been discovered in South Wales
by Messrs. T. C. Cantrill and O. T. Jones, who regard them as ‘probably
the remains of prehistoric hearths or cooking-places’ (_Archaeol.
Cambr._, 6th ser., vi, 1906, p. 17); but, as they ‘range in diameter
from 6 feet or so to as much as 50 feet’ (_ib._, p. 19), I would
suggest that the cooks must have been of Brobdingnagian stature.
For descriptions of other pit-dwellings which may perhaps be of
neolithic age, see G. Young, _Hist. of Whitby_, ii, 1817, pp. 666-83;
T. Bateman, _Vestiges of the Ant. of Derbyshire_, 1848, p. 126; _Journ.
Brit. Archaeol. Association_, xi, 1855, pp. 305-13; _Anthr. Rev._, v,
1867, p. 253; and _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, pp. 223-4.
[311] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxvii, 1903, pp. 370-415.
[312] A chambered mound in Stromness, Orkney, which was not a sepulchre
but a dwelling, has also been recently excavated, and contained a stone
implement (_Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxvii, 1903, pp. 352-9). Mr.
Christison (_ib._, xxxviii, 1904, pp. 5-6) tentatively refers it to the
Neolithic Age, while the discoverer more cautiously says that it must
have been built in ‘a remote period, not ... because the implement is
made of _stone_, but because the type is an ancient one’.
[313] Mr. George Clinch. See his article in _Surrey Archaeol.
Collections_, xvii, 1902, pp. 181-3.
[314] _Matériaux pour l’hist. ... de l’homme_, 3^e sér., ii, 1885, pp.
1-18.
[315] R. Munro, _The Lake-Dwellings of Europe_, 1890, pp. 470-1, 489.
Cf. _Journ. Roy. Soc. Ant. Ireland_, 5th ser., x, 1900 (1901), pp. 208,
235, and _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp.
142-3. See p. 154, _infra_.
[316] _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, iii, 1870, p. 76; W. Greenwell, _Brit.
Barrows_, 1877, p. 742.
[317] _Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Ass._, N. S., v, 1899, p. 285.
[318] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 742.
[319] _Journ. Ethn. Soc._, ii, 1870, p. 431.
[320] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 740-1. Cf. p. 151, _infra_.
[321] _Archaeologia_, lv, 1897, pp. 132-3, 150; _Archaeol. Journal_,
liv, 1897, p. 379; R. Lydekker, _Mostly Mammals_, pp. 52, 299.
[322] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 743-4; F. Keller, _Lake
Dwellings of Switzerland_, i, 1878, p. 479.
[323] _Journ. Ethn. Soc._, ii, 1870, p. 431.
[324] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxix, 1899, pp. 135-6; J. R. Mortimer,
_Forty Years’ Researches_, p. lxx. Cf. E. B. Tylor, _Early Hist. of
Mankind_, 1870, pp. 262-70, and _Ency. Brit._, xxv, 1902, p. 467.
[325] _Archaeol. Review_, i, 1888, p. 6.
[326] _Congrès internat. d’anthr. et d’arch. prehist._, 1900 (1902), p.
407.
[327] F. Keller, _Lake Dwellings_, &c., i, 1878, pp. 518-36.
[328] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 257.
[329] A stone which appears to have been used as a grain-crusher was
found in the neolithic village at West Wickham (_Journ. Anthr. Inst._,
xxix, 1899, p. 133).
[330] See p. 76, _supra_.
[331] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 744-5.
[332] _Archaeologia_, xix, 1821, p. 48; _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, i, 1865,
p. 144; _Anthr. Rev._, iii, 1865 (_Journ. Anthr. Soc._, p. lxvii); W.
Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 701-5; _Brit. Med. Journal_, 1903, pp.
809-10; _Vict. Hist. of ... Derby_, i, 168. It must be admitted that in
some cases the teeth of neolithic skulls are as much worn as those of
the Bronze Age.
Messrs. W. Johnson and W. Wright (_Neol. Man in N.-E. Surrey_,
1903, pp. 53-4), referring to _Science Gossip_, July, 1901, p. 36,
affirm that under the tartar which covered the teeth of a skeleton
in a neolithic barrow on Warminster Downs were found particles of
quartzite,--‘apparently the rubbings from the mortar in which the corn
was ground.’ But the writer of the article in _Science Gossip_ states
that bronze was found in the barrow.
[333] See O. Schrader, _Prehist. Ant. of the Aryan Peoples_, p. 286,
and _Journ. Roy. United Service Inst._, xiii, 1870, p. 518.
[334] See _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, iii, 1874, pp. 35-6, and Mr. Clement
Reid’s article in _Vict. Hist. of ... Sussex_, i, 9-10.
[335] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, v, 1876, pp. 121, 478. See also p. 152,
_infra_.
[336] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 659-60, 704.
[337] _Nature_, Nov. 22, 1894, p. 92.
[338] F. Keller, _Lake Dwellings of Switzerland_, i, 1878, pp. 44, 46,
56, 63-4, 67, 69, 505-17, &c.
[339] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 744-5.
[340] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 436-9.
[341] _Ib._, p. 465.
[342] See p. 80, _supra_, and _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 312.
[343] J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone
Ages_, p. 240.
[344] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 519-20, 543.
[345] ‘The fact is,’ says Professor Ridgeway (_Man_, iii, 1903, No. 97,
pp. 171-2), ‘that mankind was led to wear such objects by magic rather
than by aesthetic considerations ... the use of all the objects still
employed in modern jewellery has primarily arisen from the magical
powers attributed to them, by which they were thought to protect the
wearer.’ M. Salomon Reinach’s review (_L’Anthr._, xiv, 1903, pp.
711-12) of Professor Ridgeway’s article is worth reading.
[346] A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, ii, 179;
_Folk-Lore_, xii, 1901, p. 175.
[347] See Lord Avebury’s _Origin of Civilisation_, 1902, pp. 54-8.
[348] The primitive method was apparently scraping (_L’Anthr._, viii,
1897, p. 204). M. Hippolyte Müller (_ib._, xiv, 1903, pp. 430-4)
has performed the operation on four skulls by scraping with a flint
implement; and he concludes that this method was adopted in the case
of living patients. It appears (_ib._, p. 434) that the distinguished
anthropologist, M. Capitan, has been impelled by scientific ardour to
experiment ‘sur plusieurs chiens vivants’. What will happen if the
Anti-Vivisection Society hears of this?
[349] _Bull. de la Soc. d’anthr. de Paris_, 3^e sér., iv, 1881, p. 107;
vi, 1883, pp. 318-9; _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xi, 1882, pp. 9, 12-4, 16;
xvii, 1888, pp. 101, 106; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxvi, 1892, pp. 5,
8, 14-5, 17-8, 21, 28, 30-2; Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_,
1897, p. 289; R. Munro, _Prehist. Problems_, pp. 191-232; E. B. Tylor,
_Prim. Culture_, i, 1903, p. 295; _Bull. et mém. de la Soc. d’anthr._,
5^e sér., v, 1904, pp. 67-73; _Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron
Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 58. See also _Man_, v, 1905, No. 27, p. 49. A
perforated skull which was found in an interment in Bute may perhaps
show that the practice of trepanning existed in this country as early
as the Bronze Age; but a physician who has examined the perforation
believes that it was not produced by trepanning (_Proc. Soc. Ant.
Scot._, xxxviii, 1904, pp. 67-8). Artificially perforated skulls were
found just outside the Late Celtic fortified village of Hunsbury near
Northampton. See A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, vol.
iii, unnumbered page following pl. ccxxviii.
[350] Diodorus Siculus, v, 14, § 2.
[351] Apollonius Rhodius, ii, 1011-4.
[352] Strabo, iii, 4, § 17.
[353] See Lord Avebury’s _Origin of Civilisation_, 1902, pp. 25,
157-68, and _L’Anthr._, v, 1894, pp. 352-7. According to Dr. G. A.
Wilken (_ib._, p. 356), certain communities in the Indian archipelago
who practised the _couvade_ in 1894 were in a state of transition from
matriarchy to father-right. Cf. _Man_, vi, 1906, No. 74, p. 112.
[354] _Rev. celt._, vii, 1886, p. 227.
[355] _Academy_, xxv, 1884, p. 112.
[356] E. B. Tylor, _Early Hist. of Mankind_, 1870, pp. 293-304; _Prim.
Culture_, 1903, i, 84.
[357] See, however, pp. 117-8, _infra_.
[358] See _Trans. Epping Forest ... Field Club_, ii, 1882, p. 60; iii,
1884, p. 228.
[359] _Bull. et mém. de la Soc. d’anthr. de Paris_, i, 1900, p. 53.
[360] _Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Ass._, N. S., vii, 1901, p. 17.
[361] See p. 156, _infra_.
[362] _Proc. Dorset Nat. Hist. and Ant. Field Club_, xxii, 1901, pp.
28-42; _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xviii, 1901, pp. 258-62.
[363] _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, pp. 195, 232.
[364] It should be noted that pottery of the types that characterized
the Bronze Age was still manufactured in the Early Iron Age. See p.
244, _infra_. Fragments of pottery were found in the long barrow of
West Kennet in Wiltshire; but Thurnam (_Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, p.
231) regards it as ‘very doubtful whether they belong to the people
by whom the chamber was erected’. They seem to have been portions of
‘food-vessels’, which belong to the Bronze Age (see p. 191, _infra_);
and Pitt-Rivers (_Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 1898, pp. 100,
163) says that they ‘must probably have got in subsequently to the
construction of the barrow’. See also _ib._, pp. 147 and 162 (fig. 8);
and, for examples of round-bottomed domestic pottery which have been
found both in long barrows and in certain round barrows that may have
been erected in the Stone Age, see _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 488-9, 509, and
J. R. Mortimer, _Forty Years’ Researches_, p. lxviii.
The Scottish chambered cairns have yielded more pottery than the
English barrows. Most of the vessels lacked decoration; but some were
ornamented either with cord patterns or by impressions of the potter’s
finger-tips and nails, or with vertical flutings; while a chambered
cairn at Unstan, in Orkney, contained a vessel with triangular
ornament of a kind which, as we shall see (pp. 197-8, _infra_),
was characteristic of the Bronze Age. It may, however, have been
manufactured at a time when bronze was coming into use in Southern
Britain. See _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xix, 1885, pp. 346-8, and J.
Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone Ages_, pp.
240, 248-9, 252, 272-3, 294-7.
Some of the ‘drinking-cups’ which have been exhumed from round barrows
doubtless belong to the end of the Neolithic Age (see pp. 192-3,
_infra_); and a curious vessel, which Bateman (_Vestiges of the Ant.
of Derbyshire_, 1848, p. 43) described as ‘a small drinking or incense
cup of novel and unprecedented shape’, was found in a round barrow the
neolithic age of which is certain. See _Man_, vi, 1906, No. 44, pp.
70-1.
[365] _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, p. 44.
[366] _Ib._, pp. 32-3. See also _Vict. Hist. of ... Sussex_, i, 458,
461, 463.
[367] Worthington G. Smith, _Man, the Primeval Savage_, pp. 319-20;
_Vict. Hist. of ... Bedford_, i, 160.
[368] _Vict. Hist. of ... Surrey_, i, 237-8.
[369] Gen. Pitt-Rivers (_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, vi, 1877, pp. 359-60),
after remarking that in the region between Seaford and Beachy Head
‘the _débris_ of flint manufacture is so far abundant on the surface
... that the fact of finding flint flakes in the interior of these
entrenchments [Seaford and Beltout] is no proof whatever of their being
of the age of these entrenchments’, goes on to say that ‘this does
not apply to other parts of the Downs of Sussex and elsewhere. There,
worked flints are found in patches here and there; but considerable
distances may be traversed without coming to these patches, and the
fact of finding them in unusual numbers in the insides of these
earthworks remains to testify to the probability of their having been
used by the inhabitants of them.’
[370] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, v, 1876, pp. 383-4. Mr. George Clinch
(_Vict. Hist. of ... Sussex_, i, 316), referring to certain implements
which he found himself at Cissbury, says, ‘The position of the flint
flakes and chips upon [the side of one of the mounds] proves that the
earthworks were completed during the Neolithic Age’.
[371] _L’Anthr._, xiv, 1903, pp. 444-62, and especially 450-2. See
also A. Bertrand, _Archéol. celt. et gaul._, 1889, p. 105, n. 1, and
_Congrès internat. d’anthr. et d’arch. préhist._, 1900 (1902), pp.
430-1.
[372] _Vict. Hist. of ... Sussex_, i, 469-70. The authors of an
interesting article in the _Cornhill Magazine_ (May, 1906, pp. 611-2),
which, however, contains some unverifiable statements, assert that
earthworks of a peculiar form, ‘usually at the base of a hill on the
edge of a plain,’ were designed as a protection against wolves.
[373] _L’Anthr._, xv, 1904, p. 159.
[374] _Ib._, pp. 162, 165; _Man_, iv, 1904, No. 22, p. 37; _Fort.
Rev._, Oct., 1904, pp. 635-9. M. Piette, however (_L’Anthr._, xvi,
1905, pp. 6-7), holds that certain symbols which he himself discovered
in the cave of Gourdan form a real inscription.
[375] _L’Anthr._, xv, 1904, p. 162.
[376] Gongora y Martinez, _Antiguëdades prehist. de Andalucia_, 1868,
p. 40, fig. 24. Cf. _Fort. Rev._, Oct., 1904, p. 643. See also in
regard to primitive writing _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxix, 1899, pp.
204-6, _Rev. arch._, 4^e sér., i, 1903, pp. 231-2, and _Man_, iv, 1904,
No. 22, p. 37.
[377] _Archaeol. Cambr._, 4th ser., iii, 1872, p. 25; W. Boyd Dawkins,
_Cave Hunting_, pp. 155-9; _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, lx, 1904, pp.
335-48.
[378] See _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, i, 1865, p. 133, and W. Greenwell, _Brit.
Barrows_, pp. 1-2.
[379] See p. 58, _supra_.
[380] See _Folk-Lore_, xii, 1901, pp. 28-9.
[381] _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, p. 109. Mr. J. R. Mortimer (_Forty
Years’ Researches_, &c., 1905, p. lxxxi) is ‘slightly inclined to
consider that the long barrows [of the Yorkshire Wolds] ... are more
recent than the greater number of the round ones’; but the only
reason which he gives for this singular opinion, namely, that he has
frequently found both long and round skulls in the round barrows of the
same district, has no weight against the facts which have led all other
investigators to regard the long as earlier than the round barrows. See
p. 393, _infra_. Not only has no metal ever been found with a primary
interment in a long barrow, but sepulchral pottery is also wanting. See
_Man_, v, 1905, No. 86, p. 159. If the contents of certain long barrows
‘do not show any features of interest differing from those found in
[some] round barrows’ (_Forty Years’ Researches_, p. xix), that only
suggests that long barrows were still made for some time after the
first interment in a round barrow took place. See W. Greenwell, _Brit.
Barrows_, pp. 509, 556.
[382] J. B. Davis and J. Thurnam, _Crania Britannica_, ii, 1865, pl.
33, p. 2; _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, pp. 170, 176, 202, 206-7; _Mem.
Anthr. Soc._, iii, 1870, p. 41; W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp.
479, 484-511, 550-6; B.C. A. Windle, _Remains of the Prehist. Age_,
pp. 155, 157, 159-63, 166-71; _Vict. Hist. of ... Durham_, i, 200,
207. A few long barrows are said to exist in Lancashire, but it is
doubtful whether they can really be classed as such (_Vict. Hist. of
... Lancs._, i, 211).
[383] W. Boyd Dawkins, _Cave Hunting_, p. 162; J. Anderson, _Scotland
in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone Ages_, pp. 232-67; _Proc. Soc.
Ant. Scot._, xxxvi, 1902, pp. 39-42.
[384] _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, pp. 206-7; W. C. Lukis, _Prehist.
Stone Monuments of the Brit. Isles,--Cornwall_, 1885, p. 13;
J. Anderson, _op. cit._, pp. 268-303; _Journ. Brit. Archaeol.
Association_, N. S., vi, 1900, p. 7; _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxii,
1902, p. 404.
[385] _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, pp. 206-7; _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, iii,
1870, p. 41.
[386] See S. Nilsson, _Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia_, 1868, pp.
124-58; _Journ. Ethn. Soc._, N. S., ii, 1870, p. 448; W. Greenwell,
_Brit. Barrows_, p. 536; _Archaeol. Review_, ii, 1889, p. 314; E.
Cartailhac, _La France préhist._, 1889, p. 195; and A. H. Keane,
_Ethnology_, 1896, p. 126, note. The ‘Picts’ houses’, whose resemblance
to chambered _tumuli_, according to Thurnam (_Archaeologia_, xlii,
1869, pp. 223-4), is such that ‘in particular instances it has been
doubted whether the structure ... was a dwelling or a tomb’, belong to
a much later period than that of the _tumuli_. See pp. 261 and 391,
_infra_.
[387] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, v, 1876, pp. 130-1; W. Greenwell, _Brit.
Barrows_, p. 536, n. 2.
[388] Canon Greenwell (_ib._, p. 485, n. 1) says that in North
Gloucestershire ‘the rule of the primary interment having been made
at the larger end of the mound by no means holds good in all cases’.
See also p. 504. In the Wor Barrow on Cranborne Chase the primary
interments lay south of the centre of an oblong enclosure, which is
described on p. 106, _infra_ (A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne
Chase_, iv, 20-1 [preface]).
[389] _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, pp. 181, 208-9; _Mem. Anthr. Soc._,
iii, 1870, p. 41; W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 484, 487-8, 491,
497, 501, 505, 509, 511, 513, 515, 521, 524; _Dict. des. sc. anthr._,
1883, p. 387; J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and
Stone Ages_, pp. 264-5; E. Cartailhac, _La France préhist._, 1889, p.
183; _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xv, 1893-5, p. 404; W. C. Borlase,
_Dolmens of Ireland_, ii, 489-90.
[390] _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, pp. 172, 208; J. B. Davis and J.
Thurnam, _Crania Britannica_, ii, pl. 50, pp. 1-2.
[391] J. B. Davis and J. Thurnam, _Crania Britannica_, ii, pl. 5, p. 2;
_Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, p. 212, pl. xiv.
[392] _Ib._, pp. 172-3, 209; W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 544. See
p. 177, _infra_.
[393] See p. 65, _supra_.
[394] Oval neolithic barrows, which were not only fenced by
peristaliths, but also had ellipses of stone on the surface, and which,
like the West Kennet barrow, were each surmounted by a dolmen, exist in
Northern Germany, west of the Vistula (_L’Anthr._, iv, 1893, p. 487),
in Denmark (A. Bertrand, _Archéol. celt. et gaul._, 1889, pp. 163-4),
and in France (_ib._, p. 166). Cf. _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, p. 165
(pl. xii, figs. 3 and 4), 211, note b.
[395] J. B. Davis and J. Thurnam, _Crania Britannica_, ii, pl. 24, pp.
2-3, pl. 5, p. 2; _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, pp. 209-21; W. Greenwell,
_Brit. Barrows_, p. 544; J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the
Bronze and Stone Ages_, p. 232.
[396] _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, pp. 20-1 (preface).
[397] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, v, 1876, p. 153, fig. 1, 165, fig. 1.
[398] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 536; J. Anderson, _Scotland in
Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone Ages_, pp. 232, 266-7; _Proc. Soc.
Ant. Scot._, xxxvi, 1902, pp. 39-42.
[399] J. Anderson, _op. cit._, p. 300.
[400] See, however, p. 108, and p. 109, n. 2, _infra_. According to Dr.
R. Munro (_Prehist. Scotland_, 1899, p. 325), ‘Although many [Scottish]
graves have been examined which contained ... stone and nothing of
bronze, it does not follow that they were earlier than others in which
bronze articles were found. It seems to me’, he continues, ‘that the
vast majority of the sepulchral memorials hitherto explored within the
Scottish area date from the introduction of bronze’.
The evidence that the Scottish chambered tombs belonged to the Scottish
Stone Age is precisely the same as that which is almost unanimously
accepted for the English long barrows. Since we find that not a single
article of bronze has ever been found with a primary interment in a
Scottish chambered cairn, while bronze is abundant in the short cists
and unchambered cairns of the same country; that the skeletons in
chambered cairns belong to the same stock as the people who built the
long barrows (see pp. 393-4, _infra_); and that the chambered cairns
and the chambered long barrows are structurally akin, we may infer that
the former, like the latter, belonged to the Stone Age. That, however,
some of them may have been built after bronze had been introduced into
Southern Britain is not improbable.
[401] J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone
Ages_, pp. 249-50, 258, 264, 272, 274.
[402] _Journ. Ethn. Soc._, N. S., ii, 1870, pp. 416-9.
[403] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxviii, 1871, pp. 85-96.
[404] An oval cairn, however, at Pawton in East Cornwall (W. C. Lukis,
_The Prehist. Stone Monuments of the Brit. Isles,--Cornwall_, 1885, p.
11) contains a cist, apparently contemporary with its erection, and is
therefore presumably later than the chambered round barrows. It has
been suggested (_Vict. Hist. of ... Derby_, i, 175-6) that the oval
form of some barrows may be due to the addition, following secondary
interments, of new material.
[405] _Ib._, pp. 166-9.
[406] T. Bateman, _Ten Years’ Diggings_, &c., 1861, pp. 253-4. The
Derwent Moor barrow was opened in 1780, when the art of excavation
was in its infancy; and the urn in question may have belonged to a
secondary interment.
[407] _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1888 (1889), pp. 289-316.
In regard to the chambered round barrows of Derbyshire, see also
_Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_, N. S., vi, 1900, p. 7, and cf. W.
Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 447-52.
[408] _Archaeologia_, xlix, 1885, pp. 189-92, 194-7; W. C. Borlase,
_Dolmens of Ireland_, i, 145, 149, ii, 418, 441-2, 445-6, 448, 451,
462. See also Borlase’s _Nenia Cornubiae_, 1872, p. 3, and _Vict. Hist.
of ... Cornwall_, i, 358.
[409] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxvi, 1902, pp. 74-181: xxxvii, 1903,
pp. 36-67; xxxviii, 1904, pp. 17-81; _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxii,
1902, pp. 398-406. These cairns have no passages of entrance. Their
outline was commonly rectangular, the ground-plan being defined by
flagstones, arranged at one end in a semi-circle, the space within
which led to a low portal that gave access to the chamber. The latter
consisted of two sections, one above the other, of which the lower
was built of large lateral slabs, covered by flagstones, and divided
by other slabs into compartments, while the upper was formed of small
flags laid horizontally.
A chambered cairn of abnormal form in the island of Ronsay, Orkney,
which has been described by Sir William Turner (_Proc. Soc. Ant.
Scot._, xxxvii, 1903, pp. 73-82), ‘consisted of a central part and four
recesses’ (_ib._, pp. 74-5, fig. 1); and on its roof were cremation
cists ‘quite different in character from the short cists so frequently
found in Scotland’ (_ib._, p. 79).
[410] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxii, 1902, pp. 398, 405; _Proc. Soc.
Ant. Scot._, xxxviii, 1904, p. 78.
[411] _Ib._, xxxvi, 1902, pp. 154-5. The chronology of the peculiar
chambered cairns of South-Western Scotland is somewhat perplexing. On
the one hand the structure of the cairns is presumptive evidence that
they were built in neolithic times (J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan
Times,--the Bronze and Stone Ages_, pp. 271-2; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._,
xxxvi, 1902, p. 136); the successive interments which were made in them
were characteristic of the same period (_ib._, p. 134); the pottery
which they contained is almost all of neolithic type (_ib._, pp. 165-7;
xxxviii, 1904, pp. 78-9); and the presence of drinking-cups does not
necessarily point to a later date (p. 193, _infra_). On the other hand
a perforated stone hammer, which was found in one of the chambers
(_ib._, xxxvi, 1902, p. 100), belongs to a class of implements which in
this country were generally post-neolithic (p. 78, _supra_); an elegant
bowl which was obtained by Canon Greenwell in a cairn on Largie Farm,
near Crinan (_Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxvi, 1902, pp. 165-7), although
neolithic in form, is somewhat similar to a food-vessel figured in
_Brit. Barrows_, p. 88, fig. 73, which, like it, is ornamented with
vertical flutings; and one of the drinking-cups deposited in the same
cairn is ‘almost identical in size, shape, and ornamentation’ with
a specimen that was associated with a bronze dagger in a barrow on
Roundway Hill, Wiltshire (_Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, vi, 1867, pp. 345,
n. 1, 347). I conclude that these cairns were locally of neolithic age,
but that the influence of the later culture had made itself felt in the
district,--in short, that they belonged to a period of transition.
[412] M. de Baye exaggerates when he says (_L’archéol. préhist._, 1888,
p. 108) that in France inhumation in the Neolithic Age was almost
universal. M. E. Cartailhac (_Matériaux pour l’hist. ... de l’homme_,
xxii, 1888, pp. 1-2, 4, 6-7; _La France préhist._, 1889, pp. 270-6)
gives numerous instances of incineration in neolithic tombs in the
departments of the Aisne, the Marne, the Morbihan, &c.
[413] W. C. Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_, ii, 520.
[414] _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, pp. 191-2, 224-6; _Journ. Anthr.
Inst._, v, 1876, p. 129.
[415] _Ib._; _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), p.
53.
[416] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxviii, 1904, p. 81. Cremation was
common in the Neolithic Age in Derbyshire (_Report of ... the Brit.
Association_, 1888 [1890], p. 316).
[417] See, however, p. 187, _infra_.
[418] See _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, v, 1876, pp. 130-1.
[419] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 690-1; J. Anderson, _Scotland
in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone Ages_, pp. 244-5, 250, 274, 293,
300; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxviii, 1904, p. 42.
[420] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 506; _Guide to the Ant. of the
Stone Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 72.
[421] In a long barrow at Upper Swell in Gloucestershire (W. Greenwell,
_Brit. Barrows_, pp. 524, 526, 536) the primary interment was in a true
grave. No similar interment, so far as I know, has been found in any
long barrow.
[422] _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, pp. 189, 224-5. Sir J. Evans
(_Archaeol. Journal_, xxxv, 1878, p. 266) gives an instance of a
skeleton of neolithic age found in the extended position near Daventry
in Northamptonshire.
[423] _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, p. 189; W. Greenwell, _Brit.
Barrows_, pp. 23-4.
[424] _Archaeologia_, xv, 1806, p. 339; xix, 1821, pp. 43-4; xlii,
1869, pp. 184-5.
[425] _Ib._, pp. 190-1; W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 504; A.
Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 20-1 (preface);
_Guide to the Ant. of the Stone Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 72-3. In
the Wor Barrow on Cranborne Chase (see p. 105, _supra_) Pitt-Rivers
discovered six skeletons ‘huddled together beneath a small mound’,
which was within and distinct from the monument itself. Three of them
were crouched, and the rest ‘put in with them as bones, with the
long-bones laid out by the side of the skull’. Referring to a discovery
made in Egypt by Professor Flinders Petrie, Pitt-Rivers observes that
the bones of a skeleton of the Fifth Dynasty (about 3500 B.C.) ‘had
been cut up and put in a box, with an effigy of the deceased by the
side of it. Something of this sort’, he continues, ‘may have occurred
here’.
[426] v, 18, § 2.
[427] _Guide to the Ant. of the Stone Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 73.
[428] _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, pp. 184-5; W. Greenwell, _Brit.
Barrows_, pp. 500-1.
[429] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, v, 1876, pp. 134-8. Even in cremation
deposits the bones are often imperfect and disconnected; and, previous
to cremation, the bodies must have been stored in an ossuary (W.
Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 547).
[430] _Ib._, pp. 527, 533-4, 547-8
[431] _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, pp. 185, 191-2, 222, 227; _Mem.
Anthr. Soc._, iii, 1870, p. 76.
[432] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 686-93. See also Canon
Greenwell’s remarks on pp. 544-5. Although he agrees in the main with
Rolleston, he admits the probability that Thurnam ‘found signs of
violent breakage upon a few skulls’.
[433] _Archaeologia_, xxxviii, 1860, p. 421.
[434] Gen. Pothier, _Les tumulus du plateau de Ger_, 1900, pp. 30-1.
[435] See the references in Greenwell’s _Brit. Barrows_, p. 685.
[436] See E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, i, 1903, pp. 458-67.
[437] _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, pp. 188, 222. Cf. _Bull. de la Soc.
d’anthr. de Paris_, 2^e sér., ii, 1867, pp. 326-32; J. R. Mortimer,
_Forty Years’ Researches_, p. xxiv, and W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_,
p. 15; and, for a valuable caution against forming hasty inferences
as to cannibalism, _Journ. Derby. Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Soc._, xv,
1893, p. 162.
[438] See p. 268, n. 1, _infra_.
[439] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 486, 499, 544.
[440] ‘Remains of the horse,’ says Lord Avebury (_Prehist. Times_, 6th
ed., 1900, p. 160, with which cf. p. 152, n. 5, _infra_), ‘are very
rare in English barrows, and I know no well authenticated case of their
occurrence in a long barrow’. See, however, _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869,
pp. 228-9. In Gaul at all events in the Neolithic Age horses abounded
(_Association franç. pour l’avancement des sc._, 32^e sess., 1903, 2^e
part., p. 851).
[441] _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, pp. 182-3, 227-8, 237-8, 241.
[442] See E. B. Tylor, _Early Hist. of Mankind_, 1870, p. 131.
[443] _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, N. S., iii, 1865, p. 317.
[444] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 735.
[445] _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, p. 183.
[446] _B. G._, v, 12, § 6.
[447] See W. Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_, 1901, p.
350.
[448] Primus in orbe deos fecit timor (Statius, _Theb._, iii, 661). Cf.
E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, ii, 1903, p. 230.
[449] _Ib._, pp. 28, 111, 113.
[450] _Acad. des inscr. et belles-lettres_,--comptes-rendus des séances
de l’année 1892, 4^e sér., xx, 6-7.
[451] See pp. 289-98, _infra_.
[452] _L’Anthr._, iv, 1893, p. 488; _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, p. 232.
[453] _Ib._, pp. 193, 229, 232; W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 543.
[454] See _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, iii, 1865, p. 316, and cf. W. Greenwell,
_Brit. Barrows_, pp. 57-60, 120-1, whose remarks, though they apply to
the round barrows of the Yorkshire Wolds, are relevant.
[455] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, vi, 1877, p. 500 (with which cf. p. 293);
W. Boyd Dawkins, _Early Man in Britain_, p. 287. Cf. J. R. Mortimer,
_Forty Years’ Researches_, p. 1.
[456] See pp. 201-2, _infra_.
[457] See Lord Avebury’s _Origin of Civilisation_, 1902, pp. 35, 301.
Professor Boyd Dawkins misunderstands the custom.
[458] See pp. 288, 403, _infra_; _Archaeol. Cambr._, 3rd ser., x,
1864, pp. 292, 296, 298; _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, pp. 216-7; and
W.C. Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_, i, 68, 75, 95, 174. Numerous holed
stones exist in the vicinity of barrows and stone circles, which
were probably erected in the Bronze Age, in Cornwall, Ross-shire,
Inverness-shire, the Orkneys, and the island of Arran; but their
significance is unknown. There are holed megaliths in Britain (one of
which has in recent times been used for curing weakly children, whose
mothers passed them through it) that do not belong to dolmens (W. C.
Lukis, _Prehist. Stone Monuments of the Brit. Isles,--Cornwall_, p. 17).
[459] E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, i, 1903, p. 454. Cf. _Rev. des
études anc._, vii, 1905, pp. 31-2, and p. 288, _infra_.
[460] See E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, 1903, i, 477, ii, 144-5, 159,
242-3.
[461] _Ib._, i, 120.
[462] _Ib._, ii, 209-14; G. L. Gomme, _Ethnology in Folk-lore_, 1892,
pp. 78-9; Lord Avebury, _Prehist. Times_, 1900, pp. 207-8. See also W.
Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_, 1901, p. 182.
[463] E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, i, 1903, pp. 108-10; ii, 209.
[464] _Ib._, i, 357-8. Cf. A. Lang, _Custom and Myth_, 1885, pp. 124,
131, 137, 142.
[465] E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, ii, 1903, pp. 186, 248-9, 255.
[466] _Ib._, p. 364. Cf. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxiv, 1904, p. 264,
and Mr. R. R. Marett’s interesting article, ‘From Spell to Prayer’
(_Folk-Lore_, xv, 1904, pp. 132-65).
[467] _L’Anthr._, xv, 1904, p. 120; A. Lang, _The Clyde Mystery_, 1905,
pp. 82, 89, 99.
[468] E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, ii, 1903, p. 22.
[469] E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, ii, 1903, p. 185.
[470] See W. Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_, 1901,
p. 152; Lord Avebury, _Origin of Civilisation_, 1902, pp. 466-70;
_L’Anthr._, xvi, 1905, p. 660; and A. Lang, _The Secret of the Totem_,
p. 2.
[471] See W. Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_, 1901, pp.
38, 41, 92, 119, &c.
[472] _Ib._, pp. 253-6, 263.
[473] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxviii, 1899, p. 145; E. B. Tylor, _Prim.
Culture_, ii, 1903, p. 370.
[474] ‘... die Phantasie, welche wie aller Poesie so auch aller
Historie Mutter ist’ (Th. Mommsen, _Röm. Gesch._, v, 1885, p. 5).
[475] See pp. 408-9, _infra_.
[476] W. C. Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_, ii, 516-7, 549, 563; _Rev.
de l’École d’anthr._, xv, 1905, pp. 213-4. The rarity of long barrows
may partly be explained by supposing that a certain proportion of the
others belonged to the late Neolithic Age. That some did is certain.
See _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxvi, 1902, pp. 159, 171, and pp. 408-9,
_infra_.
[477] M. Salomon Reinach (_L’Anthr._, xvi, 1905, p. 659)
characteristically remarks in regard to the discovery of metals that
‘On l’explique ordinairement par une succession de hasards heureux, en
oubliant que l’humanité primitive, n’ayant aucune idée de l’utilisation
industrielle des métaux, ne pouvait en arriver là du premier coup....
Aujourd’hui toute la métallurgie primitive me semble un chapitre de
l’histoire des religions.... On a soumis ces métaux [gold and tin] à
l’action du feu, au cours d’opérations magiques; ainsi naquit l’idée
de traiter de même les minerais de cuivre ... et d’en dégager le métal
brillant qui ressemble à l’or ... L’alchimie primitive, absolument
étrangère à toute application industrielle, chercha à manier des
substances divines par l’action du feu, à opérer ... des _hiérogamies_
analogues à celle qui conduisit les agriculteurs à la découverte de la
griffe. L’alliage du bronze fut un des résultats de leurs efforts.’
That smiths were sometimes regarded with superstitious awe by those who
did not share their secrets (O. Schrader, _Prehist. Ant. of the Aryan
Peoples_, pp. 165-8); that metallurgy was connected at various points
with religion;--so much may be granted. But to say that ‘primitive
alchemy’ (if it existed) had no industrial application is simply to
make an unverifiable and improbable assertion. The discovery that
ores could be smelted must have been accidental. Why should not the
‘alchemist’, however superstitious he may have been, have thereupon
conceived the idea of turning gold to account for the manufacture of
ornaments, or copper for that of axes?
[478] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xvi, 1895-7, p. 333.
[479] See _Man_, ii, 1902, No. 19, p. 29.
[480] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxi, 1901, pp. 278-9; _Man_, iv, 1904,
No. 5, pp. 13-4.
[481] _Rev. mens. de l’École d’anthr._, iii, 1893, pp. 227-9; _Report
of ... the Brit. Association_, 1896, p. 911.
[482] See _L’Anthr._, iv, 1893, p. 559; xvi, 1905, p. 198.
[483] _Congrès internat. d’anthr. et d’archéol. préhist._, 1900 (1902),
p. 340; _Vict. Hist. of ... Hertford_, i, 232; C. H. Read, _Guide to
the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), 1904, pp. 5-6, 27, 101,
111, 130. M. P. du Chatellier (_Rev. de l’École d’anthr._, xiii, 1903,
pp. 169-72) thinks that there was a copper age in Brittany, but admits
that he cannot settle the question. Professor O. Montelius affirms
(_Man_, v, 1905, No. 7, p. 13) that ‘copper had been used there [in
Britain] for a long time’ before bronze; but British archaeologists
do not bow to his authority. Pitt-Rivers (_Journ. Roy. United Service
Inst._, xiii, 1870, p. 520) remarked that ‘it is not surprising that
on the first discovery of the advantages of [adding tin to copper] ...
all the old implements of copper, wherever procurable, should have been
taken to the melting-pot for conversion into bronze, and we should
thus be left with such scanty evidence of the existence of an age of
copper’. Still we have sufficient evidence for Ireland, and not for
Britain. Professor Gowland (_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxvi, 1906, p. 23)
attributes the scarcity of copper celts in England to ‘the occurrence
of mixed copper and tin ores in Cornwall.’
[484] _Man_, iii, 1903, No. 8, pp. 147-9. Professor Montelius (_ib._,
v, 1905, No. 7, pp. 13-4) denies that iron was used by the Egyptians
before the fifteenth century B.C., and insists that the lump of iron
oxide which was found at Abydos in association with copper implements
of the Sixth Dynasty, or about 3200 B.C., ‘does not prove the _use_ of
iron, only the existence of that metal’. The professor doubtless wrote
‘existence’ by a slip for ‘knowledge’. But, as Mr. H. R. Hall points
out (_ib._, No. 40, pp. 69-71), he ignores the discovery in the Great
Pyramid of a piece of worked iron, which is now in the Third Egyptian
Room of the British Museum (Case K 29, No. 2433), and to which a date
about 300 years older ‘is assigned on good _prima facie_ grounds’; and
Mr. Hall reasonably asks whether the discovery of the lump of iron
oxide does not corroborate the other. It is unlikely that an unworked
lump of iron would have been deposited along with copper tools; and we
may fairly suppose that the lump is the remains of an iron tool.
[485] _Archaeologia_, lvi, 1899, pp. 302-3; L. Beck, _Die Gesch. des
Eisens_, i, 1884, pp. 593-6. As far as I can see, all that is proved by
the instances which Beck has collected is--what we know already--that
stone implements continued in use after the Iron Age had begun. In
regard to the discovery, mentioned on p. 595, which Worsaee made in a
stone chamber, may not graves of this kind have been built here and
there after the Neolithic Age? See pp. 108, 109, n. 2, _supra_.
[486] See _Man_, v, 1905, No. 7, p. 13.
[487] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxx, 1900, p. 16.
[488] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, &c., p. 25. See also p. 95.
[489] _Ib._, p. 23.
[490] See O. Schrader, _Prehist. Ant. of the Aryan Peoples_, pp. 194,
203-4, 242; _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp.
3-4; _Rev. mens. de l’École d’anthr._, iii, 1893, pp. 105-6, 118,
120-2; Daremberg and Saglio, _Dict. des ant. grecques et rom._, ii,
1075; and Pauly’s _Real-Encyclopädie_, v, 1905, col. 2143. Classical
scholars will remember that Lucretius (v, 1286), in his powerful
description of prehistoric times, affirmed that bronze was used before
iron.
[491] See O. Schrader, _Prehist. Ant. of the Aryan Peoples_, pp. 192-3,
_Reallexicon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde_, 1901, pp. 200-1;
and _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 9-11.
Dr. Schrader argues that as there are no special names for bronze in
the languages of any of the ancient bronze-using peoples except the
inhabitants of Mesopotamia, in whose tongue bronze, as distinct from
copper (_urudu_), was designated by the word _zabar_, they must have
been the inventors of bronze. See p. 494, _infra_.
[492] Professor Boyd Dawkins (_Early Man in Britain_, pp. 408-9) has
compiled tables which show that the percentage of tin in British bronze
implements varies between 5·09 and 18·31, and in French between 1·50
and 21·5. He concludes (_ib._, p. 410) that ‘the uniformity of the
composition of the cutting implements of the Bronze Age implies that
the art of compounding tin with copper was discovered in one place,
from which the knowledge of it spread over ... Europe and Asia, and the
greater part of the Americas. Had it spread from separate centres, this
uniformity would have been impossible.’ The uniformity which subsists
between 5·09 and 18·31, and between 1·50 and 21·5 is remarkable.
[493] See Sir John Evans’s _Anc. Bronze Implements_, p. 420; _Rev.
d’anthr._, 3^e sér., iii. 1888, pp. 209-10; and Lord Avebury’s
_Prehist. Times_, 1900, pp. 53-7.
[494] _L’Anthr._, iv, 1893, pp. 548, 561-2, 566. M. Salomon Reinach
(_ib._, iii, 1892, p. 280) has gone so far as to suggest that ‘les
origines mêmes de la métallurgie du bronze’ should be sought in Western
Europe.
[495] See _Journ. Roy. United Service Inst._, xiii, 1870, p. 539, and
J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, p. 419.
[496] _Ib._, p. 476.
[497] _Ib._, pp. 476-7. See p. 144, n. 5, _infra_.
[498] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 420, 477; _Association
franç. pour l’avancement des sc._, 2^e partie, 1903, p. 931;
_L’Anthr._, xvi, 1905, p. 168.
[499] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 470-2. See pp. 231-4,
_infra_.
[500] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 472-3.
[501] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxix, 1899, pp. 308-10; _Man_, v, 1905,
No. 7, p. 13.
[502] See pp. 33-4, _supra_.
[503] See pp. 424-44, _infra_.
[504] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 111-2.
[505] _Ib._, pp. 118-20.
[506] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 313; _Report of ... the Brit.
Association_, 1888 (1889), p. 316. Cf. O. Schrader, _Prehist. Ant. of
the Aryan Peoples_, p. 389.
[507] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 127, 711-2; _Vict. Hist. of
... Derby_, i, 180, 190, n. 1. See pp. 427-8, _infra_.
[508] See pp. 131-2, _infra_. Professor Boyd Dawkins (_Early Man in
Britain_, p. 342) asserts that ‘bronze weapons ensured victory [to the
brachycephalic immigrants] over enemies armed with the old weapons of
stone’. On page 344 he remarks that ‘while the chiefs and the rich
possessed bronze implements and weapons, the poorer classes would
naturally continue to use those of stone’, &c. How could bronze weapons
have decided battles if only ‘the chiefs and the rich’ wielded them?
[509] _Vict. Hist. of ... Lancs_, i, 212, 239.
[510] Since the publication of Sir John Evans’s work, bronze weapons
have been found in the Orkney and Shetland Islands (_Proc. Soc. Ant.
Scot._, xxi, 1887, pp. 340-2).
[511] See p. 133, n. 1, _infra_.
[512] See the Topographical Index in Sir J. Evans’s _Anc. Bronze
Implements; Vict. Hist. of ... Northampton_, i, 142; _Vict. Hist. of
... Nottingham_, i, 289; _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxii, 1902, p. 386;
and _Archaeol. Journal_, lxiv, 1904, pp. 310-2. It must not, however,
be supposed that mere statistics of finds are necessarily valid
evidence. See _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxviii, 1904, pp. 496-7.
[513] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 118, 133-5.
[514] _Vict. Hist. of ... Worcester_, i, 183-4. Cf. J. Evans, _Anc.
Bronze Implements_, pp. 81, 88, 129, 368.
[515] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 159-60; J. Evans, _Anc.
Bronze Implements_, p. 318, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 195;
_Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 409-12; lii, 1890, pp. 60-1; liv,
1895, p. 105; _Archaeol. Cambr._, 6th ser., ii, 1902, pp. 60-1. Flint
arrow-heads are also found with burials of the Bronze Age in France (J.
Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone Ages_, p.
171, n. 1); and Sir J. Evans (_Anc. Bronze Implements_, p. 318) says
that ‘many of the bronze arrow-heads found on the Continent appear to
belong to the Early Iron Age’. He admits, however, that some very small
spear-heads, so called, ‘may possibly have served to point arrows’.
Bronze battle-axes are unknown in Northern France as well as in Britain
(_ib._, pp. 161-2).
[516] _Ib._, pp. 19-20, 41, 51, 165, 189-90, 224-5, 256, 480, 487;
_Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 143; _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, N. S.,
iii, 1865, p. 313; _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 412-3, 435-6,
438; W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 38, 43, 360; A. Pitt-Rivers,
_Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 11, 17; _Trans. Devon
Association_, xxxiv, 1902, p. 128; _Vict. Hist. of ... Lancs_, i, 218.
[517] No British bronze saws are mentioned in Sir J. Evans’s work,
which was published in 1880; but see _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xi,
1885-7, p. 12; _The Naturalist_, 1903, pp. 206-7; and J. R. Mortimer,
_Forty Years’ Researches_, p. 182.
[518] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, p. 173.
[519] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxviii, 1904, p. 78.
[520] See B. C. A. Windle, _Remains of the Prehist. Age_, &c., pp.
232-47. Durham, strange to say, has hardly any, though they abound in
Northumberland (W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 378, 440; _Journ.
Brit. Archaeol. Association_, N. S., xi, 1905, p. 168). In highly
cultivated districts many have of course been destroyed.
[521] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxix, 1872, p. 160, n. 1; xxxii, 1875, p.
292.
[522] See A. Pitt Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iii, 5, 7-8.
[523] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, p. 250.
[524] _Trans. Devon. Association_, xxxi, 1899, pp. 146-55; _Trans. Hon.
Soc. Cymmrodorion_, 1898-9 (1900), p. 19.
[525] _Archaeol. Cambr._, 6th ser., ii, 1902, pp. 252-60.
[526] _Proc. Somerset. Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Soc._, 1, 1905, part
ii, pp. 32-49.
[527] _42nd Annual Report Roy. Inst. Cornwall_, 1860, pp. 17-43;
_Journ. Roy. Inst. Cornwall_, xiii, 1895 (1896), pp. 98-9; _Trans. Hon.
Soc. Cymmrodorion_, 1898-9 (1900), p. 19; _Trans. Roy. Irish Acad._,
xxxi, 1896-1902, p. 633.
[528] _Ib._, pp. 618-9, 623; _Journ. Roy. Soc. Ant. Ireland_, xxxv,
1905, pp. 244-5.
[529] _Vict. Hist. of ... Worcester_, i, 182.
[530] G. Payne, _Collectanea Cantiana_, 1893, pp. 176-7.
[531] _Vict. Hist. of ... Sussex_, i, 471.
[532] _Vict. Hist. of ... Berks_, i, 261.
[533] _Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_, xxviii, 1872, pp. 40, 42;
_Man_, iv, 1904, No. 105, pp. 161-2. Mr. Cunnington (_Proc. Dorset.
Nat. Hist. and Ant. Field Club_, xxiv, 1903, pp. xxxiv-xxxviii) has
wasted much labour in endeavouring to prove that the Maiden Castle was
constructed by the Romans. In 1882 and following years he excavated in
the eastern division of the fort and found remains of a Roman building,
which proves merely that the fort was occupied in Roman times.
[534] I am glad to find that I have the support of Mr. C. H. Read
(_Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_, p. 78) and Mr. Reginald
Smith (_Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_, 1905, p. 122), who
unhesitatingly refer the Dorsetshire hill-forts in general to ‘the
Bronze, and possibly, in some cases, the Neolithic period’. Mr. H.
St. G. Gray strains Pitt-Rivers’s doctrine when he argues (_Index
to Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, 1905, p. xix; _Proc. Somerset.
Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Soc._, 3rd ser., ix, 1903 [1905], p. 28)
that, without excavation, it is idle to express any opinion as to
the age of a camp. He says that ‘Caesar’s Camp’ at Folkestone ‘was
always considered to be pre-Roman before Lane-Fox excavated it and
proved it to be of Norman construction’ This remark is incorrect (see
_Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iii, p. xi), and, even if it were
true, would only prove that less was known about the principles of
construction of prehistoric British camps in former days than now.
I cannot conceive how anybody could on _a priori_ grounds suppose
‘Caesar’s Camp’ to be pre-Roman, even if he had only seen the plan
on the 25-inch O. S. map. Of course I freely admit that, without
excavation, it would be generally (though not always) idle to express
any opinion as to the particular prehistoric epoch to which a fort
belonged.
Dr. Joseph Anderson (_Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone
Ages_, p. 139, with which cf. D. Christison, _Early Fortifications
in Scotland_, 1898, pp. 350-3, 380-1) observes that no one Scottish
fort ‘can be assigned with certainty to the Bronze Age’; but it is
nevertheless morally certain that many did then exist.
Mr. R. Burnard (_Vict. Hist. of ... Devon_, i, 366) remarks that it
is unsafe to infer from the fact that Cranbrook Castle, in the valley
of the Teign, contained pottery of Bronze Age type, that it belonged
to that period; for such pottery was also used in the Early Iron Age.
Certainly it was; and so also were bronze implements (see pp. 266-7,
_infra_); but, as a rule, the discovery of Bronze Age pottery, or
bronze implements, unaccompanied by objects of the Early Iron Age,
is enough to raise a presumption, which in most instances would be
correct, that the site was occupied in the Bronze Age.
[535] _Scheme for recording Ancient Defensive Earthworks and
Fortified Enclosures_, 1903, pp. 2-3, 6 (published by the Congress of
Archaeological Societies). My classification differs slightly in form,
but not in substance, from that adopted by the Congress.
[536] _Journ. Derbyshire Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Soc._, xxv, 1903, pp.
175-80.
[537] _Archaeologia_, xliv, 1873, p. 424; xlix, 1885, p. 181; _Journ.
Roy. Soc. Ant. Ireland_, xxxv, 1905, p. 244; _Archaeol. Cambr._, 3rd
ser., xi, 1865, pp. 77-81. Many of the ‘cliff-castles’ probably do not
belong to the Bronze Age (see _Vict. Hist. of ... Cornwall_, i, 451-2,
458-9).
[538] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, vi, 1877, pp. 288-9. See also
_Archaeologia_, xlvi, 1881, p. 458.
[539] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, vi, 1877, pp. 288-9. The same feature
exists in the camp at Seaford.
[540] See p. 98, _supra_.
[541] See _Archaeol. Journal_, xxii, 1865, p. 354.
[542] E.g. Ambresbury Banks in Essex, Yarnbury on Salisbury Plain, and
Hunsbury near Northampton. See R. C. Hoare, _Anc. Wilts_, i, 1812, pp.
89-90; _Trans. Epping Forest ... Field Club_, ii, 1882, pp. 55-68; and
_Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_, N. S., vii, 1901, p. 23.
[543] See pp. 259-60, _infra_.
[544] Mr. I. Chalkley Gould (_Trans. Essex Archaeol. Soc._, N. S.,
viii, 1903, p. 139, with which cf. _Journ. Derby. Archaeol. and Nat.
Hist. Soc._, xxiv, 1902, p. 29) says that ‘the early constructors
fixed on the highest points, and ... adopted a system of tortuous and
involved entrances’; and that in later times engineers ‘no longer
depended on involved tortuous entrances’. There is some truth in this;
but forts which were at all events occupied in the Early Iron Age stood
‘on the highest points’, and the entrances of Cissbury (_Archaeologia_,
xlv, 1880, p. 338, pl. xxvi), which was probably erected in the
Neolithic Age (pp. 97-8, _supra_), and of many other hill-forts were
not tortuous.
[545] See, for instance, _Trans. Devon. Association_, xxxi, 1899, p.
151, xxxiii, 1901, pp. 129-38; and _Archaeol. Cambr._, 6th ser., ii,
1902, pp. 252-60.
[546] See _Vict. Hist. of ... Derby_, i, 364, and pp. 257-8, _infra_.
[547] _Proc. Geologists’ Association_, 1887-8 (1889), pp. 376-7;
_Papers Hants Field Club_, iii, 1896, part ii, p. 175; W. Johnson and
W. Wright, _Neol. Man in N.-E. Surrey_, 1903, p. 47; _Cornhill Mag._,
May, 1906, p. 612.
[548] _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 19-20.
[549] See my _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1903, pp. 51, 160-1.
[550] See _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, p. 51; A. Pitt-Rivers,
_Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, ii, 238; and _Journ. Derby. Archaeol.
and Nat. Hist. Soc._, xxiii, 1901, pp. 112-3.
[551] Prof. F. J. Haverfield (_Eng. Hist. Rev._, xix, 1904, p. 746)
says that ‘the scanty archaeological evidence hardly seems to justify
... Cornish mining so early as B.C. 800’. But it does prove that bronze
implements were made in Britain in the earlier part of the Bronze
Age,--considerably earlier than 800 B.C.; and the tin must have been
obtained either from Cornwall, or from Dartmoor, or from both. There is
no evidence of prehistoric mining in Dartmoor, and there is in Cornwall
(pp. 502-3, n. 8, _infra_).
[552] See Prof. Gowland’s interesting paper in _Archaeologia_, lvi,
1892, pp. 267-322, especially 268, 284-5, 287, 296.
[553] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, p. 425. I do not know what
the results of later analyses have been. See also _Archaeologia_, liv,
1895, p. 97, and Addenda, p. 739.
[554] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 39, 188, 204-5, 222, 487.
[555] _Ib._, pp. 48, 69-70, 74, 76, 153.
[556] _Ib._, pp. 70-3, 160.
[557] _Ib._, p. 468.
[558] _Ib._, pp. 107-8.
[559] _Ib._, pp. 160, 162-3.
[560] _Archaeologia_, liv, 1895, p. 98.
[561] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, p. 167. Cf. _Archaeol.
Journal_, xxvi, 1869, pp. 346-50.
[562] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 173, 175-6.
[563] _Ib._, pp. 207-8.
[564] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, p. 480.
[565] _Ib._, p. 479; _Papers Hants Field Club_, iii, 1895, pp. 56-7.
[566] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, p. 106.
[567] Sir J. Evans (_ib._, p. 483) observes that ‘our socketed celts
appear to have had the cradle of their family in Western Germany’. See
also _ib._, pp. 107-8.
[568] _Ib._, pp. 84, 108, 483.
[569] _Ib._, pp. 108, 135.
[570] _Ib._, pp. 114-5.
[571] _Journ. Roy. United Service Inst._, xiii, 1870, p. 531; J. Evans,
_Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 75, 133.
[572] Pitt-Rivers (_Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 106-7),
referring to _Ancient Bronze Implements_, p. 72, remarks that a
palstave found on the bottom of the Angle Ditch on Handley Down was
probably used in excavating the ditch, the sides of the lower part
of which are ‘scored all along by vertical grooves’, some of which
‘coincide with the width of the flat side of the palstave’.
[573] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 194, 197-200, 202; J.
Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone Ages_, p.
202; _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xv, 1893-5, pp. 358-60.
[574] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 204, 222-4.
[575] _Ib._, pp. 257-60, 473, 480; _Archaeologia_, xxxvi, 1855, pp.
326-31.
[576] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 261-2, 265, 269-70.
[577] _Ib._, pp. 248-9, 256, 273, 342-3, 354-5.
[578] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 343-8, 354-5, 481;
_Archaeologia_, xxvii, 1838, pp. 298-300, liv, 1895, p. 112; J.
Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone Ages_, p. 227.
[579] _Ib._, pp. 171, 173; J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp.
250-1, 278-81, 297, 301-2, 308, 481; _Archaeologia_, liv, 1895, p. 112.
[580] _Ib._, xliii, 1871, pp. 455-6; J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze
Implements_, p. 310.
[581] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xix, No. ii, 1902, pp. 287-9.
[582] ‘The openings’ [in one specimen], says Sir J. Evans (_Anc. Bronze
Implements_, p. 332), ‘are about 17 inches from the point. An Irish
friend has suggested that they were for the reception of poison, but
after the blade had penetrated seventeen inches into the human body
such an use of poison would probably be superfluous.’
[583] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 341-2; _Guide to the Ant.
of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 68-9, 81.
[584] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 337-8, 341-2.
[585] _Ib._, p. 315.
[586] _Ib._, p. 311.
[587] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 107, 427-8, 430, 438,
440-1, 445; _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xvi, 1895-7, pp. 328-30; xx,
1904-5, p. 259; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxviii, 1904, pp. 487-505;
_Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 72-3.
[588] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 186, 451-2. See p. 71,
_supra_.
[589] _Ib._, pp. 67-8, 177, 179, 181, 451-3.
[590] Daggers with chevron ornament are very rare in the British Isles
except in Ireland (_Archaeol. Cambr._, 6th ser., ii, 1902, p. 221). One
or two English specimens are noticed by Sir John Evans (_Anc. Bronze
Implements_, pp. 232, 238).
[591] _Ib._, pp. 108, 320, 330. Mr. Romilly Allen is mistaken when he
says (_Archaeol. Cambr._, 6th ser., ii, 1902, p. 220) that winged,
looped, and socketed celts never have chevron ornament. Several
instances are given in _Anc. Bronze Implements_ (pp. 74, 84, 90, 126,
128, 132).
[592] See pp. 181-4, _infra_.
[593] _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 457-70. For details of hoards which
have been found since the publication of Sir John Evans’s book, see
_Archaeol. Cambr._, 5th ser., i, 1884, pp. 225-7; _Proc. Soc. Ant._,
2nd ser., xi, 1885-7, pp. 12, 42-51; xv, 1893-5, p. 138; xvi, 1895-7,
pp. 96-8, 327-30; xviii, 1900, pp. 285-7; _Archaeologia_, xlviii, 1888,
pp. 106-14; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxvi, 1892, pp. 182-8; xxxv, 1901,
pp. 266-75; _Papers Hants Field Club_, iii, 1895, pp. 53-66; and _Vict.
Hist. of ... Surrey_, i, 241.
[594] _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 457-8; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._,
xxxviii, 1904, p. 504.
[595] Some hoards of damaged and broken implements, unaccompanied by
copper cakes, may have been formed for barter with a bronze-founder
(_Vict. Hist. of ... Surrey_, i, 240).
[596] See p. 126, _supra_.
[597] Cf. _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 536, with Greenwell’s _Brit.
Barrows_, p. 740, and Pitt-Rivers’s _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_,
iv, 132.
[598] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 110-1; _Archaeologia_, liv,
1895, pp. 110-1; A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv,
19.
[599] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 192, 236.
[600] J. R. Mortimer, _Forty Years’ Researches_, &c., pp. 111-2. See
also _Brit. Barrows_, p. 114; and _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxiv, 1904,
pp. 392, 396.
[601] See W. Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_, 1901, pp.
260-1.
[602] See p. 90, _supra_.
[603] Oxen drawing a plough are depicted on rock-carvings in
Scandinavia (_Congrès internat. d’anthr. et d’archéol. préhist._, i,
1874 [1877], pp. 454 [fig. 1], 473 [fig. 31]).
[604] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 220, 262; _Archaeologia_, liv,
1895, p. 110; A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv,
127-8.
[605] O. Montelius, _Civilisation of Sweden in Heathen Times_, 1888,
pp. 71-6; _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 141.
[606] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 399-400, 404. Harness
rings have been found, according to Dr. J. Anderson (_Scotland in
Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone Ages_, p. 168), in Scottish hoards.
Professor W. Ridgeway (_The Thoroughbred Horse_, p. 92) argues that
‘the use of the horse by man in the British Isles cannot be placed
before the end’ of the Bronze Age.
[607] See p. 221, _infra_.
[608] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 656-7.
[609] _Nature_, Nov. 22, 1894, p. 92.
[610] O. Schrader, _Prehist. Ant. of the Aryan Peoples_, p. 379.
[611] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 139, 591-2, 599.
[612] See pp. 85-6, _supra_.
[613] See _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp.
52-3; and p. 467, _infra_.
[614] D. Wilson, _Prehist. Annals of Scotland_, 2nd ed., i, 1863, p.
107.
[615] See p. 87, _supra_.
[616] See B.C. A. Windle, _Remains of the Prehist. Age_, &c., p. 279.
[617] _Anc. Bronze Implements_, p. 486. Bronze spear-heads were
associated with objects of the Early Iron Age in a hoard found on
Hagbourne Hill in Berkshire, which belonged to a period of transition.
See p. 267, _infra_.
[618] _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 143. The
argument is no doubt generally sound, and no find, as far as I know,
refutes it; but I do not think that it is absolutely conclusive. Stone
implements were undoubtedly used in the Early Iron Age; and bronze and
iron implements have been found together.
[619] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxiv, 1867, pp. 229-35; xxvi, 1869, pp.
301-5, 317; xxvii, 1870, pp. 158-9. The workshops may have been used in
the Bronze Age; but one, in which iron slag was found, contained Roman
coins. Huts similar to those of Ty Mawr have been explored in Brittany
(_ib._, p. 148).
[620] _Archaeologia_, xlv, 1880, pp. 356-8. See p. 86, _supra_.
[621] W. C. Lukis, _Prehist. Stone Monuments of the Brit.
Isles,--Cornwall_, pp. 18-9.
[622] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 402; _Reliquary_, viii, 1902,
p. 92.
[623] _Vict. Hist. of ... Devon_, i, 350, 352.
[624] _Ib._, p. 349; _Trans. Devon. Association_, xxxiv, 1902, p. 161.
[625] _Ib._, p. 163.
[626] _Ib._, pp. 161-3.
[627] _Vict. Hist. of ... Devon_, i, 354.
[628] _Trans. Devon. Association_, xxxi, 1899, p. 148.
[629] _Ib._, xxxiv, 1902, p. 160. Cf. _Archaeologia_, xlv, 1880, pp.
362-3.
[630] _Trans. Devon. Association_, xxxiv, 1902, p. 160.
[631] _Reliquary_, N. S., viii, 1902, p. 91.
[632] _Trans. Devon. Association_, xxxiv, 1902, p. 163. Bronze has
been found, though rarely, in graves on Dartmoor (_Ib._, p. 130;
_Reliquary_, N. S., vii, 1901. p. 95).
[633] _Ib._, p. 92.
[634] A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 46-8.
[635] _Ib._, pp. 14, 15-6, 20 (preface), 185-90, and pl. 306. See also
_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxiv, 1904, pp. 387-97. Mr. J. R. Mortimer
(_Forty Years’ Researches_, pp. 365, 369) describes an ‘extensive
labyrinth of entrenchments’, which ‘traversed the high grounds of the
[Yorkshire] Wolds in every direction, forming a network ... connecting
hill to hill and valley to valley’. He states (p. 379) that several
round barrows have been mutilated by these entrenchments ‘in a manner
which shows that the latter are the more recent’ [but does not show
that they are later than the Bronze Age], but that they are ‘at least
for the most part pre-Roman, being in several instances crossed by what
are believed to be portions of ... Roman roads’; and he concludes,
disagreeing with Pitt-Rivers (see p. 441, n. 2, _infra_), that they
were intended to protect cattle against robbers. In regard to the
entrenchments near Flamborough Head which Pitt Rivers excavated, I
prefer his guidance.
[636] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 107-8; J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze
Implements_, pp. 179, 185; _Archaeologia_, liv, 1895, pp. 87-114.
Canon Greenwell (_ib._, p. 103) conjectures that the disks, which have
analogues in France, Switzerland, and Italy, may have been worn as
ornaments upon the breast; but their use is uncertain. Cf. _Anc. Bronze
Implements_, pp. 401-3.
[637] _Ib._, pp. 408-14; J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the
Bronze and Stone Ages_, p. 205; _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_
(Brit. Museum), pp. 28-30, 84. Cauldrons with ring-handles and rounded
bottoms have been found in Ireland and in various parts of Scotland,
but, according to Dr. J. Anderson (_Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xix, 1885,
pp. 313-5; xxxix, 1905, pp. 14-20) and Mr. C. H. Read (_Guide_, &c.,
p. 30), not on the Continent. Dr. R. Munro, however (_Lake Dwellings
of Europe_, 1890, p. 290), affirms that they have been found in the
famous settlement of La Tène. They belonged indeed to the very latest
period of the Bronze Age, if not to the Early Iron Age (_Anc. Bronze
Implements_, p. 410). Only one cauldron of the flat-bottomed type has
been found in Scotland (_Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxii, 1888, p. 36).
The British cauldrons of this kind differ in details from continental
examples, especially in their handles, which are rings, and may be of
native manufacture. Anyhow, the Heathery Burn Cave cauldron had been
mended with a degree of skill which shows that British workmen knew how
to rivet plates together.
[638] Professor Boyd Dawkins (_Early Man in Britain_, pp. 360-2)
remarks that if a well-known amber cup, which was found at Hove, was
of British workmanship, it proves that the use of the lathe was known
in Britain in the Bronze Age. Sir John Evans (_Anc. Stone Implements_,
1897, pp. 445-50), like the professor, thinks that the cup may have
been imported; but he points out that cups made of shale, which
were certainly turned in a lathe, and were most probably of British
manufacture, have been found in round barrows on Broad Down near
Honiton. Sir R. C. Hoare (_Anc. Wilts_, i, 122-3) found in the trunk
of a tree inside a bowl barrow along with a skeleton an urn which he
described as ‘different both in shape and colour to any we have ever
found in the British sepulchres’, and which appeared to him to have
been turned in a lathe. Still the statement in the text is, generally
speaking, true both of the British Isles and of Northern and Western
Europe.
[639] _Trans. Devon. Association_, xxxiv, 1902, p. 125. See also p.
467, _infra_.
[640] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 338-43, and pl. xxix; liv, 1895,
p. 110; W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 11, 106-8; _Trans. Devon.
Association_, xxxiv, 1902, p. 125; _Proc. Somerset. Archaeol. and Nat.
Hist. Soc._, 1, 1905, part ii, p. 42; J. R. Mortimer, _Forty Years’
Researches_, pp. lxvii, 9, 82.
[641] See pp. 395-7, _infra_.
[642] _Archaeologia_, liv, 1895, pp. 112-4.
[643] _Ib._, pp. 94, 108.
[644] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 438-9; _Anc.
Bronze Implements_, p. 383.
[645] Sir A. Mitchell, _The Past in the Present_, pp. 5-6, 12.
[646] _Archaeologia_, liv, 1895, pp. 108-9.
[647] _Ib._, xliii, 1871, p. 440; J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_,
pp. 191-2; A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 162-3.
[648] ‘So called’, says Pitt-Rivers (_ib._, i, 66), ‘because some
of them are found with an edge as sharp as a penknife’. The thought
of shaving with a bronze razor is not pleasant; but the negroes of
Tanganyika still use razors of this metal (_L’Anthr._, xiv, 1903, pp.
667-75; xv, 1904, p. 116); and everybody knows that the Flamen Dialis
might only shave with a bronze knife. See J. G. Frazer, _The Golden
Bough_, i, 1900, p. 242.
[649] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 451; liv, 1895, p. 99; J. Evans,
_Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 217-21, 480.
[650] See p. 156, _supra_. Cf. W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 118,
142.
[651] _Ib._, p. 411.
[652] See p. 189, _infra_.
[653] _Germania_, 17.
[654] _Archaeol. Journal_, ix, 1852, p. 8; _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871,
pp. 432-4; liv, 1895, pp. 101, 107; W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_,
pp. 15, 31, 33; J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 366-73; J.
Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone Ages_, p. 168.
[655] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 32-3, 54-6; _Archaeologia_,
xliii, 1871, pp. 510-2, 519-22; J. R. Mortimer, _Forty Years’
Researches_, p. xli.
[656] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 452-5; _Anc.
Bronze Implements_, pp. 400-1; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxvi, 1902,
pp. 473-4, 477, 480-5. One button with a V-shaped perforation, found in
a barrow at Winterbourne Stoke, Wiltshire, was associated with glass
beads (_ib._, p. 474), which (p. 183, _infra_) appear to have belonged
to a comparatively advanced period of the Bronze Age. Cf. _Proc. Soc.
Ant. Scot._, xxxvi, 1902, p. 481.
[657] R. C. Hoare, _Anc. Wilts_, i. 99, pl. x; _Archaeologia_, xliii,
1871, pp. 524-5.
[658] _Ib._, pp. 490-1, 502-3; J. R. Mortimer, _Forty Years’
Researches_, pp. li, 92.
[659] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 492.
[660] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 55, n. 1.
[661] _Trans. Devon. Association_, v, 1872, pp. 554-5 and pl. ii.
[662] _Anc. Wilts_, i, 202, pl. xxvii, 2. See also _Archaeologia_,
xliii, 1871, p. 459, and _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 51, 232.
[663] _Archaeologia_, xxvi, 1836, pp. 422-31; _Archaeol. Journal_,
lviii, 1901, p. 324; _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xviii, 1899-1901, pp.
223-4.
[664] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 501. Cf. p. 502, note c.
[665] See _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 395, 481, 487.
[666] _Ib._, p. 481.
[667] _Ib._, p. 395.
[668] _Archaeologia_, liv, 1895, p. 102. Sir John Evans (_Anc. Bronze
Implements_, p. 402) does not accept them as armlets; but cf. _Guide to
the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 85.
[669] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 76, 90, 96, 375-9. Cf. W.
Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 55, n. 1, 436. Bronze torques of all
these patterns have also been collected. Funicular torques are unknown
in Scotland.
[670] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 283, 381-7;
_Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 489-90, 528; J. Anderson, _Scotland
in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone Ages_, pp. 94-5, 168, 217; A.
Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 6.
[671] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., ii, 1861-4, pp. 247-8; J. Anderson,
_Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone Ages_, p. 224, n. 1;
Mr. G. Clinch (_Vict. Hist. of ... Sussex_, i, 320) thinks that the
Mountfield hoard probably belonged to the Late Celtic period.
[672] J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone
Ages_, pp. 217, 220-1.
[673] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxiv, 1867, pp. 197, 201; J. Evans, _Anc.
Bronze Implements_, p. 42; J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the
Bronze and Stone Ages_, p. 222; _Rev. celt._, xxi, 1900, pp. 166-73;
_Vict. Hist. of ... Cornwall_, i, 356. Cf. _L’Anthr._, xvii, 1906, p.
135.
[674] See _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxv, 1901, p. 263.
[675] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 470; J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze
Implements_, pp. 390-1.
[676] _Ib._, pp. 391-3; _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 471, 531; W.
Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 117, 223, 324; J. R. Mortimer, _Forty
Years’ Researches_, pp. xlvi, 218. A pair of ornaments, which may have
been ear-rings, have been found in a barrow in Wiltshire. Cf. _Guide to
the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 94, with _Anc. Bronze
Implements_, p. 393. Ear-rings of the Bronze Age are equally rare in
France (_Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxv, 1901, pp. 267, 273).
[677] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 392-3
[678] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 514-5, 522; J. Anderson,
_Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone Ages_, pp. 51-2; _Proc.
Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxv, 1901, pp. 270-1; _Archaeol. Cambr._, 6th ser.,
ii, 1902, p. 209.
[679] See p. 469, _infra_.
[680] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 494-5, 500, 504, 526-7.
[681] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxvi, 1892, p. 183.
[682] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 394, 485; _L’Anthr._,
xvi, 1905, pp. 173-5. Mr. L. M^cLellan (_Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xl,
1906, pp. 396-402), unlike Mr. Abercromby (_Journ. Anthr. Inst._,
xxxix, 1905, p. 262), argues that the paste beads were made in Britain.
[683] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 492-4.
[684] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, p. 485.
[685] _Journ. Roy. Inst. Cornwall_, xvi, 1904, p. 103.
[686] _Journ. Roy. Soc. Ant., Ireland_, 5th ser., v, 1895, p. 23;
_Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1896, pp. 912-4; _L’Anthr._,
vii, 1896, pp. 688-9; _Rev. celt._, xxi, 1900, pp. 166-75; _Guide to
the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 29, 145-6; _Man_, v,
1905, No. 7, p. 13. For evidences of intercourse between Scotland and
Ireland see _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, vi, 1867, pp. 350-1; W. Greenwell,
_Brit. Barrows_, p. 62; and R. Munro, _Prehist. Scotland_, p. 290.
[687] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 508-9; J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze
Implements_, p. 484; _Journ. Roy. Soc. Ant. Ireland_, 5th ser., vi,
1896, p. 37, n. 1.
[688] This conjecture, I find, has the support of Mr. Coffey (_ib._, p.
39).
[689] See p. 357, _infra_.
[690] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, iii, 1860, pp. 183, 195.
[691] _Ib._, xxvi, 1892, pp. 186-7; W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p.
55.
[692] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxv, 1905, p. 261.
[693] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 54-6; _Archaeologia_, xliii,
1871, pp. 492, 494-5, 507, 530; lii, 1890, pp. 58-9. A glass bead has
been found in one Derbyshire barrow (_Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xv,
1893-5, p. 425). Gold has only once been found in a barrow on the
Yorkshire Wolds (_Archaeologia_, lii, 58-9); and of 379 interments
only 10, of which 2 were Late Celtic, were found there accompanied by
ornaments (_Brit. Barrows_, pp. 51-2); whereas in Wiltshire 64 were
found out of 354 (_Archaeologia_, xliii, 488).
[694] The absence of gold and amber which distinguishes the group of
barrows round the great stone circle at Avebury from those associated
with Stonehenge (_Crania Britannica_, ii, pl. 11, p. 5, n. 11) is
remarkable. Perhaps it may be due partly to the greater antiquity of
the Avebury barrows.
[695] In regard to the poverty of the people who, probably in the Early
Iron Age, used the stronghold of Winkelbury Hill, 13 miles WSW. of
Salisbury, see A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, ii,
236.
[696] Dr. Joseph Anderson assigns these balls, which have been found
only in Scotland, to the Iron Age; but Mr. George Coffey (_Journ. Roy.
Soc. Ant. Ireland_, 5th ser., vi, 1896, p. 42) thinks that ‘the general
character of these spirals appears to be distinctly Bronze Age, not
Late Celtic’. It has been pointed out (_Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser.,
xvi, 1895-7, pp. 408-9) that Mr. Coffey’s theory is ‘strengthened by
the fact that stone balls of this class have been found associated
with cist burials [of the Bronze Age] ... near Ballater, and ... [in]
Elginshire’.
[697] Meath, Louth, Fermanagh, Tyrone, and Donegal.
[698] See Mr. G. Coffey’s articles in _Journ. Roy. Soc. Ant. Ireland_,
5th ser., iv. 1894, pp. 349-79; v, 1895, pp. 16-29, 195-211; vi, 1896,
pp. 34-69, and especially 40-2, 65; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxi, 1887,
p. 144; xxiii, 1889, p. 133; xxix, 1895, pp. 191-4; xxxiii, 1899, pp.
363-4, 368; _L’Anthr._, vii, 1896, pp. 688-9; xvii, 1906, p. 332, fig.
6; _Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Ant. and Archaeol. Soc._, N. S.,
ii, 1902, pp. 381-2; Romilly Allen, _Celtic Art in Pagan and Christian
Times_, 1904, pp. 50-3; C. H. Read, _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze
Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 96; and _Vict. Hist. of ... Lancs_, i, 240.
Mr. Read observes (_op. cit._, p. 103) that some of the Scandinavian
bronzes have been shown by analysis to have been imported from Britain.
[699] M. Salomon Reinach (_L’Anthr._, iv, 1893, pp. 688-90), if I do
not misunderstand him, although he admits that the British Isles in the
Bronze Age were connected by trade with Scandinavia, thinks it probable
that the spiral reached the former by way of Spain. He observes that
among Scandinavian rock-sculptures there are no spirals; that certain
designs--for example the boat--are common to sepulchral monuments in
Brittany and in Ireland; that there are striking points of resemblance
between the bronze culture of Ireland and Spain; and that designs which
have been found in the East Riding of Yorkshire represent Aegean types
which also appear in the departments of the Marne and the Gard (see p.
200, _infra_). These arguments seem unavailing against those stated in
the text, and especially against the almost complete absence of the
spiral from Spain, Gaul, and Southern England. If the figure does not
appear on Scandinavian rocks, it abounds on Scandinavian weapons and
ornaments; and on rocks boats are frequently represented (O. Montelius,
_Civilisation of Sweden in Heathen Times_, 1888, pp. 46, 73-6). Nor is
M. Reinach’s reasoning sound when he goes on to argue that we have no
right to trace the Bronze Age spiral of Western Europe to an Egyptian
source because the same design has been found engraved on mammoths’
tusks in the Pyrenaean cave of Espélungues at Arudy (_L’Anthr._, xv,
1904, p. 146, fig. 24; xvi, 1905, p. 5, fig. 4). As Dr. Arthur Evans
remarks (_Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1896, p. 913), ‘the
earliest cultural strata of Europe, from the Neolithic period onwards,
betray an entire absence of the recurring spiral motive. When we find
it later propagating itself as a definite ornamental system in a
regular chronological succession throughout an otherwise inter-related
European zone, we have every right to trace it to a common source.
[700] See pp. 499-500 and 511-4, _infra_.
[701] See _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxx, 1900, p. 94, and the Hon. John
Abercromby’s article in the same periodical, xxxv, 1905, pp. 256-64,
especially 262. Mr. George Coffey (_Journ. Roy. Soc. Ant. Ireland_,
5th ser., vi, 1896, p. 40), remarking that Britain and Gaul were on a
lower plane of civilization in the Bronze Age than Scandinavia, argues
that one cause may have been that ‘the sea-way south of the Elbe was
possibly closed to Scandinavian enterprise in the Bronze Age’. But
the North Sea was not; and apparently there was nothing to prevent
Scandinavian traders from landing on our eastern coasts if they had
thought it worth while.
[702] See p. 119, _supra_. Prof. B.C. A. Windle (_Remains of the
Prehist. Age_, pp. 153-73) gives a fairly complete list. It would be
superfluous to print references for barrows belonging to counties not
mentioned in my text; for full lists are being given in the _Victoria
County History_.
[703] Long barrows may possibly have been erected in remote districts
after bronze had been introduced into Southern Britain. See _Archaeol.
Cambr._, 5th ser., viii, 1891, pp. 33-7.
[704] A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 58-9. Cf.
_Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, p. 196.
[705] See p. 108, _supra_.
[706] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 13, 451; _Trans. Devon.
Association_, xxxiv, 1902, p. 111.
[707] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 309, 314, 326; W. Greenwell,
_Brit. Barrows_, pp. 12-3.
[708] _Ib._, pp. 31-2; R. C. Hoare, _Anc. Wilts_, i, 52, 122-5; J.
Hutchins, _Hist. and Ant. of Dorset_, 3rd ed., i, 1861, p. 100;
_Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 314-5; A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations
in Cranborne Chase_, i, 4; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxix, 1905, pp.
179-81; J. R. Mortimer, _Forty Years’ Researches_, p. xxvii.
[709] J. R. Mortimer, _Forty Years’ Researches_, p. xxv.
[710] The same degeneration took place in Gaul (A. Bertrand, _Archéol.
celt. et gaul._, 1889, p. 104; _Rev. de l’École d’anthr._, xv, 1905,
pp. 213-4).
[711] Mr. J. R. Mortimer (_Forty Years’ Researches_, p. xxv) believes
that on the Yorkshire Wolds barrows were occasionally erected over
the dwellings in which the dead had lived; but the evidence which he
adduces, except in one instance (pp. 182-3), appears to me weak. See
pp. 155, 328-9, 336-7.
[712] _Stonehenge_, 1740, p. 45.
[713] _Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, p. 63.
[714] _Ib._, xlix, 1885, p. 183.
[715] J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone
Ages_, pp. 3-4; _Trans. Glasgow Archaeol. Soc._, N. S., iii, part ii,
1899, p. 499.
[716] _Trans. Devon. Association_, xxxvii, 1902, p. 106.
[717] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 309; lii, 1890, p. 63; _Proc.
Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., viii, 1879-81, p. 289.
[718] J. R. Mortimer, _Forty Years’ Researches_, p. xxi.
[719] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 291-2; W. Greenwell, _Brit.
Barrows_, pp. 4-5.
[720] _Ib._, p. 3; _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 290-1, 301-4; A.
Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, ii, 7-8, 64.
[721] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 291. It has often been assumed
that barrows had no ditches because none were visible; but Pitt-Rivers
(_Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, i, 4) showed that several barrows
on his estate were surrounded by ditches ‘of which no trace was seen
before excavating’. See also _ib._, ii, 7-8.
[722] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 302-4; W. Greenwell, _Brit.
Barrows_, pp. 3-4. Composite bowl barrows and bell barrows are
described in _Archaeologia_, xliii, 297-300.
[723] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 293-5, 303-4; _Folk-Lore_, vi,
1895, pp. 14-5. Pitt-Rivers (_Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv,
145) suggests that the common form of disk barrows ‘may have arisen
through a failure to carry out the original intention’. ‘The first
idea,’ he continues, ‘of the mourners ... may probably have been to
erect a large monument ... and the ditch in such a case would contain
a large area. In the course of a few days, however, the grief may have
abated, and laziness supervened, in which case the arrested tumulus
would assume the form described. The habit of all primitive peoples
... of lashing themselves up into a frenzy on the occasion of a death,
and general excitability upon any uncommon occurrence, followed by a
speedy relapse, favours this hypothesis. When, however, a vallum is
seen to follow the line of the ditch, this cause cannot be assigned to
the particular structure. It may, however, be a form that has become
persistent and conventionalized through the cause already mentioned.’
This ingenious theory seems to imply that the motive of laziness only
began to operate when disk barrows came into fashion.
The few disk barrows of Derbyshire have no apparent ditches (_Vict.
Hist. of ... Derby_, i, 169). That county also contains barrows
constructed differently and of different materials from those which
undoubtedly belong to the Bronze Age: their date is uncertain, but may
be Romano-British (_ib._, pp. 186-9; _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xv,
1893-5, p. 427).
Mr. G. F. Tregelles (_Vict. Hist. of ... Cornwall_, i, 358) thinks that
in Cornwall the distinctions between conical, bowl, bell, flat, and
ring barrows ‘may be little more than differences in height’.
[724] _Journal Brit. Archaeol. Association_, xviii, 1862, p. 39;
_Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., viii, 1879-81, pp. 289, 291-2; x, 1884-5,
pp. 305-6; W. C. Lukis, _Prehist. Stone Monuments of the Brit.
Isles,--Cornwall_, p. 6; _Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, p. 63; _Trans.
Cumberland and Westmorland Ant. and Archaeol. Soc._, N. S., i, 1901,
pp. 295-9.
[725] _Vict. Hist. of ... Derby_, i. 169.
[726] The ditches of the Cranborne Chase barrows in Dorsetshire,
just outside the frontier of Wiltshire, are sometimes incomplete (A.
Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 138).
[727] See p. 104, _supra_.
[728] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 6-8; _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd
ser., xi, 1885-7, p. 434. Canon Greenwell _(Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._,
vi, 1867, p. 339), speaking of a cairn near Crinan in Argyllshire,
surrounded by ‘a double circle of stones’, which ‘stood from 3 feet
to 5 feet apart, except for a space ... where, in both circles, four
stones were found placed close together’, says, ‘This is not an unusual
feature in circles which enclose burials; in fact it is, in one shape
or another, almost universal.... The object seems to be to make the
circle incomplete.... When the circle is made of stones placed close
together, or is formed of earth, then one or more openings occur in
it.’ On the other hand, Mr. W. C. Borlase (_Archaeologia_, xlix, 1885,
p. 183) found that in Cornwall the stone rings enclosing barrows were
almost always continuous.
[729] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 8.
[730] A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 138. Mr.
J. R. Mortimer (_Forty Years’ Researches_, p. xxii), referring to the
incomplete stone rings or trenches which are found _within_ barrows,
suggests that they were intended ‘to mark off ... the sacred spot in
which the ceremony and interment were afterwards to be conducted, and
that the break in the circle had no other significance than to serve as
a place of ingress and egress’.
[731] _Ib._, p. lxxi; W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 112.
[732] _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, pp. 169-71.
[733] _Archaeol. Journal_, lviii, 1901, pp. 328-31.
[734] _Journ. Derby. Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Soc._, xi, 1889, pp.
39-44; xiv, 1892, pp. 244-7, 250; xv, 1893, pp. 161-2.
[735] In certain cases, however, the mound may have been so worn down
by denudation as to escape notice.
[736] A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 148.
[737] J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone
Ages_, pp. 28, 37-8; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xx, 1886, pp. 114, 240-1;
xxix, 1895, pp. 46-8; xxxv, 1901, pp. 258-66; xxxix, 1905, pp. 189,
528-32.
[738] _Anthr. Rev._, v, 1867, p. 255.
[739] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 112-3.
[740] J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone
Ages_, pp. 38, 48-50, 63-4.
[741] _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 22-3 (preface). ‘There is
no knowing,’ says Pitt-Rivers, ‘how many of these graves without mounds
or ditches may exist in the soil; as they show no mark on the surface,
they can only be found accidentally’.
[742] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 113.
[743] _Trans. Devon. Association_, xxxiv, 1902, p. 111.
[744] _Brit. Barrows_, p. 402. For other instances of moundless graves
see _Anthr. Rev._, iii, 1865 (_Journ. Anthr. Soc._, p. lxvii); _Journ.
Brit. Archaeol. Association_, xlv, 1889, pp. 112-22; _Proc. Soc. Ant._,
2nd ser., xvi, 1895-7, p. 335; W. C. Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_,
iii, 1013; _Archaeol. Cambr._, 6th ser., ii, 1902, p. 28; _Wilts
Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Mag._, xxxiii, 1904, pp. 410-1; _Archeol.
Aeliana_, 3rd ser., ii, 1906, p. 132; and _Vict. Hist. of ... Lancs_,
i, 245. Mr. J. R. Mortimer, _Forty Years’ Researches_, p. lxxii,
suggests that ‘the great number of small cairns which even yet exist on
the uncultivated moors of Yorkshire’ may have ‘belonged to the masses’.
[745] See pp. 105-6, _supra_.
[746] _Trans. Lancs. and Cheshire Ant. Soc._, xviii, 1900 (1901), pp.
114-24.
[747] These cists are assigned by the excavators, Dr. W. A. Herdman
and Mr. P. M. C. Kermode (_Proc. Liverpool Biol. Soc._, viii, 1894,
pp. 159-72), to the Neolithic Age; but the evidence which they adduce
is purely negative. Perhaps the people who built them only had stone
tools; but the fact that the interments were in cists and accompanied
by cinerary urns proves that they were made after bronze had come into
use.
[748] A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, ii, 4;
_Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, pp. 24-7, 41, 60; W. C. Borlase, _Dolmens of
Ireland_, ii, 634; Général Pothier, _Les tumulus du plateau de Ger_,
1900, pp. 28-9. See also _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xv, 1886, pp. 95-7.
[749] J. H. F. Brabner, _Gazetteer of England and Wales_, vi, 31.
[750] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 2, n. 2. Mr. J. R. Mortimer
(_Forty Years’ Researches_, p. xviii, n. ||) remarks that ‘it could
hardly be expected that these two small openings would be more likely
to find the primary grave ... than two rat holes would be likely
to come upon the ashes of a mouse placed under a mound ten feet in
diameter’.
[751] _Wilts Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Mag._, xxiii, 1887, pp. 245-52.
At the foot of Garrow by Hill, on the Yorkshire Wolds, there is another
gigantic mound, 50 feet high and 250 feet in diameter, which has not
been opened (J. R. Mortimer, _Forty Years’ Researches_, p. xx).
[752] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 134, 273-4, 277, 342;
W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 44, 48-9; _Archaeologia_, xliii,
1871, pp. 442-6. See also _Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_, x,
1855, p. 8. Dr. Thurnam (_Archaeologia_, xliii, 447 and note b) quotes
one instance of the discovery in a round barrow of a socketed celt,
which, notwithstanding the doubts expressed by Sir John Evans (_Anc.
Bronze Implements_, p. 134), appears to have been contemporaneous with
the interment; and another is mentioned in _Anc. Bronze Implements_,
p. 114. On the other hand, Pitt-Rivers, referring to the spear-head
mentioned in _Archaeologia_, xliii, 447, says, ‘I am informed by Mr.
William Cunnington ... that ... it was found by his grandfather ...
immediately under the turf near Stonehenge, and not in a barrow’. The
reference given by Pitt-Rivers (_Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv,
20) to _Archaeologia_ is incorrect.
[753] See J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone
Ages_, pp. 169-70. Canon Greenwell (_Brit. Barrows_, pp. 48-50) asserts
that knife-daggers and flat axes--the only bronze implements found in
Yorkshire barrows--never accompany swords and spear-heads in hoards,
and argues that this proves the early date of round barrows in general.
If the assertion were true, the fact would prove the early date of
those Yorkshire barrows in which daggers and flat axes were found;
but the question is whether many other barrows do not belong to later
periods of the Bronze Age. Moreover, flat axes have been found twice
in hoards,--one with palstaves (J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, p.
464), another with swords (_ib._, p. 466).
[754] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 463.
[755] The Hon. John Abercromby (_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxv, 1905,
p. 262) affirms that ‘the few bronze swords, spear-heads, etc., of
the Bronze Age and Hallstatt Period, that first filtered in driblets
into this country, and were then reproduced with variations by native
smiths, were too precious to be laid by for ever in a grave, even
at the end of the Bronze Age in Britain’. Is not this begging the
question? If small bronze weapons were ‘laid by for ever’ in graves in
the earlier period, when bronze was scarce, why should not large ones
have been laid by when it was common? And if gold ornaments were not
too costly to be sacrificed, why should bronze swords have been deemed
so precious?
[756] _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 473-4.
[757] See p. 288, _infra_, and Addenda.
[758] See p. 181, n. 2, _supra_; _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp.
447-8; and _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), p.
93. Sir John Evans (_Anc. Bronze Implements_, p. 310), referring
to the tanged weapons of Arreton Down type and to certain blades
found in the Wiltshire barrows, which (see pp. 145, 147, _supra_) he
thinks ‘may have been the heads of spears rather than the blades of
daggers’, remarks that ‘at the period to which they belong the art of
making cores must have been known, as the ferrule found at Arreton
Down will testify’. This is significant; but on p. 473 he refers the
‘tanged spear-heads or daggers’ to the second period of the Bronze
Age,--earlier than that of palstaves and socketed celts.
Mr. C. H. Read (_Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_, p. 24) observes
that cinerary urns ‘possibly represent the period during which swords
and spear-heads of bronze were manufactured ... by our population’. It
is true that certain urns of overhanging rim type were contemporary
with socketed weapons (_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxv, 1905, pp. 262-4);
but the oldest urns were much earlier. Cf. _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser.,
xviii, 1899-1901, pp. 251-3.
[759] _Archaeol. Rev._, ii, 1889, p. 323. Cf. _Folk-Lore_, vi, 1895,
pp. 15-7. Dr. Evans remarks in this article that ‘the characteristic
form presented by a spiral ring of bronze found in one urn leads
one indeed to believe that these flat disk-barrows of Standlake [in
Oxfordshire] belong to a time when iron was coming into use’.
[760] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxv, 1905, pp. 256-64.
[761] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 366, 369.
[762] See p. 149, _supra_.
[763] See pp. 205-6, _infra_.
[764] Flat bronze celts were found by Canon Greenwell in two only
of the multitudes of barrows which he has explored not only in the
northern counties but also in Wiltshire and Berkshire (_Archaeologia_,
lii, 1890, p. 3); while Mr. J. R. Mortimer (_Forty Years’ Researches_,
p. xlvi) never found one with any of the 893 interments which he
examined on the Yorkshire Wolds. The canon opened four Late Celtic
barrows in the parish of Cowlam, of which he says (_Brit. Barrows_,
p. 212), ‘Had the bodies occurred without the necklace, fibula, or
armlets, I should not have hesitated the least about classing these
four barrows with the other barrows in the immediate vicinity,
which were of the time of stone, or more probably of bronze.’ Is it
unreasonable to conclude that a few other barrows which contain no
relics of the late Bronze Age may nevertheless belong to that time?
[765] _L’Anthr._, xvii, 1906, pp. 321-42. Cf. W. Greenwell, _Brit.
Barrows_, p. 44, n. 2, and _Rev. de l’École d’anthr._, xv, 1905, pp.
213, 215.
[766] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 21, 333.
[767] _Ib._, p. 21, n. 1.
[768] _Ib._ See p. 185, n. 3, _infra_.
[769] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 19-20; J. R. Mortimer, _Forty
Years’ Researches_, p. xxxiv. Canon Greenwell remarks, however (pp.
28-30), that charcoal was almost always found in contact with unburnt
bodies; and he was doubtful whether it was merely the ashes of the fire
at which the funeral feast had been cooked, or might be regarded as a
sign that the corpses had been passed through fire, just as in baptism
aspersion was substituted for immersion. But this would of course imply
that cremation on the Wolds was earlier than inhumation. Cf. J. R.
Mortimer, _Forty Years’ Researches_, p. lxxvii.
[770] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 21 n. l, 445; _Archaeologia_,
xliii, 1871, p. 310; xliv, 1873, p. 426; lii, 1890, pp. 37-8, 43;
_Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1888 (1889), p. 315; _Journ.
Anthr. Inst._, xxxii, 1902, p. 386. In regard to the few interments by
inhumation that have been found in Cornwall see _Vict. Hist. of ...
Cornwall_, i, 362-3, 366.
[771] _Trans. Devon. Association_, xxxiv, 1902, p. 119.
[772] _Archaeol. Scotica_, ii, 1822, pp. 76-102; iii, 1831, pp. 40-50;
_Nature_, Jan. 13, 1898, p. 236.
[773] O. Montelius, _Sur la chronologie de l’âge du bronze_, 1885, p. 3.
[774] Mr. Abercromby in _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxviii, 1904, p. 364,
denies that any drinking-cups were contemporary with cinerary urns; but
in _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxii, 1902, p. 385, he affirms that some
were.
[775] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 390; A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations
in Cranborne Chase_, ii, 6; _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxii, 1902, pp.
375, 381; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxviii, 1904, p. 364. Five more
drinking-cups have lately been found with burnt bones in two cists in
Dilston Park, Northumberland (_Archaeol. Aeliana_, 3rd ser., ii, 1906,
pp. 142-6, 148).
Mr. John Ward (_Vict. Hist. of ... Derby_, i, 177-8) shows from an
examination of the sepulchral pottery of Derbyshire (cf. pp. 191-6,
_infra_) that in those districts in which interments of both kinds are
found cremation was, generally speaking, later than inhumation. This
conclusion is supported by the fact that in Wiltshire, where cremation
on the whole greatly predominates, it occurs only about as often as
inhumation in bowl and bell barrows (_Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p.
293).
[776] _L’Anthr._, xvii, 1906, p. 326.
[777] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxviii, 1904, p. 78. Canon Greenwell
(_Ib._, vi, 1867, p. 343, n. 2), speaking of a cairn near Crinan in
Argyllshire, which he explored, remarks that ‘in this part of Scotland
at all events the earliest interments in the large megalithic chambers
are of burnt bodies’.
[778] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, vii, 1870, pp. 268-70; xx, 1886, p.
252; xxix, 1895, pp. 191-4; _Archaeologia_, xxx, 1844, p. 335; xliii,
1871, pp. 450-1; lii, 1890, pp. 25, 64; J. B. Davis and J. Thurnam,
_Crania Britannica_, ii, pl. 1, p. 1; W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_,
pp. 20-1; J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone
Ages_, p. 90; A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, ii, 2,
29; iii, 17; _Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_, N. S., vi, 1900,
p. 10. Secondary interments by inhumation sometimes succeeded primary
interments by cremation (_Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 173;
_Proc. Dorset Nat. Hist. and Ant. Field Club_, xvi, 1895, p. 50).
[779] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxvi, 1902, pp. 650-1.
[780] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 312, 450-1; _Journ. Brit.
Archaeol. Association_, N. S., vi, 1900, p. 10; _Guide to the Ant. of
the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 16. The two latter authorities only
suggest that in cases like that mentioned in the text the unburnt body
was that of the chief.
[781] _Archaeologia_, xv, 1806, pp. 340-1. The nine skeletons may have
belonged to a secondary interment, but Cunnington inferred from the
careless manner in which they had been buried that they were ‘slaves or
dependents of the great personage below’. Mr. J. R. Mortimer (_Forty
Years’ Researches_, p. xxxii), remarking that ‘in several instances
where the body of the chief burial was reduced to ashes the attendants
[?] were inhumed’, argues that in some cases cremation, in others
inhumation, was considered the more honourable mode of sepulture.
Perhaps.
[782] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 20-1. Cf. J. R. Mortimer,
_Forty Years’ Researches_, pp. xxxii, 60, 318.
[783] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xvi, 1895-7, p. 304.
[784] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 313-4.
[785] _Ib._, lii, 58-9; J. R. Mortimer, _Forty Years’ Researches_, p.
xxxviii. Cf. _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), p.
90.
[786] _Nature_, Jan. 13, 1898, p. 237; J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan
Times,--the Bronze and Stone Ages_, pp. 17, 74-5.
[787] _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 48.
[788] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 309; W. Greenwell, _Brit.
Barrows_, p. 12.
[789] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 22-3; _Archaeologia_, xliii,
1871, pp. 315-8. Cf. _Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_, N. S., vi,
1900, pp. 8-9.
[790] C. Warne, _Celtic Tumuli of Dorset_, 1866 (‘Tumuli opened at
Various Periods’, pp. 10-1, 72, 76). The instance mentioned on p.
72 is, in my opinion, doubtful, and no certain pre-Roman instances
are recorded in the sections entitled ‘Personal Researches’ and
‘Communications from Personal Friends’. Prof. Ridgeway (_Early Age of
Greece_, i, 1901, p. 502), referring to Greenwell’s _Brit. Barrows_, p.
22, states that ‘in Dorsetshire ... the extended position seems to be
the prevalent one’, a remark which illustrates the danger of relying on
second-hand evidence.
In a few cases in Derbyshire and elsewhere in which the body has been
found sitting the posture was perhaps due to some accident in filling
up the grave (_Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 318-20; _Journ. Brit.
Archaeol. Association_, xxxviii, 1882, pp. 109-10). Two skeletons,
however, were found sitting, back to back, in a barrow in Denbighshire
(_Crania Britannica_, ii, pl. 23, p. 1).
[791] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 12. In a round barrow on the
south of the road between Rochester and Gravesend, and about midway
between Chalk Church and the Crown Inn, five skeletons were found in
the trench near the bottom (_Archaeol. Cant._, xxiv, 1900, pp. 86-90).
[792] C. Warne, _Celtic Tumuli of Dorset_, pp. 46-9. Cf. pp. 36-7. In
Derbyshire ‘secondary interments are found in any position, central or
otherwise’ (_Vict. Hist. of ... Derby_, i, 176).
[793] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 12-3.
[794] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 321-3. Cunnington, however,
remarks (_ib._ xv, 1806, p. 343) that ‘on the top of barrows we find
the skeletons in every direction’.
[795] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 25-6; _Archaeologia_, lii,
1890, pp. 25, 38, 64; _Wilts Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Mag._, xxxiii,
1904, pp. 412-3; J. R. Mortimer, _Forty Years’ Researches_, p. xxxvii;
_Vict. Hist. of ... Derby_, i, 173. All the kistvaens of Dartmoor lie
at one end between north and west, at the other between south and east
of the corrected compass (_Trans. Devon. Association_, xxxiii, 1901,
pp. 121-2; xxxiv, 1902, p. 164); and the cairns near the Land’s End
have ‘an aspect ranging from south-east to south-west’ (_Archaeologia_,
xlix, 1885, p. 182). Cf. _Rev. arch._, 4^e sér., v, 1905, p. 307.
[796] _Archaeologia_, xxxiv, 1862, p. 255; xliii, 1871, pp. 314-5; W.
Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 31-2; J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan
Times,--the Bronze and Stone Ages_, pp. 74-5; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._,
xxxix, 1905, p. 552; J. R. Mortimer, _Forty Years’ Researches_, p. xli.
[797] _Anc. Wilts_, i, 124.
[798] J. R. Mortimer, _Forty Years’ Researches_, pp. xxxiii, 15-6, 63,
66, 77; A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 66.
[799] _Ib._, ii, 1-2; E. T. Stevens, _Flint Chips_, 1870, p. 410;
_Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 324-5; W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_,
p. 14; _Trans. Devon. Association_, xxxiv, 1902, p. 108.
[800] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 294, 310, 325-6.
[801] _Ib._, p. 326. Cf. W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 445;
_Nature_, Jan. 13, 1898, p. 236; _Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_,
N. S., vi, 1900, pp. 8-9; and _Trans. Devon. Association_, xxxiv, 1902,
pp. 108-9.
[802] _Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Ant. and Archaeol. Soc._, N.
S., i, 1901, pp. 295-9. Cf. _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxix, 1905, p.
547.
[803] _Ib._, xxxvi, 1902, p. 644.
[804] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 326. On the other hand the urns
which Canon Greenwell found in Yorkshire were usually placed upright
(_Brit. Barrows_, p. 14).
[805] _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 49.
[806] _Iliad_, xxiii, 254. Cf. xxiv, 795-6.
[807] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 326.
[808] J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone
Ages_, pp. 43-7. An urn only ⅞ inch high, which of course could not
have been used for containing ashes, has been found in a cairn of the
Bronze Age in Fifeshire (_Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxvi, 1902, p. 641).
[809] J. Anderson, _op. cit._, pp. 51-2, 74-5; W. Greenwell, _Brit.
Barrows_, pp. 62, 72-3, 139, 277, 291, 297.
[810] A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, ii, 29. Canon
Greenwell (_Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, pp. 63-4) has described in an
interesting paragraph ‘the infinite variety, within certain limits,
which is found in connection with the burials of the Bronze Age’.
[811] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 331; _Brit. Barrows_, p. 74; J.
R. Mortimer, _Forty Years’ Researches_, pp. lv, lix.
[812] See pp. 442-3, _infra_.
[813] Sir A. Mitchell, _The Past in the Present_, 1880, p. 28;
_Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 334.
[814] See p. 159, n. 1, _supra_.
[815] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 63. See, however,
_Archaeologia_, xlix, 1885, p. 184.
[816] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 391, 396; _Journ. Anthr. Inst._,
xxxii, 1902, pp. 373-97; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxviii, 1904,
pp. 323-410; xxxix, 1905, pp. 326-44; J. R. Mortimer, _Forty Years’
Researches_, pp. lxv-lxvii.
Mr. J. P. Gibson, in a paper on a recent find of drinking-cups in
Dilston Park, Northumberland (_Archaeol. Aeliana_, 3rd ser., ii, 1906,
pp. 126-49) says (pp. 146-7), ‘There appears nothing in the Dilston
Park discovery to confirm this suggested [chronological] arrangement.
Mr. Abercromby tells me that evidence received since the paper [in
_Proc. Soc. Ant._, xxxviii, 1904] was published has convinced him that
“the whole question requires a fresh investigation” ... The Dilston
Park find ... furnishes two instances in which in the same cist ...
vessels are found varying widely both in form and decoration. It also
proves the great difficulty of attempting to fix any relative dates of
Bronze Age beakers by a comparison either of their shape or ornament.’
Mr. Abercromby, however, in his third paper (_ib._, xxxix, 1905),
adheres to his chronological arrangement. See also _ib._, xl, 1906, pp.
32-3, 371.
Handles are occasionally found not only on drinking-cups, but also on
the other kinds of sepulchral pottery.
[817] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 378-83; W. Greenwell, _Brit.
Barrows_, pp. 83-93; J. R. Mortimer, _Forty Years’ Researches_, pp.
lxii-lxv.
[818] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 343-57; xlix, 1885, p. 195; W.
Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 66-74; J. R. Mortimer, _Forty Years’
Researches_, pp. lviii-lix; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxix, 1905, pp.
415-6.
[819] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 74-83; _Archaeol. Journal_,
xxiv, 1867, pp. 22-5; _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 357-77; J. R.
Mortimer, _Forty Years’ Researches_, pp. lix-lxii.
[820] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 61; _Archaeol. Cambr._, 6th
ser., ii, 1902, p. 197. The counties in which drinking-cups have been
found are Kent, Sussex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Berkshire, Buckingham,
Hampshire, Dorset, Devon, Somerset, Wiltshire, Oxford, Cambridge,
Lincoln, Derby, Stafford, the East Riding of Yorkshire, Durham,
Northumberland, Westmorland, Cumberland, Monmouth, Anglesey, Carnarvon,
Denbigh, Glamorgan, Berwick, Roxburgh, Ayr, Argyll, Stirling, Lanark,
Haddington, Edinburgh, Linlithgow, Kinross, Fife, Forfar, Perth,
Aberdeen, Banff, Elgin, Nairn, Inverness, Ross, Sutherland, and the
island of Mull (_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxii, 1902, p. 386 and map
facing p. 396; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxviii, 1904, p. 329). Their
rarity in South-Eastern Britain is doubtless due largely to the
destruction of barrows in a highly cultivated region; while their
absence from many of the Midland counties may be ascribed partly to
the same cause and partly to the fact that the population of those
parts in the Bronze Age was probably small. In Cornwall vessels of a
peculiar kind appear to have served the same purposes as drinking-cups
and food-vessels (_Archaeologia_, xlix, 1885, pp. 186-8). From the
frequency with which drinking-cups occur in the east of Scotland it may
perhaps be inferred that they were introduced into that country, at
least in part, by immigrants from Scandinavia or Denmark.
A gold cup, which in form resembles certain drinking-cups and is
ornamented on the bottom with concentric circles, has been found with a
bronze dagger at Rillaton in Cornwall (_Archaeol. Journal_, xxiv, 1867,
p. 189).
[821] See pp. 408-9, 442-3, _infra_.
[822] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxii, 1902, pp. 376-85.
[823] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxviii, 1904, pp. 346-7; W. Greenwell,
_Brit. Barrows_, p. 94.
[824] _Ib._, pp. 93-4, 101; _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 386; lii,
1890, pp. 24-5. Cf. J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze
and Stone Ages_, p. 76, and E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, ii, 1903, pp.
30-43. Mr. J. R. Mortimer (_Forty Years’ Researches_, pp. lxvi-lxvii)
says, ‘If food was essential [to the dead], so would liquid be ... and
I do not know of an instance of the remains of animal matter having
ever been found in any vase of the true drinking-cup type. That they
served the purpose of holding liquid, there can be little doubt’.
Mr. Mortimer is more logical than the people of the Bronze Age. His
argument would lead to the conclusion that only food or only drink
was considered necessary for the dead according as food-vessels or
drinking-cups were placed with them. Very likely liquid was sometimes
poured into drinking-cups: but for obvious reasons evidence is wanting;
whereas evidence exists that they sometimes held food. By ‘the true
drinking-cup type’ Mr. Mortimer apparently means the low-brimmed type
which Thurnam called γ (see W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 95, fig.
82), and which, as we have seen, is confined to Northern Britain; but
he is alone in calling this type ‘true’ to the exclusion of the others.
[825] _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 44-5.
[826] _Ib._, p. 45; _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 378.
[827] _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 44.
[828] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxviii, 1904, pp. 362-3.
[829] _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 46.
[830] _Ib._; _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 358; W. Greenwell, _Brit.
Barrows_, p. 80. The orthodox view is that incense-cups have never been
found with interments by inhumation; but see J. R. Mortimer, _Forty
Years’ Researches_, pp. liv-lv, lx, 256 (fig. 724), 259.
[831] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 357; W. Greenwell, _Brit.
Barrows_, p. 80.
[832] The suggestions that they may have been lamps or even small
urns intended to receive the ashes of infants have been refuted. See
on the whole question _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 374-7; W.
Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 81-3; _Nature_, Jan. 13 (with which cf.
_Archaeologia_, xliii, 374-5); E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, ii, 1903,
pp. 383-5; and _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum),
pp. 45-6.
[833] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 388-400; W. Greenwell, _Brit.
Barrows_, pp. 65-7, 71, 76-7, 92-102; _Journ. Roy. Soc. Ant. Ireland_,
5th ser., iv, 1894, pp. 378-9; A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in
Cranborne Chase_, iv, 164, 169, 216-39; J. Romilly Allen, _Celtic
Art in Pagan and Christian Times_, 1904, pp. 26-39; _Proc. Soc. Ant.
Scot._, xxxix, 1905, pp. 333, 536-7. Mr. J. R. Mortimer (_Forty Years’
Researches_, p. lv) says that he has found vessels of all four kinds
which were quite plain.
[834] A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 235-8.
[835] _Ib._, pp. 218-34. ‘General resemblance of ornamental patterns.’
says Pitt-Rivers (_ib._, p. 216), ‘is not enough to prove that
they were copied from one another ... when, however, the points
of resemblance are very minute, and the distribution limited and
continuous, it may be fairly argued that the different kinds of
earthworks in which they are found, in the same district, were of the
same period’. Mr. Andrew Lang’s remarks on decorative motives (_Custom
and Myth_, 1885, pp. 286-9) contain much, but not the whole truth. ‘The
conviction becomes irresistible,’ he writes, ‘that all these objects,
in shape, in purpose, in character of decoration, are the same,
because the mind and the materials of men, in their early stages of
civilisation especially, are the same everywhere. You might introduce
old Greek bits of clay-work, figures or vases, into a Peruvian
collection, or might foist Mexican objects among the clay treasures of
Hissarlik, and the wisest archaeologist would be deceived.’ A socketed
celt, almost identical in form with some Italian celts and ornamented
with the chevron, has been found in Chili (J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze
Implements_, p. 145).
[836] A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 216, 227;
_Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xix, 1885, pp. 346-8; xxxix, 1905, p. 333;
_L’Anthr._, iv, 1893, p. 489; xvi, 1905, p. 2.
[837] Sir A. Mitchell, _The Past in the Present_, p. 28.
[838] A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 238-9.
Mr. Coffey (_Journ. Roy. Soc. Ant. Ireland_, 5th ser., v, 1895, p.
195) thinks that ‘herring-bone, chevron, and triangle ornament’ may be
native in Europe, and (_ib._, vi, 1896, p. 42) that lozenge, chequer,
and saltire patterns ‘may be original in Britain’. He holds, however
(_ib._), that ‘we have no reason to believe that geometrical forms
have ever been spontaneously invented’, and adds that ‘they appear to
have been invariably derived by a process of conventionalisation from
realistic prototypes’: he cites examples (_ib._, iv, 1894, pp. 364-6)
from the pottery of Cyprus to show how ‘the body of the lotus flower is
simplified to a triangular form, and the central sepal to an enlarged
lozenge, enriched by cross-hatching and chequer patterns’; and he
argues (_ib._, v, 1895, pp. 210-1) that ‘the occurrence of chequers of
lozenges on Early Bronze Age remains from Scotland, in some instances
identical with Cyprian forms, and the close association of lozenge,
chequer, and × [saltire] patterns with the spiral in the Bronze Age
ornament of Ireland is ... strong evidence that lozenge and chequer
patterns travelled northward across Europe on the path of the spiral’.
That geometrical forms were in certain cases derived from ‘realistic
prototypes’ may be granted, but does not exclude the possibility that
in others the same forms were ‘spontaneously invented’. Moreover,
certain geometrical forms occur, as we have seen (pp. 197-8), on
neolithic and even on palaeolithic objects, to which they could not
have found their way by the route and from the source to which Mr.
Coffey refers. Others again are of such a kind that it is difficult
to conceive of any ‘realistic prototype’ from which they could have
been derived; and there are lozenge, chequer, and saltire patterns on
pottery of the Bronze Age in parts of England to which, according to
Mr. Coffey, the spiral did not penetrate until the Bronze Age was at
an end. Mr. Coffey (_ib._, iv, 1894, p. 356) is himself disposed to
except ‘some zigzag, chevron, and triangle ornaments’ from the list of
geometric patterns which, as he insists, ‘have been invariably derived
from naturalistic forms’; but the truth is that, as Mr. Romilly Allen
has shown (_Celtic Art in Pagan and Christian Times_, pp. 27-37), all
the patterns of the Bronze Age, except spirals, circles and other
curves, and mere dots, punch marks, and straight lines, are simply
combinations of diagonal straight lines based upon the chevron.
Another theory of Mr. Coffey’s (_op. cit._, v, 1895, p. 202) is that
‘as far as the ornament of primitive peoples has been studied, it
appears to be generally associated with religious ideas’, and that the
‘naturalistic objects’ to the conventionalization of which he would
trace the geometric patterns of the Bronze Age had ‘a religious and
talismanic meaning’. I am not concerned to deny that certain geometric
patterns, for instance the swastika and the circle, may sometimes
have had such a meaning; but Mr. Coffey’s theory is too sweeping. It
would be difficult to prove that oblong punch-marks or impressions
of finger-nails and finger-tips, or the herring-bone pattern were
connected with religion. [See A. Lang, _Magic and Religion_, 1901, p.
248.]
[839] _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 51, 79.
[840] A. Lang, _The Clyde Mystery_, p. 80, fig. 5.
[841] _Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, p. 53; A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in
Cranborne Chase_, iv, 164; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxix, 1905, pp.
336-7.
[842] _Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, pp. 25-7; E. Cartailhac, _La France
préhist._, pp. 241-3; _Congrès internat. d’anthr. et d’archéol.
préhist._, 1900 (1902), p. 338; _Rév. de l’École d’anthr._, 1904, p.
135; _L’Anthr._, xvii, 1906, p. 135.
[843] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 54-6, 59; _Archaeologia_,
xliii, 1871, p. 401; xlix, 1885, pp. 188-9; _Journ. Brit. Archaeol.
Association_, N. S., vi, 1900, pp. 8-10; _Vict. Hist. of ... Derby_,
i, 175; J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone
Ages_, pp. 56, 67-9, 86-7, 94; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, _passim_.
Pitt-Rivers (_Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, ii, 8), speaking of
twenty-two round barrows near Rushmore, remarks that ‘Here, as in other
places, the smaller barrows have, as a rule, been found to contain the
larger number of relics’.
[844] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 39.
[845] _Ib._, p. 60.
[846] See Lord Avebury, _Prehist. Times_, 1900, pp. 133, 135, 144,
and _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 57.
Seventy-nine flint saws were found by Canon Greenwell (_Brit. Barrows_,
p. 262) in one barrow in the parish of Rudstone, East Riding of
Yorkshire. They could hardly have been intended for the use of the
deceased, unless, indeed, he was a dealer in implements, and his
relatives wished to provide him with the means of plying his trade in
a future state. ‘On ensevelit le guerrier,’ says M. Salomon Reinach
(_L’Anthr._, xvii, 1906, p. 354), ‘avec ses armes, la femme avec ses
objets de parure, parce qu’ils sont _tabous_ et, à ce titre, retirés de
la circulation et du commerce’, &c. Very likely this motive sometimes
operated; but it will not account for many of the deposits which I have
mentioned.
[847] E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, 1903, i, 483-5.
[848] _B. G._, vi, 19, § 4.
[849] _Germ._, 27.
[850] E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, 1903, i, 477-90.
[851] A. Lang, _Custom and Myth_, 1885, p. 11, n. 2. See also W.
Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 59-60, 121.
[852] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, pp. 536-8; lii, 1890, p. 24; W.
Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 10. Pitt-Rivers, however (_Excavations
in Cranborne Chase_, ii, 2), found that only one of the twenty-two
barrows which he opened at Rushmore contained animal bones. Mr. J. R.
Mortimer (_Forty Years’ Researches_, p. lxx) believes that ‘many of
the small dish-shaped cavities containing burnt matter that are found
scooped into the old turf-line under the barrows were probably made to
serve as cooking ovens for roasting the funeral feasts’. Some of these
cavities contained pieces of animal and human bones, charcoal, and
potsherds; but Canon Greenwell (_Brit. Barrows_, p. 9) observes that
‘there is no appearance of a fire having ever been kindled within them,
the burnt matter, when they contain any, having evidently been placed
there in that condition’. Their object remains unexplained.
[853] _Iliad_, xxiii, 171-4.
[854] _B. G._, vi, 19, § 4.
[855] _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, N. S., iii, 1865, p. 320; _Proc. Soc. Ant.
Scot._, vii, 1870, p. 375; W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 15-6;
_Rev. de l’École d’anthr._, xv, 1905, p. 217.
[856] T. Bateman, _Ten Years’ Diggings_, pp. 126, 129; _Archaeologia_,
xliii, 1871, pp. 539-40. Cf. J. R. Mortimer, _Forty Years’ Researches_,
p. 355.
[857] A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 180.
[858] T. Bateman, _Ten Years’ Diggings_, p. 25; _Proc. Soc. Ant.
Scot._, vi, 1867, p. 343, n. 2. The works of Canon Greenwell and Mr.
Mortimer abound with instances of this practice.
[859] _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 50; T.
Bateman, _Ten Years’ Diggings_, p. 135; _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871,
p. 540. See also _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, N. S., iii, 1865, pp. 317-8, and
_Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xv, 1893-5, pp. 424-5. Prof. Robertson
Smith (_The Religion of the Semites_, 1901, p. 293) remarks that ‘the
mouse appears as an abominable sacrifice in Isa. lxvi, 17’; and Sir A.
Mitchell (_The Past in the Present_, p. 145) states, as a fact within
his own experience, that in the last century cocks were buried alive
in Scotland by church-going people in order to cure epilepsy by the
propitiation of some supernatural power.
[860] T. Bateman, _Ten Years’ Diggings_, pp. 78-9; W. Greenwell, _Brit.
Barrows_, pp. 120, 164-5, 177, 243-4. Cf. O. Schrader, _Prehist. Ant.
of the Aryan Peoples_, pp. 390-1. Mr. E. Sidney Hartland (_Folk-Lore_,
xi, 1900, p. 91), criticizing Sir A. Lyall’s remark (_Asiatic Studies_,
2nd ser., 1899, p. 247) that ‘a Calabar chief explained to Miss
Kingsley that the custom [of sacrificing wives at their husbands’
funerals] was also a salutary check upon husband-poisoning’, says
that this does not explain the origin of the custom. Sir Alfred did
not quote it in this sense; but it may explain the persistence of the
custom even among certain ancient tribes. Cf. Caesar, _B. G._, vi, 19,
§ 3.
[861] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 10-1; A. Pitt-Rivers,
_Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, ii. 4, 34, 42, 252, 258.
[862] Act v, scene i, 218-9.
[863] W. Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_, i, 1901, pp. 507, 509-10,
512, 520, 524, &c.
[864] See pp. 110, 185-6, _supra_.
[865] _L’Anthr._, xvii, 1906, p. 293.
[866] See p. 286, _infra_.
[867] See pp. 177, 183, _supra_.
[868] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 55-65, 145;
_Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 39, 134; _Archaeol. Cambr._, 6th ser.,
iii, 1903, pp. 224-38 (especially 235-8).
[869] _Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_, xvi, 1860, p. 120; xxxv,
1879, pp. 16-8, 21-5; _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, ii, 1866, pp. 277-9; Sir
J. Y. Simpson, _Archaic Sculpturings_, &c., 1867, pl. xiii, figs. 3
and 5; W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 7; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._,
xvi, 1882, pp. 79-80, 85, 101, 104, 121-43, 300-401; xviii, 1884,
pp. 109-28; xix, 1885, pp. 394-5; xx, 1886, pp. 41-6, 135, 358-60;
xxi, 1887, pp. 143-51; xxiii, 1889, pp. 125-37, 140; xxix, 1895, pp.
68-71, 73, 91, 193; xxxiii, 1899, pp. 363-4, 368, 371; xxxvii, 1903,
p. 22; xxxviii, 1904, p. 148; E. Cartailhac, _La France préhist._,
1889, pp. 246-7; _Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, p. 39; A. Bertrand, _La
religion des Gaulois_, 1897, pp. 62-3; _Congrès internat. d’anthr.
et d’archéol. préhist._, 1900 (1902), pp. 269-70; _Rev. mensuelle de
l’École d’anthr._, xi, 1901, p. 55; _L’Anthr._, xiii, 1902, pp. 696,
701, 710-1; xiv, 1903, pp. 536-7; _Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland
Ant. and Archaeol. Soc._, N. S., ii, 1902, pp. 381-2; B.C. A. Windle,
_Remains of the Prehist. Age_, p. 127. It would seem that certain
cup-markings, at all events in the British Isles, France, Spain, and
Scandinavia, belong to the Neolithic Age (Sir J. Y. Simpson, _Archaic
Sculpturings_, &c., p. 29; E. Cartailhac, _Age préhist. de l’Espagne_,
1886, pp. 174-5; _La France préhist._, 1889, pp. 246-7.)
[870] W. C. Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_, ii, 437. Mr. W. Frazer
(_Journ. Roy. Soc. Ant. Ireland_, 5th ser., v, 1895, pp. 69-70)
affirms that ‘almost without exception the simple “cupules” ... on our
rude stone monuments are to be attributed to ... _Echinus lividus_’
(a sea-urchin). In many cases, however, the marks of tools are
unmistakable (W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 342-3, 433).
[871] They have been found on the porches of churches at Quimperlé,
on the north porch of the cathedral at Quimper, and (with crosses) on
the thresholds of houses of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth
centuries, near Carnac (_Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xvii, 1897-9, pp.
328-9).
[872] _Journ. Roy. Soc. Ant. Ireland_, 5th ser., vi, 1896, p. 59.
Concentric circles with rays appear to belong to the later period of
the Bronze Age (_ib._, pp. 59, 65-6). Rays are also found on a spiral
carved on a megalith in New Caledonia (_L’Anthr._, xiii, 1902, p. 697,
fig. 9).
[873] A. Lang, _Magic and Religion_, pp. 245-6, 253-4. Mr. Lang (_The
Clyde Mystery_, pp. 66, 79) observes that similar markings on rocks,
&c., in different countries may have different meanings.
[874] Rectilinear figures like those which are common on pottery of the
Bronze Age have also been found on these stones (_Archaeol. Cambr._,
6th ser., ii, 1902, pp. 209, 226-7). It seems probable that the famous
‘Cerne Giant’--a colossal human figure wielding a club--which is cut
in the chalk on the hill-side east of Cerne Abbas in Dorsetshire,
may belong to the Bronze Age and be connected with phallus-worship.
See _Vict. Hist. of ... Buckingham_, i, 189. It has been pointed out
(_Proc. Dorset Nat. Hist. and Ant. Field Club_, xxii, 1901, pp. 107-9)
that it is petrographic, colossal, nude, ithyphallic, and clavigerous;
and that ‘forms which possess these five characteristics have been
found in the rock carvings of Scandinavia ... and belong only to the
Bronze Age and to its overlap with the Early Age of Iron’. See J. J.
Worsaee, _Industrial Arts of Denmark_, 1883, pp. 112-3.
[875] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xx, part i, 1903-4, pp. 6-13, part
ii, 1904-5, pp. 254-5; _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit.
Museum), pp. 151-2.
[876] _L’Anthr._, iv, 1893, pp. 564, 721; _Report of ... the Brit.
Association_, 1904 (1905), p. 723. Cf. _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xix,
1885, p. 391.
[877] See p. 105, _supra_.
[878] J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone
Ages_, pp. 122-3.
[879] J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone
Ages_, pp. 122-3; _Archaeol. Cambr._, 5th ser., xvii, 1900, p. 224.
[880] I do not mean to suggest that all stone circles were derived
from peristaliths; but I do not think that we should be justified in
differentiating from the peristaliths by a hard and fast line those
larger circles in which no traces of interment have been found. Mr.
John Ward (_Vict. Hist. of ... Derby_, i, 169), remarking that most of
the round barrows, or rather cairns, of Derbyshire consist merely of
stones ‘thrown together anyhow’, says that ‘a slight advance is the
introduction of a kerb of larger stones laid upon the ground to confine
the proposed mound’; and he goes on to observe that in those cases in
which the stones of the mound itself have been removed, the kerb ‘may
remain as a ring of stones easily mistaken for a circle’. He evidently
believes that the kerb was merely a structural improvement. Perhaps in
Derbyshire, though even this is not certain. The object of the stone
rings which have been found within cairns, and of those which stood
upon barrows in Northern Germany, was certainly not utilitarian; and
the kerb may have had a religious or mystical meaning. Nor is there any
evidence that it was an ‘advance’ upon the structureless cairn.
[881] _Archaeologia_, xxxv, 1853, pp. 232-58; lii, 1890, p. 39; W.
Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 402; J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan
Times,--the Bronze and Stone Ages_, pp. 111, 113-4, 119-23, 300-1;
_Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_, N. S., vi, 1900, pp. 11-2;
_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxx, 1900, pp. 57, 60, 67, 70; B. C. A. Windle,
_Remains of the Prehist. Age_, pp. 197-204; _Vict. Hist. of ... Derby_,
i, 181-4; _Archaeol. Cambr._, 6th ser., vi, 1906, p. 282.
[882] _Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_, xviii, 1862, p. 50; W.
Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 402; W. C. Lukis, _Prehist. Stone
Monuments of the Brit. Isles,--Cornwall_, p. 16. The extreme rarity of
stone rows in Cornwall, contrasted with their abundance on Dartmoor,
suggests to Mr. G. F. Tregelles (_Vict. Hist. of ... Cornwall_, i, 402)
‘a difference in cult’.
[883] See _Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Ant. and Archaeol. Soc._,
N. S., ii, 1902, pp. 60-2.
[884] For instance in Cornwall (_Vict. Hist. of ... Cornwall_, i, 379),
Inverurie (_Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxv, 1901, pp. 246-7), and Lewis
(_ib._, xxxviii, 1904, p. 190).
[885] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., ix, 1881-3, p. 151; _Proc. Soc. Ant.
Scot._, xxxv, 1901, p. 246; xxxviii, 1904, p. 190; _Journ. Roy. Inst.
Cornwall_, xiv, 1901, p. 378.
[886] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, i, 1872, p. cxi. Roger Gale (whose
testimony is accepted by Mr. W. C. Lukis (_Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser.,
vii, 1876-8, pp. 270-1), writing in 1740 to Stukeley, said that he
remembered having seen the holes in which the stones of the Stonehenge
avenue had been placed.
[887] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., x, 1884-5, p. 320.
[888] _Ib._, ix, 1881-3, pp. 150-1; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxv,
1901, p. 246; _Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Ant. and Archaeol.
Soc._, N. S., ii, 1902, pp. 60-2.
[889] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxiv, 1900, pp. 143, 196-7; xxxv, 1901,
p. 246; xxxvii, 1903, p. 141; xxxviii, 1904, pp. 293-4.
[890] _Ib._, xxxv, 1901, pp. 246-7.
[891] _Ib._; _Folk-Lore_, vi, 1895, pp. 7, 12. See also _Vict. Hist. of
... Cumberland_, i, 245, 247.
[892] Caesar, _B. G._, vi, 13, § 4; 16, § 2; 21, § 1.
[893] _Rev. celt._, xiii, 1892, p. 194. Demeter was worshipped in stone
circles in the city of Hermion (Pausanias, ii, 34, § 10).
[894] Cf. _Vict. Hist. of ... Cumberland_, i, 245, 247, with _Proc.
Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., x, 1884-5, p. 312. Mr. A. L. Lewis (_Journ.
Anthr. Inst._, xv, 1886, p. 479) assumes that in some cases the
external object by which the orientation was determined was a mountain.
[895] See _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xi, 1882, pp. 3-7, 117-22; xv, 1886,
pp. 471-81; xx, 1891, p. 285; xxx, 1900, p. 70; _Archaeol. Journal_,
xlix, 1892, pp. 139, 146; _Journ. Roy. Inst. Cornwall_, xiii, 1895,
pp. 111-2; and _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxiv, 1900, p. 196. Mr. A. L.
Lewis, the principal advocate of the solar temple theory, seems to be
satisfied with almost any kind of orientation. Thus he tells us that
of twenty-one circles which he observed in Southern Britain nineteen
‘had a special reference to the north-east’, that is to the midsummer
sunrise: but he maintains that a ‘line due east through the Stannon and
Fernacre circles to Brown Willy evidently was meant to indicate the
equinoctial sunrise’; and in another case he insists that the object
pointed at was the pole star.
Mr. G. F. Tregelles (_Vict. Hist. of ... Cornwall_, i, 404-5), after
making careful investigations with his compass in Cornwall, has
arrived at results ‘mainly negative’, and concludes that ‘there is not
apparently such evidence of orientation as would satisfy a critical
observer’.
Mr. W. C. Lukis, on the other hand (_Prehist. Stone Monuments of the
Brit. Isles,--Cornwall_, p. vi), remarking that circles sometimes occur
in groups, asks, ‘if they were temples ... why should the worshippers
have been divided into so many different congregations?’ As it is not
contended that all circles were solar temples, this argument would
obviously apply only to those particular instances; and even with this
limitation it is inconclusive. Each circle was probably erected in
honour of some one chieftain; and it remains possible that sun-worship
may have been practised by his clan. We can hardly suppose that the
erection of circles was supervised by a central hierarchy who aimed at
economizing labour! See p. 479, _infra_.
[896] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, vi, 1867, pp. 337-9; xviii, 1884, pp.
319-23; xxix, 1895, p. 302; xxxiii, 1899, p. 363; xxxiv, 1900, pp. 151,
186, 197; xxxv, 1901, pp. 194, 219, 247; xxxvi, 1902, p. 579; xxxvii,
1903, p. 141; xxxviii, 1904, pp. 293-4; xxxix, 1905, pp. 192-5; _Proc.
Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., viii, 1879-81, pp. 291-2, 389-92, 471-2; x,
1884-5, p. 312; J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and
Stone Ages_, pp. 111, 113-4, 116-8; _Archaeol. Review_, ii, 1889, pp.
313-5; _Trans. Devon. Association_, xxvii, 1895, p. 442; xxx, 1898, p.
107; xxxv, 1903, p. 142; _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxx, 1900, pp. 57, 67;
_Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Ant. and Archaeol. Soc._, N. S., ii,
1902, pp. 60-1; _Vict. Hist. of ... Cumberland_, i, 236 n. 5, 245, 247,
249; _Vict. Hist. of ... Derby_, i, 183; _Vict. Hist. of Cornwall_, i,
401; _Archaeol. Cambr._, 6th ser., vi, 1906, pp. 286-92.
[897] J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone
Ages_, p. 124; _Matériaux pour l’hist ... de l’homme_, 3^e sér., ii,
1885, pp. 368-70; A. Bertrand and S. Reinach, _Les Celtes dans les
vallées du Pô et du Danube_, 1894, pp. 80-5; W. C. Borlase, _Dolmens
of Ireland_, ii, 507, 644; iii, 720, 728, 753; _Comptes rendus ... de
l’Acad. des inscr._, 1904, pp. 560-4.
[898] See _Archaeol. Journal_, xlix, 1892, p. 139; _Proc. Soc. Ant._,
2nd ser., xix, 1902, p. 98; and _Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Ant.
and Archaeol. Soc._, N. S., ii, 1902, p. 60, §§ 5-6.
[899] Mr. G. F. Tregelles (_Vict. Hist. of ... Cornwall_, i, 404)
remarks that ‘the principal English [as distinguished from most
Cumbrian and Scottish] circles have never been proved to be’
sepulchral; but neither have they been proved to be non-sepulchral.
It is said (_Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xix, 1902, p. 98) that the
circle of Sunken Kirk in Westmorland has been subjected to a ‘searching
exploration’. Was the whole area excavated? Pitt-Rivers (_Excavations
in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 148), speaking of the fifty two secondary
interments which he discovered just outside a barrow at Rushmore (see
p. 178, _supra_) says, ‘They showed no trace whatever on the surface
... and would never have been discovered had it not been for the
practice I have established of trenching down to the undisturbed chalk
the entire surface of the ground contained within the area of the
contoured plan of the Barrow’.
Mr. R. Burnard (_Vict. Hist. of ... Devon_, i, 359-60) observes that
‘fires seem to have been kindled all over the [Fernworthy] circle,
for every scoop of the pick and shovel ... displayed charcoal’, and,
remarking that this monument is the ‘predominant feature of a group of
sepulchral remains’, conjectures that it was ‘the crematorium or the
site of the funeral feasts or both’.
[900] A. Bertrand, _Archéol. celt, et gaul._, 1889, p. 103. Cf. _Proc.
Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., viii, 1879-81, p. 288, and _L’Anthr._, xvi, 1905,
p. 530.
[901] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, i, 1872, pp. cxi, cxiii-cxvi; _Trans....
Devon. Association_, xxxiv, 1902, p. 117; xxxv, 1903, p. 429; _Vict.
Hist. of ... Devon_, i, 370.
[902] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., viii, 1879-81, pp. 288, 292, 471-4.
[903] See Dr. A. J. Evans’s interesting account of the folk-lore of the
Rollright Stones in _Folk-Lore_, vi, 1895, pp. 21-3, 30-2, and cf. Lord
Avebury’s _Origin of Civilisation_, 1902, p. 388.
[904] _Journ. Ethn. Soc._, i, 1869, p. 59; _Archaeol. Review_, ii,
1889, p. 325.
[905] _Ib._, p. 316.
[906] _Archaeologia_, lviii, 1902, pp. 15, 20, 40, 42, 115.
[907] See _Archaeol. Review_, ii, 1889, p. 318.
[908] _Archaeologia_, lviii, 1902, pp. 73-5, 80-2.
[909] _Archaeol. Review_, ii, 1889, p. 318.
[910] _Archaeologia_, lviii, 1902, p. 83.
[911] Some geologists have suggested that they may have come from Wales
or even Cumberland!
[912] _Archaeologia_, lviii, 1902, pp. 115-6.
[913] Cf. p. 156, _supra_.
[914] The circle at Callernish, which belonged to the Scottish Stone
Age, and within which an interment was made, may have been contemporary
with the Bronze Age of England.
[915] See pp. 468-77, _infra_. In a case containing a model of
Stonehenge in the Prehistoric Room of the British Museum it is actually
stated that ‘on the supposition that Stonehenge was a Sun-temple, its
date has been astronomically determined’! I would ask the Keeper to
consult Mr. Hinks’s paper in the _Nineteenth Century_, June, 1903.
[916] See Polybius, iii, 38, §§ 1-2; 58-9; xxxiv, 10, § 7; Dion
Cassius, xxxix, 50, §§ 3-4.
[917] See p. 494 _infra_.
[918] See p. 513, note, _infra_.
[919] See p. pp. 490-1, 512, _infra_.
[920] See pp. 499-513, _infra_.
[921] See H. F. Tozer, _Hist. of Anc. Geogr._, 1897, pp. 15-6.
[922] Strabo, ii, 4, § 2. Cf. A. Bertrand and S. Reinach, _Les Celtes
dans les vallées du Pô et du Danube_, 1894, p. 15.
[923] Strabo, ii, 1, § 12; 5, § 8. Cf. V. de St. Martin, _Hist. de la
géogr._, 1873, p. 101.
[924] Plutarch (_De placitis philosophorum_, iii, 17, § 2), who
evidently knew nothing about the tides, ascribed to Pytheas the absurd
statement that high tide occurs at full moon, and low tide at new moon
(Πυθέας ὁ Μασσαλιώτης τῇ πληρώσει τῆς σελήνης τὰς πλημμύρας γίνεσθαι,
τῇ δὲ μειώσει τὰς ἀμπώτιδας), a blunder which, as Müllenhoff (_Deutsche
Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, p. 365) remarks, nobody could have made who
had spent twenty-four hours on the Atlantic coast. I agree with him
that Pytheas had anticipated the discovery of Posidonius (Strabo, iii,
5, § 8), which, needless to say, must have been made long before by
Phoenician mariners, but that he was unfortunate in his reporter. Cf.
H. F. Tozer, _Hist. of Anc. Geogr._, p. 155.
[925] See p. 221, _infra_, and H. F. Tozer, _Hist. of Anc. Geogr._, pp.
155-7.
[926] See _ib._, p. 160, and _Geogr. Journal_, i, 1893, p. 520.
[927] Geminus, _Elem. astron._, ed. C. Manitius, 1898, p. 70 (c. vi, §
9); K. Müllenhoff, _Deutsche Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, p. 311.
[928] _Ib._, p. 367.
[929] _Geogr._, i, 4, § 3; ii, 3, § 5; iv, 5, § 5; vii, 3, § 1, &c. Cf.
M. Dubois, _Examen de la géogr. de Strabon_, 1891, pp. 253-4, 264-5.
In regard to the scientific eminence of Pytheas see V. de St. Martin,
_Hist. de la géogr._, p. 107; K. Müllenhoff, _Deutsche Altertumskunde_,
i, 1890, pp. 311-3; _Geogr. Journal_, i, 1893, pp. 520-1; and H. F.
Tozer, _Hist. of Anc. Geogr._, pp. 47-50.
[930] H. Berger, _Gesch. der wissenschaftlichen Erdkunde der Griechen_,
iii, 1891, p. 27.
[931] Strabo, ii, 4, § 2.
[932] H. d’A. de Jubainville, _Principaux auteurs de l’ant. à consulter
sur l’hist. des Celtes_, 1902, p. 65.
[933] K. Müllenhoff, _Deutsche Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, p. 311.
[934] See pp. 495-6, _infra_.
[935] Strabo, i, 4, §§ 3, 5; iii, 2, §§ 1, 11; iv, 4, § 1; Diodorus
Siculus, v, 21, § 3; K. Müllenhoff, _Deutsche Altertumskunde_, i,
1890, pp. 368-70, 375-7; Pauly’s _Real-Encyclopädie_, iii, part i,
1897, p. 863; H. d’A. de Jubainville, _Principaux auteurs à consulter
sur l’hist. des Celtes_, pp. 66-71. Sir Clements Markham (_Geogr.
Journal_, i, 1893, p. 516) holds that Pytheas sailed from Uxisama to
Kent, ‘because he reported that the coast of Gaul, where he left it,
was some days’ sail from Cantion’. But what he reported was simply that
Cantium was some days’ sail from Gaul (καὶ τὸ Κάντιον ἡμερῶν τινων
πλοῦν ἀπέχειν τῆς Κελτικῆς φησι [Strabo, _Geogr._, i, 4, § 3]); and
this estimate may have been based upon his homeward voyage. Professor
Ridgeway (_Folk-Lore_, i, 1890, p. 97) referring to the same passage
in Strabo, argues that he sailed from Brittany to the Isle of Wight.
Müllenhoff gives satisfactory reasons for the view adopted in the text.
[936] Except by Prof. Rhys (_Celtic Britain_, 3rd ed., 1904, p. 46),
who, however, may perhaps have changed his mind since the appearance of
Mr. Clement Reid’s article in _Archaeologia_, lix, part ii, 1905, pp.
281-8.
[937] See p. 359, _infra_.
[938] See _Association franç. pour l’avancement des sc._, 1902, 1^{re}
part., p. 268; 1903, 2^e part., p. 911.
[939] See pp. 499-507, _infra_.
[940] Strabo, i, 4, § 3; ii, 4, § 1. Müllenhoff (_Deutsche
Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, pp. 379-81) makes an ingenious attempt
to explain Pytheas’s exaggeration. Cf. H. Berger, _Geschichte der
wissenschaftlichen Erdkunde der Griechen_, iii, 1891, p. 37.
[941] _Geogr._, i, 4, § 4; ii, 1, §§ 13, 17; iv, 5, § 4.
[942] Strabo, iv, 5, § 5; Diodorus Siculus, v, 21, § 5. Cf. K.
Müllenhoff, _Deutsche Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, pp. 394-6.
[943] _Nat. Hist._, ii, 97 (99), § 217.
[944] _Mém. de l’Acad. des inscr._, xxxvii, 1724, p. 437; H. F. Tozer,
_Hist. of Anc. Geogr._, p. 159.
[945] _Whitaker’s Almanack_, 1897, p. 71. Cf. K. Müllenhoff, _Deutsche
Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, p. 367, and _Geogr. Journal_, xix, 1902, p.
53.
[946] Strabo, ii, 5, § 8; iv, 5, § 5. Cf. K. Müllenhoff, _Deutsche
Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, p. 392.
[947] I have come independently to the same conclusion as M. V. de St.
Martin (_Hist. de la géogr._, p. 103) and Mr. H. F. Tozer (_Hist. of
Anc. Geogr._, pp. 158-9).
[948] Strabo, i, 4, § 2.
[949] H. Berger, _Gesch. der wissenschaftlichen Erdkunde der Griechen_,
iii, 1891, p. 37.
[950] _Geogr._, iv, 5, § 5. Müllenhoff (_Deutsche Altertumskunde_, i,
1890, p. 393) insists that Strabo’s description must include Thule;
for, he says, it compares the observations made by Pytheas in Thule
with others, made in more southerly tracts, where wheat was grown and
beer brewed. But, as I observe in the text, it is questionable whether
Pytheas was ever in Thule.
[951] _Geogr._, i, 4, § 3.
[952] _Ib._, ii, 5, § 8. See H. F. Tozer, _Hist. of Anc. Geogr._, p.
159.
[953] K. Müllenhoff, _Deutsche Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, p. 389. Cf.
_Mém. de l’Acad. des inscr._, xxxvii, 1724, pp. 436-42.
[954] Müllenhoff (_Deutsche Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, pp. 386, 401)
gives sufficient reasons for rejecting the statement of Cleomedes that
there was continuous night in Thule for one month. The statement of
Pliny (_Nat. Hist._, iv, 16 [30], § 104) that the winter night lasted
six months needs no refutation.
[955] Strabo, i, 4, § 2.
[956] _Elem. astron._, ed. C. Manitius, 1898, p. 70 (c. vi, § 9).--ἐπὶ
δὲ τοὺς τόπους τούτους δοκεῖ καὶ Πυθέας ... παρεῖναι. φησὶ γοῦν ...
ὅτι ‘ἑδείκνυον ἡμῖν οἱ βάρβαροι ὅπου ὁ ἥλιος κοιμᾶται. συνέβαινε γὰρ
περὶ τούτους τοὺς τόπους τὴν μὲν νύκτα παντελῶς μικρὸν γίνεσθαι, ὡρῶν
οἷς μὲν δύο, οἷς δὲ τριῶν, ὥστε μετὰ τὴν δύσιν μικροῦ διαλείμματος
γινομένου ἐπανατέλλειν εἰθέως τὸν ἥλιον.’
[957] See H. Berger, _Gesch. der wissenschaftlichen Erdkunde_, &c.,
iii, 1891, pp. 16-7.
[958] Cf. K. Müllenhoff, _Deutsche Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, pp. 388,
392.
[959] Strabo (ii, 4, § 1) seems to imply that Pytheas avowed that he
described Thule from hearsay. He tells us on the authority of Polybius
that Pytheas wrote an account of τὰ περὶ τῆς Θούλης καὶ τῶν τόπων
ἐκείνων, ἐν οἷς οὔτε γῆ καθ’ αὑτὴν ὑπῆρχεν ἔτι οὔτε θάλαττα, οὔτ’ ἀήρ,
ἀλλὰ σύγκριμά τι ἐκ τούτων πλεύμονι θαλαττίῳ ἐοικός, ἐν ᾧ φησι τὴν γῆν
καὶ τὴν θάλατταν αἰωρεῖσθαι καὶ τὰ σύμπαντα, καὶ τοῦτον ὡς ἂν δεσμὸν
εἶναι τῶν ὅλων, μήτε πορευτὸν μήτε πλωτὸν ὑπάρχοντα· τὸ μὲν οὖν τῷ
πλεύμονι ἐοικὸς αὐτος ἑωρακέναι, τἆλλα δὲ λέγειν ἐξ ἀκοῆς.
[960] My view coincides, in regard to the identification of Thule, with
that of G. Hergt (_Die Nordlandfahrt des Pytheas_, 1894), and also with
that of M. Camille Jullian (_Journ. des Savants_, 1905, pp. 95, n. 1,
101, n. 2). Hergt’s work is not in the British Museum, and I have not
been able to procure a copy; but his conclusions are summarized in
_Jahresberichte der Geschichtswissenschaft_, 1895, iii, 167. He and M.
Jullian (_op. cit._, p. 101) hold that Pytheas landed in Norway, and
that the Norwegians with whom he conversed pointed out to him in the
distance ‘le lieu mystérieux où le soleil repose durant les longues
nuits du cercle polaire’. On this theory I cannot conceive how Pytheas
came to regard Thule as one of the British Isles.
Müllenhoff, who identifies Thule with Mainland, argues, first
(_Deutsche Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, pp. 387-8) that Pytheas would
hardly have succeeded in sailing to Norway in six days on account
of difficulties, which he points out, in navigation; secondly (p.
393), that Pytheas, who distinguished between the Celtic and the
Germanic populations of Northern Europe and must have been accompanied
by an interpreter, would not have confounded Norway--a non-Celtic
country--with Thule; thirdly (pp. 398-9), that agriculture was
introduced into Norway by the Germans, that Pytheas, in his description
of Britain and of Thule, did not say that corn was not cultivated
there, and that, if he had visited Norway, he would have mentioned
the Lapps and the reindeer; and lastly (pp. 399-400), that the place
where ‘the barbarians’ showed him ‘the sleeping-place of the sun’ was
evidently the most northerly land which he reached, and was not in the
Arctic Circle.
Every one of these arguments rests upon the assumption that Pytheas
visited Thule, for which, as we have seen, there is no evidence.
Neither is there any that Thule was inhabited by a Celtic-speaking
people: it is, as we have seen (p. 152, n. 2), absolutely certain that
corn was cultivated in Scandinavia in the Bronze Age; and even if
Pytheas did visit Thule, there is no reason to suppose that he went
sufficiently far northward to come in contact with Lapps.
Mr. Tozer (_Hist. of Anc. Geogr._, pp. 159-60), who does not believe
that Pytheas travelled further northward than ‘the extremity of
Britain’, nevertheless holds with Müllenhoff that Thule was Mainland.
He points out that ‘the sleeping-place of the sun’, which he of course
locates in Thule, was in the Arctic Circle. ‘This of course,’ he
continues, ‘would not apply to Shetland ... but on such a question the
report of “barbarians” could hardly be expected to be accurate.’ Is
not this a weak argument for identifying Thule with Mainland, where,
even at the winter solstice, the sun is above the horizon five hours
out of the twenty-four? The ‘barbarians’ had not themselves penetrated
within the Arctic Circle; and that darkness was anywhere continuous
for twenty-four hours would not have occurred to them if they had not
learned the fact from Scandinavian sailors who had seen the phenomenon
or had been informed of it by eye-witnesses. Moreover, Pytheas, who
so accurately determined the latitude of Massilia, would hardly have
allowed himself to be persuaded that Mainland was on the Arctic Circle.
[961] See, however, pp. 410, 449, _infra_.
[962] See pp. 232-3, _infra_.
[963] See _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 87,
and _Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_, p. xii. Hallstattian
objects are also very rare in Northern Gaul (_Rev. de synthèse hist._,
iii, 1901, p. 38, n. 1).
[964] See pp. 411-2, 445-6, 449, _infra_.
[965] See A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, i, 163, ii,
179-87, iv, 11, 13, 61, and _Proc. Somerset Archaeol. and Nat. Hist.
Soc._, li, 1905, p. 26.
[966] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxv, 1905, p. 262.
[967] See _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1896, pp. 930-1, and
W. Ridgeway, _The Early Age of Greece_, i, 407-52, 594-630. Cf. _Class.
Rev._, xvi, 1902, pp. 74-5, 88-90.
[968] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 208-12. Cf. _Guide to the Ant.
of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 109-11.
[969] Mr. Romilly Allen (_Archaeol. Cambr._, 5th ser., xiii, 1896, p.
223) argues from the fewness of the known Late Celtic burials that the
period between the introduction of iron and the Roman conquest ‘cannot
have been very long’. So also thought Canon Greenwell (_Brit. Barrows_,
p. 212), apparently forgetting what he had very judiciously said on
p. 50. The argument would lead to the conclusion that in Scotland the
Late Celtic Period was almost non-existent; for only one interment of
the Early Iron Age has been found there (p. 435, _infra_). Many such
interments, unmarked by any tumulus, have doubtless escaped notice; and
in many French departments they are unknown (_L’Anthr._, xiv, 1903, p.
386; _Rev. de l’École d’anthr._, xv, 1905, pp. 218-26).
[970] Sir J. Evans (_Coins of the Anc. Britons_, p. 39) remarks that,
according to Ptolemy (_Geogr._, ii, 3, § 13), the territory of the
Belgae included Ischalis (Ilchester), Aquae Calidae (Bath), and Venta
(Winchester), and must therefore have comprised nearly all the area
corresponding with Hampshire, Wiltshire, and Somersetshire; but that in
each of these counties we find a distinct coinage. Probably, he argues,
when the inscribed coins of Somersetshire were struck, the Belgae
only occupied the east of Hampshire and the west of Sussex. Without
disputing this conclusion, I would suggest that since no one Gallic
tribe was called the Belgae, the British Belgae, in the narrower sense
of the term, may have been a loose confederation or aggregate of tribes
or of _pagi_, each of which perhaps had its own coinage.
All scholars are, however, aware that it is generally impossible to
determine the frontiers of the British tribes, even for the period
of the Roman conquest, with any approach to the comparative accuracy
which has been attained in the case of those of Gaul (see my _Caesar’s
Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, pp. 330-2). The delimitation of the tribal
areas of independent Gaul depends mainly upon the reasonable assumption
that they correspond for the most part exactly or nearly with those
of the Gallo-Roman cantons (_civitates_). But in Britain we are not
only baffled by the political changes which took place in the restless
century that intervened between the invasions of Caesar and the
Claudian conquest: we also find that although a recently discovered
inscription (_Archaeologia_, lix, 1904, pp. 121-2) has shown that at
all events in the case of the Ordovices the cantonal organization
was preserved or adopted by the Roman Empire, yet, as Mommsen says
(_Provinces_, i, 191 [_Röm. Gesch._, v, 1885, p. 174]), ‘the Britannic
tribes, taken in the strict sense, [apparently] disappear as soon
as they fall under Roman rule, and of the individual cantons after
their annexation there is virtually no mention at all.’ Moreover, the
boundaries of the Gallo-Roman _civitates_ served, in principle, to
define the areas of episcopal jurisdiction; and the areas of the Gallic
dioceses are known. In Britain this source of information is wanting.
[971] _Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, pp. 387-8.
[972] _Archaeol. Rev._, ii, 1889, p. 324.
[973] _Archaeol. Oxon._, 1892-5 (1895), pp. 159-60.
[974] See _Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp.
83, 98, and p. 240, _infra_. It has been pointed out (_Archaeologia_,
lii, 1890, pp. 385-7) that the interments by inhumation which have been
discovered at Arras in the East Riding of Yorkshire correspond with
the Gallic interments of the fourth century before Christ. Since the
Belgae appear to have practised cremation, these interments very likely
indicate, what we know already, that there was a pre-Belgic Brythonic
invasion of Britain: but it does not follow that they were contemporary
with those of Gaul, and belonged to the time that immediately followed
the close of the British Bronze Age; for, as we shall see (p. 286),
inhumation persisted in Britain long after it had become obsolete on
the other side of the Channel.
[975] See my article on the ethnology of Britain (pp. 428-45, _infra_).
[976] J. Rhys, _The Welsh People_, 3rd ed., 1902, pp. 111-3.
[977] See pp. 459-60, _infra_.
[978] J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Iron Age_, 1883, pp.
172-3; _Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, pp. 360-4; _L’Anthr._, iv, 1893, pp.
573-4; vii, 1896, p. 693; _Archaeol. Oxon._, 1895, p. 160; _Scotsman_,
Dec. 14, 1895, p. 7, col. 6, Dec. 17, p. 7, col. 3, Dec. 19, p. 6,
col. 5; _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1896, p. 921; _Rev. de
synthèse hist._, iii, 1901, pp. 40-1; _Guide to the Ant. of the Early
Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 12, 16-23, 29-30, 103; _Rev. des études
anc._, viii, 1906, p. 119.
[979] J. Romilly Allen, _Celtic Art_, pp. 60, 143-4, 159.
[980] _Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, pp. 371-3.
[981] _Ib._, pp. 360-70, 374-5.
[982] A. W. Franks, _Horae ferales_, 1863, pl. xiv, fig. 1; _Guide to
the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 93.
[983] J. Romilly Allen, _Celtic Art_, pp. 144-51.
[984] _Rev. celt._, xx, 1899, pp. 13-29, 117-31; _Congrès internat.
d’anthr. et d’archéol. préhist._, 1900 (1902), p. 417; _Rev. arch._,
4^e sér., ii, 1903, p. 368; _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xx, 1904-5, p.
214; _Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 87,
105, 108.
[985] _Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp.
90-2; J. G. Bulliot, _Fouilles du mont Beuvray_, 1899, i, 123-6,
129-46; ii, 3-44.
[986] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., iii, 1864-7, pp. 342-4; _Guide to
the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 88-95. Cf. Diodorus
Siculus, v, 30, § 2; Herodian, iii, 14, § 7; J. Evans, _Coins of the
Anc. Britons_, p. 330; and _Vict. Hist. of ... Hertford_, i, 236.
Helmets, as Sir J. Evans says, ‘could never have been in general use in
Britain’; and the only two British specimens that have come to light
are not earlier than the first century of our era.
[987] J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Iron Age_, p. 125;
_Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 88, 90.
[988] _Reports Architect. Soc. of ... Lincoln_, &c., xviii, 1885-6, p.
58; _Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, pp. 761-2.
[989] _Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp.
95-6.
[990] Sometimes the bronze covered some other material,--probably wood
(_Archaeologia_, xlv, 1880, p. 263).
[991] _Agricola_, 36.
[992] _Archaeologia_, liv, 1895, p. 498.
[993] _Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), p.
98. See also, in regard to swords, _Archaeologia_, xviii, 1817, p.
341; xlv, 1880, pp. 251-66; J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, p.
275; _Archaeol. Journal_, xxxix, 1882, p. 442; and _Vict. Hist. of ...
Essex_, i, 268.
[994] _Archaeologia_, xl, 1866, pp. 502, 510; W. Greenwell, _Brit.
Barrows_, pp. 454-5; J. Romilly Allen, _Celtic Art_, pp. 115-6; _Proc.
Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xx, 1904-5, p. 214; _Guide to the Ant. of the
Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 57, 127.
[995] _Ib._, pp. 100, 127; _Crania Britannica_, ii, pl. 6 and 7, pp.
3-4; _Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, p. 382; _Archaeol. Oxon._, 1892-5
(1895), p. 163; _Congrès internat. d’anthr. et d’archéol. préhist._,
1900 (1902), p. 423.
[996] _Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 99.
Cf. A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, ii, 117-8.
[997] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xx, 1904-5, pp. 344-7.
[998] _Ib._, xvii, 1897-9, p. 120.
[999] _Archaeol. Journal_, iii, 1846, pp. 27-38; J. Anderson, _Scotland
in Pagan Times,--the Iron Age_, pp. 131, 135-6; _Archaeologia_, liv,
1895, pp. 495-6; _Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit.
Museum), pp. 55-6, 137-8. A plain bronze torque was found on the neck
of a skeleton in a grave at Arras in the East Riding of Yorkshire
(_Crania Britannica_, ii, pl. 6 and 7, pp. 1-2) and a plain iron one on
another (_Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ [Brit. Museum], p.
138).
[1000] _Crania Britannica_, ii, pl. 6 and 7, pp. 3-4; W. Greenwell,
_Brit. Barrows_, p. 210. Cf. _Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Ant.
and Archaeol. Soc._, N. S., iv, 1904, pp. 80-4.
[1001] _Proc. Somerset. Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Soc._, li, 1905, pp.
97-8.
[1002] _Hist. Berwickshire Naturalists’ Club_, 1856-62 (1863), p. 307.
[1003] _Crania Britannica_, ii, pl. 6 and 7, p. 3; _Archaeologia_,
xliii, 1871, pp. 475, 497; W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 208; J.
Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 134-5; _Proc. Somerset. Archaeol.
and Nat. Hist. Soc._, li, 1905, p. 102.
[1004] _Vict. Hist. of ... Somerset_, i, 198.
[1005] _Man_, vi, 1906, No. 63, p. 96; _L’Anthr._, xvii, 1906, pp. 130,
137.
[1006] _Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, pp. 358-9.
[1007] _Archaeol. Cambr._, 5th ser., xiii, 1896, pp. 213-6.
[1008] J. Romilly Allen, _Celtic Art_, pp. 126, 147, 160.
[1009] _Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_, xlv, 1889, p. 81;
_Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, pp. 328-31, 333-4, 340-1, 343, 344-6, 350-5;
_Essex Naturalist_, xiii, 1903, pp. 110-2; _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser.,
xvi, 1895-7, pp. 258-60; xx, 1901-5, p. 212; _Guide to the Ant. of the
Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 49, 66-8, 117-8, 122, 140; _Journ.
Anthr. Inst._, xxxv, 1905, p. 393. An urn figured in _26th ann. report
Roy. Inst. Cornwall_, 1844 (1845), p. 22, appears to me to be of the
Aylesford type.
[1010] _Archaeol. Oxon._, 1892-5 (1895), p. 163; _Archaeol. Cambr._,
6th ser., iii, 1903, p. 11; _Report of ... the Brit. Association_,
1904 (1905), p. 329; _Proc. Somerset. Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Soc._,
li, 1905, pp. 100-1; _Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit.
Museum), pp. 67, 141-2.
[1011] A. W. Franks, _Horae ferales_, pl. xv, fig. 1; J. Romilly Allen,
_Celtic Art_, pp. 93-4. Although the known Late Celtic shields were
oblong, long double-pointed shields and even round ones, which may have
resembled those of the Late Bronze Age (p. 146, _supra_), are figured
on gold coins belonging to the period between the invasions of Caesar
and the Roman conquest (Tacitus, Agricola, 36; J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze
Implements_, p. 354; _Vict. Hist. of ... Hertford_, i, 239).
[1012] _Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, pp. 376-7, 380.
[1013] _Archaeol. Oxon._, 1892-5 (1895), pp. 160-2.
[1014] _Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, p. 373; _Guide to the Ant. of the
Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 29.
[1015] See p. 357 _infra_.
[1016] _B. C._, i, 54, §§ 1-2.
[1017] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, iv, 1875, p. 425.
[1018] See G. Payne, _Collectanea Cantiana_, p. 129; _Archaeol.
Journal_, lix, 1902, p. 217; lx, 1903, pp. 209-10; lxiv, 1904, pp. 309,
313, 318; _Vict. Hist. of ... Surrey_, i, 249; and J. R. Mortimer,
_Forty Years’ Researches_, pp. 381-5. Ancient ‘corduroy’ roads, made
of ‘cross timbers laid side by side on three lines of supporting logs
parallel to the direction of the road’, have been discovered near
Gilpin Bridge in Cumberland (_Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Ant.
and Archaeol. Soc._, N. S., iv, 1904, pp. 207-10); but their date
cannot yet be fixed. It has been said that trackways were made (1) by
digging two parallel ditches and throwing up the earth so as to form a
bank between them, and (2) by digging one ditch and building the bank
on one or on both sides. See _Proc. Dorset Nat. Hist. and Ant. Field
Club_, xxi, 1900, pp. 105-6; _Trans. Birmingham and Midland Inst._,
xxv, 1900, p. 41; and _Vict. Hist. of ... Berks_, i, 192.
[1019] _The Past in the Present_, p. 97 and figs. 70, 71, and 72. See
also A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, i, 78-9.
[1020] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, 1864, pp. 25-6, 47-8.
See, however, A. Blanchet, _Traité des monn. gaul._, 1905, pp. 478-9.
Sir J. Evans (_Coins_, &c., Suppl., p. 424) admits that the Macedonian
stater may not have been the sole progenitor of British coins. His
son, Dr. A. J. Evans (_Archaeol. Oxon._, 1892-5 [1896]) affirms that
‘Massalia, Rhoda, and Emporiae ... each contributed their part’, and
that he has ‘succeeded in tracing back ... certain scrolls and outlines
that appear on a class of late British coin-types that extend from
Tewkesbury and Oxford, through Armoric and Iberic Gaul, and the Greek
colonies beyond, still further ... to the head of Persephonê on the
medallions of Syracuse’.
[1021] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, pp. 26-8.
[1022] _Num. Chron._, 3rd ser., xvi, 1896, p. 184. M. A. Blanchet
(_Traité des monn. gaul._ p. 75) believes that the inscribed coinage of
Gaul dates from about 150 B.C.
[1023] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, pp. 25-6, 31, 38; _ib._,
Suppl., p. 423.
[1024] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, pp. 49-50, 69-70, 79, 81,
&c.
[1025] _Geogr._, iv. 5, § 2.
[1026] _Agricola_, 12.
[1027] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, p. 33; Suppl, pp. 473,
484-6.
[1028] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, pp. 99, 116-7, 123, 133.
[1029] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, pp. 36-7.
[1030] _Ib._, pp. 35-6, 41.
[1031] _Ib._, Suppl., p. 434.
[1032] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, pp. 50-2, 62, 81, 94.
[1033] _Ib._, p. 40.
[1034] _Ib._, pp. 38, 51, 95-7.
[1035] _Ib._, pp. 62-5, 81-3; Suppl., pp. 442, 481-3; _Archeologia_,
lii, 1890, p. 327; A. Blanchet, _Traité des monn. gaul._, p. 515.
[1036] _B. G._, v, 12, § 4.--_utuntur aut aere aut nummo aureo aut
anulis ferreis ad certum pondus examinatis pro nummo._ So runs the
passage in the British Museum Add. MS. 10084; but the Paris MS. 5764
has _taleis_ (bars) instead of _anulis_ (rings). ‘The phrase _aut
aere_,’ says Dr. Haverfield (_Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xx, 1904-5,
p. 186), ‘must be wrong, and the conjecture _anulis_ in Add. MS.
10084 is plainly an attempt to explain _aliis_. As _aliis_ is the
reading of A and part of B [the two principal families of the MSS. of
Caesar’s _Commentaries_, generally quoted as α and β], and _taleis_ of
the rest of B, and _aut aliis_ can hardly be other than a misreading
of _aut taleis_, this latter may be accepted.’ E. Hübner (Pauly’s
_Real-Encyclopädie_, iii, 1897, p. 864) accepts _aut aere_.
[1037] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xx, 1904-5, pp. 179-91; _Class.
Rev._, xix, 1905, pp. 206-7. Iron bars were also used as currency by
the Spartans, and are still so used by the natives of West Africa near
Sierra Leone.
[1038] _B. G._, v, 12, § 5; _Trans. Internat. Congress of Prehist.
Archaeol._, 1868 (1869), pp. 185-90.
[1039] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xx, 1904-5, p. 194.
[1040] See p. 260, _infra_.
[1041] See p. 499, _infra_.
[1042] See p. 267, _infra_. Caesar’s statement, that the Britons
imported copper or bronze (_aere utuntur importato_ [_B. G._, v, 12,
§ 4]), has always been a puzzle. I doubt whether any scholar would
now infer from it that the cakes of copper which have been found
in bronze-founders’ hoards were of foreign origin; but it has been
suggested (_Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ [Brit. Museum], p.
86) that Caesar may have referred to articles of foreign manufacture
such as the bronze flagon mentioned on p. 246, _supra_. See also J.
Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, p. 419.
M. S. Reinach (_Rev. celt._, xxi, 1900, p. 173) infers from Caesar’s
observation that ‘the industrial activity to which the relics of the
Bronze Age testify had long ceased’, and that there was an arrest,
or rather a recoil of civilization. But, as we shall see hereafter
(p. 267), the culture of the Bronze Age persisted in certain parts of
Britain until the Roman conquest. Were the bronze implements that were
used in those parts imported? If so, how could they have been paid
for without industrial activity; and what conceivable reason can be
suggested for the assumed paralysis? The industrial activity of the
Early Iron Age in Britain is unquestionable; and I doubt whether any
theory could be framed to account for a cessation, contemporaneous with
the manufacture of iron, of the trade of the bronze-founder.
[1043] See p. 148, _supra_.
[1044] See J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, Suppl., p. 492; F. J.
Haverfield, _The Romanization of Roman Britain_, 1906, pp. 20-1; and
_Vict. Hist. of ... Somerset_, i, 198.
[1045] I have nothing to add to what I have already written on this
question (_Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, pp. 521-3) except to
refer, in support of my conclusion, to _Rev. crit. d’hist. et de
litt._, nouv. sér., xxx, 1890, pp. 441-2, and E. Lavisse, _Hist. de
France_, i, 1900 (by G. Bloch), p. 61, n. 2; and, for a very clear but
hardly complete summary of the controversy, to M. G. Dottin’s _Manuel
pour servir à l’étude de l’ant. celt._, 1906, pp. 184-6. Pasture land
was not improbably common property both in Gaul and Britain. See W.
Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_, 1901, p. 95.
[1046] See pp. 339, 346, _infra_.
[1047] _Archaeol. Journal_, lix, 1902, pp. 213-6.
[1048] _Archaeologia_, xlvi, 1881, p. 422. Cf. A. Pitt-Rivers,
_Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iii, 4-6.
[1049] _Archaeologia_, xlvi, 1881, p. 451; _Reports Archit. Soc. of ...
Lincoln_, &c., xviii, 1885-6, p. 61; C. W. Dymond and H. G. Tomkins,
_Worlebury_, 1886, pp. 69, 78.
[1050] _Nat. Hist._, xvii, 6 (4), § 42; 8, § 45. Cf. Varro, _Rerum
rust._, i, 7, § 8. See pp. 515-7, _infra_.
[1051] _Archaeologia_, xlvi, 1881, pp. 438-9; _Archaeol. Cambr._, 5th
ser., xiii, 1896, pp. 238-9; _Archaeol. Journal_, lix, 1902, pp. 213-6;
_Reports Archit. Soc. of ... Lincoln_, &c., xviii, 1885-6, p. 60.
[1052] W. Holloway, _Hist. of Romney Marsh_, 1849, pp. 10-1; C. H.
Pearson, _Hist. Maps of England_, 1870, pp. 4-5; R. Furley, _Hist. of
the Weald of Kent_, i, 1871, p. 387, and map facing p. 26; _Journ.
Brit. Archaeol. Association_, N. S., iii, 1897, p. 36; _Archaeol.
Journal_, lx, 1903, p. 157. Cf. A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in
Cranborne Chase_, i, 27, ii, 56, iii, 3.
[1053] _Vict. Hist. of ... Hants_, i, 268-9; _ib._, _Somerset_, i,
213-4.
[1054] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, pp. 291, 338. See pp.
358-9, _infra_.
[1055] _Archaeol. Journal_, lxii, 1905, p. 265.
[1056] _Ib._, li, 1894, p. 338.
[1057] _Geogr._, ii, 3, § 12. Cf. _Archaeologia_, xlviii, 1885, map
facing p. 380.
[1058] See _Vict. Hist. of ... Warwick_, i, 227, and pp. 704-5, _infra_.
[1059] _Archaeol. Journal_, xlii, 1885, pp. 274, 300-2. See also pp.
272 n. 1, 275-6, 297.
[1060] _Ib._, lx, 1903, pp. 155-6, 174.
[1061] _Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_, xxxi, 1875, pp. 266-75;
C. W. Dymond and H. G. Tomkins, _Worlebury_, 1886, pp. 8 n. 3, 19-23,
29 n. 19, 50 § 4, 67 § 45, 69, 78; _Proc. Somerset. Archaeol. and Nat.
Hist. Soc._, li, 1905, pp. 17-28.
[1062] A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, ii, 233-46.
[1063] _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, p. 46.
[1064] A few pits like those of Mount Caburn, and containing similar
relics, were found at Cissbury and Winkelbury (_Archaeol. Journal_,
xli, 1884, p. 76).
[1065] _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, pp. 39, 48-50; xlvi, 1881, pp.
450-1, 456-8.
[1066] Oppidum autem Britanni vocant, cum silvas impeditas vallo atque
fossa munierunt, quo incursionis hostium vitandae causa convenire
consuerunt. _B. G._, v, 21, § 3.
[1067] See p. 136, _supra_, and _Archaeologia_, xlvi, 1881, p. 458.
[1068] _B. G._, vii, 30, § 4.
[1069] _Archaeol. Cambr._, 6th ser., vi, 1906, pp. 266-7. Two forts
with defences of this kind are known in Peebles-shire.
[1070] _B. G._, ii, 29, § 2; vi, 32, § 4. Cf. _Mém. de la Soc. nat. des
ant. de France_, 4^e sér., ii, 1871, pp. 141-2.
[1071] See p. 70, _supra_.
[1072] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxiii, 1899, pp. 29-30
[1073] See p. 138, _supra_, and also _Archaeologia_, xlvi, 1881, pp.
438-9, 467; A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, ii,
238-9; _Archaeol. Cambr._, 5th ser., xvi, 1899, pp. 106-8, 130; xvii,
1900, pp. 189, 195, 206, 209; _Archaeol. Journal_, lvii, 1900, pp.
52-6, 60-3, 66-7; _Journ. Roy. Inst. Cornwall_, xvi, 1904, pp. 73-83;
and _Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 122-4.
[1074] See p. 134, _supra_.
[1075] _Trans. Hon. Soc. Cymmrodorion_, 1898-9 (1900), p. 20.
[1076] See _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxix, 1895, pp. 131, 149-50.
[1077] _B. G._, vii, 22.
[1078] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxv, 1891, pp. 428, 438, 440, 444-5.
[1079] _Ib._, xxxiii, 1899, pp. 15, 20-3, 26-32; xxxiv, 1900, p. 74. A
similar method of fortification was practised by the Dacians (_Congrès
archéol. de France_, 1874 [1876], p. 444), ‘in the Danne-werk at
Korborg, near Schleswig’ (A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne
Chase_, iii, 254), and in Nassau (_Rev. de synthèse hist._, iii, 1901,
p. 45).
The well-known camp on Herefordshire Beacon is interesting because,
like Old Sarum (Sorbiodunum), it contains a citadel. Though it
is locally described as a ‘British camp’, its date is at present
uncertain. While most of the objects which have been found in it are
comparatively late, Pitt-Rivers (_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, x, 1881, p.
331) pointed out that the pottery seemed to indicate its Celtic origin;
but the citadel presents a difficulty. Was it a later addition? See
also F. J. Haverfield, _Archaeol. Survey of Herefordshire_, 1896, pp.
3-4.
The ‘vitrified’ stone forts of the British Isles demand a brief notice.
There are none in England, but many in the northern and western
counties of Scotland and some in France. It is very doubtful whether
any exist in Wales or Ireland (_Archaeol. Journal_, xxxvii, 1880, pp.
227, 234; D. Christison, _Early Fortifications in Scotland_, pp. 187,
190). The question is whether the vitrifaction, which was due to fire,
was accidental or designed; and in some cases the only way of settling
this is to ascertain by excavation the extent of the vitrifaction
(_ib._, p. 192). The best authorities have concluded that when the
vitrified part of the fort is small the phenomenon may be safely
ascribed to accident,--perhaps to a beacon fire; but that when it may
be traced almost all round the rampart it was intentional (_ib._,
pp. 186-7; _Archaeol. Journal_, xxxvii, 1880, pp. 240-1; R. Munro,
_Prehist. Scotland_, pp. 382-3). Probably the builders intended to give
cohesion to the walls and make it impossible for assailants to demolish
them (_L’Anthr._, xiv, 1903, pp. 330-1); or when the vitrifaction was
confined to the upper surface the defenders would have secured firm
foothold while the assailants would have stumbled over loose stones (D.
Christison, _op. cit._, pp, 186-7). [See Addenda]
[1080] _Reports Archit. Soc. of ... Lincoln_, &c., xviii, 1885-6,
pp. 53-61; _Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, pp. 382-4; _Vict. Hist. of
... Northampton_, i, 147-9, 151-2. At Beansale and Claverdon in
Warwickshire there are camps which in many respects resemble that of
Hunsbury, but have not been excavated (_Vict. Hist. of ... Warwick_, i,
350).
Professor T. McKenny Hughes (_Archaeologia_, liii, 1892, p. 484)
suggests that Offa’s Dyke may have ‘belonged to the defensive system
of the Britons’. All we know is that those dykes which have been
excavated--Bokerly Dyke and Wansdyke--were Roman or post-Roman (A.
Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iii, p. xiii); and it
is in the last degree improbable that earthworks which extend over
territory that belonged to several tribes should have been constructed
at a time when tribes only combined for brief periods and in the
presence of urgent and common peril. Cf. F. J. Haverfield, _Archaeol.
Survey of Herefordshire_, 1896, p. 7, and _Eng. Hist. Rev._, xvii,
1902, pp. 628-9.
[1081] See p. 93, _supra_.
[1082] _Journ. Derbyshire Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Soc._, xiii, 1891,
pp. 194-9; xiv, 1892, pp. 247-8; xvii, 1895, p. 76; _Vict. Hist. of ...
Derby_, i, 231-42. Cf. _Association franç. pour l’avancement des sc._,
32^e sess., 1903, 2^e partie, p. 890.
[1083] _Vict. Hist. of ... Bedford_, i, 172. See also p. 84, n. 1,
_supra_.
[1084] _Geogr._, iv, 4, § 3. Cf. Caesar, _B. G._, v, 12, § 3, 43, § 1,
and Diodorus Siculus, v, 21, § 5. Woodcuts, one of the Romano-British
villages explored by Pitt-Rivers, was constructed and chiefly occupied
by Britons (_Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, ii, 65, iii, 3); but, as
Prof. Haverfield has pointed out (_The Romanization of Roman Britain_,
pp. 18-9), ‘the material life was Roman’.
[1085] _B. G._, v, 12, § 3.
[1086] Athenaeus, iv, 36. Cf. Diodorus Siculus, v, 28, §§ 4-5 and
Strabo, iv, 4, § 3.
[1087] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., iv, 1867-70, pp. 164-70; _Journ.
Brit. Archaeol. Association_, xxxvi, 1880, pp. 254-61; J. Anderson,
_Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Iron Age_, p. 207; R. Munro, _Prehist.
Scotland_, pp. 348-9; B.C. A. Windle, _Remains of the Prehist. Age_,
p. 266; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxviii, 1904, pp. 541-7. It must
be admitted that conclusive evidence is wanting to prove that any
of the Cornish subterranean dwellings were inhabited before the
Roman occupation (see _Vict. Hist. of ... Cornwall_, i, 367-9). The
‘hut-clusters’ of Cornwall, of which Chrysoister is a good example (W.
C. Lukis, _Prehist. Stone Monuments of the Brit. Isles,--Cornwall_, p.
19) were probably later than the hut-circles of the same county. Some
may have been built before the Christian era, but they were certainly
inhabited in Roman times (_Vict. Hist. of ... Cornwall_, i, 370).
[1088] _Archaeol. Journal_, x, 1853, pp. 212, 215-9, 221-2; xviii,
1861, pp. 39-46; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, iii, 1863, pp. 128, 134-8,
141; xxxviii, 1904, pp. 102-22, 173-89, 548-58; Sir A. Mitchell, _The
Past in the Present_, p. 58; _Trans. Glasgow Archaeol. Soc._, N. S.,
iv, 1902, pp. 189-90.
[1089] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxv, 1901, pp. 116-7, 119, 147;
xxxviii, 1904, p. 558.
[1090] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxv, 1901, pp. 146-8; _Guide to the
Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 35-6; A. Lang, _The Clyde
Mystery_, p. 41.
[1091] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xv, 1886, pp. 463-5; xxviii, 1899, pp.
150-4; R. Munro, _The Lake-Dwellings of Europe_, pp. 454, 459, 461,
475, 493. Dr. Munro (_ib._, pp. 490-2) observes that ‘in the early
centuries of the Christian era the distribution of crannogs in Scotland
and Ireland closely coincides with a well-defined area in which the
Celtic language was spoken’, though he admits that ‘they have not been
found in the south-eastern provinces of Scotland’. ‘In this wider area’
[including Southern Britain], he continues, ‘on the supposition that
the Celts were the introducers or founders of the system, we ought to
find some vestiges of these dwellings.... This is precisely what the
general researches into British lake-dwellings have shown in the stray
remnants of them that have been found in Llangorse, Holderness, the
_meres_ of Norfolk and Suffolk, Cold Ash Common, etc. All these, with
perhaps the exception of the pile-structures at London Wall, appear to
be older than the majority of the crannogs of Scotland and Ireland....
Taking all these facts into account ... I am inclined to believe that
we have here evidence of a widely distributed custom which underlies
the subsequent [to Caesar] great development which the lake-dwellings
assumed in Scotland and Ireland. Moreover, I believe it probable
that the early Celts had got this knowledge from contact with the
inhabitants of the pile-dwellings of Central Europe.’
Llangorse is the only Welsh site at which a lake-dwelling has been
found (_ib._, p. 464). I venture to ask the doctor why lake-dwellings
are so rare in England and Wales, where, on his theory, they ought
to abound; why the Scottish and Irish Celts did not apply their
‘knowledge’ for some centuries after they reached the British Isles;
and why lake-dwellings are non-existent (_ib._, p. 493) in Spain and
Portugal, where Celts were numerous (G. Dottin, _Manuel pour servir
à l’étude de l’ant. celt._, pp. 324, 329-31, 349)? And, seeing that
there are pile-dwellings in New Guinea and Central Africa, is it not
conceivable that those of the British Isles had no connexion with
Central Europe?
[1092] Cf. Tacitus, _Germania_, 24, and _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871,
pp. 439-40.
[1093] _Vict. Hist. of ... Somerset_, i, 198.
[1094] _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1893 (1894), p. 903;
1894, pp. 431-4; 1898, pp. 694-5; 1904 (1905), pp. 324-30; _Proc.
Somerset. Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Soc._, xlix, 1903, pp. 103, 107-8,
114-5, 120-1; 1, 1904, pp. 68-93; li, 1905, pp. 77-104; _Journ. Anthr.
Inst._, xxxv, 1905, p. 395; _Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_
(Brit. Museum), pp. 126-7.
[1095] _Ib._, p. 127; _Crania Britannica_, ii, pl. 6 and 7, p. 4.
[1096] Diodorus Siculus, v, 30, § 1; Strabo, iv, 4, § 3; C. Elton,
_Origins of Eng. Hist._, 1890, p. 110; Rice Holmes, _Caesar’s Conquest
of Gaul_, 1903, p. 10; _Rev. arch._, 4^e sér., i, 1903, pp. 337-42; H.
d’A. de Jubainville, _Les Celtes_, pp. 337-42.
[1097] J. O. Westwood, _Lapidarium Walliae_, 1876-9, p. 37, and pl.
xxv, fig. 3; J. Rhys, _The Welsh People_, 1902, p. 567.
[1098] _B. G._, v, 14, § 3.
[1099] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xx, 1904-5, pp. 345-6; _Guide to
the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 50, 135.
[1100] _B. G._, vi, 14, § 3.
[1101] _Bibl. Hist._, v, 28, § 6.
[1102] _B. G._, i, 29, § 1.
[1103] _Ib._, v, 48, §§ 3-4. Cf. my _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899,
p. 715.
[1104] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, p. 171. Cf. p. 368,
_infra_, and F. J. Haverfield, _The Romanization of Roman Britain_,
1906, p. 9.
[1105] Diodorus Siculus, v, 31, § 2; Strabo, iv, 4, § 4; Athenaeus, iv,
37, vi, 49; Ammianus Marcellinus, xv, 9, § 8.
[1106] _Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), p.
144. Cf. _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xviii, 1901, p. 373.
[1107] _Vict. Hist. of ... Lancs_, i, 246. Only one has come to light
in Durham (_Vict. Hist. of ... Durham_, i. 209).
[1108] _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 11, 59-61. A bronze
socketed celt has been found at Cann, near Shaftesbury, in association
with British silver coins (J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, p.
102).
[1109] _Archaeologia_, xvi, 1812, pp. 348-9; _Guide to the Ant. of the
Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 83, 103-4. If it is true that coins
formed part of the Hagbourne Hill deposit, bronze implements must have
continued in use in Berkshire to a very late date.
[1110] May the rarity of British iron weapons be partly accounted for
by supposing that during the greater part of the Late Celtic Period
swords and spear-heads were still in many cases made of bronze? In the
Homeric Age implements were of iron, but the weapons which the poet
mentions were all of bronze, doubtless because the armourers had not
yet learned to temper iron (_Rev. arch._, 4^e sér., vii, 1906, pp. 284,
290-1, 294).
[1111] _B. G._, v, 14, § 2.
[1112] See pp. 161, 189, _supra_.
[1113] F. J. Haverfield, _The Romanization of Roman Britain_, pp. 7-9.
Cf. _Vict. Hist. of ... Derby_, i, 191-2, and see also Solinus, 22, 12
(ed. Th. Mommsen, p. 234).
I hardly know whether it is worth while to notice the statements
of Diodorus (v, 32, § 3) and Strabo (iv, 5, § 4) in regard to the
prevalence of cannibalism in certain parts of the British Isles. If
there is any truth in them, the cannibals had doubtless inherited the
custom from neolithic times (p. 113, _supra_). Strabo’s remark, which,
as he himself warns us, does not rest upon good authority, refers only
to Ireland. Diodorus says that some of the Britons were cannibals;
but this observation may also refer to the Irish. A mound-dwelling
near Kirkwall (_Archaeol. Journal_, x, 1853, p. 217) is said to have
contained broken human bones mingled with those of sheep, which may or
may not be evidence of cannibalism; and every scholar knows the speech
that Caesar puts into the mouth of Critognatus, one of the Arvernian
chiefs who was blockaded in Alesia (_B. G_., vii, 77, § 12). As for the
unnatural vices with which Diodorus (v, 32, § 7), Strabo (iv, 4, § 6),
and others charge the Celts, they are rife among the civilized nations
of modern Europe.
[1114] See H. J. Mackinder, _Britain and the British Seas_, pp. 177-9.
[1115] See p. 288, _infra_.
[1116] _B. G._, v, 9, § 4; 11, § 9.
[1117] _Agricola_, 12.
[1118] _Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_, xxviii, 1872, p. 42;
_Archaeologia_, xlvi, 1881, p. 467; lii, 1890, pp. 761-2; _Trans.
Epping forest ... Field Club_, ii, 1882, p. 65; C. W. Dymond and
H. G. Tomkins, _Worlebury_, 1886, p. 78; Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone
Implements_, 1897, pp. 419-20; _Archaeol. Journal_, lix, 1902, pp.
213-6.
[1119] See _Rev. arch._, 3^e sér., xli, 1902, p. 428, and my _Caesar’s
Conquest of Gaul_, 1903, p. 12, n. 1.
[1120] See _B. G._, i, 18, §§ 6-7.
[1121] Tacitus, _Ann._, xii, 36.
[1122] See p. 296, _infra_.
[1123] _B. G._, vi, 19, §§ 1-2. Cf. my _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_,
1899, pp. 521-2.
[1124] _B. G._, vi, 19, § 3. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville (_Études sur le
droit celt._, i, 1895, p. 241) holds that if _uxores_ means ‘wives’,
Caesar’s statement is inconsistent with the custom which regulated the
administration of dowries, and accordingly gives the word the sense of
‘concubines’. It seems to me equally rash to assume that Caesar was
mistaken, and that _uxores_ means ‘wives’ in § 1 and ‘concubines’ in §
3. May we not suppose that the husband’s power was checked by public
opinion?
[1125] _B. G._, vi, 19, § 3.
[1126] See my _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1903, pp. 12-5.
[1127] _Ib._, 1899, pp. 525-7.
[1128] See W. Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_, 1901, pp.
31-2, 38-9.
[1129] Ausonius, _Clarae urbes_, xiv, 31-2; Gildas, _Hist._, 2. Cf.
J. Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, 1888, p. 106; Sir A. Lyall, _Asiatic
Studies_, i, 1899, pp. 12, 20-2; and E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, ii,
1903, pp. 212-4.
[1130] See J. G. Frazer, _Early Hist. of the Kingship_, p. 154.
[1131] _Corpus Inscr. Lat._, vii, 507; J. Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, p.
104.
[1132] See _Rev. celt._, ii, 1873-5, p. 1; iv, 1879-80, pp. 57-8;
xviii, 1897, p. 259; E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, ii, 1903, pp. 221,
228.
[1133] Cf. J. Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, p. 106, with G. Dottin, _La
rel. des Celtes_, 1904, p. 60.
[1134] M. Jullian (_Rev. des études anc._, iv, 1902, p. 101) points out
that the texts fall into two groups, one of which, all posterior to 100
B.C., deals with the Transalpine Celts, and the other, mostly earlier,
with all the others, except the Britons.
[1135] _Rev. celt._, xii, 1891, p. 316; _Rev. num._, 3^e sér., ii,
1884, pp. 179-202; _Rev. des études anc._, iv, 1902, p. 279, n. 2.
[1136] ‘On se tromperait beaucoup,’ says M. Dottin (_La rel. des
Celtes_, pp. 7-8), ‘si l’on croyait que tous les anciens _Mercuriacus_
de France, devenus aujourd’hui Mercuray, Mercurey, Mercoirey,
Mercury, sont dérivés du nom de dieu Mercurius. Ils proviennent plus
vraisemblablement du gentilice romain Mercurius, assez fréquent dans
les inscriptions, et dénomment simplement le _fundus_, la propriété
d’un Gallo-Romain du nom de Mercurius.’
[1137] J. Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, p. 235. See also _Rev. celt._,
iv, 1879-80, p. 45; x, 1889, pp. 485, 487, 489; H. Gaidoz, _Esquisse
de la rel. des Gaulois_, 1879, p. 11, _Études de mythologie gaul.,--Le
dieu gaul. du soleil_, 1886, pp. 90-1, 93; _Rev. num._, 3^e sér., ii,
1884, p. 201, n. 1; _Archaeol. Review_, ii, 1889, p. 124; _Journ. Brit.
Archaeol. Association_, 1, 1894, pp. 105-9; and G. Dottin, _La rel. des
Celtes_, pp. 5-16, 56-7, 60.
[1138] Caesar does not say that Mercury was actually the supreme deity
of the Gauls, but only the most fervently worshipped: he expressly
says that they regarded their Jupiter as the lord of the celestials.
‘It must not be supposed,’ says Sir Alfred Lyall (_Asiatic Studies_,
i, 1899, p. 121), ‘that even the uppermost gods of Hinduism have
retired behind mere ceremonial altars, like constitutional monarchs....
But there seem to be many grades of accessibility among them, from
Brahma--who, since he created the world, has taken no further trouble
about it, and is naturally rewarded by possessing only one or two of
the million temples to Hindu gods,’ &c.
[1139] _B. G._, vi, 17.
[1140] _De divin._, i, 41, § 90. Cf. my _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_,
1899, p. 532, n. 13.
[1141] H. Gaidoz, _Études de mythol. gaul.,--Le dieu gaul. du soleil_,
p. 91. Cf. E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, ii, 1903, pp. 252, 254.
[1142] De his eandem fere quam reliquae gentes habent opinionem. _B.
G._, vi, 17, § 2.
[1143] See _Rev. des études anc._, vi, 1904, p. 329. Cf. Sir A. Lyall,
_Asiatic Studies_, i, 1899, pp. 2-3, 6.
[1144] See W. Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_, 1901, pp.
16-8, 29, 253-6, 263.
[1145] See pp. 273 n. 7, 284, _infra_, and G. Boissier, _La rel. des
Romains_, i, 1892, pp. 335, 340-1.
[1146] _Folk-Lore_, xvii, 1906, pp. 32, 324. See Mr. A. B. Cook’s
series of articles in the same volume and in the first number of vol.
xviii.
[1147] W. Warde Fowler, _The Roman Festivals_, 1899, p. 333.
[1148] _Ib._, p. 347. Cf. W. Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the
Semites_, 1901, p. 64.
[1149] J. Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, p. 49; G. Dottin, _La rel. des
Celtes_, p. 12. Mercury was also reverenced more than any other god by
the Germans of whom Tacitus wrote (_Germ._, 9).
[1150] _B. G._, v, 22, § 3.
[1151] H. d’A. de Jubainville, _Les Celtes_, pp. 39-40, 44. Cf. J.
Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, p. 220.
[1152] J. Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, pp. 39, 41-2.
[1153] M. Camille Jullian _(Rev. des études anc._, iv, 1902, p. 109,
n. 1) points out that in vol. vii [p. 331] of the _Corpus inscr.
Lat._ there are sixty-one inscriptions in honour of Mars [of which,
however, eight are uncertain], and only eight in honour of Mercury;
and the greater popularity of Mars is also apparent in the supplements
published in _Ephemeris epigraphica_ (iii, 1877, pp. 125, 128; iv,
1881, p. 196; vii, 1892, pp. 289, 299, 313, 324, 332, 334, 352). But
no account should be taken of those inscriptions in which the name of
Mars is not coupled with that of a Celtic deity, though even with this
reservation the ascendancy of Mars remains unaffected.
[1154] See _Rev. des études anc._, iv, 1902, p. 109, n. 1. Even in
Gaul the cult of Mars appears to have preponderated among the Aquitani
(_ib._, pp. 106-7, and _Corpus inscr. Lat._, xiii, 87, 108-17, 209-13).
[1155] _B. G._, vi, 17, §§ 3-5. Cf. J. Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, pp.
49-50.
[1156] _Corpus inscr. Lat._, vii, 84.
[1157] _Pharsalia_, i, 445-6.
[1158] There is no trace of the worship of Esus in the British Isles,
unless M. d’Arbois de Jubainville (_Les Celtes_, p. 63) is right in
thinking that Esus was a god whose surname was Smertullos, and that
Smertullos, the Celtic Pollux, is to be identified with the Irish
Cuchulainn (see also _Fragm. hist. Graec._, ed. Didot, i, 1841, p.
194, fr. 6; Diodorus Siculus, iv, 56, § 4; _Corpus inscr. Lat._, xiii,
3026 _c_; and H. d’A. de Jubainville, _Principaux auteurs à consulter
sur l’hist. des Celtes_, p. 88). Esus is depicted as a woodman in the
act of felling a tree on No. 2 of four altars which were discovered
at Paris in 1710; while Smertullos appears on the right of No. 3,
threatening a serpent with a club. M. d’Arbois is a little rash in
concluding (_La civilisation des Celtes_, 1899, p. 173) that because
there was a Briton called Esunectus, who may have been an immigrant
from Gaul, Esus was worshipped in Britain. The name AESV occurs on a
coin of the Iceni; but its meaning is uncertain (J. Evans, _Coins of
the Anc. Britons_, p. 386). The scholiasts of Lucan identified Esus
with Mercury; but their authority on such a matter is worthless (see
_Rev. celt._, xviii, 1897, p. 117). Prof. Rhys, however, has recently
examined an inscription (_Celtic Inscr. in France and Italy_, 1907, p.
56), which leads him to give a qualified support to the identification.
[1159] _Corpus inscr. Lat._, vii, 747, 1114_d_; H. Gaidoz, _Esquisse de
la rel. des Gaulois_, p. 12; W. H. Roscher, _Lex. der griech. und röm.
Mythol._, i, 1884-6, col. 1286-93; _Rev. arch._, 3^e sér., xxvi, 1895,
pp. 309, 317; 4^e sér., ii, 1903, pp. 348-50; _Rev. des études anc._,
vii, 1905, pp. 234-8.
[1160] _Rev. celt._, xviii, 1897, pp. 140-1.
[1161] _Corpus inscr. Lat._, vii, 168.
[1162] My criticism of M. S. Reinach’s theory is supported, I am glad
to see, by M. Jullian (_Rev. des études anc._, v, 1903, pp. 217-9).
[1163] H. Gaidoz, _Études de mythologie gaul.,--Le dieu gaul. du
soleil_, &c., pp. 96-7.
[1164] H. Gaidoz, _Études de mythologie gaul.,--Le dieu gaul. du
soleil_, &c., pp. 7, 61-3, 66, 92, 96; _Corpus inscr. Lat._, vii, 879,
882; J. Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, pp. 55-6; _Class. Rev._, xvii, 1903,
p. 420; _Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum),
pp. 60, 136, 152; _Rev. des études anc._, vii, 1905, pp. 156-7;
_Folk-Lore_, xvi, 1905, p. 272, n. 9. The supposition that the wheels
were money is no longer admitted by competent antiquaries (A. Blanchet,
_Traité des monn. gaul._, pp. 27-8).
[1165] J. G. Frazer, _Golden Bough_, iii, 1900, p. 326.
[1166] J. Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, pp. 74-5.
[1167] _Corpus inscr. Lat._, vii, 200, 203, 875, 1062. Cf. W. H.
Roscher, _Lex. der griech. und röm. Myth._, i, 1884-6, col. 819, and H.
d’A. de Jubainville, _Les Celtes_, p. 35.
[1168] _Ib._, p. 33. Cf. J. Rhys, _Celtic Inscr. in France and Italy_,
p. 11.
[1169] _Corpus inscr. Lat._, vii, 1345; _Trans. Cumberland and
Westmorland Ant. and Archaeol. Soc._, xv, 1899, p. 463.
[1170] _Corpus inscr. Lat._, vii, 1082. ‘On se tromperait grandement,’
says M. d’A. de Jubainville (_Les Druides_, 1906, p. 68), ‘si l’on
croyait qu’il y eut entre le dieu gaulois _Belenus_ ... et les dieux
gaulois _Grannos_ et _Borvo_ [all of whom were assimilated to Apollo]
... une analogie quelconque ... Le dieu _Maponus_, “jeune fils”,
n’avait probablement de commun avec Apollon que la jeunesse éternelle.’
[1171] Prof. Rhys (_Celtic Heathendom_, p. 126) says that ‘most of
the remains of antiquity connected with his temple make him a sort of
Jupiter’, but adds (_ib._, p. 130) that he ‘was not simply a Neptune
... he was also a Mars, as the inscriptions at Lydney testify’. But
the testimony of the inscriptions (_Corpus inscr. Lat._, vii, 138-40)
consists simply in the letter M; and Hübner, to whom the professor
appeals, queries his own suggestion that M stands for _Marti_. [I learn
from one of Mr. A. B. Cook’s articles in _Folk-Lore_ (xvii, 1906, p.
39, n. 1) that Hübner (_Jahrbuch des Vereins von Alterthumsfreunden im
Rheinlande_, Heft lxvi, 1879, pp. 29-46) corrected and supplemented the
account of Nodons which he had given in the _Corpus_, and interpreted
_D. M. NODONTI_ as d(eo) m(_agno_)--‘the great god’--a reading which
would authorize us to regard him, with Mr. Cook, as ‘a Jupiter and a
Neptune rolled into one’.]
[1172] _Folk-Lore_, xvii, 1906, pp. 30, 39.
[1173] H. d’A. de Jubainville, _Les Celtes_, pp. 33-5.
[1174] _Ib._, pp. 54-6.
[1175] J. Rhys, _Celtic Inscr. in France and Italy_, p. 14.
[1176] _B. G._, vi, 18, § 1. Cf. Tacitus, _Germ._, 2.
[1177] C. Jullian in Daremberg and Saglio, _Dict. des ant. grecques et
rom._, ii, 1892, p. 280. Cf. _Bull. de l’Acad. des inscr._, 1887, p.
443, and _Rev. arch._, xx, 1892, pp. 208, 213.
[1178] _Rev. celt._, xvii, 1896, pp. 45-59. Cf. G. Dottin, _La rel.
des Celtes_, pp. 21-2. The Celtic name of the god on the altar at
Sarrebourg was Sucellos.
[1179] C. de Clarac, _Musée de sculpture ant. et mod._,--Planches, t.
iii, 1832-4, pl. 398 [670]; _Comptes rendus ... de l’Acad. des inscr._,
4^e sér., xv, 1887, p. 444.
[1180] S. Reinach, _Antiquités nat.,--Descr. raisonnée du musée de St.
Germain-en-Laye_, pp. 137, 156-68; H. Gaidoz, _Le grand dieu gaul.
chez les Allobroges_, 1902, p. vi. Cf. J. Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_,
p. 81, and _Folk-Lore_, xvi, 1905, p. 273. Dis Pater is identified by
Professor Rhys and M. G. Bloch (E. Lavisse, _Hist. de France_, i, 51-2)
with Cernunnos (see p. 284, _infra_). Cf. W. Warde Fowler, _The Roman
Festivals_, p. 286.
M. H. Gaidoz (_Rev. arch._, 3^e sér., xx, 1892, p. 213) says that
the worship of Dis Pater in Britain is attested--it hardly needs
attestation--by two inscriptions (_Corpus inscr. Lat._, vii, 154, 250).
The former is not worth quoting. The latter--one of many inscriptions
addressed to the _Di Manes_ which are contained in the _Corpus_ and
in _Ephemeris epigraphica_, (vols. iii and vii) contains the words
_Secreti Manes qui regna Acherusia Ditis incolitis_.
[1181] _B. G._, vi, 21, § 2.
[1182] _Germ._, 9.
[1183] _Rev. des études anc._, iv, 1902, p. 228; v, 1903, p. 106.
[1184] See G. Boissier, _La rel. rom._, i, 6.
[1185] _Class. Rev._, xviii, 1904, pp. 361, 367-72, 375; _Folk-Lore_,
xv, 1904, p. 264; xvi, 1905, p. 321; xvii, 1906, p. 30.
[1186] _Rev. des études anc._, iv, 1902, p. 221.
[1187] _Ib._, v, 1903, p. 110.
[1188] _Ib._, vi, 1904, pp. 111 n. 1, 134 n. 4; A. Holder,
_Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz_, ii, 1805-6.
[1189] _Folk-Lore_, xvii, 1906, pp. 59, 71.
[1190] _Rev. des études anc._, iv, 1902, pp. 110-4.
[1191] G. Dottin, _Manuel pour servir à l’étude de l’ant. celt._, pp.
234-5.
[1192] See _Rev. celt._, xxv, 1904, pp. 130-1.
[1193] _Corpus inscr. Lat._, vii, 168a, 221, 348, 559; _Ephemeris
epigr._, iii, 1877, p. 120; iv, 1881, p. 198a; _Rev. des études anc._,
viii, 1906, pp. 53-8.
[1194] _Rev. celt._, i, 1870-2, pp. 306-19.
[1195] _Corpus inscr. Lat._, xiii, pars i, fasc. i, p. 249.
[1196] J. Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, p. 99.
[1197] _Rev. celt._, i, 1870-2, pp. 306-19.
[1198] Diodorus Siculus, v, 29, § 4; _Rev. celt._, viii, 1887, pp. 47,
59, n. 13; H. d’A. de Jubainville, _La civilisation des Celtes_, pp.
374-5; _Rev. des études anc._, v, 1903, p. 252.
[1199] See E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, ii, 1903, pp. 229-34.
[1200] J. Evans, _Coins of the Ancient Britons_, p. 121, Suppl., p.
477; Cf. _Rev. celt._, xxi, 1900, pp. 297-9.
[1201] _B. G._, vii, 88, § 4; E. Desjardins, _Géogr. de la Gaule rom._,
iii, 1890, pl. xii; S. Reinach, _Répertoire de la statuaire grecque et
rom._, ii, 746-7; H. d’A. de Jubainville, _La civilisation des Celtes_,
1899, pp. 390-1; _Rev. des études anc._, vi, 1904, p. 48.
[1202] _Corpus inscr. Lat._, xiii, 3026 _b_, _c_. Cf. G. Dottin, _La
rel. des Celtes_, pp. 20-1, 28, and _Rev. celt._, xxvi, 1905, p. 199.
M. d’Arbois de Jubainville (_ib._, p. 195) thinks that the original
Epona was the mare deified, and that the woman in the statues was a
Greek addition. Cf. A. Lang, _Custom and Myth_, 1885, pp. 118-20, and
Sir A. Lyall’s _Asiatic Studies_, i, 1899, p. 18.
[1203] xxii, 57, § 10; xxiii, 24, § 11.
[1204] ii, 32, § 6.
[1205] _B. G._, vi, 13, § 10, 17, § 5; Tac., _Ann._, xiv, 30; Dion
Cassius, lxii, 7, § 3. Cf. G. Dottin, _La rel. des Celtes_, p. 30.
Strabo (iv, 4, § 6), Diodorus Siculus (v, 27, § 4), Plutarch (_Caesar_,
26), and Suetonius (_Divus Iulius_, 54) speak of temples in Transalpine
Gaul; but all archaeologists would admit that the words which they
used--τέμενος, ἱερόν, fanum, and templum--did not denote roofed
edifices. I think, however, that Livy (xxii, 57, § 10, xxiii, 24, § 11)
had such buildings in mind. Whether he was well informed is another
question. Cf. _Rev. des études anc._, iv, 1902, pp. 279-80.
[1206] Tacitus, _Germ._, 9.
[1207] Livy, i, 31, § 3. Cf. W. Warde Fowler, _The Roman Festivals_,
pp. 338-9, and J. G. Frazer, _Early Hist. of the Kingship_, pp. 210-1.
[1208] _Rev. celt._, xiii, 1892, pp. 190-3. Cf. vol. xi, 1890, p. 225.
M. d’A. de Jubainville (_Rev. arch._, 4^e sér., viii, 1906, p. 146)
says that ‘la vie de Saint Samson désigne par le mot _simulacrum_
une pierre levée, _lapis stans_, qui était l’objet d’un culte en
Grande-Bretagne au milieu du vi^{e} siècle’, &c.
[1209] Pausanias, vii, 22, § 4.
[1210] M. Jullian (_Rev. des études anc._, iv, 1902, pp. 284 n. 6, 285
n. 1), referring to the passage in which Lucan (iii, 412-3) describes
the Druids’ grove near Massilia,--
_simulacraque maesta deorum
Arte carent caesisque exstant informia truncis_,
and interpreting it differently from M. Reinach, argues that Caesar’s
_simulacra_ ‘ne peut signifier que des objets ayant déjà vaguement
l’aspect de forme humaine’. In regard to the ‘statues--menhirs’, which
the abbé Hermet (_Congrès internat. d’anthr. et d’archéol. préhist._,
1900 [1903], pp. 335-8) regards as figures of divinities, see p. 200,
_supra_, and cf. E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, ii, 1903, p. 168.
[1211] _Rev. celt._, xiii, 1892, p. 199.
[1212] M. d’A. de Jubainville (_ib._, xxvii, 1906, p. 122) argues
that the absence of pre-Roman Gallic statues is due not to Druidical
influence but to the fact that the Gauls built their houses not of
stone but of wood, and were therefore ignorant of the art of sculpture!
But houses built of stone have been found at Bibracte. See _Congrès
internat. d’anthr. et d’archéol. préhist._, 1900 (1902), pp. 418-9.
[1213] Augustine, _De civ. Dei_, iv, 31.
[1214] _Germ._, 9.
[1215] G. Boissier, _La rel. rom._, 1892, pp. 8, 35. Cf. Ovid, _Fasti_,
vi, 295.
[1216] See _Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), p.
115.
M. Camille Jullian (_Rev. des études anc._, v, 1903, p. 251, n. 1)
maintains that Caesar (_B. G._, vi, 19, § 4) does not say that the rich
were cremated, but only their slaves. M. Jullian’s interpretation of
this well-known passage is, I believe, unique; anyhow, the statement in
the text rests upon certain archaeological evidence. See _Rev. celt._,
xx, 1899, pp. 119-20; _Rev. de synthèse hist._, 1901, p. 50; and _Guide
to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 84.
[1217] _Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, pp. 320, 322, 325.
[1218] J. R. Mortimer, _Forty Years’ Researches_, p. 357.
[1219] J. Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times,--the Bronze and Stone
Ages_, p. 229.
[1220] _Crania Britannica_, ii, pl. 6 and 7, pp. 1-3; _Archaeol.
Journal_, xliv, 1887, p. 271; _Archaeol. Cant._, xxvi, 1904, pp. 11-2;
_Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 109.
[1221] _Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp.
106-7, 110-1. Cf. _Crania Britannica_, ii, pl. 6 and 7, p. 6. Mr.
Reginald Smith (_Guide_, &c., p. 112) remarks, in regard to the ‘Danes’
Graves’ near Driffield, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, that ‘the
bodies lay indifferently on the right or left side, though the majority
had the head at the north end of the grave: there was thus’, he adds,
‘no tendency to face the sun, as in the Bronze period’. Since the
bodies, on whichever side they lay, would have faced either the morning
or the afternoon sun, Mr. Smith’s observation apparently assumes that
in the Bronze period corpses were laid so as to face the morning sun,
which was far from being an invariable rule. See pp. 188-9, _supra_,
and the authorities there cited; also _Wilts Archaeol. and Nat. Hist.
Mag._, x, 1866, p. 101. Unhappily Sir R. C. Hoare, from whom we learn
that in Wiltshire corpses were generally laid with their heads pointing
northward, omits to say whether they were laid on the right or the left
side. [See Addenda.]
[1222] J. Romilly Allen, _Celtic Art_, pp. 63-71; _Guide to the Ant. of
the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 104-20.
[1223] _Ib._, p. 112.
[1224] _Ib._, p. 122; W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 208-12.
[1225] _B. G._, vi, 19, § 4.
[1226] Or, as Dr. Evans, who mentions both alternatives, suggests
(_Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, p. 326), for the introduction of food. See
pp. 115-6, _supra_.
[1227] _Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, pp. 324-7. Cf. _Guide to the Ant.
of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 82-3, and see also W. C.
Borlase, _Nenia Cornubiae_, pp. 247-51.
[1228] _Vitae phil._, ed. Didot, p. 2, ll. 22-3.
[1229] _B. G._, vi, 13, § 11.
[1230] Diogenes Laertius, ed. Didot, p. 1, l. 11.
[1231] _B. G._, vi, 21, § 1.
[1232] _Ib._, 16, § 1.
[1233] See _Rev. des études anc._, iv, 1902, p. 102.
[1234] _B. G._, vi, 21, § 1.
[1235] Arrian, _De venatione_, 34, §§ 1-3.
[1236] See _Rev. des études anc._, vi, 1904, pp. 47-8, 53, 55, 59-60.
[1237] See p. 291, n. 2, _infra_.
[1238] ‘The political condition of the people of Brythonic Britain,’
says Prof. Rhys (_Celtic Britain_, 3rd ed., 1904, pp. 57, 61), ‘towards
the end of the Early Iron Age and the close of their independence,
is best studied in connection with that of Gaul as described by
Caesar.... The state of things, politically speaking, which existed in
Gaul, existed also most likely among the Belgic tribes in Britain.’
That is to say, the professor accepts the political part of Caesar’s
description as applying to the Belgic and the other Brythonic tribes
of both Gaul and Britain. Yet he insists that that part of the same
description which deals with Druidism, and which is indissolubly
connected with the political part, has nothing to do either with the
Belgae or the other Brythons.
[1239] Professor Rhys virtually admits this when he says that the
Brythonic dialect was largely influenced by the language of the
aborigines. See p. 452, n. 8, _infra_.
[1240] The problem of the origin of Druidism is interesting as
an example of the divergence which exists among Celtic scholars
upon almost every important question of Celtic religion, and also
because it once more illustrates the working of that powerful but
erratic engine,--the mind of Professor Rhys. The first known mention
of Druidism, the substance of which is reproduced in Diogenes
Laertius’s _Lives of the Philosophers_, occurred in a work by Sotion
of Alexandria, who lived about 200 B.C. From this, M. d’Arbois de
Jubainville (_Principaux auteurs de l’ant. à consulter sur l’hist. des
Celtes_, 1902, pp. 187-8) infers that the Belgic invaders of Britain
found Druidism flourishing there about that date, and transplanted
it into the country which they had left, but with which they kept
up a constant intercourse. M. d’Arbois has consistently maintained
this view for many years; and under his influence Professor Rhys
affirmed in 1879 (_Lectures on Welsh Philology_, 2nd ed., pp. 83-4)
that Druidism reached Gaul ‘undoubtedly through the Belgae who had
settled in Britain’. Now, however, the professor rightly holds that the
Belgae were preceded in Britain by other Brythons (_Celtic Britain_,
1904, p. 4); and it would seem therefore that the date of the first
mention of Druidism gives no clue as to the place where it originated.
Moreover, Professor Rhys has long been of opinion that there is ‘no
proof that any Belgic or Brythonic people ever had Druids’ (_ib._,
2nd ed., 1884, p. 69; 3rd ed., 1904, p. 69; _Report of ... the Brit.
Association_, 1900, p. 894). In 1901, accordingly, he argued (_Celtic
Folk-lore_, ii, 623, 685) that the Goidelic invaders of Britain (whose
existence, I must remind the reader, is denied by some Celtic scholars)
‘got their magic and druidism’ from ‘the [imaginary] dwarf race of
the _sids_’ (see p. 391, _infra_). But in 1900 (_The Welsh People_,
p. 83) and again in 1902 (_ib._, 3rd ed.) he affirmed that Druidism
had been ‘evolved by the Continental Goidels, or rather accepted by
them from the Aborigines’. Presumably, then, they already had Druids
when they invaded Britain, and had no need to borrow them from the
_sids_. By 1904, however, the professor appears to have concluded
that Druidism originated independently among the aborigines both
of Gaul and of Britain, and that with both it was an inheritance
from common ancestors; for, after telling us (_Celtic Britain_, 3rd
ed., p. 69) that Druidism ‘may be surmised to have had its origin’
among ‘the non-Celtic natives’ of Britain, he goes on to say that it
‘possessed certain characteristics which enabled it to make terms
with the Celtic conqueror, both in Gaul and in the British islands’;
while on page 73 he remarks that ‘it is hard to accept the belief ...
that druidism originated here’, and concludes that ‘the Celts found
it both here and there [in Gaul] the common religion of some of the
aboriginal inhabitants’. But the weary student who hopes to be allowed
to acquiesce in this conclusion is distracted by finding that on page
4 of this very book, in which the professor insists that ‘there is no
proof that any ... Brythonic people ever had Druids’, he affirms that
‘traces of [the Goidels] are difficult to discover on the Continent’
(_Celtic Britain_, p. 4). This time the conclusion would seem to be
that the Gauls, whose Druids Caesar described, were neither Goidels nor
Brythons! It is hardly necessary to add that the professor has since
satisfied himself (see p. 410, _infra_) that traces of Continental
Goidels are abundant.
As we have already seen (p. 114, _supra_), M. S. Reinach (_Acad. des
inscr. et belles-lettres_,--comptes-rendus de l’année 1892, 4^e sér.,
xx, 6-7) attributes the megalithic monuments of Gaul to Druidical
influence, arguing that their construction is inexplicable except on
the hypothesis of ‘une aristocratie religieuse exerçant un empire
presque absolu sur une nombreuse population’ (_Rev. celt._, xiii,
1892, p. 194). Certainly: but if it is a fair conclusion that this
hierarchy was composed of Druids, might it not be argued that Druidism
was a world-wide institution, or at least co-extensive with rude stone
monuments? On the other hand, Professor J. von Pflugk-Harttung (_Trans.
Roy. Hist. Soc._, N. S., vii, 1893, p. 57) can see no reason for
supposing that Druidism was originally non-Aryan.
M. Camille Jullian (_Rev. des études anc._, vi, 1904, p. 260) seems
inclined to believe that the priests (_sacerdotes_) of the Cisalpine
Boii (Livy, xxiii, 24, § 12) were Druids; and I admit that it is
impossible to prove that they were not.
[M. d’A. de Jubainville, in his latest volume (_Les Druides_, p. 13),
infers from Caesar’s statement, that Druidism originated in Britain,
that it was of Goidelic [why not pre-Goidelic?] origin, and holds (pp.
22-3) that it was imposed by the Goidels upon their Gallo-Brythonic
conquerors.]
[1241] _Ann._, xiv, 30. Cf. Pliny, _Nat. Hist._, xxx, 1 (4), § 13.
[1242] _B. G._, vi, 13-4, 16.
[1243] Hoc maxime ad virtutem excitari putant metu mortis neglecto
(_ib._, 14, § 5). See p. 295, _infra_.
[1244] This statement is, I admit, open to dispute. Caesar (_B. G._,
vii, 33, § 4) does not expressly say that Druids exercised the right in
question, but priests (_sacerdotes_); and it has been argued that those
priests may not have been Druids (see my _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_,
1899, p. 534, n. 3, and G. Dottin, _La rel. des Celtes_, p. 41). But,
so far as we know, the only other name that designated a priest in Gaul
was _gutuater_, which occurs in two Gallo-Roman inscriptions (_ib._,
and _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, p. 818); and I doubt whether it
is possible to prove that in pre-Roman times the _gutuater_ was not
a Druid. Anyhow, considering the terms in which Caesar describes the
Druids, considering what he says of their power, political and legal as
well as spiritual (_fere de omnibus controversiis publicis privatisque
constituunt_), I find it difficult to believe that they would have
permitted any priest who was not one of themselves to exercise the
very important function which he describes in _B. G._, vii, 33. [For
confirmation of the statement in the text see H. d’A. de Jubainville,
_Les Druides_, p. 159, who, however (pp. 2-6), insists that _gutuatri_
were distinct from Druids.]
[1245] Tacitus, _Ann._, xiv, 30; Diodorus Siculus, v, 31, § 3.
[1246] _Chronica minora_, ed. Th. Mommsen, iii, 1898, p. 182, 11, 14-7.
Cf. E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, i, 1903, pp. 104-8; _Rev. celt._,
xxvi, 1905, p. 289; and Sir A. Lyall, _Asiatic Studies_, ii, 1899, pp.
312-3. In regard to the Druidical practice of human sacrifice see N.
Fréret, _Œuvres complètes_, xviii, 1796, pp. 264-72; _Nouvelle rev.
hist. du droit français et étranger_, 1898, pp. 289-300; Rice Holmes,
_Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, p. 533; and J. G. Frazer, _The
Golden Bough_, iii, 1900, pp. 319-23, 326.
[1247] M. G. Bloch (_Rev. internat. de l’enseignement_, Août, 1895,
p. 151), referring to Caesar (_B. G._, vi, 13, § 5), argues that the
suitors who appealed to Druids probably all belonged to the upper class
(_equites_), who, having unlimited rights over their dependents (_ib._,
§ 3), doubtless decided their disputes.
The meaning of the ‘awards and penalties’ (_praemia poenasque_) which
the Druidical judges fixed is uncertain. See H. d’A. de Jubainville,
_Études sur le droit celt._, i, 80-1; G. Dottin, _Manuel pour servir
à l’étude de l’ant. celt._, p. 190; and Sir H. Maine, _Early Hist. of
Inst._, 1875, p. 136.
[1248] _Rev. internat. de l’enseignement_, Août, 1895, pp. 149-50.
[1249] _B. G._, v, 55, § 3. Cf. viii, 30, § 1.
[1250] _Ib._, vi, 13, § 10.
[1251] _Bibl. hist._, v, 28, § 6.
[1252] Ammianus Marcellinus, xv, 9, § 8.
[1253] _E.g._ by Fustel de Coulanges (_Rev. celt._, iv, 1879-80, p. 53).
[1254] H. Gaidoz, _Esquisse de la rel. des Gaulois_, p. 18.
[1255] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, p. 98. The pentagram,
which, says Professor Tylor (_Ency. Brit._, xv, 1883, p. 203), is ‘an
interesting proof of tradition from the Pythagoreans’, has also been
found on a more recently discovered British coin (J. Evans, _Coins_,
&c.,--Suppl., p. 573); on a bucket in Carnarvonshire (_Archaeol.
Cambr._, 6th ser., v, 1905, p. 256); on a pebble in a broch at
Burrian, Orkney (_ib._); and on Gallic coins of the Carnutes, Senones,
Suessiones, and Remi (A. Blanchet, _Traité des monn. gaul._, pp. 331,
360, 378, 385-6).
M. d’Arbois de Jubainville (_Études sur le droit celt._, i, 1895, p.
5), referring to Mela, iii, 2, § 19 (_unum ex his quae praecipiunt
in vulgus effluxit, videlicet ut forent ad bella meliores, aeternas
esse animas vitamque alteram ad manes. Itaque cum mortuis cremant
ac defodiunt apta viventibus_), asserts that the teaching of the
Druids differed from that of Pythagoras: they did not inculcate
metempsychosis, but merely the immortality of the soul. He also
insists, quoting Valerius Maximus, ii, 6, § 10, that, in the belief
of the Gauls, the life to come was analogous to life upon earth (cf.
N. Fréret, _Œuvres complètes_, xviii, 1796, pp. 182-8). But it is not
proved that Caesar, whose authority is higher than that of Mela, and
whose testimony is not really contradicted by him, was misinformed when
he said that the Druids taught _non interire animas, sed ab aliis post
mortem transire ad alios_; and Valerius Maximus himself remarks that
the belief of the Gauls was identical with that of Pythagoras. Many
Christians, who believe in the immortality of the soul, also believe,
or fancy that they believe, in the transmigration of souls. Still, as I
have suggested in the text, it is quite possible that even the Druids
did not preach the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis, and that
Caesar did not intend to convey that they did.
[1256] E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, ii, 1903, pp. 75-83.
[1257] _Ib._, pp. 63-5, 77; _Rev. de l’hist. des rel._, xiv, 1886, p.
61; G. Dottin, _La rel. des Celtes_, pp. 35-7.
[1258] _B. G._, vi, 14, § 6.
[1259] See _Rev. celt._, iv, 1879-80, pp. 51-2.
[1260] _B. G._, vi, 18, § 2; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._, xvi, 43 (95), §
250. The Germans had the same notion as the Gauls about night and day
(Tacitus, _Germ._, 11). Cf. N. Fréret, _Œuvres complètes_, xviii, 1796,
p. 222, and _Rev. internat. de l’enseignement_, Août, 1895, p. 159.
[1261] See _Rev. des études anc._, v, 1903, p. 127; _Rev. celt._, xxv,
1904, pp. 115, 118, 121, 131-2, 160; and J. Rhys, _Celtae and Galli_,
1905, pp. 1-4, 8, 21, 35, 46. Of course we have no right to assume that
the calendar of Coligny, which was not earlier than the first century
of our era, was identical with that of the Britons; but this caution
does not invalidate the statements in the text.
The language of the calendar is a subject of dispute. Prof. Rhys
and M. Camille Jullian (_Rev. des études anc._, v, 1903, p. 127)
unhesitatingly treat it as Celtic: M. d’Arbois de Jubainville regards
the association of _qu_ with _p_ (see pp. 227-8, _supra_) as proof
of its being Ligurian. [Prof. Rhys’s latest view (_Celtic Inscr. of
France and Italy_, p. 99) is that ‘it becomes more and more a question
of names, whether it is to be called Celtic or Ligurian’. But the fact
remains that history and physical anthropology tend to show that the
Ligurians were utterly different from the people among whom the Celtic
language came into being. See my _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, pp.
275-81.]
[1262] Cf. W. Warde Fowler, _The Roman Festivals_, p. 3.
[1263] Lampridius, _Alexander Severus_, 60; Vopiscus, _Aurelianus_, 44,
_Numerianus, Rev. des études anc._, vi, 1904, p. 258, n. 6; and J. G.
Frazer, _Early Hist. of the Kingship_, p. 224, note.
M. d’Arbois de Jubainville (_Rev. celt._, xxvi, 1905, p. 359) holds
that Lampridius and Vopiscus were mistaken in designating as _dryades_
women who were mere fortune-tellers, and who should be classed among
the μάντεις or soothsayers, mentioned by Diodorus Siculus (v, 31, § 3)
or the οὐάτεις who, according to Strabo (iv, 4, § 4), were specially
concerned with sacrifices. Μάντεις and οὐάτεις, however, who were
doubtless identical, would seem to have been merely Druids of inferior
rank (G. Dottin, _Manuel pour servir à l’étude de l’ant. celt._, pp.
263-4, 267). M. Toutain (_Mélanges Boissier_, 1903, pp. 439-42), who
also regards the _dryades_ as fortune-tellers, denies that there is any
authority for translating the word by ‘Druidesses’, and insists that
if Druidesses had existed, they would not have been mentioned for the
first time by writers of the 3rd century. A. Holder (_Alt-celtischer
Sprachschatz_, i, 1326, 1329), who prints the quotations from
Lampridius and Vopiscus under the heading _Druida_, remarks that
in Lucan, i, 451, instead of _druidae_ there is a various reading
_dryadae_.
[1264] Dion Cassius, lxii, 6, § 1; 7, §§ 2-3. Cf. _Rev. des études
anc._, iv, 1902, pp. 224-5.
[1265] _Ib._, vi, 1904, pp. 261-2. Cf. J. G. Frazer, _Early Hist. of
the Kingship_, p. 31.
[1266] _De div._, i, 15, § 26; ii, 36, § 76. Pliny (_Nat. Hist._, xvi,
43 [95], § 249) says that the Gallic Druids of his time were _magi_,
which is commonly translated by ‘magicians’ (cf. H. Gaidoz, _Esquisse_,
&c., pp. 15-6). But might not the word have been applied to any one who
practised augury and divination (Cicero, _de div._, i, 41, § 90)?
[1267] Sir A. Lyall, _Asiatic Studies_, i, 1899, pp. 2, 26, 135, 161.
[1268] See J. G. Frazer, _Golden Bough_, iii, 1900, pp. 328 note, 343-4.
[1269] Pliny, _Nat. Hist._, xvi, 44 (95), § 250.
[1270] J. G. Frazer, _Early Hist. of the Kingship_, pp. 212-3.
[1271] M. G. Dottin (_La rel. des Celtes_, p. 41), remarking that
Druids were also politicians, and that the Druid, Diviciacus, led a
life which differed little from that of his brother Dumnorix, who
was not a Druid, concludes that ‘il ne s’agit donc pas d’une classe
sacerdotale, à plus forte raison, comme on l’a dit, d’un clergé
gaulois’. Were there then no clergy in England in the days of Becket,
or of Wolsey, or in France when Richelieu and Mazarin were supreme?
[1272] See H. d’A. de Jubainville, _Les Druides_, pp. 60, 64, which has
come into my hands since I wrote this chapter.
[1273] The question may be asked, If there were Druids in South-Eastern
Britain, why does Caesar not tell us what part they took, or whether
they took any part, in the campaign of Cassivellaunus? As all readers
of his memoirs have remarked, he is equally silent in regard to the
political activity or the political apathy of the Druids of Gaul. ‘A
singularly powerful priesthood,’ says Prof. Haverfield (_Eng. Hist.
Rev._, xviii, 1903, p. 336), ‘numbering political leaders, like
Divitiacus, among its ranks, might be expected in a national crisis
to take some definite line, requiring notice in the _Commentaries_.
Yet omit two chapters, and so far as the _Commentaries_ go, the Druids
might never have existed.’ M. Camille Jullian (_Vercingétorix_, 1902,
pp. 107-11) argues that they did take an active part in the rebellion
of Vercingetorix, but that Caesar chose to ignore the fact: Caesar
‘_a laïcisé à outrance l’esprit et l’histoire de la Gaule.... Nul ne
croira que la Gaule n’ait pas appelé prêtres et dieux à son secours_’.
Prof. Haverfield, who naturally asks ‘What motive had Caesar for this?’
suggests that an analogy ‘to these powerful non-political priests ...
is provided by various priestly _collegia_ at Rome, which include
political leaders, but which in their augural or other capacity take
no political action’, and maintains that the Druids, ‘as Druids,
uttered no word against Caesar or for him’. But if so, why, at a time
when their power had certainly diminished, did they aid and abet the
insurrection of Civilis (Tacitus, _Hist._, iv, 54)? I would suggest
that Caesar may have bought over the Arch-Druid (_B. G._, vi, 13, §
8)--and his use of secret-service money is one of the matters which
he did not mention--and that if individual Druids did take part in a
crusade, he may not have thought their action sufficiently important
(if he was aware of it) to be worth recording.
[1274] _B. G._, v, 14, § 1.
[1275] _Archaeol. Oxon._, 1892-5 (1895), p. 159.
[1276] The word _Britanniae_ (_B. G._, ii, 4, § 7) is of course used
loosely.
[1277] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, p. 83; Suppl., p. 483.
See also pp. 51, 63, 65, 90, and 94 of the earlier volume.
[1278] Professor Rhys (_The Welsh People_, 1902, pp. 88-90) remarks
that ‘since no hint as to a revolution is vouchsafed [in Caesar’s
narrative (_B. G._, ii, 4, § 7)], the probability is that the empire of
Diviciacos in this country subsisted under his successors in Caesar’s
time. But,’ he continues, ‘Diviciacos’s people were the Suessiones
and the Remi; so we should expect to find both of them represented in
Britain, though their names have not been detected. Now we know from
a couple of inscriptions that a god of the Remi was Camulos.’ The
professor goes on to observe that Camulodunum ‘was near Colchester, in
the country of the Trinovantes, in whom we are accordingly prepared
to find the Remi we are seeking’; and, he says, ‘The next neighbours
of the Trinovantes were the Catuvellauni, in whom we probably have
our insular Suessiones. At any rate the name of the Catuvellauni was
also that which, shortened into _Catelauni_ ... eventually became
... Chalons, the name of a town ... in a district usually assigned
to the Remi ... the Catuvellauni and the Trinovantes between them
may be regarded as the upholders of the empire of Diviciacos,’ &c.
But in Caesar’s time the Catuvellauni were the bitter enemies of the
Trinovantes: Camulos was worshipped by many other tribes besides the
Remi; and although it is probable that the Gallic Catuvellauni were
clients of the Remi in the time of Caesar (Rice Holmes, _Caesar’s
Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, pp. 476-7), it is not unlikely that they were
one of the tribes which placed themselves under the protection of the
Remi in consequence of the favour shown to the latter by Caesar (_B.
G._, vi, 12, § 7). The passage in which Caesar mentions Diviciacus
leaves upon my mind the impression that his empire, like that of
Celtillus, the father of Vercingetorix, was short-lived. At all events
there is no evidence for asserting its continuance.
[1279] Exigua parte aestatis reliqua Caesar, etsi in his locis, quod
omnis Gallia ad septentriones vergit, maturae sunt hiemes, tamen in
Britanniam proficisci contendit, quod omnibus fere Gallicis bellis
hostibus nostris inde subministrata auxilia intellegebat, &c. _B. G._,
iv, 20, § 1.
[1280] ... Οὐενετοὶ μὲν εἰσιν οἱ ναυμαχήσαντες πρὸς Καίσαρα· ἕτοιμοι
γὰρ ἦσαν κωλύειν τὸν εἰς τὴν Βρεττανικὴν πλοῦν, χρώμενοι τῷ ἐμπορίῳ
(_Geogr._, iv, 4, § 1)
[1281] The estuary of the Loire was the nearest considerable harbour to
the scene of the naval battle. It is not likely that Caesar would have
sent his fleet to any of the smaller ports in the country of the Veneti
(see my _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, p. 665); but supposing that
he did so, my argument would hardly be affected.
[1282] See pp. 494-7, _infra_.
[1283] See my _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, pp. 663-74.
[1284] Except perhaps sweeps, which they may have used occasionally to
help them in tacking.
[1285] Reliquum erat certamen positum in virtute, qua nostri milites
facile superabant. _B. G._, iii, 14, § 8.
[1286] ius legatorum. _Ib._, 16, § 4.
[1287] quod inde erat brevissimus in Britanniam traiectus. _B. G._, iv,
21, § 3.
[1288] See pp. 552-95, _infra_.
[1289] See A. E. E. Desjardins, _Géogr. de la Gaule rom._, i, 1876, pl.
xv (p. 352), pl. xvii (p. 384), and cf. _Boulogne-sur-mer et la région
boulonnaise_, i, 1899, p. 30.
[1290] tamen magno sibi usui fore arbitrabatur si modo insulam adisset,
genus hominum perspexisset, loca, portus, aditus cognovisset. _B. G._,
iv, 20, § 2.
[1291] See p. 329, _infra_.
[1292] Dion Cassius, xxxix, 50, §§ 3-4. See p. 509, _infra_.
[1293] neque his ipsis quicquam praeter oram maritimam atque eas
regiones quae sunt contra Gallias notum est. _B. G._, iv, 20, § 3.
[1294] See _Journ. Roy. Soc. Ant. Ireland_, 5th ser., v, 1895, p. 26.
[1295] C. Volusenus, tribunus militum, vir et consilii magni et
virtutis. _B. G._, iii, 5, § 2.
[1296] See p. 300, _supra_.
[1297] See _Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_, xxxvii, 1881, p. 272.
[1298] See pp. 532-52, _infra_.
[1299] See pp. 629, 635-6, _infra_.
[1300] See pp. 547-8, 632-3, _infra_.
[1301] See pp. 530-1, _infra_.
[1302] See pp. 595-6, 651, 664-5, _infra_.
[1303] See pp. 525-8, 657-9, _infra_.
[1304] See pp. 600-3, _infra_.
[1305] _B. G._, iii, 14, § 4. Cf. C. Torr, _Ancient Ships_, 1894, p. 59.
[1306] M. le Contre-Amiral Serre, _Les marines de guerre de l’ant._,
1885, p. 36. _Naves longae_ were not necessarily even decked (_B. C._,
i, 56, § 1; iii, 7, § 2).
[1307] See pp. 587-8, _infra_.
[1308] See pp. 600-3, _infra_.
[1309] E. A. Freeman, _Norman Conquest_, iii, 1875, p. 399. The minute
details which Mr. F. H. Appach (_C. J. Caesar’s Brit. Expeditions_,
1868, pp. 57-8, 99, 107-8) gives as to Caesar’s order of sailing both
in 55 and 54 B.C. are imaginary: in saying this I have the support of
Capt. Iron, the harbour-master of Dover. Moreover, if, as Mr. Appach
conjectures, the transports had been drawn up for the disembarkation in
55 B.C. in two lines, one behind the other, the men, in attempting to
disembark from the rear line, would have been drowned. See _B. G._, iv,
24, § 2, 25, § 3, and p. 673, _infra_.
[1310] In regard to Caesar’s expression--(III. fere vigilia) _solvit_
(_B. G._, iv, 23, § 1), see Prof. R. Y. Tyrrell’s _Correspondence of
Cicero_, i, 1885, p. 193, with which cf. _B. C._, iii, 102, § 7.
[1311] See _Tidal Streams,--English and Irish Channels_.
[1312] See pp. 634-5, 644-6, _infra_.
[1313] See pp. 615-6, _infra_.
[1314] See p. 615, _infra_.
[1315] Cuius loci haec erat natura atque ita montibus angustis mare
continebatur, uti ex locis superioribus in litus telum adigi posset.
_B. G._, iv, 23, § 3.
[1316] See pp. 652-3, _infra_.
[1317] See pp. 648-9, _infra_.
[1318] See pp. 610-1, 647-9, _infra_. Strictly speaking, the true (not
magnetic) direction of the stream, west of the South Foreland, would
have lain between about ENE. and NE. by E. See _Archaeologia_, xxxix,
1863, pp. 291-3.
[1319] Cf. _B. G._, v, 14, § 2, with _Journ. Brit. Archaeol.
Association_, N. S., ix, 1903, pp. 95-6.
[1320] _B. G._, iv, 25, § 5. See the notes in Kraner--Dittenberger’s
edition and in that of C. E. C. Schneider.
[1321] _B. G._, v, 37, § 3.
[1322] Diodorus Siculus, v, 30, § 3; J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc.
Britons_, pp. 192, 232, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, p. 363.
[1323] _Rev. des études anc._, vi, 1904, pp. 53, n. 6, 54.
[1324] aliae eodem unde erant profectae referrentur, aliae ad
inferiorem partem insulae, quae est propius solis occasum, magno suo
cum periculo deicerentur; quae tamen ancoris iactis cum fluctibus
complerentur, necessario adversa nocte in altum provectae continentem
petierunt. _B. G._, iv, 28, §§ 2-3. See p. 598, n. 2, _infra_.
[1325] A gale blowing from the north-east on the eastern coast of Kent
would be diverted on the south coast to ENE. This, or possibly NE. by
E., may be assumed to have been the direction of the wind when the
transports were scudding before it. If it had blown from a point nearer
north they would have found shelter under the lee of the southern
cliffs. See p. 582, _infra_.
[1326] See pp. 582, 651, _infra_.
[1327] See p. 219, n. 4, _supra_.
[1328] _B. G._, i, 50, §§ 4-5.
[1329] My view, which is based upon _B. G._, iv, 32--not § 5 only--is
supported by Turpin de Crissé (_Comm. de César_, i, 1785, p. 294), but
differs from that of von Göler (_Gall. Krieg_, 1880, p. 136, n. 3).
[1330] See _Rev. celt._, xxv, 1904, pp. 229-31.
[1331] See pp. 676-7, _infra_.
[1332] It is impossible to decide whether the cohort or half-cohort
which reported to Caesar (_B. G._, iv, 32, § 1) was an outlying piquet,
as von Göler thinks (_Gall. Krieg_, 1880, p. 136, n. 2), or a guard
stationed just outside one of the gates. The latter appears to have
been the usual position. (_B. G._, vi, 37, §§ 3-4; _B. C._, i, 75, § 3;
iii, 94, § 6). Von Göler’s opinion is based upon a mistranslation of
the word _longius_ (_B. G._, iv, 32, § 3).
[1333] C. Schneider (_Comm. de bellis C. I. Caesaris_, i, 407) in a
note on _B. G._, iv, 32, § 1, infers from vi, 37, §§ 3-4, that one
cohort was on guard in front of each of the four gates of the camp. But
there is no proof that in _B. G._, vi, 37, § 3, the word _cohors_ means
an entire cohort, and not details thereof, or even if it does, that any
hard-and-fast rule prescribed that, without regard to circumstances,
one entire cohort, no more and no less, should invariably guard each of
the four gates.
[1334] ... nostri se ex timore receperunt. Quo facto ad lacessendum
hostem et committendum proelium alienum esse tempus arbitratus, suo se
loco continuit, &c. _B. G._, iv, 34, §§ 1-2.
[1335] See pp. 311-2, _supra_.
[1336] Eo duae omnino civitates ex Britannia obsides miserunt, reliquae
neglexerunt. _B. G._, iv, 38, § 4.
[1337] Cf. _B. G._, v, 8, § 4.
[1338] Cf. Daremberg and Saglio, _Dict. des ant. grecques et rom._, i,
59-60 (ACTUARIAE NAVES).
[1339] I infer from Caesar’s narrative (see p. 334, _infra_) that his
vessels were not provided with lee-boards, in regard to which see E. F.
Knight, _Sailing_, 1900, pp. 16, 25.
[1340] See p. 331, n. 2, _infra_.
[1341] See Suetonius, _Divus Iulius_, 47, and also p. 350, _infra_.
[1342] Cf. _B. G._, v, 1, § 1 with p. 726, _infra_.
[1343] _Mescinium Rufum_, quem mihi commendas regem Galliae faciam....
Tu ad me alium mitte quem ornem.... Mitto igitur ad te Trebatium, &c.
_Fam._, vii, 5, § 2. See R. Y. Tyrrell, _Correspondence of Cicero_, ii,
1886, p. 112, note.
[1344] In Britannia nihil esse audio neque auri neque argenti. Id si
ita est, essedum aliquod capias suadeo et ad nos quam primum recurras.
_Ib._, vii, 7, § 1.
[1345] See my _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, pp. 568-9.
[1346] Sed ille scripsit ad Balbum fasciculum illum epistolarum in
quo fuerat mea et Balbi totum sibi aqua madidum redditum esse, ut
ne illud quidem sciat, meam fuisse aliquam epistolam. Sed ex Balbi
epistola pauca verba intellexerat, ad quae rescripsit his verbis: ‘De
Cicerone te video quiddam scripsisse, quod ego non intellexi: quantum
autem coniectura consequebar, id erat eius modi ut magis optandum
quam sperandum putarem’. _Q. fr._, ii, 10, § 4. Cf. R. Y. Tyrrell,
_Correspondence of Cicero_, ii, 1886, p. 110, note.
[1347] Modo mihi date Britanniam, quam pingam coloribus tuis, penicillo
meo. _Q. fr._, ii, 13, § 2.
[1348] See p. 667, _infra_, and _Hermes_, xl., 1905, pp. 17-8.
[1349] Britannici belli exitus exspectatur. Constat enim aditus insulae
esse muratos mirificis molibus. Etiam illud iam cognitum est, neque
argenti scripulum esse ullum in illa insula neque ullam spem praedae
nisi ex mancipiis, ex quibus nullos puto te litteris aut musicis
eruditos exspectare. _Att._, iv, 16, § 7. See pp. 666-7, _infra_.
[1350] See p. 727, _infra_.
[1351] singulari militum studio in summa omnium rerum inopia circiter
DC eius generis cuius supra demonstravimus naves et longas XXVIII
invenit instructas neque multum abesse ab eo quin paucis diebus deduci
possint. _B. G._, v, 2, §2.
[1352] See C. E. C. Schneider’s note (_Comm. de bellis C. Iulii
Caesaris_, ii, 1849, pp. 43-4).
[1353] See my _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, pp. 453-6, and H. J.
Heller’s remarks in _Zeitschr. für allgemeine Erdkunde_, xviii, 1865,
pp. 185-6.
[1354] See my _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, p. 816.
[1355] Ex Quinti fratris litteris suspicor iam eum esse in Britannia.
Suspenso animo exspecto quid agat. _Att._, iv, 15, § 10.
[1356] nihil hunc se absente pro sano facturum arbitratus qui
praesentis imperium neglexisset. _B. G._, v, 7, § 7.
[1357] See pp. 728-30, _infra_.
[1358] See pp. 349, 355, 670, _infra_.
[1359] Cicero, _ad Fam._, xii, 16, §§ 2-3, xv, 21; _ad Q. fr._, iii, 1,
§ 9. Cf. R. Y. Tyrrell and L. C. Purser, _Correspondence of Cicero_,
iv, 1894, pp. lvii-lviii.
[1360] See p. 314, n. 3, _supra_.
[1361] See p. 729-30, _infra_.
[1362] See p. 658, _infra_.
[1363] Polybius, i, 50, §§ 7-8, 51, § 1. Cf. x, 43-7, and _Ency.
Brit._, xxii, 1887, p. 49.
[1364] See pp. 655-9, _infra_.
[1365] See p. 348, _infra_.
[1366] See pp. 664-5, and 673-4, _infra_.
[1367] eo minus veritus navibus quod in litore molli atque aperto
deligatas ad ancoras relinquebat. _B. G._, v, 9, § 1.
[1368] See pp. 682-5, _infra_.
[1369] See p. 253, _supra_.
[1370] See A. von Göler, _Gall. Krieg_, 1880, p. 149, n. 5.
[1371] See pp. 686-7, _infra_.
[1372] See pp. 685-8, _infra_.
[1373] Forcellini, _Totius latinitatis lex._, iv, 1868, p. 651.
[1374] _B. G._, v, 11, § 8. Cf. i, 30, § 4; ii, 4, § 4; iii, 8, § 3;
vii, 63, §§ 6-7; and my _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1903, p. 12.
[1375] See pp. 688-91, _infra_.
[1376] ... repente ex omnibus partibus ad pabulatores advolaverunt, sic
uti ab signis legionibusque non absisterent. _B. G._, v, 17, § 2. See
p. 692, _infra_.
[1377] ... neque post id tempus umquam summis nobiscum copiis hostes
contenderunt. _B. G._, v, 17, § 5.
[1378] See p. 675, _infra_.
[1379] See G. Dottin, _Manuel pour servir à l’étude de l’ant. celt._,
p. 197.
[1380] See p. 676, _infra_.
[1381] _B. G._, iv, 2, § 2.
[1382] W. Ridgeway, _Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse_,
pp. 94-5, 102-3.
[1383] _B. G._, i, 48, §§ 4-7; iv, 2, §§ 2-3; vii, 65, § 5.
[1384] See p. 676, _infra_.
[1385] Livy, x, 28-30.
[1386] See pp. 692-8, _infra_.
[1387] _Archaeologia_, li, 1888, map facing p. 446.
[1388] See A. von Göler, _Gall. Krieg_, 1880, p. 157, n. 1.
[1389] See pp. 692-6, _infra_.
[1390] See p. 697, _infra_.
[1391] See pp. 698-9, _infra_.
[1392] Sed ea celeritate atque eo impetu milites ierunt, cum capite
solo ex aqua extarent, ut hostes impetum legionum atque equitum
sustinere non possent ripasque dimitterent ac se fugae mandarent. _B.
G._, v, 18, § 5.
[1393] See _Archaeologia_, ii, 1773, p. 166.
[1394] See _Vict. Hist. of ... Norfolk_, i, 284-5. I am inclined to
think that the Bibroci, whether their name is connected with that of
Berkshire or not, and the other two may have lived on the south of
the Thames. Otherwise would they not have been clans either of the
Trinovantes or the Catuvellauni? It seems unlikely that any group
included in the latter would have dared in spite of Cassivellaunus to
surrender. Dr. Haverfield (R. L. Poole’s _Hist. Atlas of Mod. Europe_,
1896, xv,--‘Roman Britain’) suggests that the Bibroci may have been in
Berkshire, and that they and the Segontiaci were clans of the Atrebates.
[1395] See J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, pp. 41, 225, 272-5,
Suppl., pp. 534, 539-40; and _Vict. Hist. of ... Hampshire_, i, 273.
Sir J. Evans says that the word SEGO on coins of Tasciovanus ‘seems
plainly to point to the tribe of the Segontiaci’; and as VER. on coins
stands for Verulam, so SEGO, may stand for Segontium, the site of which
is, however, unknown.
[1396] _Vict. Hist. of ... Hampshire_, i, 273-4.
[1397] _Vict. Hist. of ... Norfolk_, i, 284-5.
[1398] See pp. 699-702, _infra_.
[1399] O iucundas mihi tuas de Britannia litteras! Timebam Oceanum,
timebam litus insulae. Reliqua non equidem contemno, sed plus habent
tamen spei quam timoris, &c. _Q. fr._ ii, 15 (16), § 4.
[1400] De Britannicis rebus cognovi ex tuis litteris nihil esse nec
quod metuamus nec quod gaudeamus. _Ib._, iii, 1, § 10.
[1401] Ex Britannia Caesar ad me Kal. Sept. dedit litteras, quas ego
accepi A.D. IIII. Kal. Octobr., satis commodas de Britannicis rebus,
quibus, ne admirer quod a te nullas acceperim, scribit se sine te
fuisse, cum ad mare accesserit. _Ib._, § 25.
[1402] See pp. 672, 731-3, _infra_.
[1403] Such is Caesar’s statement (_B. G._, v, 22, § 3): but only his
perfervid admirers deny that in certain passages of his memoirs he
was guilty of misrepresentation; and there are critics who argue that
he employed Commius to induce Cassivellaunus for a consideration to
negotiate. See pp. 669-71, _infra_.
[1404] A Quinto fratre et a Caesare accepi A.D. IX. Kal. Nov. litteras,
datas a litoribus Britanniae proximis A.D. VI. Kal. Octobr. Confecta
Britannia, obsidibus acceptis, nulla praeda, imperata tamen pecunia,
exercitum _e_ Britannia reportabant. _Att._, iv, 18, § 5. See pp.
712-3, 726, _infra_. Strabo (iv, 5, § 3) says that Caesar got much
booty besides slaves.
[1405] See p. 499, _infra_ and Pauly’s _Real-Encyclopädie_, iii, part
i, 1897, p. 863.
[1406] Hominum est infinita multitudo creberrimaque aedificia fere
Gallicis consimilia, pecoris magnus numerus. _B. G._, v, 12, § 3.
[1407] See pp. 225-6, _supra_.
[1408] Nos nihil de eo percontationibus reperiebamus, nisi certis ex
aqua mensuris breviores esse quam in continenti noctes videbamus.
_Ib._, 13, § 4.
[1409] _Ib._, 14, §§ 4-5.
[1410] See pp. 414-7, _infra_.
[1411] See p. 223, _supra_.
[1412] See my _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, p. 480.
[1413] Cf. Caesar, _B. C._, i, 44, § 4.
[1414] Quae prima signa conspexit, ad haec constitit. _B. G._, ii, 21,
§ 6.
[1415] Lord Wolseley, _The Soldiers’ Pocket-Book_, 5th ed., pp. 286,
412-7.
[1416] _Phars._, ii, 572.
[1417] See the passages quoted on pp. 329, 348, 350, _supra_, and also
Diodorus Siculus, v, 21, § 2; Strabo, iv, 5, § 3; Plutarch, _Caesar_,
23; Appian, _De rebus Gall._, i, 5, _B. C._, ii, 17; Dion Cassius,
lxii, 4, § 1; Tacitus, _Agricola_, 13; and Suetonius, _Divus Iulius_,
25.
[1418] ... divus Iulius cum exercitu Britanniam ingressus, quamquam
prospera pugna terruerit incolas ac litore potitus sit, potest videri
ostendisse posteris, non tradidisse (_Agricola_, 13).
[1419] Th. Mommsen, _Hist. of Rome_, v, 1894, p. 66 (_Röm. Gesch._,
iii, 1889, p. 272). Mommsen is, I think, nearer the truth when he says
(_The Provinces of the Roman Empire_, i, 1886, p. 171 [_Röm. Gesch._,
v, 155]) that ‘the Britons ... certainly did not long pay--perhaps
never paid at all--the tribute,’ &c.
[1420] _Bibl. Hist._, v, 21, § 2.
[1421] Strabo, ii, 5, § 8; iv, 5, § 3.
[1422] ... φέρει δὲ σῖτον καὶ βοσκήματα καὶ χρυσὸν καὶ ἄργυρον καὶ
σίδηρον· ταῦτα δὴ κομίζεται ἐξ αὐτῆς καὶ δέρματα καὶ ἀνδράποδα, &c.
_Geogr._, iv, 5, §§ 2-3.
[1423] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, pp. 241, 265-6.
[1424] _Ib._, pp. 297-305, 347, 352-3.
[1425] _Ann._, xiv, 31.
[1426] See p. 510, _infra_.
[1427] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, pp. 99, 116, 126.
[1428] _Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_, xxvi, 1870, p. 198;
_Archaeologia_, liii, 1892, pp. 247-8. Silver coins of two values
have been found in Sussex (J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, pp.
109-10).
[1429] _Ib._, p. 44.
[1430] _Ib._, pp. 106, 131, 148, 361, 379-80; _Numism. Chron._, 3rd
ser., xvi, 1896, pp. 183-4.
[1431] A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 240-1.
[1432] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, pp. 246-7, 291.
[1433] See _Vict. Hist. of ... Northampton_, i, 161.
[1434] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, p. 215.
[1435] _Ib._, p. 38.
[1436] _Ib._, p. 406.
[1437] _Ib._, p. 131.
[1438] _Ib._, pp. 40, 129; Suppl., pp. 433, 549, map facing p. viii,
and indices of both vols.
[1439] _Ib._, p. 41.
[1440] See pp. 250-1, _supra_.
[1441] 22, 7 (9). Sir J. Evans (_Coins_, &c., p. 36) says that Solinus
made the statement quoted in the text about the Silures of South Wales;
but he speaks of the inhabitants of the island of Silura, which, he
says, is separated from the country of the Dumnonii (Cornwall) by a
stormy strait (_Siluram insulam ab ora quam gens Brittana Dumnonii
tenent turbidum fretum distinguit_). Mommsen, in his edition of
Solinus (p. 113), remarks that as there is no island called Silura, we
must either accept the reading of the ‘interpolated’ MSS., _insulae
Sillinae_ (Scilly islands), or assume that Solinus based his statement
upon a careless perusal of the passage in which Pliny (_Nat. Hist._,
iv, 16 [30], § 103) mentions the Silures (_super eam_ [Britanniam]
_haec_ [Hibernia] _sita abest brevissimo transitu a Silurum gente
xxx_). Considering what Solinus says about the Dumnonii, I would adopt
the former alternative.
[1442] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, pp. 39, 140-1; Suppl., p.
488 and map facing p. viii.
[1443] J. Rhys, _Celtic Britain_, 3rd ed., 1904, pp. 29, 62. Professor
Rhys (_ib._, pp. 40-1) remarks further that on coins of the Parisi
‘one Volisios styles himself sometimes Domnocoveros and sometimes
Domnoveros, which may possibly have meant the guardian of the state,
or the man of the people. At any rate ... the same term occurs on a
coin of Dumnorix, the Æduan, whose great popularity with the common
people Caesar dwells upon more than once.... On another of these
northern coins the person who issued it gives himself a title, which,
if correctly read Senotigirnios, would literally mean the old lord or
monarch, whatever the exact official signification of that may have
been among the Parisi. Unfortunately, the relation of these two kinds
of coins to one another in point of time is not known; should they
turn out to be of the same date, they might be taken to prove the
state to have been divided into two parties, the one clinging to the
representative of a dynasty, and the other rallying round one who gave
himself out as the friend of the people.’
The professor’s ‘proof’, resting as it does upon possibilities and
uncertainties, is hardly conclusive. Moreover the reading DOMNOVEROS
does not occur at all, and must be replaced by DVMNOVELLAVNOS (J.
Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, Suppl., p. 591)--the same name as
that of the prince who sought the aid of Augustus (p. 363, _infra_);
while the reading SENOTIGIRNIOS is hopelessly uncertain (J. Evans,
_Coins_, &c., pp. 405, 410-1). The term which occurs on the coins
of Dumnorix (assuming that Dumnorix and Dubnorex are identical) is
DVBNOCOV (E. Muret and M. A. Chabouillet, _Cat. des monnaies gaul. de
la Bibl. Nat._, 1889, Nos. 5026-48).
It is impossible to decide whether the coins to which Professor Rhys
alludes belong to the Parisi or to the Brigantes (J. Evans, _Coins_,
&c., Suppl., p. 589).
[1444] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, p. 141; Suppl., p. 488.
[1445] According to Xiphilinus, the continuator and epitomator of Dion
Cassius (lxxvi, 12, § 2), the Caledonians had democratic government
(δημοκρατοῦνται δὲ ὡς πλήθει): but Dion wrote in the third century;
and he also says (_ib._, § 1) that they did not till the soil, which,
considering that bronze sickles have been found in Perthshire,
Aberdeenshire, and Sutherlandshire (J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_,
pp. 199-200), and that ancient Scottish querns are numerous (_Anc.
Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 259), is hardly credible.
[1446] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, pp. 223-4.
[1447] _Ib._, pp. 223-6, 239-40.
[1448] _Ib._, pp. 222-3.
[1449] _Ib._, pp. 200, 216, 226, 238-9, 274; _Vict. Hist. of ...
Northampton_, i, 154.
[1450] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, pp. 200, 226, 279-80.
[1451] _Hist. Brit._, iv, 11. Cf. J. Evans, _Coins_, &c., pp. 288-9.
[1452] _Ib._, pp. 289-90; Suppl., pp. 479, 565.
[1453] J. Evans, _Coins_, &c., p. 283. See p. 369, n. 3, _infra_.
[1454] _Ib._, pp. 200-2, 226, 287, 291.
[1455] _Ib._, pp. 226, 287-9.
[1456] _Ib._, pp. 137-8. Sir John Evans is mistaken in identifying the
Dobuni with the Boduni, whom Aulus Plautius subdued (Dion Cassius,
lx, 20, § 2), and who were certainly a south-eastern tribe. See Th.
Mommsen, _Provinces_, i, 175, n. 1 (_Röm. Gesch._, v, 1885, p. 160,
n. 1) and F. Haverfield (R. L. Poole’s _Hist. Atlas of Mod. Europe_,
xv,--‘Roman Britain’).
[1457] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, p. 287.
[1458] _C. Caligula_, 44.
[1459] _Res gestae divi Augusti_ ed. Th. Mommsen, 1883.
[1460] _Ib._ p. 139.
[1461] J. Evans, _Coins_, &c., pp. 200-2; Suppl, p. 527. According to
Mommsen (_Provinces_, i, 171 [_Röm. Gesch._, v, 156]), Dubnovellaunus
was ‘probably the successor of the prince of the Trinovantes confirmed
by Caesar’. The only ground for this conjecture is that Dubnovellaunus
appears to have had temporary dominion over the country of the
Trinovantes, which had previously been annexed by Tasciovanus. But the
fragmentary numismatic evidence which is all that we have to go upon
seems to show that Dubnovellaunus was originally King of Kent.
[1462] Gold coins have been found, struck by a king named Addedomaros,
which appear to show that he began to reign earlier than Cunobeline,
and that his dominions were in the eastern counties, their centre
being Essex; but there is no evidence for defining his relations with
Cunobeline or Dubnovellaunus (_Numism. Chron._, 4th ser., ii, 1902, pp.
12, 16).
[1463] ‘primas tres’ [litteras], says Mommsen, ‘in Latino exemplo
TIM fuisse Chishullius auctor est, qui unus eas servavit, in Graecis
non superest nisi prima T. Comparavit Evansius (l. c. p. 159) nummos
inscriptos _Tinc... Commi f(ilius)_ repertos praesertim in regione
Sussex, potestque fortasse defendi in lapide Ancyrano superfuisse TIN
et postremam litteram fractam errore pro M acceptam esse.’
[1464] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, Suppl., pp. 499, 515. In
his earlier volume (pp. 159-60) Sir John Evans remarks that ‘possibly
it is his [Tincommius’s] name which is preserved in the form of TIM, in
company with that of Dubnovellaunus, in the inscription at Ancyra....
I should, however,’ he adds, ‘regard Tinc[ommius] as belonging to a
rather earlier period than Dubnovellaunus, though both must have been
contemporaries of Augustus,’ &c.
[1465] _Ib._, pp. 153-4.
[1466] Huius opera Commii, ut antea demonstravimus, fideli atque utili
superioribus annis erat usus in Britannia Caesar; pro quibus meritis
civitatem eius immunem esse iusserat, iura legesque reddiderat atque
ipsi Morinos attribuerat. Tanta tamen universae Galliae consensio fuit
libertatis vindicandae et pristinae belli laudis recuperandae ut neque
beneficiis neque amicitiae memoria moverentur omnesque et animo et
opibus in id bellum incumberent. _B. G._, vii, 76, §§ 1-2.
[1467] J. Rhys, _Celtic Britain_, 1904, pp. 30-1.
[1468] J. Evans, _Coins_, &c., p. 156. Cf. pp. 83, 157-8; Suppl., p.
499; and _Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_, xxvi, 1870, p. 196.
[1469] J. Evans, _Coins_, &c., pp. 154-5.
[1470] _Ib._, pp. 153, 155-6.
[1471] _Ib._, p. 155.
[1472] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, pp. 155, 158, 171;
Suppl., p. 521.
[1473] J. Evans, _Coins_, &c., pp. 170-2; Suppl., pp. 508-9.
[1474] _Ib._, pp. 523-4. Is it permissible to suppose that Verica may
have ruled the Gallic, and Eppillus the British Atrebates?
[1475] See J. Evans, _Coins_, &c., pp. 159, 172.
[1476] _Ib._, p. 172.
[1477] _Ib._, pp. 172-3, 183.
[1478] See p. 363, _supra_.
[1479] J. Evans, _Coins_, &c., p. 161 and pl. I, no. 12.
[1480] _Ib._, p. 194 and pl. III, no. 14.
[1481] As far as I know, I am alone responsible for the conjecture
which I have made in the text.
[1482] Dion Cassius, xlix, 38, § 2.
[1483] _Georg._, i, 30.
[1484] _Carm._, i, 35, 29.
[1485] _Ib._, iii. 5, 2-4.
[1486] Dion Cassius, liii, 22, § 5; 25, § 2.
[1487] Professor Rhys (_Celtic Britain_, 1904, p. 32), apparently
forgetting the dates (which I have given in the text) of Augustus’s
preparations for invading Britain, suggests that ‘it may be that it was
the representations of the [fugitive British princes] ... that led him
thereto.’
[1488] ii, 5, § 8; iv, 5, § 3.
[1489] _Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, p. 384.
[1490] Velleius Paterculus, ii, 110, § 5.
[1491] _Archaeologia_, liv, 1895, pp. 489-94.
[1492] xi, 53.
[1493] J. Evans, _Coins_, &c., pp. 151, 156.
[1494] See J. Rhys, _Celtic Britain_, 1904, pp. 25-6.
[1495] νυνὶ μέντοι τῶν δυναστῶν τινες τῶν αὐτόθι πρεσβεύσεσι καὶ
θεραπείαις κατασκευσάμενοι τὴν πρὸς Καίσαρα τὸν Σεβαστὸν φιλίαν,
ἀναθήματά τε ἀνέθηκαν ἐν τῷ Καπετωλίῳ, καὶ οἰκείαν σχεδόν τι
παρεσκεύασαν τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ὅλην τὴν νῆσον (_Geogr._, iv, 5, § 3).
[1496] J. Evans, _Coins_, &c., pp. 226, 289-90. Sir John observes that
Jupiter Ammon, Hercules, Apollo, Diana, Cybele, and other deities are
figured on silver and copper coins of Cunobeline, which proves ‘how
completely Roman mythology had taken root ... unless we are to suppose
that the types were ... left to the mere fancies of the engravers’, who
either were Roman or had been trained in Roman workshops.
[1497] _Hist. Brit._, iv, 11.
[1498] Tacitus, _Ann._, ii, 24.
[1499] See Mommsen’s _Provinces_, i, 173-4 (_Röm. Gesch._, v, 157-8).
[1500] Sir J. Evans (_Coins_, &c., pp. 208-9) gives good reasons for
not identifying Adminius with the Amminus whose name appears on coins.
Cf. J. Rhys, _Celtic Britain_, 1904, pp. 34, 280.
[1501] Suetonius, _C. Caligula_, 44. Cf. J. Evans, _Coins_, &c., p. 285.
[1502] _Ib._, pp. 286-7. See also Tacitus, _Ann._, xii, 35.
[1503] See p. 330, _supra_.
[1504] This is the theory of Professor Rhys (_Celtic Britain_, 1904,
pp. 36-8) and apparently also of Sir John Evans (_Coins of the Anc.
Britons_,--Suppl., pp. 489-93, with which cf. p. 584 and pp. 358,
366-7, 381-5, 387-9 of the earlier volume); but it will not bear
examination. Bericus was one of the fugitives whose retention at Rome
was resented by the two sons of Cunobeline who remained in Britain. It
is admitted, or rather maintained, by Professor Rhys that the Iceni
were hostile to the dynasty of Cunobeline. It would seem therefore that
if, as the professor suggests, Antedrigus was forced to flee from the
Iceni when they joined the Romans, he belonged to a party among the
Iceni which was not opposed to the sons of Cunobeline and was perhaps
even in sympathy with them. But if he had prevailed over Bericus and
forced him to flee, his party was evidently the stronger. Why then
should he have been forced to quit the Icenian territory? Are we to
assume that the anti-Catuvellaunian party among the Iceni, to which
Bericus _ex hypothesi_ belonged, was originally the weaker, but on
the return of Bericus suddenly became the stronger? May we not rather
suppose that Bericus was one of the sons of Cunobeline and was for some
reason at variance with his brothers, Caratacus and Togodumnus; that
the Iceni, with whom he was in sympathy, were for the most part or as
a whole opposed to them; and that Antedrigus was not the leader of a
faction but the king of the Iceni, who, like Gallic kings mentioned by
Caesar, was unpopular with his nobles and his subjects generally, and
was by them forced to flee?
[1505] Dion Cassius, lx, 19, § 1.
[1506] Suetonius, _Claudius_, 17.
[1507] See _Vict. Hist. of ... Norfolk_, i, 284-5. Professor Haverfield
(R. L. Poole’s _Hist. Atlas of Mod. Europe_, xv,--‘Roman Britain’)
thinks that Claudius’s pretext, as stated by Dion Cassius--the appeal
of Bericus--‘may well be the real reason for the undertaking’. Mommsen
(_Provinces_, i, 174, n. 1 [_Röm. Gesch._, v, 1885, p. 158, n. 1]) says
‘The war was certainly not waged on account of Bericus (Dio, lx, 19)’.
[1508] F. J. Haverfield, _The Romanization of Roman Britain_, pp. 9-12.
[1509] _Ib._, pp. 14-5; _Vict. Hist. of ... Northampton_, i, 159-62.
[1510] _Eng. Hist. Rev._, xi, 1896, pp. 417-30.
[1511] See _Vict. Hist. of ... Hampshire_, i, 268-9, and cf. F. W.
Maitland, _Domesday Book and Beyond_, 1897, pp. 222, 327-40.
[1512] A few years ago Professor Macalister (_Journ. Anthr. Inst._,
xxiii, 1894, pp. 407-8) propounded a set of questions which, he
suggested, might be answered by the help of an ‘ethnographic
census’:--‘Have we’, he asked, ‘any representatives of the pre-Celtic
inhabitants? ... if so, are such people of a pre-Aryan stock, and are
they of the same type as the long-headed people in the long barrows?
... Are these the Silures? ... Were the Celtic immigrants homogeneous?
... What relation subsisted between the Cymric and Gaidhelic-speaking
peoples?’ &c. It will be apparent to any one who reads this article
that most of these questions can be answered without the aid of
an ‘ethnographic census’; and that, if they could not be answered
independently, such aid would be insufficient unless it could be
supplemented by new archaeological and linguistic information. The
unofficial census which has been carried out by Dr. Beddoe, M. H.
Muffang, Sir William Turner, and, perhaps in consequence of Professor
Macalister’s suggestion, by Dr. C. R. Browne, Messrs. Gray and
Tocher, and other anthropologists, is of course incomplete; but it
may be doubted whether the evidence which they have collected would
be seriously modified by further investigation. When Dr. Collignon
undertook a similar informal census in France, he compared in each
department the mean cephalic index of the whole number of the heads
which he had measured with that of the ten which he had measured first;
and in every instance the difference was less than 1 per cent. (Rice
Holmes, _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, p. 320).
[1513] _Mém. d’anthr._, iv, 1883, p. 243.
[1514] Professor W. Z. Ripley thinks that the difference is nearer
1·5 than 2 (_L’Anthr._, vii, 1896, pp. 516-9); while Mr. Gray (_Man_,
ii, 1902, No. 41, pp. 50-1) regards the method of subtracting 2 as
‘illogical’, and would subtract 8 mm. from the breadth and 10 mm. from
the length.
Certain minute differences between Broca’s system of measuring the
skull, which is followed everywhere except in Germany, and that adopted
by the German anthropologist, von Ihering, are lucidly explained by
Otto Ammon (_L’Anthr._, vii, 1896, pp. 676-82) and Professor Ripley
(_The Races of Europe_, 1900, p. 593), but may, for the purpose of the
present inquiry, be safely disregarded.
[1515] _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, pp. 249-50.
[1516] For instance, Prof. Ripley (_The Races of Europe_, p. 37),
Dr. Beddoe (_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxx, 1900, No. 93), Sir W. Turner
(_Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh_, xl, part iii, 1903, pp. 547-614), and
Prof. Symington (_Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1903, p. 796).
See also _L’Anthr._, x, 1899, pp. 105-6, and _Journ. Anthr. Inst._,
xxxiv, 1904, pp. 181-206.
[1517] See Prof. C. S. Myers’s article (_ib._, xxxiii, 1903, pp.
36-40) and _Man_, iii, 1903, No. 13, pp. 28-32. I confess that I do
not believe that for the present inquiry any valuable result would
be attained by revising, on what are called ‘biometric’ lines, the
craniological work which has already been done for ancient Britain. See
_Nature_, Aug. 30, 1906, p. 458, and _Biometrika passim_.
[1518] _The Mediterranean Race_, 1901, p. 102. See also _L’Anthr._, x,
1899, pp. 105-6; _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1901, p. 778;
_Man_, ii, 1902, No. 41, p. 50; and _Nature_, Aug. 30, 1906, p. 458.
[1519] _The Mediterranean Race_, p. 104.
[1520] _Ib._, p. 195.
[1521] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., iii. 1864-7, p. 284. Cf. G.
Rolleston (_Brit. Barrows_, p. 646, n. 1).
[1522] For instance, on pages 136, 138, 143, 160-2, 189-92, and 238.
For evidence that ‘the mesaticephals’, Sergi’s opinion notwithstanding,
are the result of intermarriage between ‘dolichocephals’ and
‘brachycephals’, see _Rev. mensuelle de l’École d’anthr._, iv, 1894, p.
399; v, 1895, p. 413.
[1523] _The Mediterranean Race_, pp. 199-200. Professor Rolleston
(_Brit. Barrows_, 1877, p. 568) so far supports Sergi’s view that he
regards a skull as brachycephalic, even though its index be less than
80, if it has what he regards as the distinguishing characteristic
of brachycephaly, which he proceeds to explain in terms that are too
technical for the general reader. Ethnological students will remember
the passage.
[1524] Even Sergi, as Mr. Myers observes (_Journ. Anthr. Inst._,
xxxiii, 1903, p. 37), ‘shows signs of yielding the isolated position
which he originally took up as to the utter worthlessness of
indices.’ He has recently affirmed (_Archiv für Anthr._, N. F.,
iii, 1904, p. 120) that the long and the short types of European
skulls are specifically different,--that the ‘Eurafrican’ species
is dolichocephalic and the ‘Eurasiatic’ brachycephalic. See also
_L’Anthr._, xiv, 1903, pp. 587-8.
[1525] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxiii, 1903, pp. 38, 40.
[1526] _The Mediterranean Race_, p. 105.
[1527] _Brit. Barrows_, p. 568.
[1528] See A. de Quatrefages and E. T. Hamy, _Crania Ethnica_, 1876-82,
pl. lv, and _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, i, 1865, p. 150.
[1529] _Brit. Barrows_, p. 621. For some valuable remarks on the
permanence of cranial types notwithstanding changes of environment, see
Mr. J. L. Myres’s paper in _Geogr. Journal_, xxviii, 1906, p. 559, with
which cf. pp. 555-6.
[1530] See my _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, p. 246, n. 1.
[1531] A. H. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, ii, 1888,
pp. 205-6. See also Dr. Beddoe’s remarks in _Journ. Anthr. Inst._,
xvii, 1888, pp. 202-9.
[1532] I say ‘for our purpose’ because of many of the skeletons
with which we are here concerned the only relevant measurement that
exists is that of the thigh-bone. Dr. Garson (_Journ. Anthr. Inst._,
xxii, 1893, p. 9) thinks that the ‘most reliable estimate of stature
is obtained from the length of the femur and tibia added together’
according to the formula (Femur + Tibia x 100) / 49·4
[1533] _Ib._, xvii, 1888, p. 204. Dr. Beddoe’s arguments are very
strong; and his method appears to me better, on the whole, than that
of Dr. Topinard, expressed by the formula (Femur x 100) / 27·1 (_ib._,
xxii, 1893, p. 9), or than that of M. Rollet (_ib._, p. 19, note),
expressed by the formula (Femur x 100) / 27·3. So far as I know, the
most exhaustive discussion of the question is that of M. L. Manouvrier
(_Mém. de la Soc. d’anthr._, 2^e sér., iv, 1892, pp. 347-402), who
points out defects in the methods of Dr. Beddoe and MM. Topinard and
Rollet; but although he has perhaps shown how greater accuracy can be
achieved, the more or less approximate results that have been already
obtained are sufficient for our purpose: we should not be in a better
position for solving the problems of the ethnology of Ancient Britain
even if the Britons whose skeletons have been preserved had been
measured in their lifetime, and the measurements recorded.
[Since the foregoing note was written I have read a most interesting
paper by Dr. Beddoe (_Journ. Roy. Inst. Cornwall_, xv, 1902, pp.
161-78), which confirms my conviction that his is the best method
of measurement, although he confesses (p. 165) that it ‘probably
errs by excess in the higher statures’. Remarking (p. 163) that
prehistoric bones ‘have lost much of their original substance, and
are probably from 1 to 3 millimetres short of their original length’,
he says, ‘Manouvrier does not seem to have made any provision for
this reduction; and I apprehend that his computed statures must on an
average be a little too low’. See Addenda.]
[1534] See pp. 25-30, _supra_.
[1535] See p. 35, _supra_.
[1536] _Proc. Philosoph. Soc. Glasgow_, xxx, 1899, pp. 30-8.
[1537] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxvi, 1902, p. 42.
[1538] _Archaeol. Journal_, liii, 1896, pp. 217, 221. See also _Quart.
Journ. Geol. Soc._, li, 1895, pp. 505-27, and especially 516 and 526.
[1539] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xiv, 1885, pp. 51-5. Cf. Sir J. Evans,
_Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 542, 656, 703.
[1540] See p. 33, _supra_.
[1541] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 607.
[1542] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xiv, 1885, p. 51, pl. iv-vi; _Nature_,
Nov. 15, 1894, p. 68. A skeleton of palaeolithic age was found two
years ago near Luton in Bedfordshire, but has not been preserved
(_Man_, vi, 1906, No. 6, pp. 10-1).
[1543] _Nature_, Nov. 22, 1894, pp. 90-1; Ph. Salmon, _L’Age de la
Pierre_, 1889, p. 62; J. Deniker, _The Races of Man_, 1900, pp. 310-2.
[1544] The reader will remember that the age of the Neanderthal skull
is uncertain. See p. 34, _supra_. The _norma verticalis_ of the Galley
Hill skull is different from that of ‘the continental forms’ (_Quart.
Journ. Geol. Soc._, li, 1895, p. 526); and the profile is not brutal.
[1545] _Nature_, Nov. 22, 1894, p. 90.
[1546] Der Neanderthalschädel (_Bonner Jahrbücher_, Heft 106, 1901,
pp. 1-72). See also _Globus_, lxxx, 1901, pp. 217-22; lxxxi, 1902, pp.
165-74; the notices of Schwalbe’s article in _Man_, ii, 1902, No. 129,
pp. 186-9; and _L’Anthr._, xiii, 1902, pp. 356-8, xvii, 1906, pp. 67-72.
[1547] Mr. J. Gray (_Man_, iv, 1904, No. 17, pp. 28-9) summarizes
Schwalbe’s most recent views (_Die Vorgeschichte des Menschen_).
[1548] Professor Johnson Symington (_Report of ... the Brit.
Association_, 1903, p. 798) holds that Schwalbe ‘has not sufficiently
recognised the significance of the large cranial capacity of the
Neanderthal skull ... or made sufficient allowance for the great
variations in form which skulls undoubtedly human may present’; and
he affirms that the Neanderthal skull ‘was capable of lodging a brain
fully equal in volume to that of many existing savage races’.
[1549] See p. 40, _supra_.
[1550] _L’Anthr._, xvi, 1905, pp. 17-8.
[1551] _Ib._, p. 395.
[1552] _Ib._, pp. 396-7.
[1553] See p. 35, _supra_.
[1554] See J. Deniker, _The Races of Man_, pp. 311-2 and fig. 87.
Dr. J. G. Garson (_Nature_, Nov. 22, 1894, pp. 90-1) implies, if I
do not misunderstand him, that the Laugerie-Basse skeletons belonged
to the Neanderthal race. I can only invite the reader to compare the
illustrations of the two types, and refer to Deniker, Philippe Salmon,
and the French anthropologists generally in support of my view. But
when Salmon (_L’Age de la Pierre_, p. 64) remarks that ‘le crâne de
Laugerie-Basse ... présente une forme manifeste de transition entre le
type des premiers temps quaternaires et ceux de Cro-Magnon’ [the oldest
of the French neolithic skulls], I am unable to follow him. See _Geogr.
Journ._ xxviii, 1906, p. 546. The known skulls of Neanderthal type do
not belong to ‘les premiers temps quaternaires’, and the age of the
Neanderthal skull is unknown. See p. 34, _supra_.
[1555] See p. 35, _supra_.
[1556] I find that Sir John Evans (_Report of ... the Brit.
Association_, 1897 [1899], p. 12) has argued in the same sense.
[1557] _L’Anthr._, xvii, 1906, p. 292.
[1558] _Ib._, and p. 111.
[1559] _Ib._, pp. 110, 292, 297. M. Verneau holds that the skeletons
of Laugerie-Basse and Chancelade are the ‘arrière-petits-fils’ of this
inhabitant of the Mentone cave.
[1560] _Ib._, p. 299.
[1561] _L’Anthr._, xvii, 1906, pp. 292-3. Cf. vol. xvi, 1905, pp.
503-6. M. E. Piette (_Bull. et mém. de la Soc. d’anthr._, 5^e sér.,
iii, 1902, pp. 773-4), if I do not misunderstand him, attributes
negroid characters to the Neanderthal race.
[1562] _L’Anthr._, xvii, 1906, pp. 308-9. It has been maintained
that another--the so-called steatopygous--race existed in Gaul in
late palaeolithic times. If any reader does not know the meaning of
‘steatopygous’, let him use his dictionary, and he will pardon me for
not having translated the word into plain English. The existence of
this people is inferred from the discovery of certain ‘statuettes’ at
Brassempouy in the department of the Landes (_L’Anthr._, vi, 1895,
pp. 129-51) and near Mentone. I have not seen them; but when I saw
the woodcut of one which was selected for illustration (_Bull. et
mém. de la Soc. d’anthr._, 5^e sér., iii, 1902, p. 775, fig. 4), it
seemed to me that the carving was so villainous that no scientific
conclusion could be drawn from it; and I am glad to find (p. 778) that
this was the opinion of M. Manouvrier. M. Piette, however, assures
us (_L’Anthr._, vi, 1895, p. 143) that the ‘Venus of Brassempouy’
is ‘l’œuvre d’art la plus parfaite qui soit sortie des mains des
sculpteurs éburnéens’. Anyhow, though it would not be difficult for a
sculptor to make statuettes of steatopygous individuals in the England
of to-day, there is no evidence that the ‘race’ in question, if it
existed in palaeolithic Gaul, ever penetrated into this country.
[1563] _Early Man in Britain_, p. 207.
[1564] _Ib._, pp. 230, 243.
[1565] _Ib._, pp. 204-5.
[1566] _Ib._, p. 111, fig. 24.
[1567] See p. 435, _infra_.
[1568] _Early Man in Britain_, pp. 230-1.
[1569] _Ib._, pp. 202-3.
[1570] See p. 40, _supra_.
[1571] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 475, 641-3.
[1572] _Early Man in Britain_, p. 230.
[1573] _Ib._, and p. 243.
[1574] _Early Man in Britain_, p. 230.
[1575] _Ib._ p. 243.
[1576] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, pp. 475, 499-500,
522, 641; _Guide to the Ant. of the Stone Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 62.
[1577] _Nature_, Nov. 22, 1894, p. 90.
[1578] _The Races of Britain_, 1885, pp. 8-9.
[1579] _Crania Ethnica_, pp. 28-9.
[1580] See _Quart. Journ. of Science_, 1864, p. 96; _Mem. Anthr. Soc._,
i, 1865, pp. 288-90; _Anthr. Review_, iii, 1865, pp. 372-3; S. Laing,
_Prehist. Remains of Caithness_, pp. 114, 125, and fig. 44-7, 60-61;
Worthington Smith, _Man, the Primeval Savage_, pp. 37-9; J. Deniker,
_The Races of Man_, p. 312; and _Journal of Anatomy and Physiology_,
xxxix, 1905, pp. 423-4. Dr. Wright (_Ib._, xxxviii, 1904, p. 120) has
described two skulls of Chancelade type, found in a round barrow near
Garton-on-the-Wolds of the late Stone Age or Early Bronze Age.
[1581] J. Deniker, _The Races of Man_, p. 312, n. 1; _Scottish Review_,
xx, 1892, pp. 148, 152-3; _Proc. Geologists’ Association_, xv, 1899, p.
261; _Nature_, March 7, 1901, p. 457.
[1582] See p. 59, _supra_.
[1583] _Ethnology_, 1896, p. 113.
[1584] See pp. 19-22, 59-60, 62, _supra_.
[1585] _Trans. Internal. Congr. Prehist. Arch._, 1868 (1869), p. 278.
Mr. F. C. J. Spurrell indeed affirms (_Proc. Geologists’ Association_,
xi, 1891, pp. 226-7) that remains of some of the extinct mammals,
including the elephant, ‘are found high up in the’ alluvium, and that
mammoths’ teeth, not ‘derived’, have frequently been met with in peat
in the valley of the Thames.
[1586] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxiii, 1894, p. 246.
[1587] _Ib._
[1588] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxiii, 1894, p. 246.
[1589] _Ib._, p. 248.
[1590] Even this, however, is not absolutely certain. See p. 62,
_supra_.
[1591] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxiii, 1894, p. 250.
[1592] _Ib._, p. 255. Cf. A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne
Chase_, iv, 10 (pref.), note.
[1593] See Mr. W. J. Knowles’s valuable article in _Journ. Roy. Soc.
Ant. Ireland_, 5th ser., vii, 1897, pp. 1-18.
[1594] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxii, 1893, p. 98. See pl. iii and iv,
facing p. 98. Mr. F. C. J. Spurrell (_Proc. Geologists’ Association_,
xi, 1891, pp. 225-6, note) and Mr. Worthington Smith (_Man, the
Primeval Savage_, p. 299) also regard certain British implements as
mesolithic; and Mr. Spurrell (_op. cit._, p. 226) gives reasons for
believing that the Tilbury skull belonged to a period of transition.
[1595] _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 501.
[1596] To quote Mr. Allen Brown (_Journ. Anthr. Inst_., xxii, 1893,
p. 93), ‘Sir J. Evans says, “It is almost demonstrable that some of
the chipped celts which have hitherto been classed as Neolithic must
be among the earliest of the Neolithic implements,” and “must in all
probability date back to a very distant period”. It is to these forms,
which appear to be of transition age, that I would apply the term
Mesolithic.... At present some flint implements, which from their form
would be ranged under one of the later Palaeolithic groups by the
French geologists, would be included in the ... Neolithic in England.’
Mr. Brown’s quotation from Sir John Evans (_Anc. Stone Implements_, pp.
85-6) is substantially but not verbally accurate.
[1597] _Cave Hunting_, pp. 353-9; _Early Man in Britain_, pp. 233-42.
[1598] See A. Lang, _Custom and Myth_, 1885, p. 310.
[1599] See p. 49, _supra_.
[1600] See _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xiv, 1885, pp. 387-8; _L’Anthr._,
xvi, 1905, pp. 707-9; xvii, 1906, pp. 180-2.
[1601] _Cave Hunting_, p. 243.
[1602] _Vict. Hist. of ... Somerset_, i, 179.
[1603] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxiii, 1894, p. 257.
[1604] _L’Anthr._, vii, 1896, pp. 1-17, 388-9; R. Munro, _Prehist.
Problems_, pp. 66-81; _Archaeol. Journal_, lv, 1898, pp. 277-84;
_Athenaeum_, Jan. 14, 1899, p. 53; _Rev. de l’École d’anthr._, ix,
1899, p. 275, xiv, 1904, pp. 160, 378; _Bull. et mém. de la Soc.
d’anthr._, 5^e sér., v, 1904, p. 614; _Association franç. pour
l’avancement des sc._, 33^e sess., 1904 (1905), p. 1035.
[1605] See p. 61, _supra_. Dr. A. J. Evans, who in 1893 was ‘so
overpowered by the vision of the yawning hiatus’ between the
Palaeolithic and the Neolithic Age that he regarded the skeletons of
the Baoussé Roussé caves as neolithic, has of course since recanted
(_Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1896, p. 908).
[1606] _Celtic Folk-Lore_, 1901, pp. 675-6.
[1607] _Geogr._, ii, 3, § 11.
[1608] _Celtic Folk Lore_, pp. 679-80.
[1609] _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1900, p. 888.
[1610] _Celtic Folk Lore_, pp. 683-6.
[1611] In _Celtic Britain_, 1884, p. 288, Professor Rhys suggested
that _Coritani_ might be a pre-Celtic word; and as the suggestion
is repeated on p. 293 of the 3rd edition, which has just appeared
(November, 1904), it would seem that he does not set great store by his
intermediate conjecture,--that _Coritani_ is derived from the Celtic
word _cor_.
[1612] Vol. ii, pp. 675-6.
[1613] _The Welsh People_, 1900, and 3rd ed., 1902, pp. 111-2. The
references which Prof. Rhys gives to Ripley’s _Races of Europe_
(pp. 322, 328, 521) do not prove that the country of the Coritani
was inhabited by dwarfs, but only by descendants of the neolithic
population.
[1614] _Fians, Fairies and Picts_, 1893, pp. 44-53; _Antiquary_,
xxxvi, 1900, pp. 53-6, 70-4; _Scottish Notes and Queries_, 2nd ser.,
i, 1900, pp. 137-9; _The Reliquary and Illustrated Archaeologist_, N.
S., vii, 1901, pp. 89-97; _Monthly Review_, Jan., 1901, pp. 131-48;
_Trans. Glasgow Archaeol. Soc._, N. S., iv, 1902, pp. 179-94. See also
_Archaeol. Journal_, x, 1853, pp. 212-23; xx, 1863, pp. 32-7; Sir A.
Mitchell, _The Past in the Present_, 1880, pp. 59-72; _Journ. Brit.
Archaeol. Association_, xxxvii, 1881, pp. 254-61; _Report of ... the
Brit. Association_, 1902 (1903), p. 755; and _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._,
xxxvii, 1903, pp. 352-9.
[1615] _Scottish Notes and Queries_, 2nd ser., i, 1900, pp. 137-8.
‘Mound-dwellings’ and other ‘earth-houses’ are commonly assigned to the
Early Iron Age. See R. Munro, _Prehist. Scotland_, 1899, pp. 345-81.
[1616] He tells us (_Monthly Review_, Jan., 1901, pp. 139-40) that
‘the early Gaelic chroniclers assert that the Gaels were preceded in
Scotland and Ireland by two races’ [the Picts and the Dananns]. ‘Of
them too,’ he adds, ‘it is said that they lived in hidden habitations,
that they also persecuted the newer race.’ In other words, the
‘mound-folk’ who, according to Professor Rhys, were ‘slaves and
drudges’ of the neolithic race, were themselves persecutors of the
Celts. That the Picts, or some of them, lived in ‘hidden habitations’ I
am not concerned to deny; as for the ‘Dananns’ of Irish legend, I would
ask Mr. MacRitchie to read what Professor Rhys (_Celtic Heathendom_, p.
119) has written about them. ‘The earliest Scottish writer, so far as
I am aware,’ continues Mr. MacRitchie (_Monthly Review_, Jan., 1901,
p. 141), ‘who speaks of the Picts as a small race living underground
was a fifteenth-century Bishop of Orkney, Thomas Tulloch.... Tulloch
compiled a Latin account of Orkney (_De Orcadibus Insulis_) ... and
therein he states that the Picts inhabiting those islands ... in the
ninth century were “not much bigger than pigmies in stature”, and that
... they occasionally took refuge “in little houses underground”’. The
work of Tulloch, or rather Tullock, is not mentioned in the catalogue
of the British Museum; and I cannot verify Mr. MacRitchie’s quotation.
But is the statement of a fifteenth-century compiler about the stature
of a people who lived in the ninth century to be taken seriously as
evidence? And if so, what does it prove about the Picts as a whole?
What more does it prove than this,--that in a remote group of islands
there were dwarfish people who were included under the name ‘Picts’,--a
name which of course denoted not a race but a heterogeneous population,
comprising people whom the physical anthropologist would classify under
several heads?
[1617] _Antiquary_, xxxvi, 1900, pp. 54-5.
[1618] Cf. _Archaeol. Journal_, xx, 1863, pp. 33-4. Some
‘mound-dwellings’, the chambers in which were of habitable though very
small size, have, I am of course aware, been proved to have been really
dwellings.
[1619] _Antiquary_, xxxvi, 1900, p. 73. See also _Proc. Soc. Ant.
Scot._, vii, 1870, pp. 519-23.
[1620] I find that this suggestion is supported by Mr. W. C. Mackenzie
(_ib._, xxxix, 1905, p. 257), who truly says that tradition ‘measures
its low-statured people by inches, just as it measures its tall peoples
by yards’.
[1621] See W. C. Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_, ii, 552-3, 687, iii,
801, 805, 810, &c. Canon Greenwell (_Brit. Barrows_, p. 344) tells
us that he has examined many mounds in Westmorland, locally called
‘Giants’ Graves’, without finding anything in them. In regard to the
danger of trusting to legend and folk-lore as evidences of the former
existence of giants and dwarfs, see E. B. Tylor, _Prim. Culture_, i,
1903, pp. 385-8.
[1622] _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, xxvi, 1894, pp. 189-254;
_Die Pygmäen und ihre systematische Stellung innerhalb des
Menschengeschlechts_, 1902, reviewed in _Man_, iii, 1903, No. 62, p.
112. See also _L’Anthr._, xv, 1904, pp. 37-9.
[1623] _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, iii, 1870, p. 51.
[1624] J. Beddoe, _The Races of Britain_, p. 13.
[1625] _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, iii, 1870, p. 41. Mr. J. R. Mortimer
(_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, vi, 1877, p. 333) has, however, affirmed that
‘the few explored long barrows’ of the district between Driffield and
Aldro’ in Yorkshire have yielded skulls whose cephalic indices exceeded
80; and one of the skulls found in the cave of Perthi-Chwareu in
Denbighshire had a cephalic index of 80. See p. 396, n. 17, _infra_.
[1626] _L’Anthr._, v, 1894, p. 522. See also p. 517, n. 1.
[1627] See A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 30
(pref.).
[1628] _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, iii, 1870, p. 59.
[1629] Based on Dr. Humphry’s estimate of the relation of the
thigh-bone to the height, viz. 27·5:100.
[1630] _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, iii, 1870, pp. 71-3. According to the method
recommended by Thurnam in _Crania Britannica_, ii, pl. 42, p. 3, n. ‡,
the average, deduced from the data which he furnishes in _Mem. Anthr.
Soc._, iii, 1870, p. 72, n. 1, would have been exactly 5 feet 8 inches,
or 1 metre 727!
[1631] See p. 379, n. 3, _supra_.
[1632] According to the method of M. Rollet, recommended by Dr. Garson
(see p. 379, n. 3, _supra_), the average height of the fourteen Long
Barrow skeletons the measurements of which are given in Tables I and II
of _Crania Britannica_, would have been just under 5 feet 6⅙ inches, or
about 1 metre 680.
[1633] The skeletons from the Wor Barrow, referred to on p. 111, n. 3,
_supra_, measured by M. Rollet’s method, gave the following results:--5
ft. 9·4 in., 5 ft. 7·2 in., 5 ft. 1·9 in., 5 ft. 0·7 in., 4 ft. 11 in.,
and 4 ft. 10·2 in., or an average of 5ft. 2·4 in. (A. Pitt-Rivers,
_Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, vol. iv, one of unnumbered pages
following p. 122).
[1634] _Nature_, Jan. 13, 1898, p. 258; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxix,
1895, pp. 412-3, 425, 430; xxxvi, 1902, p. 142; _Journ. Anthr. Inst._,
xxxii, 1902, p. 402.
[1635] _Nature_, Nov. 22, 1894, p. 92.
[1636] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxvi, 1902, pp. 147, 154-5, 161. The
cephalic indices of such of these skulls as could be measured were
75·2, 70, and 66·6 (male), and 75 (female).
[1637] _Ib._, xxix, 1895, p. 436; _Nature_, Jan. 13, 1898, p. 258.
[1638] _Nature_, Nov. 22, 1894, p. 92. Mr. C. S. Myers (_Journ. Anthr.
Inst._, xxvi, 1897, p. 123) makes some interesting remarks on ‘the
two [types of Long Barrow skulls] which Dr. Garson has been able to
differentiate’ (cf. _Wilts. Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Mag._, xxiii,
1887, p. 296): but for the purposes of ethnological investigation the
doctor nevertheless places the two types in one group (_Journ. Anthr.
Inst._, xxii, 1893, pp. 13, 15-6).
[1639] _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, i, 1865, p. 154.
[1640] _Crania Britannica_, ii, 1865, pl. 33, p. 6.
[1641] _Ib._, pl. 5.
[1642] _Crania Britannica_, ii, pl. 5, p. 2.
[1643] _Ib._, pl. 24, p. 4
[1644] _Ib._, pl. 50, p. 5.
[1645] See p. 394, _supra_.
[1646] _Brit. Barrows_, p. 654.
[1647] _Crania Britannica_, ii, Table II. See also _Anthr. Rev._, iii,
1865 (_Journ. Anthr. Soc._, p. lxvii).
[1648] The length of its thigh bone was 508 millimetres, or almost 20
inches.
[1649] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxii, 1893, p. 9. See pp. 408-9, _infra_.
[1650] _Archaeologia_, xlii, 1869, p. 222.
[1651] W. Boyd Dawkins, _Cave Hunting_, pp. 155-87.
[1652] _The Geologist_, v, 1862, pp. 213-4.
[1653] _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, N. S., i, 1861, p. 268; S. Laing and T. H.
Huxley, _Prehist. Remains of Caithness_, p. 123, and figs. 48-51.
[1654] W. Boyd Dawkins, _Cave Hunting_, p. 186; W. C. Borlase, _Dolmens
of Ireland_, iii, 944.
[1655] S. Laing and T. H. Huxley, _Prehist. Remains of Caithness_, pp.
83-103.
[1656] _Ib._, p. 120, and figs. 52-5; _Archaeol. Journal_, iii, 1846,
pp. 223-8.
[1657] S. Laing and T. H. Huxley, _Prehist. Remains of Caithness_, pp.
114-5.
[1658] It is very doubtful whether the Caithness skulls were neolithic
(_Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxvi, 1902, p. 160, n. 1).
[1659] See pp. 408-9, _infra_.
[1660] _The Races of Europe_, p. 306.
[1661] _Prehist. Remains of Caithness_, pp. 128-30. Cf. _Mem. Anthr.
Soc._, iii, 1869, p. 63. Huxley argued that these skulls were also
virtually identical with those of the Australian aborigines; but on
another occasion, as we have seen already (p. 377, _supra_), when his
combative instincts were aroused, he affirmed the contrary.
[1662] _Nature_, Nov. 22, 1894, p. 92.
[1663] _Journ. Ethn. Soc._, N. S., ii, 1870, p. 449.
[1664] _Ib._, p. 444. Cf. _Fortnightly Rev._, N. S., xvi, 1874, p. 336;
and W. Boyd Dawkins, _Cave Hunting_, pp. 155, 159, 164, 185, 187.
[1665] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., iii, 1864 7, p. 282.
[1666] _The Races of Britain_, p. 13. See also p. 360.
[1667] _L’Anthr._, v, 1894, pp. 515-6.
[1668] Boyd Dawkins, _Cave Hunting_, p. 171. The figures are 76, 75,
80, 79·7, 74·6, 79·4, 74·3 (Perthi-Chwareu); 77 (Cefn cave); and 76·5
(Tyddyn Bleiddyn).
[1669] _Ib._, pp. 179, 187; _Journ. Ethn. Soc._, N. S., ii, 1870, pp.
444-5, 460.
[1670] W. Boyd Dawkins, _Cave Hunting_, p. 186.
[1671] See the illustrations of the Perthi-Chwareu skulls in _Cave
Hunting_, pp. 168-9.
[1672] No. 7 (figs. 1-4, p. 84 of _Prehist. Remains of Caithness_); no.
2 (figs. 17-20, p. 90); no. 3 (figs. 34-8, p. 98); and no. 5 (figs.
39-43, p. 96).
[1673] No. 8 (figs. 9-12, p. 88); and no. 1 (figs. 25-8, p. 92).
[1674] _Ib._, p. 115.
[1675] See _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxvi, 1902, p. 162.
[1676] _Nature_, Jan. 6, 1898, p. 235; R. Munro, _Prehist. Scotland_,
pp. 58-9, 71. Professor Boyd Dawkins (_Archaeol. Journal_, liv, 1897,
p. 338), speaking of the famous Cro-Magnon skeleton and of the gigantic
skeleton without a skull, the discovery of which in the Paviland cave,
Glamorganshire, was recorded in 1824 by Dean Buckland (_Reliquiae
Diluvianae_, p. 82), says:--‘In this group of remains so widely spread
over Europe, we are on the track of a very early Prehistoric people,
belonging to a tall, long-headed race, without the knowledge of pottery
and without polished axes, if negative evidence be accepted.... They
are probably the advance-guard of the Neolithic migration.... Further
evidence is needed before we can define their precise relation to the
Neolithic culture ordinarily so called.’ Further evidence is also
needed before we can affirm that the Paviland skeleton was neolithic at
all (Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, &c., 1897, p. 487).
[1677] _Trans. Devon. Association_, xxiii, 1891, pp. 119-24.
[1678] _Ib._, facing p. 121.
[1679] _Trans. Devon. Association_, xxiii, 1891, p. 120.
[1680] _Nature_, Nov. 22, 1894, p. 92.
[1681] _Proc. Royal Irish Acad._, 3rd ser., iv, 1896-8, pp. 570-85; vi,
1900-2, pp. 334-5; _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1901, pp.
795-7.
[1682] M. J. Deniker (_The Races of Man_, p. 313) even goes so far
as to say that it is not yet certain whether the Long Barrow race
immigrated from the Continent or were descended from the palaeolithic
inhabitants of Britain!
[1683] This definition may be accepted as true in a general sense,
though it leaves out of account the Celtic inhabitants of the
peninsula, whom Strabo loosely called Iberians; but see my _Caesar’s
Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, pp. 255-62, and cf. _Rev. des études anc._, v,
1903, pp. 383-4.
[1684] _The Mediterranean Race_, pp. 213-21, 225, 230, 244, 249, &c.
[1685] _Agricola_, 11. Silurum colorati vultus, torti plerumque crines,
et posita contra Hispania Iberos veteres traiecisse easque sedes
occupasse fidem faciunt.
[1686] M. d’Arbois de Jubainville formerly pointed out, in support
of Tacitus’s conclusion, that, according to Festus Avienus (_Ora
maritima_, 433), there was a mountain in the Spanish peninsula called
_Silurus_ (_Les premiers habitants de l’Europe_, i, 1889, p. 44). But,
since the origin of the name _Silures_ is unknown, it seems rash to
found an ethnological argument on its resemblance to _Silurus_. In
Mexico there is a river called Tamesi: would M. d’Arbois infer from the
name which Caesar latinized into _Tamesis_ that the people who named
this river were akin to the prehistoric inhabitants of Britain? M.
d’Arbois has since argued that the Silures could not have been Iberian
(_Les Celtes_, p. 30); but his recantation is hardly more reasonable
than his original theory.
[1687] Rice Holmes, _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, p. 480.
[1688] _Nature_, Nov. 22, 1894, p. 92.
[1689] _Crania Britannica_, ii, pl. 59, p. 5, note.
[1690] _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, i, 1865, p. 160.
[1691] _The Races of Britain_, p. 26.
[1692] _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, pp. 270-3.
[1693] _L’Anthr._, v, 1894, pp. 276-87.
[1694] See p. 376, _supra_.
[1695] See _Bull. de la Soc. d’anthr._, 4^e sér., vii, 1896, pp. 666-71.
[1696] See also _Rev. mensuelle de l’École d’anthr._, x, 1900, p. 214.
[1697] _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, p. 271.
[1698] _Ib._, pp. 267-8. Professor Boyd Dawkins (_Early Man in
Britain_, p. 334) argues that ‘the identification of the Neolithic
aborigines with ... the modern Basques, is confirmed by’ the fact
that _aizcora_, the Basque word for an axe, means ‘stone mounted in
a handle’: but how does this tend to establish the identity of the
British neolithic aborigines with the Basques? It only shows that the
ancestors of the Basques used stone tools.
Since I wrote the paragraph to which this note relates I have read M.
G. Hervé’s interesting article ‘La race basque’ (_Rev. mensuelle de
l’École d’anthr._, x, 1900, pp. 213-37), which confirms my conclusions.
He holds (p. 220) that the Spanish Basques represent ‘une race croisée,
à la constitution de laquelle a pris part, en tant que facteur
principal, la _race ibérique_, la vieille race de Baumes-Chaudes’.
‘Il est clair’, he adds (pp. 221-2), ‘que les Hispano-Basques se
différenciant des Gallo-Basques par tous leurs points de ressemblance
avec les Ibères, les Gallo Basques ne peuvent à aucun titre être
rattachés à ces derniers ... les Ibères, en tout cas, n’ont joué qu’un
rôle médiocre dans leur ethnogénie’. On pp. 235-7 M. Hervé offers
certain tentative suggestions as to the origin of the Basques, whose
purest representatives are the French Basques, and whose physical
characters raise them, he considers, ‘sans conteste au rang de
quatrième race européenne’.
[1699] _The Mediterranean Race_, pp. 206-7, 210. See also pp. 159-60,
182, 211-3 218-9, 269, 275.
[1700] _Ib._, p. 212.
[1701] _Ib._, p. 269.
[1702] _Ib._, p. 286.
[1703] See p. 110, _supra_. In France also incineration was common in
the Neolithic Age (_Matériaux pour l’hist. ... de l’homme_, xxii, 1888,
pp. 1-2, 4, 6-7).
[1704] _The Mediterranean Race_, p. 182.
[1705] J. B. Davis and J. T. Thurnam, _Crania Britannica_, ii, pl. 59,
p. 3. See also _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 127, 713-4.
[1706] See Dr. Beddoe’s article in _L’Anthr._, v, 1894, p. 515; _Rev.
mensuelle de l’École d’anthr._, v, 1895, p. 171; Rice Holmes, _Caesar’s
Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, p. 251; and _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxvi,
1902, pp. 161-2. Still, Rolleston points out (_Brit. Barrows_, p. 710)
that ‘the orbital index [the relation between the length and breadth of
the socket of the eye], which does put ... the Caverne de l’Homme Mort
into a position of similarity to skulls such as those of the Tasmanian,
Australian, and Melanesian races, puts the neolithic skulls of British
Barrows into a position of superiority’, &c.
The average height of the people of l’Homme Mort was, according to
M. Rollet, 1 m. 578, or nearly 5 ft. 1-9/10 in.; according to M.
Manouvrier, 1 m. 620, or nearly 5 ft. 2-9/10 in. (_Mém. de la Soc.
d’anthr. de Paris_, 2^e sér., iv, 1892, p. 388). See, however, p. 379,
n. 3, _supra_.
[1707] _Rev. mensuelle de l’École d’anthr._, v, 1895, pp. 163-4. The
cephalic indices of 35 Baumes-Chaudes skulls varied from 64·3 to 76·1.
[1708] _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, i, 1865, p. 160.
[1709] See pp. 393-4, _supra_.
[1710] _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, iii, 1870, pp. 72-3.
[1711] _Ethnology_, 2nd ed., 1896, pp. 135-6.
[1712] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxix, 1899, p. 308.
[1713] _Man_, i, 1901, No. 88, p. 110.
[1714] _Ib._
[1715] _The Mediterranean Race_, p. 70.
[1716] _Man_, i, 1901, No. 88, p. 110. Cf. _Rev. d’anthr._, ii, 1873,
p. 113, and A. Bertrand, _Archéol. celt. et gaul._, 1889, p. 173, _La
religion des Gaulois_, p. 4.
[1717] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxiv, 1895, pp. 316-30; A. H. Keane,
_Ethnology_, 1896, p. 133; E. Cartailhac, _La France préhist._, 1889,
p. 186; W. C. Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_, ii, 476-566, 698-712, iii,
726-55.
[1718] It is remarkable, however, that in Prussia there are no dolmens
east of the Vistula, although stone is as abundant there as in West
Prussia, where there are many. _L’Anthr._, iv, 1893, p. 485.
[1719] _Rev. d’anthr._, ii, 1873, map facing p. 631; A. Bertrand, _La
Gaule avant les Gaulois_, 1891, map facing p. 128.
[1720] _Rev. mensuelle de l’École d’anthr._, xi, 1901, pp. 36-9.
[1721] _Ib._, pp. 36-7, 43.
[1722] It would seem that there was also a dolmen in a round barrow in
Lancashire. See _Vict. Hist. of ... Lancs_, i, 240.
[1723] See p. 66, n. 5, _supra_.
[1724] Of dolmens in the narrower sense of the word (see p. 65,
_supra_) only two, so far as I know, exist in Scotland. See _Proc.
Soc. Ant. Scot._, xix, 1885, p. 373, and W. C. Borlase, _Dolmens of
Ireland_, ii, 424-9, 468.
[1725] _Dict. des sc. anthr._, 1883, p. 1079; E. Cartailhac, _La France
préhist._, 1889, p. 197; B.C. A. Windle, _Remains of the Prehist. Age_,
pp. 195-7; W. C. Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_, ii, 449, 468, 610-2,
632-4, and the maps facing pp. 1, 102, 200, and 305 of vol. i.
[1726] _Ib._, ii, 445, 460, 463, 493, 501, 557, 567-8, 585, 612-3, 634,
670; iii, 723, 962.
[1727] _Ib._, ii, 489-90; iii, 974, n. §.
[1728] _Ib._, ii, 450-1.
[1729] _Ib._, pp. 495-6.
[1730] _Ib._, p. 701.
[1731] _Ib._, iii, 723; A. Bertrand, _Arch. celt. et gaul._, 1889, pp.
139, 141, 177. Cf. the remarks of M. Salomon Reinach _La République
Française_, 26 Sept., 1892.
[1732] W. C. Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_, ii, 661-2; E. Cartailhac,
_La France préhist._, 1889, pp. 246-7.
[1733] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxvi, 1902, p. 164.
[1734] It has been argued that there must have been a particular
dolmen-building race, because certain countries, for instance Austria,
which have been continuously inhabited from palaeolithic times, contain
no dolmens. But this only proves that certain peoples did not build
dolmens.
[1735] _Dict. des sc. anthr._, p. 388.
[1736] _Ib._, pp. 387-8; E. Cartailhac, _La France préhist._, 1889, p.
199.
[1737] W. C. Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_, iii, 714-5. See also Gen.
Faidherbe’s _Collection ... des inscr. numidiques_, 1870, p. 13;
_Matériaux pour l’hist. ... de l’homme_, xxi, 1887, p. 190, pl. vi; and
A. Bertrand, _Archéol. celt. et gaul._, 1889, pp. 167-72.
[1738] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 482, 646, n. 1; _Man_, ii,
1902, No. 41, p. 51. According to Sergi (_The Mediterranean Race_,
pp. 225, 249, 254, 259), the primitive Scandinavian dolichocephali
were only one of the numerous branches of his ubiquitous ‘Eurafrican
species’. He insists that the modern Scandinavian ‘cranial and skeletal
facial forms’ are identical with those of the Mediterranean race; and
the tallness and fairness of the Scandinavians do not in the least
shake his faith. ‘Northern Europe,’ he says (p. 254), ‘has given
origin to the white skin, blond hair, and blue or grey eyes’ of the
Scandinavians. Then why did it not produce the same phenomena among the
Lapps and the ‘Iberians’ of the British Isles? See also _Rev. arch._,
4^e sér., iii, 1904, p. 153. I am of course willing to admit that the
‘Iberian’ and North European races were branches of the same primitive
stock. See p. 434, n. 7, _infra_.
[1739] See _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxvi, 1902, p. 162.
[1740] _Ib._, pp. 163-4.
[1741] _Rev. d’anthr._, ii, 1873, p. 113.
[1742] _Dolmens of Ireland_, ii, 610-2. Cf. _L’Anthr._, iv, 1893, p.
731.
[1743] _Congrès internat. d’anthr. et d’archéol. préhist._, i, 1874
(1876), p. 253; E. Cartailhac, _Les âges préhist. de l’Espagne_, p. 328.
[1744] See _ib._, pp. 144-90, 316, 318, 325; _Crania Ethinica_, pp.
493-4; and _Rev. mensuelle de l’École d’anthr._, v, 1895, pp. 155-81,
184, 407-13, ix, 1899, p. 278.
[1745] M. Salomon Reinach (_L’Anthr._, iv, 1893, pp. 485, 558) has
expressed the opinion that of all European dolmens the most ancient are
those of Northern Germany; but the only reason which he gives, namely,
that this region is on the limit of the last moraines of the northern
ice-sheet, and that the dolmens were constructed of ‘erratic’ rocks,
does not seem worth discussing.
[1746] Professor Zimmer (_Zeitschriftder Savigny-Stiftung für
Rechtsgeschte_, xv, 1894, pp. 217-8), while he denies that we are yet
justified in saying that the language of the pre-Celtic [or, as I
would say (see pp. 428-44, _infra_), the dolichocephalic pre-Celtic]
inhabitants of the British Isles was Iberian, affirms that the
linguistic evidence is sufficient to show that it was non-Aryan.
Similarly Professor Rhys remarked at the meeting of the British
Association in 1900 (_Report_, &c., p. 889) that there was ‘probably
no county in the kingdom that would be too small to supply a dozen
or two [of names of streams] which would baffle the cleverest Aryan
etymologist ... and why? Because they belong in all probability to a
non-Celtic, non-Aryan language.’
[1747] J. Rhys and Brynmor Jones, _The Welsh People_, 1902, pp. 617-41.
[1748] May it not also have been modified, before it was introduced
into Britain, by the non-Aryan language or languages which it
presumably encountered on the Continent?
[1749] _The Welsh People_, 1902, p. 618; _Celtic Review_, i, 1905, p.
279.
[1750] _The Mediterranean Race_, pp. 42-4. Cf. _L’Anthr._, v, 1894, p.
686, and _Man_, ii, 1902, No. 19, p. 28.
[1751] _Fortnightly Rev._, N. S., xvi, 1874, p. 336.
[1752] _Brit. Barrows_, p. 741, note.
[1753] After I had written these words, I was glad to learn that they
had the support of Dr. Arthur Evans, who, speaking of the discoveries
in the Mentone caves, says (_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxii, 1893, p.
301) that ‘it will no longer be allowable to say that these supposed
immigrants from Asia brought with them at their first coming certain
domestic animals, and had already attained a knowledge of the potter’s
art, and of the polishing of stone weapons’. And, as M. Salomon Reinach
has justly remarked (_L’Anthr._, vii, 1896, p. 687), in a criticism
of the address which Dr. Evans delivered in 1896 at the meeting of
the British Association, ‘La race méditerranéenne s’offre d’abord à
nos yeux dans une région [Mentone] d’où elle a pu fort bien gagner
l’Afrique avant les modifications géologiques.’
[1754] _Early Man in Britain_, pp. 296-7.
[1755] _Ib._, p. 302.
[1756] _L’Anthr._, iv, 1893, pp. 551-4; xvi, 1905, p. 187; _La Grande
Encyclopédie_, xiv, 856; _Association franç. pour l’avancement des
sc._, 33^{e} sess^{n}., 1904 (1905), pp. 1034-49.
[1757] Rice Holmes, _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, pp. 257-73.
[1758] See p. 400, _supra_.
[1759] The late Mr. Elton (_Origins of Eng. Hist._, 1890, pp. 149-50)
affirmed that certain customs, of which the couvade was one, had ‘left
distinct traces in the usages which still prevail in the region of the
Pyrenees. But,’ he continued, ‘at present there seems to be no point of
connection between them and anything which was ever observed in this
country’; and he insisted that this ‘should be taken into account by
those who assert the identity of the Iberians with the Britons of the
Silurian type’. I have not asserted that identity in the narrower sense
in which Mr. Elton used the word ‘Iberian’: nevertheless his objection
has no force. The answer to it is, first, that the couvade did survive
in historical times, or leave traces of its former existence, in
Ireland, Scotland, and Yorkshire (pp. 94-5, _supra_); secondly, that
the custom prevails, or has prevailed, among peoples of every continent
except Australia, who could never have influenced one another (_ib._);
and lastly, that it cannot be expected that widely scattered peoples
who originally sprang from one stock should continue to preserve all
the customs of their ancestors.
The other ‘customs’ of which Mr. Elton spoke are not worth mentioning.
He simply affirmed that certain tribes who inhabited the Iberian
peninsula in ancient times had different customs. Naturally. The fact
in no way tends to prove that they did not belong to the same stock.
[1760] Cf. _Rev. mensuelle de l’École d’anthr._, x, 1900, p. 230.
[1761] _Les premiers habitants de l’Europe_, ii, 1894, p. 213.
[1762] Rice Holmes, _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, pp. 276-7. See
also _Rev. arch._, 4^{e} sér., i, 1903, pp. 65-6; _Rev. celt._, xxx,
1904, p. 372; and p. 296, n. 4, _supra_.
[1763] _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, pp. 280-1, 318.
[1764] See pp. 426 and 434, _infra_; A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in
Cranborne Chase_, i, p. xv; _Archaeol. Journal_, lviii, 1901, p. 337;
and _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxvi, 1897, pp. 122-3, xxxiii, 1903, pp.
66-73.
[1765] _Anthr. Rev._, iv, 1866, p. 14; W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_,
pp. 630, 711; J. Beddoe, _The Races of Britain_, ch. v; A. Pitt-Rivers,
_Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, ii, 64; _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxvi,
1897, pp. 88, 113; W. Z. Ripley, _The Races of Europe_, pp. 321-2, 326.
Dr. Beddoe (_op. cit._, p. 270) emphasizes ‘the undoubted fact that the
Gaelic and Iberian races of the west ... are tending to swamp the blond
Teuton of England by a reflux migration’. Cf. his paper in _Journ.
Anthr. Inst._, xxxv, 1905, p. 235, and Addenda, p. 740.
[1766] See, for example, Prof. Boyd Dawkins’s article in _Archaeol.
Cambr._, 5th ser., viii, 1891, p. 72; and cf. p. 129, n. 2, _supra_.
[1767] See pp. 107-8, _supra_.
[1768] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xiii, 1884, pp. 83-4. See also _Anthr.
Rev._, iv, 1866, p. 99.
[1769] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxii, 1893, pp. 11, 15-6, 18.
[1770] _Crania Britannica_, ii, pl. 2, pp. 1-2.
[1771] _Ib._, pl. 3 and 4, p. 1.
[1772] _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 131, 450, 480, note; _Journ. Roy. United
Service Inst._, xiii, 1870, pp. 522-3; Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone
Implements_, 1897, p. 148.
[1773] _The Mediterranean Race_, p. 263.
[1774] See p. 110, _supra_.
[1775] ‘The most tenable hypothesis may be said to be that the Picts
were non-Aryans, whom the first Celtic migrations found already settled
here ... the Picts were the descendants of the Aborigines’ (_The Welsh
People_, 1902, pp. 13-4).
[1776] _Incerti Pan. Constantio Caesari_, c. 11 (XII _Panegyrici
Latini_ recensuit Aemilius Baehrens, 1874).
[1777] See pp. 410, 438, n. 3, _infra_.
[1778] See J. Rhys, _Celtic Britain_, 1904, pp. 215-6. Similarly the
Latins retained _qu_, as in _equus_, while the Greeks, as in ἵππος,
changed it into _p_.
[1779] Rice Holmes, _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, p. 299, note; E.
W. B. Nicholson, _Keltic Researches_, 1904, pp. 6-7.
[1780] _Ib._, pp. 6, 128, 149, 167.
[1781] _Rev. celt._, xi, 1890, p. 377; xx, 1899, pp. 108-9. In
the latest volume of his review (xxvii, 1906, p. 107) M. d’Arbois
reiterates his dissent, asking whether _Britain_, _Thames_, and
_London_ are words of Anglo Saxon origin.
[1782] _Ib._, xxv, 1904, pp. 351-3; xxvii, 1906, pp. 107-8.
[1783] _Celtae and Galli_, 1905. See especially pp. 1-2, 46, 55-64.
Professor Rhys (_ib._, pp. 48-50) somewhat doubtfully regards two other
inscriptions, which have been found near Bourges and near Evreux, as
akin to Goidelic.
[1784] _Keltic Researches_, pp. 116-53.
[1785] _Rev. celt._, xxv, 1904, pp. 351-3; xxvii, 1906, p. 107.
[1786] _Corpus inscr. Lat._, xiii, 2494.
[1787] _Celtae and Galli_, p. 62.
[1788] See pp. 451-2, _infra_.
[1789] _Les premiers habitants de l’Europe_, ii, 1894, pp. 255-82; _Les
Celtes_, pp. 17-9.
[1790] _Keltic Researches_, p. 127.
[1791] _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1900, p. 895.
[1792] _Rev. celt._, xxvii, 1906, pp. 107-8.
[1793] _The Welsh People_, 1902, p. 13. Cf. Zimmer in _Zeitschrift der
Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte_, xv, 1894, pp. 214, 215, n. 1.
[1794] _Ib._, pp. 215-6; J. Rhys, _Celtic Folk-Lore, Welsh and Manx_,
p. 281; _The Welsh People_, 1902, p. 76; H. d’Arbois de Jubainville,
_Principaux auteurs de l’ant. à consulter sur l’hist. des Celtes_, pp.
69-70.
[1795] The forms _Cruithni_ and _Cruithnig_ were also used. See Dr.
Whitley Stokes’s article in A. Bezzenberger’s _Beiträge zur Kunde der
indogermanischen Sprachen_, xviii, 1892, pp. 84-5, and J. Rhys, _Celtic
Britain_, 1904, pp. 241-2.
[1796] _The Welsh People_, 1902, p. 76. Cf. _Scottish Review_, xviii,
1891, pp. 133-8.
[1797] See pp. 459-61, _infra_.
[1798] _Les premiers habitants de l’Europe_, i, 1889, p. 45, n. 2; ii.
1894, pp. 282-3; _Rev. celt._, xiii, 1892, pp. 399-400; _Les Celtes_,
p. 25.
[1799] _Celtic Britain_, 1904, p. 4.
[1800] _Scottish Review_, xviii, 1891, pp. 134-5.
[1801] See pp. 418-9, _infra_. M. d’Arbois’s latest pronouncement
(_Les Druides_, pp. 35-6, n. 5) is that ‘_Cruithne_ est le même mot
que Πριτανία, le nom que prit la Grande-Bretagne avant de s’appeler’
Πρεττανία, &c.
[1802] Prof. Rhys’s suggestion (_The Welsh People_, 1902, p. 114) that
‘the word Dumnonii [which (see p. 447, _infra_) was the name of a
Brythonic tribe] was a collective name of the Goidels of Britain when
the Brythons arrived’ may be taken for what it is worth.
[1803] See p. 234, _supra_.
[1804] p. 239.
[1805] p. 243.
[1806] _Scottish Review_, xviii, 1891, p. 142.
[1807] _Ib._, p. 124.
[1808] pp. 78-9.
[1809] See pp. 499-507, _infra_.
[1810] _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1900, p. 895.
[1811] _The Welsh People_, 1902, pp. 78-9.
[1812] pp. 311-3.
[1813] _Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte_, xv,
1894, pp. 213-4.
[1814] E. Windisch in _Allgemeine Encyklopädie der Wissenschaften_,
&c., 35. Theil, 1884, p. 136; A. Holder, _Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz_,
ii, 993; E. W. B. Nicholson, _Keltic Researches_, p. 5.
[1815] _Cormac’s Glossary_, ed. Whitley Stokes, 1868, p. 40.
[1816] See the remarks of M. d’A. de Jubainville (_Les Celtes_, p. 22),
who regards the _p_ in _Picti_ as a trace of the Belgic invasion, and
Prof. Rhys’s _Celtic Britain_, 1904, pp. 311-2.
[1817] _Keltic Researches_, pp. 32, 147-50.
[1818] _B. G._, v, 14, §§ 4-5.
[1819] See p. 267, _supra_.
[1820] _B. G._, v, 14, § 1.--Ex his omnibus longe sunt humanissimi qui
Cantium incolunt ... neque multum a Gallica differunt consuetudine.
[1821] _Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte_, xv,
1894, pp. 224-5.
[1822] J. Rhys, _The Welsh People_, 1902, pp. 36-7. Cf. _Celtic
Britain_, 1904, pp. 55-6.
[1823] Dr. F. B. Jevons (_Journal of Philology_, xvi, 1888, p. 104),
remarking that ‘the Joint Undivided Family persisted in Sparta long
after it had disappeared in the rest of Greece’, and that ‘Polybius,
misunderstanding the practice, was led to imagine, where brothers lived
on the joint estate, and one alone had a wife, that the wife was common
to all the brothers’, says (_ib._, n. 1) that ‘precisely the same
mistake, due to the same cause ... is made by Caesar when he ascribes
polyandry to the ancient Britons’. M. d’Arbois Jubainville, however
(_Rev. celt._, xxv, 1904, pp. 188-9), referring to _Ancient Laws of
Ireland_ (_Senchus Mor_), ed. W. N. Hancock, i, 122, 1. 19, 126, 1.
4, 142, 1. 30, concludes that ‘en Irlande, à une époque reculée, la
communauté des femmes entre frères a existé d’une façon générale’. The
editor (p. 143) does not share this view.
[1824] pp. 369-80.
[1825] _Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte_, xv,
1894, p. 234.
[1826] _The Welsh People_, 1902, pp. 61-2.
[1827] I quote from the translation of Messrs. Church and Brodribb.
[1828] I find that M. J. Loth (_Annales de Bretagne_, vi, 1890-1, p.
113) has made a suggestion which is substantially the same.
[1829] _The Welsh People_, 1902, p. 14.
[1830] _Ib._, pp. 14-5.
[1831] J. Rhys, _The Welsh People_, 1902, pp. 45-7. Cf. _Proc. Soc.
Ant. Scot._, xxxii, 1898, pp. 324-98, and especially 324-30; also
_Archaeol. Cambr._, 5th ser., viii, 1891, pp. 29-32.
[1832] J. Rhys, _The Welsh People_, pp. 640-1. Professor Jones refers
to A. Hanoteau, _Essai de grammaire de la langue tamachek_, 1860, p. xv.
[1833] _The Welsh People_, 1902, pp. 61-2.
[1834] See p. 422, _infra_.
[1835] _Archaeol. Cambr._, 6th ser., ii, 1902, p. 59. Cf. J. G. Frazer,
_Early Hist. of the Kingship_, pp. 229-46.
[1836] M. d’Arbois de Jubainville (_Rev. celt._, xxii, 1901, p.
122) gives various instances from history to show that the ‘Pictish
succession’ did not imply matriarchy. ‘Julius Caesar,’ he says, ‘chose
as his heir Octavius, his sister’s grandson: was this matriarchy?
Tiberius was the stepson of Augustus: was this matriarchy? When a king
had to be chosen among the Picts, the son of the late king’s sister may
sometimes have been preferred to his own son; but the sister’s son must
often have been the elder and more experienced of the two.’ And so on
(see also vol. xxiii, 1902, p. 359, vol. xxv, 1904, p. 206, and _Rev.
arch._, 4^e sér., v, 1905, p. 447). But the point is that during the
time for which the history of the Picts is known to us a Pictish king
was never once succeeded by his own son. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville’s
arguments are not required for the purpose of demonstrating that the
‘Pictish succession’ does not prove the Picts to have been _the_
representatives of the neolithic aborigines.
[1837] _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1900, p. 895.
[1838] _Ib._, p. 896.
[1839] Mr. Nicholson (_Keltic Researches_, pp. 144, 174) offers one
explanation of _Vipoig_, and Dr. Macbain (W. F. Skene, _The Highlanders
of Scotland_, 1902, pp. 394-5) another.
[1840] _Celtic Britain_, 1884, p. 222. See also p. 153.
[1841] p. 224.
[1842] _Incerti Pan. Constantino Augusto_, c. 7 (published in XII
_Panegyrici Latini_ recensuit Aemilius Baehrens).--Caledonum aliorumque
Pictorum silvas, &c. For the manuscript reading Baehrens, following
Eyssenhardt, needlessly substitutes (Caledonum,) _Pictorum aliorumque_.
[1843] The view, advocated by W. C. Borlase (_Dolmens of Ireland_, iii,
1042-3) and others, that the Caledonians were Germans is hardly worth
discussing. There is absolutely no evidence for it, except the remark
of Tacitus (_Agricola_, 11) that ‘the red hair and large limbs of the
inhabitants of Caledonia indicate a German origin’; and everybody
knows that the physical characters of the Germans and the Celts, as
described by the ancient writers, were virtually identical (see my
_Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, pp. 309-10, and _Rev. mensuelle de
l’École d’anthr._, vii, 1897, pp. 74, 89). It is possible that some of
the Caledonians may have been descended from immigrants who came from
Germany; but this, I need hardly say, would be quite consistent with
the view that they were a Celtic-speaking people.
[1844] _De bello Gothico_, 416-8.--
Venit et extremis legio praetenta Britannis,
Quae Scotto dat frena truci ferroque notatas
Perlegit exanimes Picto moriente figuras.
[1845] iii, 14, § 7.--τὰ δὲ σώματα στίζονται γραφαῖς ποικίλαις καὶ ζῴων
παντοδαπῶν εἰκόσιν· ὅθεν οὐδ’ ἀμφιέννυνται ἵνα μὴ σκέπωσι τοῦ σώματος
τὰς γραφάς.
[1846] M. d’A. de Jubainville (_Rev. celt._, xiii, 1892, p. 401, n. 1)
rejects this derivation.
[1847] Those who are familiar with Professor Rhys’s writings will not
be surprised to find that his notion of the meaning of these words is
unstable. In 1884 he wrote (_Celtic Britain_, p. 240), ‘These words
Cruithni and Prydyn are derived from _cruth_ and _pryd_ respectively,
which mean form’; and he added that ‘Duald MacFirbis, quoted by Todd
in a note on the Irish version of Nennius, p. vi,’ ‘has rightly
explained the former [Cruithni] as meaning a people who painted the
forms (crotha) of beasts, birds, and fishes on their faces, and ...
on the whole of the body. This,’ he observed, ‘agrees well enough
with Claudian’s vivid description of Stilicho’s soldiery, scanning
the figures punctured with iron on the body of the fallen Pict,’ &c.
In 1891 he threw both MacFirbis and Claudian overboard: ‘We are not
warranted,’ he said (_Scottish Review_, xviii, 1891, p. 124), ‘in
supposing that he [Claudian] drew his inspiration from any deeper
source than the popular etymology of the name Pictus, interpreted as
a Latin word.’ He went on to say (p. 131) that the silence of Gildas,
who hated the Picts, ‘is proof positive that neither Picts nor Scots
were in the habit of discolouring their skins to any greater extent
than his own people’; and he insisted that there was a grave objection
to the explanation given by MacFirbis, ‘namely, that it accounts for
too few of the elements of the word Cruithne.’ In 1900 (_Report of ...
the Brit. Association_, p. 895) he brushed aside the ‘proof positive’,
and proclaimed his conviction that, after all, the Picts really had
tattooed themselves. In 1902 (_The Welsh People_, pp. 79-80, n. 2) he
observed that if _Cruithni_ and _Prydyn_ had been really derived from
_cruth_ and _pryd_, ‘one could scarcely avoid treating _Cruithni_ and
_Prydyn_ as translations ... of the word _Pict_ regarded as the Latin
_pictus_, ‘painted’’; and that ‘the supposition here suggested as to
_Pretani_ being merely a sort of translation of ... _pictus_ would
compel us to regard the first use of _Pretani_ as dating no earlier
than Caesar’s time’, which, as he truly remarks, chronology will hardly
allow us to do. In the 3rd edition of _Celtic Britain_, 1904, p. 242,
he reverts to his view of 1884.
Candour is a virtue; but how are we to follow a guide who is for ever
changing his mind?
[1848] See p. 413, _supra_.
[1849] _The Language of the Continental Picts_, 1900, pp. 22, 26.
[1850] E. Muret and M. A. Chabouillet, _Cat. des monn. gaul. de la
Bibl. Nat._, 4439.
[1851] _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1900, pp. 889-90. Cf.
Rhys’s _Celtic Folk-lore, Welsh and Manx_, pp. 681-2.
[1852] A. H. Keane, _Man, Past and Present_, 1899, pp. 138, 198-9;
_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxiv, 1904, p. 255; xxxv, 1905, pp. 283-94;
_L’Anthr._, xvi, 1905, p. 129; _Man_, v, 1905, No. 53, pp. 86-7; vi,
1906, No. 4, pp. 6-9. Needless to say, tattooing is practised by many
other peoples besides those mentioned in the text.
[1853] _Celtic Britain_, 1904, pp. 94-5, 162, 184, &c. On the
last-named page, for instance, among the ‘nations of Pictland’ are
included ‘the Verturian Brythons’.
[1854] _Ib._, p. 275.
[1855] _Ib._, pp. 241, 245.
[1856] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxvi, 1892, pp. 263-351.
[1857] _Ib._, xxxii, 1898, p. 324.
[1858] _Ib._ See also _The Welsh People_, 1902, p. 16.
[1859] W. F. Skene, _The Highlanders of Scotland_, 1902, p. 398.
[1860] _Keltic Researches_, pp. 71-3.
[1861] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxii, 1898, p. 374.
[1862] _Ib._, p. 361.
[1863] _Celtic Britain_, 1904, p. 272.
[1864] _Les Celtes_, p. 30.
[1865] _Rev. celt._, vii, 1886, p. 181.
[1866] _Keltic Researches_, p. 24.
[1867] _Ib._, p. 21.
[1868] A. Bezzenberger, _Beiträge zur Kunde der indogermanischen
Sprachen_, xviii, 1892, pp. 84-115, and especially 113-4.
[1869] W. F. Skene, _The Highlanders of Scotland_, 1902, pp. 381-401.
[1870] _Hist. eccl._, i, 12.--Incipit autem duorum ferme milium spatio
a monasterio Aebbercurnig ad occidentem, in loco qui sermone Pictorum
Peanfahel, lingua autem Anglorum Penneltun appellatur, &c.
[1871] E. W. B. Nicholson, _Keltic Researches_, pp. 4, 21. Cf. A.
Bezzenberger, _Beiträge_, &c., xviii, 1892, pp. 98, 108.
[1872] _Celtic Britain_, 1884, p. 153.
[1873] _Ib._, 1904, pp. 153-4. Referring to p. 24 of Mr. Nicholson’s
book, Professor Rhys says (_Celtic Britain_, 1904, p. 153) that
_Peanfahel_ ‘points back to a Latin term _penna(e)_ or _pinna(e)
valli_, “wing of the vallum,” that is, the pinnacle or turret at the
end of the wall’. Now ‘pinnacle or’ appears to have been inserted
in order to save the face of _pinna_. Does the professor mean ‘a
pinnacle’, or does he mean a ‘turret’? And if he means ‘a turret’, in
what sense does he use the word? A pinnacle would have been a feature
far too insignificant to give rise to a place-name; and a turret would
have been equally insignificant unless it was a defensive tower,
in which case it would have been called not _pinna_ but _turris_.
Professor Haverfield (_Archaeologia_, lv, 1897, p. 196) speaks of ‘the
corner turret’ of the fort of Aesica on the Roman wall about midway
between Newcastle and Carlisle. Read his description of it, and you
will appreciate the absurdity of calling it a _pinna_, and the still
greater absurdity of the supposition that even a ‘corner turret’ could
beget a geographical name. There is no authority for the use of the
word _pinna_ in connexion with a defensive wall, except in the sense of
‘pinnacle’, in which sense it is used twice by Caesar (_B. G._, v, 40,
§ 6; vii, 72, § 4). The _pinnae_ which he describes were merely small
pinnacles rising from a breastwork on an earthen rampart, breastwork
and pinnacles forming a battlement, and both being made of wattlework
(_pinnae loricaeque ex cratibus contexuntur_ [_B. G._, v, 40, § 6]. See
also C. E. C. Schneider’s note in his edition of Caesar, vol. ii, p.
565). The notion that the geographical name _Peanfahel_ ‘points back’
to a _pinna_ is too ridiculous to be discussed. Why not be content with
Dr. Stokes’s etymology in Bezzenberger’s _Beiträge_, xviii, 1902, pp.
98, 108?
[1874] _Celtic Britain_, 1904, p. 154. Cf. _Rev. celt._, vi, 1883-5, p.
398.
[1875] _Keltic Researches_, pp. 33-80.
[1876] A. Bezzenberger’s _Beiträge zur Kunde der indogermanischen
Sprachen_, xviii, 1892, pp. 84-115.
[1877] W. F. Skene’s _Highlanders of Scotland_, 1902, pp. 387-401.
[1878] Bezzenberger’s _Beiträge_, &c., xviii, 1892, pp. 113-4. M. J.
Loth (_Annales de Bretagne_, vi, 1890-1, p. 115) is substantially in
agreement with Dr. Stokes.
[1879] I find that my criticism has been anticipated by M. J. Loth
(_ib._, p. 114).
[1880] _The Welsh People_, 1902, pp. 15-6.
[1881] _Rev. celt._, xx, 1899, p. 390.
[1882] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxii, 1898, p. 398.
[1883] _Celtic Britain_, 1904, p. 275.
[1884] _Ib._, p. 165.
[1885] I am glad to find that I have been anticipated by M. d’A. de
Jubainville (_Rev. celt._, vii, 1886, p. 381). Replying to Professor
Rhys’s argument, which appeared also in the earlier edition of _Celtic
Britain_, he remarked that ‘l’usage des vaincus est de copier les noms
propres des vainqueurs’.
[1886] See pp. 429-40, _infra_.
[1887] _Celtic Britain_, 1904, p. 160.
[1888] See, for instance, _The Welsh People_, 1902, p. 19.
[1889] See pp. 408-9, _supra_.
[1890] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, p. 713.
[1891] _Nature_, Jan. 13, 1898, p. 258; W. Z. Ripley, _The Races of
Europe_, p. 309.
[1892] D. Wilson, _Prehist. Annals of Scotland_, i, 1863, pp. 268-75;
_Anthr. Rev._, iii, 1865, p. 76; _Crania Britannica_, ii, Tables i and
ii; _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, iii, 1870, p. 52; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xix,
1885, pp. 39-41; xxxvi, 1902, pp. 157-9; xxxviii, 1904, p. 81; _Journ.
Anthr. Inst._, xxvi, 1897, pp. 96-7; xxxii, 1902, pp. 402-3; _Nature_,
Jan. 13, 1898, p. 258; _Archaeol. Journal_, lviii, 1901, pp. 330-8;
_Archaeol. Cambr._, 6th ser., ii, 1902, p. 31.
[1893] Thirty years ago, however, Mr. J. R. Mortimer (_Journ. Anthr.
Inst._, vi, 1877, pp. 328-34) said, ‘My computation of the stature of
these two types of men--the brachycephalic and the dolichocephalic--is
the very reverse of’ Thurnam’s; and he stated that of ten skeletons
found in round barrows of the Yorkshire Wolds between Driffield and
Aldeborough, five, of which the cephalic indices ranged from 70 to
75, averaged 5 ft. 9⅖ in. in height, while five others, the indices
of which ranged from 79 to 94, averaged only 5 ft. 5 in. The barrows,
however, although no bronze was found in them, contained not only
‘drinking-cups’ but also ‘food-vessels’ (_Anthropologia_, i, 1873-5,
pp. x-xi); and it may be concluded that they belonged to the Bronze
Age. Rolleston (_Brit. Barrows_, p. 654, n. 2) was therefore justified
in presuming that the tall dolichocephali who were buried in them
belonged to ‘a mixed race’; and, he said, ‘the effect of crossing ...
is very usually to increase the size of the mixed races.’ Still, the
low stature of Mr. Mortimer’s brachycephali is remarkable; and we shall
see that they belonged to a distinct race, of which other examples have
since been exhumed.
[1894] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxix, 1905, pp. 437-8.
[1895] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xvii, 1888, p. 209. Dr. Beddoe’s
figures are not absolutely correct. The measurements of the thigh
bones of the twenty-seven skeletons to which he refers are given in
Tables I and II of _Crania Britannica_. They do not include the Arras
skeleton, mentioned in Table I, which belonged to the Early Iron Age.
The average height of the seventeen brachycephali, calculated by Dr.
Beddoe’s method, would have been just over 5 ft. 9⅕ in. (1 m. 758); of
the twenty-seven mixed skeletons, 5 ft. 9⅗ in. (within a very minute
fraction), or approximately 1 m. 768. Calculated by M. Rollet’s method
(see p. 379, n. 2, _supra_), the figures would have been just under 5
ft. 8½ in. and just over 5 ft. 9⅖ in. respectively.
[1896] A. Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, ii, 6-7,
50-62; iii, 225.
[1897] _Archaeol. Cambr._, 6th ser., v, 1905, pp. 222, 235-6. The
average length of the thigh-bones was 446 millimetres, or rather more
than 17·55 inches.
[1898] _Proc. Aberdeen Univ. Anatom. and Anthr. Soc._, 1902-4, pp.
11-20, 31.
[1899] Dr. Beddoe (_L’Anthr._, v, 1894, p. 522) assigns all the
skeletons in question to the Bronze Age; but I suspect that some are
older.
[1900] _Ib._ Thurnam’s figures are much about the same. He found that
out of 70 skulls from round barrows 44 had indices ranging from 80 to
89 (_Memoirs Anthr. Soc._, iii, 1870, pp. 48-50; _Archaeologia_, xliii,
1871, pp. 543-4). There is reason to believe that some of the round
skulls found in round barrows had been artificially flattened on the
occiput in infancy; but Thurnam (_Crania Britannica_, ii, pl. 45, p.
6) shows that their brachycephaly was only due in a minor degree to
this cause. I presume that Dr. Beddoe, in his article in _L’Anthr._ (v,
1894, p. 522), did not take account of 15 skulls which were found in
1885-7, in association with bronze and remains of the _urus_, during
the excavation of the Ribble Docks at Preston. Their cephalic indices
range between 70·41 and 81·76. See _Vict. Hist. of ... Lancs_, i, 250.
[1901] _Journal of Anatomy and Physiology_, xxxviii, 1904, p. 127;
xxxix, 1905, pp. 438-9; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxix, 1905, p. 426.
Apparently Dr. Beddoe’s list did not include Scottish skulls.
[1902] _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 639-40, 642.
[1903] _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 644-5. See also _Crania Britannica_, ii,
pl. 45, p. 4.
[1904] _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, i, 1865, p. 154. In Scotland, however, of
12 skulls from short cists, the mean cephalic index of which was 81·4,
only one, says Sir W. Turner (_Nature_, Jan. 13, 1898, p. 258), was
prognathous.
[1905] _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, i, 1865, pp. 151-2.
[1906] _Ib._, p. 154.
[1907] _Brit. Barrows_, p. 681. Cf. _Crania Britannica_, pl. 11;
_Reliquary_, N. S., vii, 1901, pp. 240-2; _Wilts. Archaeol. and Nat.
Hist. Mag._, xxxiii, 1904, pp. 18-9; and _Journal of Anatomy and
Physiology_, xxxviii, 1904, pp. 120-4, xxxix, 1905, pp. 418-21, 423-4,
429-30.
[1908] _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1903 (1904), pp. 801-2.
Cf. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, vi, 1877, p. 333, and _Journal of Anatomy
and Physiology_, xxxix, 1905, pp. 417-21.
[1909] _Ib._, p. 442.
[1910] Six of the skeletons were associated with drinking-cups (_Proc.
Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxix, 1905, p. 431); and no bronze was found with
any of them, only flint and bone implements (_Proc. Aberdeen Univ.
Anatom. and Anthr. Soc._, 1902-4, p. 33).
[1911] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxix, 1905, p. 431.
[1912] _Journ. Anat. and Physiol._, xxxviii, 1904, pp. 127-9.
[1913] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxix, 1905, pp. 426, 437.
[1914] _Archaeol. Cambr._, 6th ser., v, 1905, p. 219.
[1915] _Ib._; _Proc. Aberdeen Univ. Anatom. and Physiol. Soc._, 1902-4,
p. 26.
[1916] _Ib._, p. 34. A skeleton has been found with a drinking-cup in a
short cist in Caithness, which belonged to the same type (_Proc. Soc.
Ant. Scot._, xxxix, 1905, pp. 421-4).
[1917] This view, stated independently, would leave it an open question
whether they were Celts or not.
[1918] See for instance A. Pitt-Rivers (_Archaeol. Journal_, liv, 1897,
p. 390); A. H. Keane, _Man, Past and Present_, p. 527; Romilly Allen
(_Archaeol. Cambr._, 5th ser., xvii, 1900, p. 225); W. Boyd Dawkins
(_Vict. Hist. of ... Hampshire_, i, 261); B.C. A. Windle (_Vict. Hist.
of ... Worcester_, i, 179); G. Sergi, _The Mediterranean Race_, p. 243;
and H. d’A. de Jubainville, _Les Druides_, pp. 15-6. It is useless to
multiply references.
[1919] _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, i, 1865, p. 135.
[1920] _Ib._, pp. 484-5.
[1921] _Ib._, pp. 482-3.
[1922] _Ib._, p. 128.
[1923] _Ib._, iii, 1870, p. 76.
[1924] _Ib._, p. 79; _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 304. Huxley (S.
Laing, _Prehist. Remains of Caithness_, pp. 117-9) agreed with Thurnam.
[1925] _Scottish Review_, xv, 251.
[1926] _Fortnightly Rev._, xvi, 1874, p. 337.
[1927] _Origin of the Aryans_, pp. 86, 88.
[1928] The statement in the text is of course perfectly consistent with
the fact that some of the earlier Brythonic invaders buried their dead
in small round barrows. See p. 435, n. 1, _infra_.
I am astonished to find that even such a well-informed writer as Mr. H.
J. Mackinder (_Britain and the British Seas_, 1902, p, 185) suggests
that the Belgae ‘may well have been the broad-skulled “bronze” men
of the round barrows’; and that, according to Mr. C. H. Read (_Guide
to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ [Brit. Museum], p. 15), ‘the Gaels
and Brythons ... are the people of the Round-barrows.’ It is rather
puzzling to find that he fixes ‘the close of the Barrow period about
900 B.C.’ (ib., p. 23), and yet assigns the first Brythonic invasion to
the fourth century B.C. He appears to think that the earliest invaders
of the Round Barrow period belonged to a non-Aryan race (_ib._, pp.
24-5); and he rightly distinguishes both the Goidels and the Brythons
from the brachycephalic neolithic population of Gaul (_ib._, p. 22),
whom he nevertheless erroneously calls ‘the true Kelts’. See pp.
433-40, _infra_. I am still more puzzled when I read in the _Guide to
the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (p. 2), for which Mr. Read has made
himself responsible, that ‘the Bronze Age inhabitants of this country
seem to have been the most closely connected with the true Kelts’,
whereas in the _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (p. 15) they are
sharply distinguished from them.
[1929] _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1900 (1901), p. 894.
[1930] See p. 127, _supra_.
[1931] M. Déchelette’s remarks in _Rev. de synthèse hist._, iii, 1901,
pp. 32-3, are worth reading.
[1932] _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, i, 1865, pp. 482-3, 486-8. See also _Brit.
Barrows_, pp. 639-41, and J. Beddoe, _The Races of Britain_, p. 253, n.
*.
[1933] _Mém. d’anthr._, ii, 1874, p. 126.
[1934] _L’Anthr._, v, 1894, p. 516.
[1935] See _Crania Britannica_, pl. 1, 53, 41, 11, 32, 43, 42, and the
descriptions of these skulls in vol. ii; also the illustrations facing
pp. 571, 579, 583, 587, 591, and 599 of Greenwell’s _Brit. Barrows_.
The description which Dr. Collignon gives of the brachycephalic race
of France will show how totally unlike it is to the characteristic
Round Barrow type. He speaks (_Ann. de Géogr._, v, 1896, p. 164) of
‘les caractères bien connus de la race brachycéphale, à savoir, taille
plutôt petite, cheveux foncés, tête globuleuse, face ronde, courte,
large, plate, nez large et court’, &c.
[1936] _Rev. mensuelle de l’École d’anthr._, iv, 1894, pp. 396, 400.
The ‘maximum of frequency’, according to M. Hervé (_ib._, vi, 1896, p.
105), lies between 1 m. 50 (just over 4 ft. 11 in.) and 1 m. 59 (just
over 5 ft. 2½ in.).
I was glad to find, after I had finished the rough draft of this
article, that Prof. A. C. Haddon (_Proc. Roy. Irish Acad._, 3rd ser.,
iv, 1896-8, pp. 583-4) distinguishes ‘the short, swarthy, black- [or
rather dark-brown] haired brachycephalic race of Central Europe (the
“Celtae” ... or the “Type de Grenelle” ...)’ from ‘the tall, fair,
brachycephalic race that may have come from Denmark (the “Celts” of
some authors ... the “Round Barrow Race” of all authors)’. To identify
the Grenelle race with the Celtae is, however, misleading. The
Celtae (see pp. 438-9, _infra_) were a mixed population, comprising
descendants of various neolithic dolichocephalic tribes and of the
Grenelle race and also real Celts--the introducers of the Celtic
language--who invaded Gaul about the eighth century B.C.
[1937] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxiv, 1904, p. 203.
[1938] _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 25.
[1939] See Greenwell’s _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 10, 15-6.
[1940] _Brit. Barrows_, p. 682.
[1941] _Ib._, p. 746; L. Rütimeyer and W. His, _Crania Helvetica_,
1864, p. 12. The average cephalic index of 29 skulls of the Sion type
described in _Crania Helvetica_ is 77·2, the highest being 81·9, and
the lowest 73. Not one of the 22 illustrations has the slightest
resemblance to the more strongly marked brachycephalic Round Barrow
type. The Sion type, moreover, is orthognathous, whereas the tall Round
Barrow men were often extremely prognathous.
Taking into account the skulls of the Sion type which have been
measured since the publication of the work of His and Rütimeyer, the
average cephalic index is 76. See _Rev. mensuelle de l’École d’anthr._,
v, 1895, p. 153.
[1942] Rice Holmes, _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, p. 308.
[1943] _Ib._, p. 296, and n. 3.
[1944] See J. Beddoe, _The Races of Britain_, p. 16; _Scottish Review_,
xxi, 1893, p. 361; W. Z. Ripley, _The Races of Europe_, p. 310: and cf.
Sir W. R. Wilde, _The Beauties of the Boyne_, 2nd ed., 1850, p. 40; W.
C. Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_, iii, 1006-12; and _Proc. Roy. Irish
Acad._, xxiv, 1902-4, sect. C, pp. 1-6. Professor A. C. Haddon (_ib._,
3rd ser., iv, 1896-8, p. 584) suggests that the brachycephalic people
who did invade Ireland were ‘the Neolithic brachycephals of Central
Europe’, and that ‘the Round Barrow race had comparatively little to
say to Irish ethnology’.
[1945] See pp. 126-7, _supra_.
[1946] See K. Müllenhoff, _Deutsche Altertumskunde_, ii, 1887, pp.
236-8, and cf. H. d’A. de Jubainville, _Les premiers habitants de
l’Europe_, i, 1889, p. 262, and _Report of ... the Brit. Association_,
1900, p. 894.
[1947] See p. 494, _infra_.
[1948] _Les Celtes_, pp. 19-20.
[1949] Professor Rhys, who a few years ago (_Report of ... the Brit.
Association_, 1900, p. 893) assigned the Goidelic invasion to ‘the
seventh and the sixth centuries B.C.’, has recently (_Celtic Britain_,
1904, p. 2) dated it back to ‘more than a millennium before the
Christian era’, but without giving any reasons.
[1950] See _L’Anthr._, xiv, 1903, p. 344. The Aryans, before their
dispersion, were acquainted with the use of copper (O. Schrader,
_Prehist. Ant. of the Aryan Peoples_, pp. 187-91; _L’Anthr._, iv, 1893,
p. 547; _Rev. de l’École d’anthr._, xiv, 1904, pp. 163, 207-19; _Bull.
et mém. de la Soc. d’anthr._, 5^e sér., v, 1904, p. 88).
[1951] _Rev. de l’École d’anthr._, xv, 1905, p. 407.
[1952] _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, pp. 281-319.
[1953] _Ib._, p. 305.
[1954] _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, i, 1865, p. 514.
[1955] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 636, 683, 711. See also
_Crania Britannica_, ii, pl. 6, pp. 7-8; _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser.,
vol. xvii, 1897-9, p. 126, n. *; and p. 435, n. 1, _infra_.
[1956] _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 129, 213.
[1957] The skulls which have been found in the fort of Worlebury,
near Weston-super-Mare, belong, according to Prof. Macalister (C. W.
Dymond and H. G. Tomkins, _Worlebury_, 1886, pp. vii, 102-4), ‘to the
so-called Iberian type’; but they have ‘strong brow ridges’, and ‘the
men were of strong muscular build’. They appear to me to show signs of
crossing with individuals of the ‘characteristic’ Round Barrow type;
but it is impossible to determine whether they were of Gallo-Brythonic
descent or not. Prof. Macalister computed the stature of five males,
whose bones, except in one instance, did not belong to the skulls, at
5 ft. 3 in., 5 ft. 5½ in., 5 ft. 8 in., 5 ft. 10 in., and 6 ft. 4 in.,
the overage being 5 ft. 8½ in.
[1958] _Brit. Barrows_, p. 683. It appears, however, highly probable
that the ‘Iberian’ and North-European dolichocephalic types, to the
latter of which the type which I call Celtic belongs, are traceable to
the same origin. See _Geogr. Journal_, xxviii, 1906, pp. 538, 541.
[1959] Partly because during the latter part of the period the custom
of cremation was prevalent in South-Eastern Britain. See p. 286,
_supra_.
A considerable number of skeletons has been discovered in the
so-called ‘Danes’ Graves’ in the parish of Driffield, Yorkshire, which
undoubtedly belong to the Early Iron Age, and were earlier than the
time of Agricola (_Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xx, 1904-5, p. 257), by
Dr. Thurnam (_Archaeol. Journal_, xxii, 1865, pp. 109 n. 8, 264), Canon
Greenwell (_ib._, pp. 108-11, 264), and Mr. J. R. Mortimer (_Proc. Soc.
Ant._, 2nd ser., xvii, 1897-9, pp. 119-28). The cephalic indices of
those male skulls which were found by Thurnam and Canon Greenwell are
75, 76, 70, 75, and 71: the mean index of those in the collection of
Mr. Mortimer, who does not give the individual measurements, is 75·5;
and the indices of fourteen, which have lately been measured by Dr.
Wright (_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxiii, 1903, pp. 67, 70-1), and which,
for aught that I know, may have included the others, ranges from 68
to 79. Neither Thurnam, nor Canon Greenwell, nor Mr. Mortimer says
anything about stature; but the average height of the men whose bones
Dr. Wright measured would only have been 5 ft. 3½ in. This is so low as
to suggest that they were not Celts; and the question of their origin
has caused much discussion. The remains of a chariot were found in one
of the graves which Mr. Mortimer opened; but chariots may of course
have been used by non-Celtic Britons. According to Thurnam, the skulls
‘appear to be distinguished from the ... long-barrow type’, and might
pass for those of modern inhabitants of Scandinavia; but the pottery
found in the graves by Canon Greenwell was not only unlike any which
he had discovered in other parts of Yorkshire, but also different from
Scandinavian or Anglo-Saxon ware. Moreover, he describes the mode of
interment as ‘unlike any which has been found in Denmark, Norway, or
Sweden’. Therefore I cannot agree with Dr. Wright, who thinks that the
people in question came from Scandinavia. All that is certain is that,
like most of our Late Celtic skeletons, they did not belong to the
familiar tall Celtic type.
In Scorborough Park, near Beverley, there is a group of small mounds,
similar to the ‘Danes’ Graves’. Mr. Mortimer opened six of them in
1895, and found two skulls ‘of a decidedly long type’.
Fourteen skulls at least have been found in and just outside the
Glastonbury marsh-village (_Report of ... the Brit. Association_,
1895, p. 519; 1896, p. 658; 1898 [1900], p. 695; 1899 [1901], p. 594;
_Proc. Somerset. Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Soc._, l, 1904, p. 80;
li, 1905, pp. 88, 99-100); but no detailed description of them has
yet been published, though Prof. Boyd Dawkins (_Vict. Hist. of ...
Somerset_, i, 200) affirms that they ‘belong to the small dark Iberic
inhabitants’, and argues that as some of them belonged to men who had
been decapitated, they do not represent inhabitants of the village,
but their enemies. Some, however, belonged to young children, and were
found in the hut-circles. There is the same dearth of information about
skeletons which have been found near Birdlip, on the Cotswold Hills
(_Trans. Bristol and Gloster Archaeol. Soc._, v, 1880-1, pp. 137-41),
and in the parish of St. Keverne, Cornwall (_Archaeol. Journal_, xxx,
1873, pp. 267-72).
In the only interment of the Early Iron Age that has yet been
discovered in Scotland--a cist on the estate of Moredun in Midlothian
(_Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxviii, 1904, pp. 427-38)--which was
probably not earlier than the second century of our era (_ib._, p.
438), two skeletons, apparently of females, were found. It was only
possible to calculate the stature of one, which, estimated from the
_femur_ alone, by what method I do not know, was about 5 ft. 5½ in.
This, for a woman, would be comparatively tall. The cephalic index was
75; and, according to Dr. T. H. Bryce, who measured the skull (_ib._,
pp. 439-45), ‘all the measurements and the indices deduced from them
are such as might belong to a [neolithic] skull from the chambered
cairns,’ but ‘the general characters are markedly different. It
resembles in general proportions certain of the skulls from the “Danes’
Graves” ... described by Dr. W. Wright ... but in form it does not fall
in with any of his types ... the skull shows rather closer affinities
with the modern than with any ancient type,’ &c. Has Dr. Bryce seen any
of the skulls from the Gallic tumuli of the Early Iron Age?
For further information about skeletons of this period see _Crania
Britannica_, ii, pl. 6 and 7, pp. 2, 7 (Arras), pl. 43, p. 3
(Roundway Hill); _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., iv, 1867-70, pp. 275-6
(Grimthorpe); _Brit. Barrows_, p. 683; _Archaeologia_, lii, 1890, pp.
325-6; and _Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum),
pp. 124-5, 130. The Arras and Grimthorpe specimens at least were
probably Brythonic.
[1960] _Rev. d’anthr._, ii, 1873, pp. 605, 607, 611. Unhappily Broca
does not give the indices of all the skulls, but only the average.
[1961] _Bull. du Muséum d’hist. nat._, &c., 1902, p. 178.
[1962] _L’Anthr._, xvii, 1906, pp. 7, 10, 16-7, 25. See also _Crania
Ethnica_, p. 498; _Scottish Review_, xxi, 1893, p. 171; A. Bertrand and
S. Reinach, _Les Celtes_, &c., pp. 122-34; _Rev. mensuelle de l’École
d’anthr._, vii, 1897, pp. 65-87; _Bull. et mém. de la Soc. d’anthr._,
v^e sér., ii, 1901, pp. 721-2; and _Archiv für Anthr._, xxviii, 1902,
pp. 185-6.
[1963] _The Races of Europe_, p. 126. ‘The philologers,’ says Professor
Ripley, ‘properly insist upon calling all those who speak the Celtic
language, Celts ... while the physical anthropologists, finding the
Celtic language spoken by people of divers physical types, with equal
propriety hold that the term Celt, if used at all, should be applied to
that physical group or type of men which includes the greatest number
of those who use the Celtic language.’ I, on the contrary, hold that in
an ethnological inquiry the term should be applied to ‘that physical
group’ (if we can discover it) among whom the Celtic language came into
being and who imposed it upon those whom they subdued; and I would
remind the philologers that if all who speak the Celtic language are
Celts, all who speak the English language, including the inhabitants of
the United States and the negroes of Jamaica, are Englishmen.
[1964] See _L’Anthr._, iii, 1892, p. 748. We shall see that MM.
Collignon, Hervé, and Wilser are also dissentients. So too is Dr. Laloz
(_L’Anthr._, xiii, 1902, p. 776).
[1965] _The Races of Britain_, p. 29. See also _L’Anthr._, v. 1894, p.
517.
[1966] _B. G._, i, 1, § 1.--Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres,
quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua
Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur.
[1967] _Bull. de la Soc. d’anthr._, 2^e sér., xii, 1877. p. 511.
[1968] _Ib._, p. 514.
[1969] _Mém. d’anthr._, ii, 1874, p. 126.
[1970] ‘La race celtique,’ he says (_Bull. de la Soc. d’anthr._,
2^e sér., ix, 1874, p. 713), ‘est le résultat du mélange des races
indigènes avec les immigrants.’
[1971] _Mém. d’anthr._, i, 1871, p. 395.
[1972] A. Kuhn’s _Beiträge zur vergleichenden Sprachforschung_, &c., v,
1868, p. 98. Cf. J. Rhys, _Celtic Britain_, 1904, p. 291. The remark
of Professor Rhys (_ib._, p. 2) that ‘Recent writers are of opinion
that the terms Galli and Celtae argue an ancient distinction of race’,
and that ‘the latter first applied exclusively to the aborigines’, is
apparently based upon an entire misconception of the writings of Broca
and M. Alexandre Bertrand. Does the professor mean by ‘the aborigines’
the dolichocephalic neolithic Baumes-Chaudes race, or the totally
different brachycephalic neolithic Grenelle race? No French ethnologist
holds the opinion which Professor Rhys attributes to ‘recent writers’;
and even M. Bertrand, who distinguished ‘les Celtes’ from ‘les
Galates’, was careful to point out (_Les Celtes dans les vallées du
Pô et du Danube_, p. 36) that between them there was no ‘distinction
of race’. The reader should note that, according to M. Bertrand, ‘les
Galates,’ who conquered Gaul in the Iron Age, belonged to ‘la race
celtique’; that his tall fair ‘Celtes’, who had invaded Gaul before,
were not identical with, but only part of the mixed population whom
Caesar called _Celtae_; and that his ‘Galates’ were to be found among
the Celtae as well as among the Belgae. Professor Rhys, in a recent
paper (_Celtae and Galli_, pp. 57-9, 62), assumes that as (according
to his view) both Goidelic and Gallo-Brythonic were spoken in the
country of the Celtae, the names _Celtae_ and _Galli_ correspond to
the peoples who spoke the two dialects: he argues that the Celtae were
conquered by the Galli; and he concludes that the two peoples were
ethnologically distinct. Probably Goidelic Celts were conquered by
Gallo-Brythonic Celts; but what then? It remains certain that conquered
and conquerors were by themselves called collectively Celtae. Why did
the name of the conquered prevail over that of the conquerors if it
was essentially different? And does not Caesar expressly say that the
two names denoted one and the same people? As a matter of fact, the
terms _Celtae_ and _Galli_, as used by the ancient writers, including
Polybius, were, generally speaking, synonymous. Diodorus Siculus (v,
23, § 1) distinguished between them; but as his Γαλαται included the
Cimbri and other Germans, his testimony, which implicitly contradicts
that of Caesar, is worthless. Even if it could be accepted it would
only show that the Celtae, as a whole, differed from the Γαλάται, not
that the Galatic conquerors of the people who, after the conquest and
including the conquerors, were called Celtae, differed in race from
earlier Celtic conquerors. Moreover, as I have remarked in _Caesar’s
Conquest of Gaul_ (p. 290), ‘anybody who carefully reads through the
chapters in which he [Diodorus] describes the inhabitants of Gaul, will
see that he habitually uses the word Γαλάται not in the restricted but
in the general sense, including both Γαλάται and Κελτοί.... In fact,
though he thinks it necessary to warn his readers that the Celtae
were geographically distinct from the Galli, he draws no physical
distinction between them; and, in conformity with ancient usage, he as
a rule uses the two terms indifferently.’ See my _Caesar’s Conquest
of Gaul_, 1899, p. 300; M. Déchelette’s article in _Rev. de synthèse
hist._, iii, 1901, pp. 32-3; _Rev. de l’École d’anthr._, xv, 1905, pp.
216-30; and _Rev. celt._, xxvii, 1906, pp. 109-10.
[1973] I am glad to find that I have the support of Dr. Collignon
(_Annales de géogr._, v, 1896, p. 159), who speaks of ‘la population
pré-gauloise que Broca nommait à tort les Celtes’. Similarly M. G.
Hervé (_Rev. mensuelle de l’École d’anthr._, vi, 1896, p. 99) says
that ‘_la race brachycéphale néolithique_ ou _race de Grenelle_ est
devenue à l’âge de bronze ... celle des _Celtes_, au sens que les
anthropologistes ont accoutumé d’attacher depuis Broca à ce dernier
terme’; and, as he remarks (_ib._, p. 104), the Celtic language was
imposed on this people, long before they and their conquerors were
called by Caesar _Celtae_, by invading Gauls. MM. Collignon and Hervé
do not perhaps make it sufficiently clear that the people whom Broca
called ‘les Celtes’ were not the brachycephalic neolithic race alone,
but that race _plus_ mesaticephalic people also of neolithic origin
_plus_ the conquerors of both.
[1974] _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, p. 291. See also pp. 245-8,
281-301 of the same book.
[1975] _Bull. de la Soc. d’anthr._, ii, 1861, pp. 508-9.
[1976] ... ‘les Kimris s’étaient établis en grand nombre dans cette
région [the neighbourhood of Paris], au milieu des populations
celtiques; que celles-ci, enfin, étaient déjà mélangées avant
l’arrivée des Kimris, puisque le nom sous lequel elles ont pour la
première fois paru dans l’histoire leur avait été imposé par ... la
race conquérante,’ &c. ‘Cette première opinion,’ says Dr. L. Wilser
(_L’Anthr._, xiv, 1903, pp. 496-7), ‘oubliée plus tard par son auteur
et par ses disciples, était juste.’
[1977] _Der Mensch_, ii, 1887, pp. 261-7.
[1978] Cf. _Scottish Review_, xxi, 1893, p. 368; _Proc. Roy. Irish
Acad._, 3rd ser., iii, 1893-5, pp. 323, 369; v, 1898-1900, pp. 43, 45,
71, 227-8; vi, 1900-2, p. 506; _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxvii, 1898, pp.
104-30, and especially p. 117; _Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh_, xl, part
iii, 1903, pp. 547-614; and Rice Holmes, _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_,
1899, pp. 281-320.
[1979] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxvi, 1897, p. 124. Cf. my _Caesar’s
Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, pp. 301-5.
[1980] _The Mediterranean Race_, pp. 74-5.
[1981] See p. 418, n. 1, _supra_.
[1982] _The Races of Britain_, pp. 270-1.
[1983] An Italian anthropologist, Dr. V. Barteletti (_Archivio por
l’antropologia e la etnologia_, xxxiii, 1903, pp. 277-85) affirms
that red hair is an anomaly due to the crossing of blond with dark
people. On this theory it seems inexplicable that in certain parts of
the Highlands of Scotland and Wales red hair is very much more common
than anywhere in England or in those parts of the Continent in which
blonds and brunets have long been intermixed, and much more common
in the department of Finistère than elsewhere in France. See _Crania
Britannica_, i, 210; my _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, pp. 315-6;
and Dr. Beddoe’s article in _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxv, 1905, p. 223.
[1984] _Origins of Eng. Hist._, 1890, p. 162.
[1985] Vol. i, p. 85. Probably Mr. Elton intended to refer to vol. ii,
p. 85; but neither there nor on any other page of the book is there a
single sentence which bears out his statement.
[1986] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, vi, 1877, p. 505. In a more recent paper
(_ib._, xi, 1882, pp. 467-8), after remarking that ‘the defenders
of the earth-work used flint, and consequently the work itself is
not later than the bronze period’, and that the people who buried
their dead on the Yorkshire wolds ‘were in the early bronze phase of
civilisation’, General Pitt-Rivers goes on to say, ‘the archaeologists
of Denmark have shown that the Early Bronze Age did not exist in
Denmark; the art of working in bronze was full-blown when it first
entered Denmark. If the invaders of Flamborough came from Denmark,
and were, as we suppose ... a bronze-using people, they would have
brought with them weapons of a more advanced type than those found in
the tumuli of the wolds.... We are narrowed, therefore, to the opinion
that the invaders of Flamborough, if invaders they were, were the same
people who landed on the south and south-east coasts of England [the
extreme improbability of which he has already shown], or else that
these dykes belong to the people of the country, who ... were driven to
the coast by another ... people who occupied the interior,’ &c. But why
should the general assume that ‘the invaders of Flamborough’ were ‘a
bronze-using people’? See pp. 119, 129, 131-2, 408-9, _supra_.
[1987] _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, i, 1865, pp. 130, n. *, 508-10.
[1988] _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 588-9, 680. Rolleston also mentions ‘the
discovery in Yorkshire of monoxylic coffins with similar contents and
fashion to those found in South Jutland’, &c. (_ib._, p. 631, n. 2).
[1989] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xix, 1890, pp. 482-3. Cf. _Scottish
Review_, xxi, 1893, p. 162, and W. Z. Ripley, _The Races of Europe_, p.
309.
[1990] _Man, Past and Present_, p. 528.
[1991] _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), pp. 24-5.
[1992] _Man_, ii, 1902, No. 79, p. 110.
[1993] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxx, 1900, No. 84, pp. 86-8.
[1994] Cf. _Scottish Review_, xx, 1892, p. 378, and _Journ. Anthr.
Inst._, xxxiv, 1904, pp. 203-4.
[1995] _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 24.
[1996] See pp. 408-9, _supra_.
[1997] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxxii, 1902, pp. 373-97.
[1998] _Ib._, p. 374.
[1999] _Ib._, pp. 388, 393.
[2000] _Ib._, pp. 394-5. Dr. T. H. Bryce, who has made a special study
of the chambered cairns of South-Western Scotland, and has found no
bronze in any of them, tells us (_Man_, iv, 1904, No. 110, p. 176) that
in one at Glecknabae, Bute, ‘fragments of four vessels were recovered,
of the “beaker” or “drinking-cup” class.’ ‘If,’ he says (_Proc. Soc.
Ant. Scot._, xxxviii, 1904, p. 78), ‘we accept Mr. Abercromby’s
conclusions that this class of ceramic was introduced at the end of
the Neolithic period, and that the type named α is earlier than ... β
and υ, we are obliged to conclude that the culture of the Stone Age
prevailed in the Western Islands for the whole period corresponding to
type α in South Britain.’
[2001] Some of the skulls examined by Dr. Wright (see p. 427, _supra_)
resembled the ‘Row Grave’ (_Reihengraber_) skulls of Germany, and he
suspects that they belonged to immigrants from the valley of the Rhine
(_Journ. Anat. and Physiol._, xxxix, 1905, p. 441).
[2002] _Rev. mensuelle de l’École d’anthr._, viii, 1898, p. 207; _Proc.
Roy. Irish Acad._, 3rd ser., iv, 1896-8, p. 584.
[2003] _Rev. mensuelle de l’École d’anthr._, vi, 1896, p. 105.
[2004] Does not the radical difference between British and Gallic
pottery of the Bronze Age (see _L’Anthr._, xvii, 1906, pp. 325, fig. 2;
337, fig. 8; 338-9, figs. 9 and 10; 340, fig. 11) tell against the view
that many immigrants from Gaul entered Britain in the earlier periods?
[2005] Moreover, it must be remembered that only one interment of the
Early Iron Age has been found in Scotland (see p. 435, n. 1, _supra_),
although the culture of the same period is represented by ‘finds’ that
range from Dumfriesshire to the Orkneys.
[2006] _The Geologist_, v, 1862, p. 204. Cf. _Archaeologia_, liv, 1895,
pp. 110-1.
[2007] See pp. 396-7, _supra_.
[2008] See p. 448, _infra_.
[2009] iv, 5, § 2.--οἱ δὲ ἄνδρες εὐμηκέστεροι τῶν Κελτῶν εἰσι καὶ ἧσσον
ξανθότριχες, &c.
[2010] _Ib._,--σημεῖον δὲ τὸν μεγέθους· ἀντίπαιδας γὰρ εἴδομεν ἡμεῖς ἐν
Ῥώμῃ τῶν ὑψηλοτάτων αὐτόθι ὑπερέχοντας καὶ ἡμιποδίῳ, &c.
[2011] See p. 425, n. 4, _supra_.
[2012] _Phars._, iii, 77-8.--
celsos ut Gallia currus
Nobilis et flavis sequeretur mixta Britannis.
[2013] _The Races of Britain_, pp. 26, 249, 258.
[2014] _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, pp. 302-5.
[2015] In regard to the ethnology of the Belgae, sec _ib._, pp. 301-25,
with which cf. J. Rhys, _Celtae and Galli_, p. 60.
[2016] pp. 17, 35.
[2017] _The Welsh People_, 1902, p. 12. When that book appeared he
was disposed to apply the word ‘Goidel’ to the mixed population of
‘Celticans’ and aborigines, who, he holds, became more closely fused
under pressure from the Brythons. [For ‘Celticans’ he is now (?)
inclined to substitute ‘Kelts’ of the ‘Celtic’ (not ‘Keltic’) family.
Unlearned readers who scoff at subtle distinctions will find an
explanation in the professor’s _Celtae and Galli_, p. 56. Is not the
word Celtican unfortunate? The Celtici (Strabo, iii, 1, § 6) were in
N.W. Spain.]
[2018] _The Welsh People_, 1902, p. 75.
[2019] _Celtic Britain_, 1904, p. 4.
[2020] See p. 499, _infra_.
[2021] F. Vogel, in his edition of 1888, adopts the reading Βρεττανικῶν
νήσων in i, 4, § 7; but everywhere else he prints the word with Π,
following the codex _Vindobonensis_. See p. 459, _infra_.
[2022] _Rev. celt._, xiii, 1892, pp. 399-400.
[2023] _The Welsh People_, 1902, pp. 3-4.
[2024] I am of course aware that Professor Kuno Meyer disregards this
argument; but he makes no attempt to answer it.
[2025] pp. 218-63 (216-60 of the older edition).
[2026] _The Welsh People_, 1902, p. 8; _Celtic Britain_, 1904, pp.
216-8. When the second edition of _Celtic Britain_ was published,
Professor Rhys held (p. 216) that the inscriptions were the monuments
of Goidels retreating before Brythonic invaders, ‘and not those of
Goidelic invaders from Ireland.’ In the new edition (p. 218) he says
that ‘it is partly the monuments of these retreating Goidels of Britain
that we have in the old inscriptions, but partly perhaps those also of
Goidelic invaders from Ireland’.
[2027] _Ib._, pp. 229-31.
[2028] See the map facing the title page of _Celtic Britain_.
[2029] Professor Rhys (_Celtic Britain_, 1904, pp. 214-5) denies
that Brittany was colonized ‘by Brythons from here’: but one of his
arguments is simply that the Dumnonii were not Brythons, which I deal
with in the text; and the other is equally unsatisfactory. Remarking
that Procopius ‘gives a very fabulous account of an island called
Brittia’, he says that ‘Brittia must have been a real name, as it is
exactly the form which would result in that which is the actual Breton
name of Brittany--namely Breiz: this last,’ he continues, ‘cannot be
derived from any known form of the kindred name of our country and
its people, and thus tells not a little against the tradition that
Brittany was first colonised by Brythons from here,’ &c. But who ever
heard of ‘the tradition that Brittany was _first_ colonised by Brythons
from here’? And what if Brittany received the name which would have
resulted in ‘Breiz’ _before_ the British immigration? See my _Caesar’s
Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, p. 416, and J. Loth, _L’Émigration bretonne en
Armorique_, 1883, pp. 21, 50-1, 75-82.
[2030] _Celtic Britain_, 1884, p. 221.
[2031] _Ib._, 1904, pp. 223-4.
[2032] _Rev. celt._, vii, 1886, pp. 379-80.
[2033] _Ib._, xxii, 1901, p. 124.
[2034] _Ib._
[2035] _Celtic Britain_, 1904, p. 222.
[2036] _Ib._, p. 233.
[2037] _Ib._, p. 234.
[2038] _Ib._
[2039] _Ib._, pp. 164-6.
[2040] _Ib._, 2nd ed., 1884, p. 221.
[2041] _Ib._, 1904, pp. 223-4.
[2042] _Ib._, p. 222.
[2043] _Ib._, p. 223.
[2044] _Trans. Hon. Soc. Cymmrodorion_, 1895-6, p. 69.
[2045] W. F. Skene, _The Highlanders of Scotland_, 1902, p. 383.
[2046] _Trans. Hon. Soc. Cymmrodorion_, 1895-6, pp. 65-6.
[2047] _The Races of Britain_, p. 29.
[2048] _Incerti Pan. Constantio Caesari_, c. 11 (published in XII
_Panegyrici Latini_ recensuit Aemilius Baehrens, 1874).--Britannia
natio etiam tunc rudis, et solis Pictis modo et Hibernis assueta
hostibus adhuc seminudis, facile Romanis armis signisque cessit. Prof.
Haverfield (_The Romanization of Roman Britain_, p. 28) apparently
disbelieves that there was any Irish invasion of Britain as early as
the third century; but see _Y Cymmrodor_, xiv, 1901, p. 102.
[2049] _Trans. Hon. Soc. Cymmrodorion_, 1895-6, pp. 70-1.
[2050] See pp. 411-2, _supra_; also M. d’Arbois’s _Principaux auteurs
de l’ant. à consulter sur l’hist. des Celtes_, p. 69.
[2051] _Les Celtes_, p. 17.
[2052] I say ‘substantially’ because M. d’Arbois, unlike Professor
Rhys, holds that at the time of the Goidelic invasion the Celtic
language was everywhere one and the same.
[2053] See p. 445, _supra_.
[2054] _Les Celtes_, p. 31.
[2055] See p. 410, _supra_. M. d’Arbois rejects the analogy; but of
course he would admit that the people of Gaul who remained behind
belonged ethnologically to the same stock as those who, on his theory,
invaded Britain and became the ancestors of British Goidels.
[2056] _Keltic Researches_, p. 110.
[2057] _Ib._, p. 111.
[2058] _Keltic Researches_, pp. 110-1.
[2059] _Ib._, pp. 30, 37, 5, 63-5, 78, 175.
[2060] _Celtic Britain_, 1904, pp. 229-31.
[2061] _Keltic Researches_, pp. 19-20, 27, 16-7.
[2062] Mr. Nicholson himself (_ib._, p. 151) calls attention to the
fact that the Gallic tribes whose Goidelic character he believes
himself to have proved belonged, for the most part, to the west of Gaul.
[2063] See pp. 410 and 449, _supra_.
[2064] See Rhys’s _Celtae and Galli_, p. 60.
[2065] _Keltic Researches_, p. 9.
[2066] Cf. J. Rhys, _Celtic Britain_, 1904, p. 231.
[2067] _B. G._, i, 10, § 4; v, 39, § 1. Mr. Nicholson contends (_Keltic
Researches_, pp. 9-13) that the Belgae also colonized Anglesey, where
he finds various place-names of which _Bol_ forms a part; South
Wales, where St. David’s was formerly called Meneu; both banks of the
estuary of the Forth, where he believes that he can find traces of
the Irish stem _Manann_; and Galway, Mayo, and other remote parts of
Ireland, where the name _Mannin_ is of frequent occurrence. The Belgae,
or rather the Menapii, would certainly seem to have been not less
enterprising as colonists than Mr. Nicholson as an etymologist. Without
straining the elasticity of the words _Menapii_ and _Belgae_ more than
he has already done, he could easily, with a little diligence and a
good gazetteer, find traces of them all over the world. Surely they
must have settled in _Bul_garia. But, seriously, I would ask the reader
to consider whether it is likely that they would have taken the trouble
to go all the way to Connemara when there was plenty of good land open
to them in this country. And, considering that they introduced the use
of coins into Britain, is it not significant that no British coins have
been found in Ireland, and hardly any in Scotland or Wales?
Mr. Nicholson (_Keltic Researches_, pp. 11, 98-100) of course maintains
that the Fir-Bolg of Ireland were Belgae, and that there is an
etymological connexion between the two words. Professor Rhys, in a
note to the second edition of his _Celtic Britain_ (p. 280), which in
the third is absent, affirmed that ‘one thing is certain: neither the
people [Belgae] nor its name had anything whatever to do with the Irish
Fir-bolg’. At all events, MacFirbis and other Irish writers regarded
the Fir-Bolg as having been found in Ireland and conquered by the
Celtic invaders (J. Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, p. 120; W. C. Borlase,
_Dolmens of Ireland_, iii, 1027-8).
[2068] _Keltic Researches_, p. 151, n. 1.
[2069] _Ib._, p. 15.
[2070] _Ib._, p. 16.
[2071] Cf. _B. G._, i, 1, § 2, with ii, 1-4. See also J. Rhys, _Celtae
and Galli_, 1905, p. 61.
[2072] _Keltic Researches_, p. 16.
[2073] I find that, in the judgement of Prof. Haverfield (_The
Romanization of Roman Britain_, p. 29), ‘the inscription ... may be
best explained as the work of some Western Celt who reached Silchester
before its British citizens abandoned it in despair.’
[2074] Chambers’s _Encyclopaedia_, 1901, vol. i, p. 279.
[2075] ‘In case,’ says Mr. Nicholson (_Keltic Researches_, p. 16,
n. 2), ‘any one should quote against me Eppillus, the name of a son
of Commius the Atrebat, as derived from _epos_ for _equos_, let me
say that in that case it ought to have only one _p_.’ No doubt it is
remarkable that the _p_ should be double (Rhys, _Celtic Britain_, 1904,
p. 302); but _Epillos_, which is certainly the same word (A. Holder,
_Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz_, i, 1445), occurs on Gallic coins of the
Lemovices and on coins from Poitiers and the neighbourhood of Arles
(E. Muret and M. A. Chabouillet, _Cat. des monnaies gaul. de la Bibl.
nat._, 4578, 4579, 4580). See also _Rev. celt._, xxvi, 1905, p. 189.
[2076] _Keltic Researches_, pp. 17-8.
[2077] Tacitus, _Ann._, xiv, 31.
[2078] Ptolemy, _Geogr._, ii, 3, § 11.
[2079] _Keltic Researches_, pp. 25, 149. On page 26 (n. 1) Mr.
Nicholson makes the curious suggestion that ‘the Britons, strictly
speaking, were the Kymric branch who painted themselves, as
distinguished from the Goidelic who tattooed’. Is he prepared to argue
that the Belgae, who, on his theory, were Goidels, and with whom (p.
110) he apparently identifies ‘the original Brittones or Brittani’,
were not included among ‘the Britons, strictly speaking’? Will he
maintain, in the face of Caesar, from whom we learn that the Britons
all ‘painted themselves (_Omnes vero se Britanni vitro inficiunt_)’,
that ‘the great majority’ (p. 110) of the inhabitants of Britain did
not paint? And, since Caesar undoubtedly included among the painted
Britons the maritime tribes of the south-east, and also included them
among the Belgae, does he not see the inconsistency into which he has
fallen?
_Bratuspantium_, the name of a Belgic town mentioned by Caesar (_B.
G._, ii, 13, § 2), would to most minds prove that the Belgae spoke a
Gallo-Brythonic dialect, not only by the _p_ which it contains, but
also by the _nt_, a non-Goidelic combination. Mr. Nicholson, however
(_Keltic Researches_, p. 16, with which cf. A. Holder, _Alt-celtischer
Sprachschatz_, i, 515), of course explains the _p_ as Indo-European.
[2080] It may be worth mentioning that Professor Rhys has affirmed
(_The Welsh People_, p. 13) that the language of the British Goidels
shows more traces of having been influenced by contact with the
language of the non-Aryan aborigines than that of the Brythons. This
fact, if it were a fact, would obviously be a further argument, if such
were needed, against the view that the Goidels were the latest Celtic
invaders of Britain. One expects, of course, to find that the professor
changed this view, which was published in 1900; and accordingly we
read in the address which he delivered in the same year to the British
Association (_Report_, &c., p. 896) that ‘the syntax of insular
Brythonic is no less non-Aryan than that of Goidelic’. Naturally in
1902 (_The Welsh People_, 3rd ed., p. 13) he repeated the former
statement.
[2081] See p. 494, _infra_.
[2082] Philologists who have a sense of humour should read a truly
delicious story told by M. H. Gaidoz (_Esquisse de la religion des
Gaulois_, pp. 22-4) about a ‘celtiste de premier ordre’, who sent him
for publication in the _Revue celtique_ an elaborate study on the word
_encina_, which he had discovered on the pedestal of a statuette and
taken for a Celtic inscription, but which, as M. Gaidoz mercifully
warned him, was simply the name of the engraver, M. Encina, 56,
boulevard Montparnasse, Paris. ‘Nous croyons utile,’ M. Gaidoz gravely
concludes, ‘de protester par un exemple irréfutable contre l’abus qu’on
semble faire actuellement de l’étymologie.’
[2083] _B. G._, v, 12, § 2.--maritima pars [Britanniae incolitur]
ab iis qui praedae ac belli inferendi causa ex Belgis transierunt,
qui omnes fere isdem nominibus civitatum appellantur quibus orti ex
civitatibus eo pervenerunt, &c.
[2084] Ptolemy, _Geogr._, ii, 3, § 11. Cf. my _Caesar’s Conquest of
Gaul_, 1899, pp. 450, 476-7.
[2085] _Geogr._, ii, 3, § 13.
[2086] Not to mention Iscalis, the site of which is unknown.
[2087] Professor Rhys (_The Welsh People_, 1902, pp. 88-9), observing
that, according to Caesar (_B. G._, ii, 4, §§ 6-7), Diviciacus, King
of the Belgic Suessiones, had established his hegemony in (Southern)
Britain, and (_ib._, 3, § 5) that the territories of the Suessiones and
the Remi were practically one, argues that ‘we should expect to find
both of them represented in Britain, though their names have not been
detected. Now,’ he continues, ‘we know from ... inscriptions that a god
of the Remi was Camulos’; and he points out that the name of this god
is preserved in _Camulodunum_, or _Colchester_, the name of the chief
town of the Trinovantes. The argument is not decisive, because Camulos
was worshipped by other Gallic tribes as well as the Remi, and his
name appears also in that of Camulogenus, a chief of the Aulerci (_B.
G._, vii, 57, § 3), who were not Belgae: nevertheless the Professor’s
conclusion may be right.
[2088] p. 43.
[2089] _The Welsh People_, 1902, p. 6. On the next page the professor
adds that ‘the Belgae probably occupied the whole of the coast on the
east and south ... from the Isle of Wight to the Firth of Forth’. It
is clear therefore that in 1902 the Cantii were ‘considered Belgic’,
although in 1884 and in 1904 there was ‘no evidence’ for this view.
[2090] See pp. 459-60, _infra_.
[2091] _Proc. Cambridge Ant. Soc._, N. S., iv, 1904, pp. 478-9.
[2092] It has indeed been conjectured, as we have seen (p. 400, n. 3,
_supra_), that the Basques were a distinct race.
[2093] The late Professor F. W. Maitland (_Domesday Book and Beyond_,
p. 222) argues that post-Saxon British survivors could not have been
very numerous, as the Celtic language left ‘few traces of itself’; but
the same argument might be used to show that when the Romans came to
Britain the Celts were few. See F. J. Haverfield, _The Romanization of
Roman Britain_, pp. 9-12.
[2094] _An Inaugural Lecture_, 1903, pp. 39-40.
[2095] Although Matthew Arnold was almost absolutely ignorant of
ethnology, I do not know any book which ethnologists would find more
suggestive than his _Lectures on Celtic Literature_.
[2096] It has been truly said (_Journ. Anthr. Soc._, 1870, p. xxxvi)
that ‘between even the Welshman and the Irishman there is a want of
sympathy ... fully equal to that which exists between either ... and
the most Teutonic Briton’.
[2097] Mr. Alfred Nutt (_Folk-Lore_, xv, 1904, p. 234), commenting
on a statement in Mr. Nicholson’s _Keltic Researches_ (p. iv) that
Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire are as Celtic (I should say as
pre-Celtic) as South Wales and Ulster, asks whether it does not
‘demonstrate the absolute futility of statistics of “relative
nigrescence”, or ... size of skulls. The Bucks peasant,’ he continues,
‘may be physiologically akin to the man from Kerry or Glamorganshire;
psychically he differs profoundly.’ Yes, but this does not discredit
the methods of physical anthropology: it only illustrates what I
have said in the text. Between a certain number of individuals in
Glamorganshire and a certain number in Buckinghamshire there is,
let us assume, physical kinship: if we could isolate those two sets
of individuals and compare them, instead of hastily comparing the
populations of Glamorganshire and Buckinghamshire as wholes, we might
find that the psychical difference was not as profound as Mr. Nutt
supposes. Probably it would still be noticeable. But why? Partly
because the physical resemblance is combined with a physical difference
due to cross-breeding, the degree and nature of which it would be
impossible to ascertain; partly because the environment, social,
geographical, and climatic, of the peasants of Glamorganshire has for
many centuries been very different from that of Buckinghamshire. Let
two plum-puddings be made of identical sets of ingredients, but in
slightly different quantities, in different kitchens, and by different
cooks. The results will be very different. Or suppose that a thousand
Spanish immigrants settled in Britain, and intermarried only among
themselves. At the end of a century their physical and psychical types
would have been modified. Nevertheless, handled with due skill and
judgement, statistics of nigrescence and of cranial measurements retain
their value.
[2098] See pp. 411-21, _supra_.
[2099] _Geogr._, ed. C. Müller and F. Dübner, 1853, p. 948, note to p.
97, line 22.
[2100] See F. Vogel’s ed. of 1888.
[2101] See p. 499, n. 2, _infra_.
[2102] _Geogr._, ed. C. Müller, i, 1883, p. 74, note.
[2103] i, 8 (_Geogr. Graec. min._, vol. i, 1855, ed. C. Müller). Cf.
_Rev. celt._, xiii, 1892, p. 399.
[2104] Ed. A. Meineke, 1849, pp. 186, 534. Cf. Pauly’s
_Real-Encyclopädie_, vol. iii, part i, 1897, p. 860.
[2105] _Scottish Review_, xviii, 1891, p. 137.
[2106] _Rev. celt._, xiii, 1892, pp. 398-403.
[2107] _The Welsh People_, 1902, p. 76.
[2108] _Celtic Britain_, 1904, pp. 241-2.
[2109] _The Welsh People_, 3rd ed., p. 6.
[2110] _Nat. Hist._, iv, 17 (31), § 106.
[2111] _Celtic Britain_, 3rd ed., p. 4.
[2112] _Ib._, pp. 211-4.
[2113] _Allgemeine Encyklopädie der Wissenschaften_, &c., 35. Theil,
1884, p. 141.
[2114] W. F. Skene, _The Highlanders of Scotland_, 1902, p. 384.
[2115] _Celtic Britain_, 1904, pp. 208-9.
[2116] W. F. Skene, _The Highlanders of Scotland_, 1902, p. 384.
[2117] _Keltic Researches_, p. 25, n. 1.
[2118] iii, 57, § 3.
[2119] _Prehist. Times_, 1900, pp. 540-51; _Origin of Civilisation_,
1902, pp. 220-4, 340-5.
[2120] _Ib._, p. 537.
[2121] _Ib._, p. 219.
[2122] _Golden Bough_, 1900, i, 73, n. 2.
[2123] _Golden Bough_, 1900, i, 70.
[2124] See Sir A. Lyall’s _Asiatic Studies_, ii, 1899, p. 236.
[2125] See p. 58, _supra_.
[2126] _L’Anthr._, xiii, 1902, p. 534.
[2127] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, xxiii, 1894, p. 151.
[2128] _Origin of Civilisation_, 1902, p. 391.
[2129] _L’Anthr._, xiii, 1902, p. 533.
[2130] _Ib._, xvi, 1905, p. 658.
[2131] _The Religion of the Semites_, 1901, pp. 54-5.
[2132] _Fortnightly Rev._, July, 1905, pp. 162-73.
[2133] _Ib._, p. 162.
[2134] _Ib._, p. 171.
[2135] _Man_, vi, 1906, No. 49, p. 78.
[2136] _Archaeol. Journal_, lx, 1903, pp. 209-10.
[2137] _The Clyde Mystery_, pp. 138-9.
[2138] See p. 199, _supra_.
[2139] _Archaeology and False Antiquities_, pp. 170, 259-60.
[2140] _Ib._, p. 245.
[2141] See p. 435, _supra_.
[2142] _The Clyde Mystery_, p. 141.
[2143] See _Archaeology and False Antiquities_, pp. 255-6, and cf. pp.
229-30 with _The Clyde Mystery_, pp. 132-4.
[2144] _Prehist. Scotland_, p. 474.
[2145] See pp. 110, 185-6, _supra_.
[2146] _Dolmens of Ireland_, iii, 743.
[2147] _Early Man in Britain_, p. 366.
[2148] _Prehist. Scotland_, pp. 476-80.
[2149] See pp. 429-40, _supra_.
[2150] _Brit. Barrows_, p. 409.
[2151] _Ib._, pp. 19-20, 22.
[2152] _Prehist. Scotland_, pp. 478-9.
[2153] W. C. Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_, ii, 445.
[2154] See p. 110, _supra_, and W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp.
448-51.
[2155] _Ib._, p. 536.
[2156] See p. 204, _supra_.
[2157] _Vict. Hist. of ... Somerset_, i, 189.
[2158] _Ib._, p. 187.
[2159] _Early Age of Greece_, i, 502.
[2160] See p. 188, n. 2, _supra_.
[2161] _Early Age of Greece_, i, 503.
[2162] _Ib._, p. 504.
[2163] See p. 110, n. 1, _supra_.
[2164] _Archaeol. Cambr._, 3rd ser., xiv, 1868, p. 291; _Archaeol.
Journal_, xxvii, 1870, p. 156; W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 103-6.
[2165] _Ib._, pp. 103-8.
[2166] _Forty Years’ Researches_, pp. lxvii-lxviii.
[2167] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 338; _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._,
xxxviii, 1904, pp. 335-6.
[2168] _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iv, 30.
[2169] _Ib._, pp. 4-5.
[2170] _Ib._, p. 189.
[2171] _Archaeologia_, lviii, 1902, p. 84.
[2172] _Ib._, xxviii, 1840, pp. 399-419.
[2173] _Rude Stone Monuments_, pp. 8, 82-3. Of this famous book the
Rev. W. C. Lukis (_Archaeol. Review_, i, 1888, p. 353) says that ‘every
copy should be committed to the flames’.
[2174] See Lord Avebury’s _Prehist. Times_, 6th ed., 1900, pp.
112-4, 122, and _Wilts. Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Mag._, xxiii, 1887,
pp. 245-54. The theory of Mr. Edgar Barclay (_Stonehenge and its
Earthworks_, 1895, pp. 40-1, 127-30), which ascribes the construction
of Stonehenge to the time of Agricola, has been confuted by Professor
Haverfield (_Classical Review_, x, 1896, pp. 74-5). The argument which
Mr. Barclay (_op. cit._, pp. 50-1) directs against the received view
that it was pre-Roman, is based upon the fanciful assumption that it
was designed in accordance with ‘an ancient astrological figure’, which
rests upon the further assumption that ‘all the salient measurements
of Stonehenge may truly be said to result from an observation’ of the
sun. His argument (_ib._, p. 88) that ‘we have the testimony of an
eye-witness, John Webb, that an iron spike was dug up near one of the
trilithons from a depth of 3 feet’, and that the circle must therefore
have been erected after the close of the Bronze Age, would hardly
impose upon a beginner. There is no evidence that this ‘spike’ (John
Webb, _A Vindication of Stone Heng Restored_, 1665, p. 128) was made of
iron: the circumstances in which it was found are not known; and, as we
shall presently see (p. 477, n. 5, _infra_), an object manufactured in
the nineteenth century has recently been unearthed within the precincts
of Stonehenge at a depth much greater than three feet.
[2175] See pp. 215-6, _supra_.
[2176] _Archaeol. Review_, ii, 1889, pp. 320-2.
[2177] Cf. p. 183, _supra_.
[2178] The Hallstatt period is now believed to have ended about 400
B.C. See p. 229, _supra_.
[2179] _Archaeol. Review_, ii, 1889, pp. 322-3, 324-5.
[2180] _Ib._, p. 321.
[2181] Pottery was unearthed in 1802 close to the ‘Altar Stone’ from
a depth of 5 feet or more by Sir R. C. Hoare’s collaborator, W.
Cunnington, who described it as ‘similar to the rude urns found in the
barrows’ (W. Long, _Stonehenge and its Barrows_, 1876, p. 86).
[2182] _Folk-Lore_, vi, 1895, pp. 6-51, and especially 14-6.
[2183] See p. 232, _supra_.
[2184] _Ancient Wilts_, i, 127.
[2185] _Ib._
[2186] _Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 291.
[2187] _Ib._, p. 301. One of the two barrows in which chippings of the
Stonehenge stones were found contained a bronze ‘spear-head’ or dagger,
and a bronze pin.
[2188] See _Man_, ii, 1902, No. 6, pp. 7-11, and _Archaeologia_, lviii,
1902, pp. 37-118.
[2189] _Ib._, pp. 51, 53, 55, 57, 62, 65-6, 71-2, and fig. 24.
[2190] _Man_, ii, 1902, No. 16, p. 25.
[2191] _Ib._, p. 24; _Archaeologia_, lviii, 1902, p. 84.
[2192] _Man_, ii, 1902, No. 6, p. 9.
[2193] See p. 215, _supra_, and _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_
(Brit. Museum), pp. 46-7.
[2194] _Archaeologia_, lviii, 1902. pp. 63-5.
[2195] Dr. Evans, however, insists (_Man_, ii, 1902, No. 16, p. 22)
that ‘amongst all the stone implements discovered [by Prof. Gowland]
there was nothing distinctly neolithic’.
[2196] See pp. 71-2, 129, 131, _supra_.
[2197] _Man_, ii, 1902, p. 10.
[2198] _Archaeologia_, lviii, 1902, p. 86.
[2199] W. Greenwell, _Brit. Barrows_, pp. 37, n. 1, 258, 304, 329, 432;
_Archaeologia_, liv, 1895, p. 89.
[2200] A. Pitt Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iii, 135.
[2201] _Nature_, Nov. 21, 1901, p. 55.
[2202] _Nineteenth Century_, June, 1903, p. 1003.
[2203] _Ib._, p. 1002.
[2204] _Stonehenge_, 1880, p. 18.
[2205] _Nature_, Nov. 21, 1901, pp. 55-6.
[2206] _Nineteenth Century_, June, 1903, p. 1008.
[2207] _Nature_, Nov. 21, 1901, p. 57.
[2208] _Ib._
[2209] This phenomenon is explained in Sir N. Lockyer’s _Elementary
Lessons in Astronomy_, 1889, §§ 549-54.
[2210] _Nature_, Nov. 21, 1901, p. 57.
[2211] _Nineteenth Century_, June, 1903, p. 1009. See also _Nature_,
lxviii, 1903, p. 180. (On the 22nd of June, 1903, a correspondent of
the _Times_ wrote from Salisbury, ‘For the first time for nearly ten
years visitors at Stonehenge yesterday morning saw the sun rise.’)
[2212] _Nineteenth Century_, June, 1903, p. 1009. I cannot deny myself
the pleasure of quoting Mr. Hinks’s criticism of Sir Norman Lockyer’s
argument. ‘The authors [Sir Norman and Mr. Penrose] are trying,’ he
says, ‘to find the place of a prehistoric sunrise by assuming that the
avenue pointed to it. They measured the direction of the avenue, and
found that the measures agreed so very nearly with the Ordnance Survey
measure of the direction of their mark--presumably on the highest
point--at Sidbury camp, that they adopted the latter measure rather
than their own; in other words, they agreed that the avenue is directed
very exactly to Sidbury. Henceforward one cannot leave Sidbury out of
the argument.... There are two courses open to us. On the one hand we
may suppose that the avenue was drawn to lead over the down to Sidbury
camp, and had no intentional relation to the place of sunrise. On the
other hand we may suppose that Sidbury is in the sunrise line not by
accident but by design; that it forms an integral part of the solar
temple of Stonehenge. And since the camp occupies the summit of a steep
and isolated hill, while Stonehenge lies on a wide and gently sloping
down, it is plain that the camp end of the Stonehenge-Sidbury line
must have been fixed first, and the site of the temple determined by
prolonging the line sunrise-Sidbury till it struck a suitable place on
the down. There is nothing impossible in this; the question is, Can
it be said to be so probable that one is justified in fixing a date
for Stonehenge from the direction of the line so drawn? Which is the
greater improbability, that the Stonehenge-sunrise line was laid out so
that it passed over the peak of Sidbury hill ... so nearly invisible
from Stonehenge by reason of an intervening down that Sir Norman
Lockyer thought that the latter formed the local horizon, and makes no
mention of having seen Sidbury over its top ... or that the line of an
avenue setting out from Stonehenge happens to point to the place where
the sun rose at a date which is perhaps as likely as any other for the
foundation of the building...?
‘If preference be given to the first alternative, and we assume that
Stonehenge really was so placed that Sidbury marked the point where the
sun rose on midsummer morning, the question still remains, Was it done
so accurately that it is worth measuring accurately now, and drawing
from the measures an exact statement of date? It _may_ well be objected
that in our climate Sidbury is probably not visible from Stonehenge at
sunrise once in twenty years, and that the likelihood of a long delay
in drawing out the plan of so great a work would very soon have induced
the builders to adopt a line near enough for their purposes though not
for ours.... And lastly there is the grave difficulty that everything
depends upon guessing right what is to be considered the critical phase
of the sunrise or sunset,’ &c.
[2213] _Journal of Philology_, xxix, 1903, pp. 94, 113.
[2214] This article is mentioned _honoris causa_ by Mr. Hinks
(_Nineteenth Century_, June, 1903, p. 1005).
[2215] _Nature_, Nov. 21, 1901, p. 55.
[2216] See p. 290, _supra_.
[2217] Professor Montelius accepts and endorses Sir Norman Lockyer’s
conclusions. Most of the barrows near Stonehenge belong, he says
(_Archiv für Anthr._, N. F., ii, 1904, p. 140) to the earliest period
of the Bronze Age, which, in the south of England, began, in his
opinion, about 2000 B.C. He goes on to speak of the chippings of the
Stonehenge stones which have been found in two of the surrounding
barrows, and affirms that to those who know the epoch to which
Stonehenge belongs it is evident that it was a temple, for sepulchral
monuments ‘have a different appearance’ (_sahen nicht so aus_); and
finally he mentions the results at which ‘some of England’s greatest
astronomers have arrived’.
Alas that a great archaeologist should meddle with what he does not
understand! ‘Some of England’s greatest astronomers’ is presumably a
rhetorical synonym for Sir Norman Lockyer: at all events the results
which so appeal to Professor Montelius’s and Sir Norman’s imagination
stand to Sir Norman’s credit alone. Let me recommend the professor
to read the article in the _Nineteenth Century_ of June, 1903, in
which another astronomer has demolished them. The only novelty in the
professor’s article is the implied statement that the barrows in which
the chippings were found are not much later than 2000 B.C. On this
point he is of course entitled to a respectful hearing: but the mere
amateur who remembers that the two barrows in question are assigned
by one of England’s greatest archaeologists to about 300 B.C. will, I
fear, shrug his shoulders; and Mr. Abercromby (see p. 183, _supra_)
has proved that many of the Wiltshire barrows were later than 800 B.C.
The remark that sepulchral monuments have a different appearance from
Stonehenge is not helpful, seeing that Stonehenge is unique among
megalithic circles. I can only repeat that many such circles have been
proved to be sepulchral monuments; and, as I shall show presently,
there is evidence that Stonehenge was a scene of sepulchral rites.
[2218] Sir R. C. Hoare, _Anc. Wilts_, i, 144-5; W. Long, _Stonehenge
and its Barrows_, p. 86.
[2219] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxiv, 1900, p. 197. See also xxxv,
1901, pp. 194, 219; xxxvi, 1902, pp. 131, 579; and Joseph Anderson,
_Scotland in Pagan Times: the Bronze and Stone Ages_, p. 118. As I
have already remarked (p. 207, _supra_), the date of many English
circles remains uncertain; and I admit that some may be of locally
late neolithic age, though I doubt whether any were erected before
the oldest bronze implement was introduced into Southern Britain. Mr.
H. St. George Gray (_Archaeologia_, lviii, 1903, pp. 461-98) regards
the well-known monument of Arbor Low, near Bakewell in Derbyshire,
as belonging to ‘the period of transition from stone to bronze’.
This circle has been excavated to a considerable extent. No metal
was discovered, nor any pottery that could be assigned to the period
of construction; but a barbed and tanged arrow-head was found on the
bottom of the ditch. Arrow-heads of this kind were probably first
manufactured later than the non-barbed varieties (see p. 81, _supra_),
although many specimens of the latter were contemporary with the
former. As I have already pointed out, the mere absence of bronze in a
circle is not sufficient to prove that it did not belong to the Bronze
Age: the excavation of Arbor Low was necessarily incomplete; and all
that can be said with certainty is that it is not older than the period
to which Mr. Gray ascribes it. The reasons which he gives (_Man_,
vi, 1906, No. 101, p. 159) for presuming that the Stripple Stones in
Cornwall were of the same date appear to me equally inconclusive.
[I find that Mr. Gray (_Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1902
[1904], p. 465) admits that ‘Arbor Low has not been disproved to be
of Early Bronze Age date’, and that his conclusion rests ‘on somewhat
meagre evidence’. It has, however, been pointed out (_ib._, p. 466)
that ‘a Bronze Age tumulus was certainly constructed out of material
_derived from a portion of the original structure_ of the earthwork
enclosing the stone circle’, and therefore that ‘it is reasonable to
assign the date of construction of the circle to a period _not later_
than the _early_ Bronze Age’.]
[2220] _Archaeol. Review_, ii, 1889, p. 313. See pp. 211-2, _supra_.
[2221] _Ib._, pp. 313-4.
[2222] _Journ. Ethn. Soc._, ii, 1870, p. 2.
[2223] _Archaeol. Review_, ii, 1889, p. 322.
[2224] Professor Gowland (_Archaeologia_, lviii, 1902, p. 85) holds
that the discovery of the ‘incense-cup’ proves nothing, ‘as the nature
of the ground and the conditions under which it was found are not
given.... In Excavation VI’, he dryly remarks, ‘I dug up a modern
preserved meat tin from a much lower layer than the stone implements
in the neighbouring undisturbed ground.’ Dr. Evans, however, who
apparently anticipated this objection, holds (_Archaeol. Review_, ii,
1889, p. 322), that if the cup had not been originally deposited in
the place where it was found, it would have been broken. I cannot find
any proof that the so-called incense-cup was an incense-cup, in the
sense in which archaeologists use the term, at all. It is described by
John Webb (_A Vindication of Stone Heng Restored_, 1665, pp. 127-8) as
‘the _Cover_ highly probable of a _Thuribulum_.... It was of Stone,
light in comparison, the more by being hollow, and extream hard.’ Now
incense-cups were not made of stone (though fragments of stone were
often mixed with the clay of which they were baked), and they hardly
ever had covers (_Archaeologia_, xliii, 1871, p. 383; W. Greenwell,
_Brit. Barrows_, p. 164, note; _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze
Age_ [Brit. Museum], pp. 61-3). The word ‘Stone’ may have been used
incorrectly; but if the ‘Thuribulum’ was really stone, it was perhaps
of late date. Cf. Sir J. Evans’s _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 471.
[2225] W. Long, _Stonehenge and its Barrows_, p. 86; _Archaeol.
Review_, ii, 1889, p. 318. See p. 469, n. 7, _supra_.
[2226] See pp. 202, 212, n. 2, _supra_.
[2227] _Archaeol. Review_, ii, 1889, p. 315.
[2228] _Ib._, p. 318.
[2229] _Ib._, pp. 315-6. See also _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, iv, 1866, pp.
251-3.
[2230] _Archaeologia_, lviii, 1902, p. 88.
[2231] See pp. 210-2, _supra_.
[2232] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, xxxiv, 1900, p. 196.
[2233] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., ix, 1881-3, p. 348.
[2234] _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, iv, 1866, pp. 244-63.
[2235] _Stonehenge_, pp. 21, 32-3.
[2236] _Archaeol. Review_, ii, 1889, p. 319.
[2237] _Archaeologia_, lviii, 1902, pp. 83-4.
[2238] _Wilts. Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Mag._, xxi, 1884, p. 146.
[2239] vol. lxxi, 1904-5, pp. 297-300, 345-8, 367-8, 391-3, 535-8.
[2240] _Ib._, p. 298.
[2241] Ed. T. Arnold, 1879, p. 12 (lib. i, c. 7). Sir Norman Lockyer
(_Stonehenge_, 1906, p. 51), quoting the well-known passage in which
Hecataeus of Abdera, a contemporary of Pytheas, describes a circular
temple in the island of the Hyperboreans (Diodorus Siculus, ii, 47, §
1), says that ‘Stonehenge alone can by any probability be referred to’.
Is it not possible that if the romancer was serious, he was referring
to the far larger circle of Avebury?
[2242] In a work entitled _Choir Gaur ... commonly called Stonehenge
... astronomically explained_, &c.
[2243] _Nature_, lxxi, 1904-5, p. 391.
[2244] See W. W. Rouse Ball, _Short Account of the Hist. of Math._, 3rd
ed., 1901, pp. 2, 6, 14.
[2245] _Nature_, lxxi, 1904-5, p. 535. Sir Norman Lockyer has
discovered new uses for dolmens and barrows. ‘The dolmens,’ he says
(_ib._, p. 298), ‘have, I am convinced, been in many cases not
graves originally, but darkened observing places to observe along a
sight-line’; and, he adds (_ib._, lxxii, 1905, p. 272), ‘I have always
held that ... long and chambered barrows were for the living and not
for the dead.’
[2246] _Nature_, lxxi, 1904-5, pp. 536-8.
[2247] _Ib._, p. 536.
[2248] _Stonehenge_, p. 137.
[2249] _Archaeol. Journal_, xlix, 1892, p. 178, n. 1. In a more recent
article (_Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xviii, 1900, p. 119) Professor
Haverfield refers to ‘the tin-trade of N.W. Spain, where we must place
the famous and fabulous Cassiterides’. The word ‘fabulous’ seems to
suggest that he here withdraws his former view that the Cassiterides
were islands ‘off’ N.W. Spain.
[2250] _Academy_, xlviii, Oct. 5, 1895, p. 273.
[2251] W. C. Borlase, _Tin Mining in Spain_, 1898, p. 21.--‘In the
island of Ons alone, near the mouth of the river Pontevedra ... some
indications of tin-quartz were found, so Cornide tells us,’ &c. Ons is
not one of the group of islands with which the Cassiterides have been
identified.
[2252] _Ib._, pp. 24, 28, &c. Mr. Borlase’s investigations only confirm
the statements of Diodorus (v, 38, § 4), of Strabo (iii, 2, § 9), and
of Pliny (_Nat. Hist._, xxxiv, 16 [47], § 156), who all agree in saying
that Spain produced tin.
[2253] See p. 490, n. 5, _infra_.
[2254] De Mortillet’s identification of the Cassiterides with the
islands off the coast of Brittany is not worth discussing. Tin was
apparently worked in the Morbihan in the Bronze Age (W. Boyd Dawkins,
_Early Man in Britain_, pp. 403-4), but not in any of the Breton
islands; nor is there any evidence that Gallic tin was ever an object
of foreign commerce.
[2255] _Bibl. hist._, v, 21, § 2; 22, §§ 1-2; 38, § 4.
[2256] _Ib._, 38, § 4.--ὑπεράνω γὰρ τῆς τῶν Λυσιτανῶν χώρας ἔστι
μέταλλα πολλὰ τοῦ καττιτέρου, κατὰ τὰς προκειμένας τῆς Ἰβηρίας ἐν τῷ
ὠκεανῷ νησῖδας τὰς ἀπὸ τοῦ συμβεβηκότος Καττιτερίδας ὠνομασμένας.
[2257] _Geogr._, ii, 5, § 15.--τούτοις δὲ [i.e. the extremity of
the Pyrenees] τὰ ἑσπέρια τῆς Βρεττανικῆς ἀντίκεινται, πρὸς ἄρκτον,
ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ ταῖς Ἀρτάβροις ἀντίκεινται πρὸς ἄρκτον αἱ Καττιτερίδες
καλούμεναι νῆσοι πελάγιαι, κατὰ τὸ Βρεταννικόν πως κλίμα ἱδρυμέναι.
[2258] _Ib._, ii, 5, § 30.--πρόκεινται δὲ νῆσοι τῆς Εὐρώπης, ἃς ἔφαμεν,
ἔξω μὲν Στηλῶν Γάδειρά τε καὶ Καττιτερίδες, καὶ Βρεττανικαί, &c.
[2259] _Ib._, iii, 2, § 9.--τὸν δὲ καττίτερον οὐκ ἐπιπολῆς εὑρίσκεσθαί
φησιν [Ποσειδώνιος] ... ἀλλ’ ὀρύττεσθαι· γεννᾶσθαι δ’ ἔν τε τοῖς ὑπὲρ
τοὺς Λυσιτανοὺς βαρβάροις καὶ ἐν ταῖς Καττιτερίσι νήσοις, καὶ ἐκ τῶν
Βρεττανικῶν δὲ εἰς τὴν Μασσαλίαν κομίζεσθαι. ἐν δὲ τοῖς Ἀρτάβροις, οἳ
τῆς Λυσιτανίας ὕστατοι πρὸς ἄρκτον καὶ δύσιν εἰσίν, ἐξανθεῖν φησιν τὴν
γῆν ἀργυρίῳ, καττιτέρῳ, χρυσίῳ λευκῷ.
[2260] _Ib._, iii, 5, § 11.--Αἱ δὲ Καττιτερίδες δέκα μὲν εἰσί, κεῖνται
δ’ ἔγγυς ἀλλήλων, πρὸς ἄρκτον ἀπὸ τοῦ τῶν Ἀρτάβρων λιμένος πελάγιαι·
μία δ’ αὐτῶν ἔρημός ἐστι, τὰς δ’ ἄλλας οἰκοῦσιν ἄνθρωποι μελάγχλαινοι,
ποδήρεις ἐνδεδυκότες τοὺς χιτῶνας, ἐζωσμένοι περὶ τὰ στέρνα, μετὰ
ῥάβδων περιπατοῦντες, ὅμοιοι ταῖς τραγικαῖς Ποιναῖς· ζῶσι δ’ ἀπὸ
βοσκημάτων νομαδικῶς τὸ πλέον. μέταλλα δὲ ἔχοντες καττιτέρου καὶ
μολύβδου κέραμον ἀντὶ τούτων καὶ τῶν δερμάτων διαλλάττονται καὶ ἅλας
καὶ χαλκώματα πρὸς τοὺς ἐμπόρους. πρότερον μὲν οὖν Φοίνικες μόνοι τὴν
ἐμπορίαν ἔστελλον ταύτην ἐκ τῶν Γαδείρων, κρύπτοντες ἅπασι τὸν πλοῦν·
τῶν δὲ Ῥωμαίων ἐπακολουθούντων ναυκλήρῳ τινί, ὅπως καὶ αὐτοὶ γνοῖεν
τὰ ἐμπόρια, φθόνῳ ὁ ναύκληρος ἑκὼν εἰς τέναγος ἐξέβαλε τὴν ναῦν,
ἐπαγαγὼν δ’ εἰς τὸν αὐτὸν ὄλεθρον καὶ τοὺς ἑπομένους, αὐτὸς ἐσώθη διὰ
ναυαγίου.... οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι δὲ ὅμως πειρώμενοι πολλάκις ἐξέμαθον τὸν πλοῦν·
ἐπειδὴ δὲ καὶ Πόπλιος Κράσσος, διαβὰς ἐπ’ αὐτούς, ἔγνω τὰ μέταλλα ἐκ
μικροῦ βάθους ὀρυττομένα ... ἐκ περιουσίας ἤδη τὴν θάλατταν ἐργάζεσθαι
ταύτην τοῖς ἐθέλουσιν ἐπέδειξε, καίπερ οὖσαν πλείω τῆς διειργούσης εἰς
τὴν Βρεττανικήν.
[2261] _Ib._, iii, 3, § 5.--Ὕστατοι δ’ οἰκοῦσιν Ἄρταβροι περὶ τὴν
ἄκραν, ἣ καλεῖται Νέριον, ἣ καὶ τῆς ἑσπερίου πλευρᾶς καὶ τῆς βορείου
πέρας ἐστί.
[2262] _Ib._, iii, 1, § 3.--τρίτον ἐστὶ τὸ ἑσπέριον πλευρὸν ... μέχρι
τῆς πρὸς Ἀρτάβροις ἄκρας, ἣν καλοῦσι Νέριον.
[2263] _Chorographia_, iii, 6, § 47.--in Celticis aliquot sunt
[insulae], quas quia plumbo abundant uno omnes Cassiteridas appellant.
[2264] _Nat. Hist._, iv, 22 (36), § 119.--Ex adverso Celtiberiae
complures sunt insulae Cassiterides dictae Graecis a fertilitate
plumbi, et e regione Arrotrebarum promunturi Deorum VI, quas aliqui
Fortunatas appellavere. G. F. Unger (_Rheinisches Museum_, xxxviii,
1883, p. 167) holds that both Pliny and Mela, in locating the
Cassiterides, followed Roman, and therefore recent authorities.
[2265] _Ib._, vii, 56 (57), § 197.--plumbum ex Cassiteride insula
primus adportavit Midacritus.
[2266] _Les premiers habitants de l’Europe_, i, 1889, p. 196, n. 2. Cf.
K. Müllenhoff, _Deutsche Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, p. 211.
[2267] See p. 514, _infra_.
[2268] _Nat. Hist._, xxxiv, 16 (47), § 156.--Pretiosissimum hoc,
Graecis appellatum cassiterum fabuloseque narratum in insulas Atlantici
maris peti vitilibusque navigiis et circumsutis corio advehi. Nunc
certum est in Lusitania gigni et in Gallaecia, &c.
[2269] _Academy_, xlviii, Dec. 14, 1895, p. 524.
[2270] _Nat. Hist._, iii, 1 (2), § 6; iv, 19 (33), § 109; 22 (35), §
114.
[2271] _Geogr._, ii, 6, § 73.--Ἐν δὲ τῷ Δυτικῷ Ὠκεανῷ αἱ Καττιτερίδες
δέκα τὸν ἀριθμόν, ὧν τὸ μεταξὺ ἐπέχει μοίρας δʹ μεʹ 𐅵ʹʹ (4° 45° 30′)
καὶ αἱ τῶν θεῶν νῆσοι δύο τὸν ἀριθμὸν δʹ γοʹʹ μγʹ γʹʹ (4° 40′ 43° 30″).
[2272] _Orbis Descriptio_, 561-4.--αὐτὰρ ὑπ’ ἄκρην | Ἱρήν, ἣν ἐνίπουσι
κάρην ἔμεν Εὐρωπείης, | Νήσους Ἑσπερίδας, τόθι κασσιτέροιο γενέθλη, |
Ἀφνειοὶ ναίουσιν ἀγαυῶν παῖδες Ἰβήρων.
[2273] _Rheinisches Museum_, xxxviii, 1883, p. 166.
[2274] _Ib._, pp. 166-7.
[2275] _Ib._, p. 170.
[2276] _Geogr._, iii, 3, § 5.--Ἔχουσι δὲ οἱ Ἄρταβροι πόλεις συχνὰς ἐν
κόλπῳ συνοικουμένας, ὃν οἱ πλέοντες καὶ χρώμενοι τοῖς τόποις Ἀρτάβρων
λιμένα προσαγορεύουσιν.
[2277] _Chorographia_, iii, 1, § 13.--In Artabris sinus ore angusto
admissum mare non angusto ambitu excipiens Adrobricam urbem et quattuor
amnium ostia incingit, &c.
[2278] _Geogr._, ii, 6, § 2.--Ἀρτάβρων λιμὴν εʹ γʹʹ μεʹ (5° 20′, 45°) Νέριον ἀκρωτήριον
εʹ δʹʹ μεʹ ϛʹʹ (5° 15′, 45° 10′); § 4--ἐν τῷ Μεγάλῳ λιμένι Φλαούιοι Βριγάντιον
ϛʹ 𐅵ʹʹ δʹʹ μεʹ (6° 45′, 45°).
[2279] _Rhein. Mus._, xxxviii, 1883, p. 165, n. 2.
[2280] _Ib._, p. 168.
[2281] _Ib._
[2282] See p. 484, n. 6, _supra_.
[2283] _Rhein. Mus._, xxxviii, 1883, p. 170.
[2284] _Academy_, xlviii, Nov. 23, 1895, p. 438.
[2285] _Ib._, Dec. 21, p. 547.
[2286] See p. 483, n. 3, _supra_. Unger (_Rhein. Mus._, xxxviii, 1883,
p. 171) says that after the discovery made by Crassus the mines on the
islands must have been speedily worked out. But this is pure fancy: the
mines on these islands were never worked out, for they never existed.
[2287] _Geogr._, iii, 3, § 7.--Μελανείμονες ἅπαντες.
[2288] _L’Anthr._, iii, 1892, pp. 275-6. See also K. Müllenhoff,
_Deutsche Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, p. 92, n. *, and Unger in _Rhein.
Mus._, xxxviii, 1883, p. 163.
[2289] _Congrès internat. d’anthr. et d’archéol. préhist._, 1874, i,
579-84.
[2290] _Ib._, p. 579.
[2291] The theory of Mr. Cecil Torr, who holds that the Cassiterides
never existed, is virtually identical with that of M. Hildebrand. ‘In
the Phoenician language’, he remarks, ‘the word for island is the same
as in the Hebrew ... and this word אי is used repeatedly in the Bible
for places beyond the sea, as well as ... islands. Most probably the
Phoenicians used this word when speaking of the Cassiterides, meaning
thereby that these were places beyond the sea [which he identifies with
‘the north-west corner of Spain’]: but the Greeks understood it in
another sense, and thus turned these places into islands’ (_Academy_,
xlviii, Oct. 26, 1895, pp. 342-3). To the objection that Publius
Crassus reached the Cassiterides by sea, Mr. Torr replies that ‘there
is nothing to show that his destination was an island’ (_ib._, Nov. 9,
p. 390); but Mr. Talfourd Ely (_ib._, Nov. 16, p. 414) pertinently asks
whether the word διαβάς, which Strabo uses in describing the voyage
of Crassus, can be used of coasting from one point to another on the
same shore. Moreover, it is absurd to contend that ‘there is nothing
to show’ that Crassus sailed to an island; for Strabo says that the
Cassiterides were ten islands; and Mr. Torr is therefore forced, as we
have seen (p. 488), to make the incredible assumption that Strabo’s
account of the voyage of Crassus is pure fiction.
[2292] _Ency. Brit._, xviii, 1885, p. 806; _Lit. Centralblatt_, 1871,
p. 528.
[2293] Pauly’s _Real-Encyclopädie_, iii, part i, 1897, pp. 860, 863.
[2294] _Hist. of Rome_, v, 1894, p. 63 (_Röm. Gesch._, iii, 1889, p.
269).
[2295] ‘The ancient workings for Tin, in the Scilly Islands, are
neither deep, nor many, nor large’ (Wm. Borlase, _Observations on the
Ant. ... of ... Cornwall_, 1754, p. 30). [In St. Nicholas Island] ‘we
found a row of shallow Tin-pits.... These are the only Tin Pits which
we saw, or are any where to be seen, as we were informed, in these
Islands’ (_ib._, _Observations on the ... Islands of Scilly_, 1756, p.
45). ‘Some Tin might have been found in the low grounds washed down
from the Hills.... There may be also Tin-veins in those Cliffs which we
did not visit ... as the _Guêl-Hill_ of BREHAR, _Guêl_ Island, the name
_Guêl_ (or _Huêl_) in Cornish signifying a Working for Tin’ (_ib._, pp.
73-4). ‘I have been lately informed that, under one of the Cliffs of
ANNET, there is a Load, in which there is the appearance of Tin, and
that it looks as if it had been work’d’ (_ib._, p. 73, note m). ‘Tin is
found in several of the islands ... but there are now no mines in work’
(D. and S. Lysons, _Magna Britannia_, iii, 1814, p. 337). See Addenda,
p. 740.
[2296] See H. d’Arbois de Jubainville, _Principaux auteurs de l’ant. à
consulter sur l’hist. des Celtes_, &c., p. 42.
[2297] See F. Marx’s article in _Rhein. Mus._, 1, 1895, pp. 321-47.
[2298] _Ora maritima_, 90-8.--
Et prominentis his iugi surgit caput,
(Oestrymnin istud dixit aevum antiquius,)
Molesque celsa saxei fastigii
Tota in tepentem maxime vergit Notum.
Sub huius autem prominentis vertice
Sinus dehiscit incolis Oestrymnicus,
In quo insulae sese exserunt Oestrymnides,
Laxe iacentes, et metallo divites
Stanni atque plumbi.
[2299] See K. Müllenhoff, _Deutsche Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, p. 91.
[2300] _Ora maritima_, 108-9.
[2301] _Ib._, 110-6.--
Haec inter undas multa caespitum iacet,
Eamque late gens Hibernorum colit.
Propinqua rursus insula Albionum patet.
Tartesiisque in terminos Oestrymnidum
Negotiandi mos erat: Carthaginis
Etiam coloni, et vulgus, inter Herculis
Agitans columnas, haec adibant aequora, &c.
[2302] _Rhein. Mus._, 1, 1895, p. 335.
[2303] _Eng. Hist. Rev._, xix, 1904, pp. 139-40, n. 5.
[2304] _Ora maritima_, 94.
[2305] _Hist. of Anc. Geogr._, p. 37.
[2306] Similarly Appian (_De rebus Hisp._, 1) says that the voyage from
Spain to the British Isles occupied half a day!
[2307] This page was written before I had read the relevant passage
in Kiepert’s _Formae orbis antiqui_, quoted on p. 493, _infra_. Dr.
H. Berger maintains (_Gesch. der wissenschaftlichen Erdkunde der
Griechen_, iv, 1893, pp. 24-5) that Strabo’s error was due to a
misunderstanding of statements about islands situated on the route
which the ships engaged in the tin trade followed; but I cannot
conceive how such a misunderstanding could have been suggested by the
narrative of Crassus.
[2308] _Deutsche Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, p. 92 and note *; ii, 1887,
p. 317.
[2309] _Lit. Centralblatt_, 1871, pp. 528-9; _Ency. Brit._, xviii,
1885, p. 806.
[2310] See pp. 500-7, _infra_.
[2311] See also _L’Anthr._, x, 1899, p. 401, n. 2.
[2312] _Formae orbis antiqui,--insulae Britannicae_, 1893.
[2313] _The Cassiterides_, pp. 52-3. See also p. 80, n. *, and pp.
107-8, where Smith makes an ingenious but hardly successful attempt
to account for the statement of Strabo, repeated by Ptolemy, that the
Cassiterides were ten in number.
[2314] See p. 490, n. 1, _supra_.
[2315] See pp. 489-90, _supra_.
[2316] _Deutsche Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, pp. 91-2.
[2317] _L’Anthr._, iii, 1892, pp. 275-6.
[2318] Σαλύβη, ὅθεν ἀργύρου ἐστὶ γενέθλη. Homer, _Il._, ii, 857.
[2319] _L’Anthr._, iii, 1892, pp. 277-80. For unfavourable criticisms
of M. Reinach’s view see O. Schrader, _Reallexicon der indogermanischen
Altertumskunde_, p. 993, and _Eng. Hist. Rev._, xix, 1904, p. 140.
[2320] _Rhein. Mus._, xxxviii, 1883, p. 164.
[2321] _Hist. of Rome_, v, 1894, p. 63 (_Röm. Gesch._, iii, 1889, p.
269).
[2322] George Smith (_The Cassiterides_, p. 80) remarks that if Crassus
was Caesar’s lieutenant, his discovery of the Cassiterides ‘must have
taken place after the time of Julius Caesar’. But Smith forgets that
this Crassus died in 53 B.C.
[2323] _B. G._, v, 12, § 5.
[2324] _Folk-Lore_, i, 1890, pp. 91-2.
[2325] Strabo, iii, 2, § 11.
[2326] Groskurd (_Strabonis Erdbeschreibung_, i, 1831, p. 249)
translates the passage: ‘dass Iberiens nördliche Küsten gegen Keltike
leichtere Vorbeifahrt haben, als wenn man dem Ocean entgegeneschiffe.’
C. Müller, however, in his edition of Strabo (p. 953), rejects
Groskurd’s attempt to defend the common text, and holds that we
should read τὰ προσαρκτικὰ μέρη τῆς Ἰβηρίας εὐπαροδώτερα εἶναι τοῖς
πρὸς τὴν Κελτικὴν κατὰ τὸν ὠκεανὸν πλέουσι,, mentally supplying after
εὐπαροδώτερα the words τῶν νοτίων, if indeed they were not in Strabo’s
manuscript; and he gives good reasons for believing that Pytheas meant
to say what I have stated in the text.
[2327] _Deutsche Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, p. 370.
[2328] _B. G._, iii, 27, § 2.
[2329] _Hist. of Anc. Geogr._, pp. 38-9.
[2330] Unless a child born in 1888 could have been called Mr.
Gladstone’s contemporary. Strabo was born about 63, and Crassus died in
53 B.C.
[2331] As Sir George Cornewall Lewis pointed out (_Hist. Survey of the
Astronomy of the Ancients_, 1862, p. 452), ‘the Romans ... were not
likely to attempt voyages beyond the Pillars of Hercules before ...
146 B.C., whereas after that time the Carthaginians had no ships or
factories; Gades had been sixty years in the hands of the Romans; and
ever since the end of the Second Punic War the Romans had been able
to extort the secrets of the Carthaginians.... The story doubtless
originated in the known commercial jealousy of the Carthaginians,’ &c.
M. Salomon Reinach (_L’Anthr._, x, 1899, p. 400) holds that the Romans
were anxious to ascertain the maritime route to the Cassiterides
because it was cheaper than the overland route. But is it certain that
a voyage of more than 2,000 miles would have been cheaper than a land
journey of 600?
[2332] _B. G._, ii, 34; iii, 7, § 2.
[2333] Cf. H. Berger, _Gesch. der wissenschaftlichen Erdkunde der
Griechen_, iii, 1891, pp. 29, 34.
[2334] See pp. 500-7, _infra_.
[2335] H. Berger (_op. cit._, p. 29) affirms that, according to Strabo
(iii, 5, § 11), Crassus saw ‘with his own eyes’ the tin-mining actually
going on; but Strabo does not say this.
[2336] Berger (_op. cit._, pp. 34-5) points out that Crassus’s
description [was it his?], reproduced by Strabo, puts us in mind of
that of Diodorus (pp. 499, 506, _infra_), and may have been suggested
to Crassus by a perusal of Diodorus’s authority. R. Zimmermann, on the
contrary, argues (_Hermes_, xxiii, 1888, pp. 121-3) that the passage in
Strabo is based upon Posidonius. Obviously not the part which relates
to Crassus.
[2337] Ἴσως γὰρ δή τινες ἐπιζητήσουσι, πῶς ... οὐδὲν ἐπὶ πλεῖον
εἰρήκαμεν ... περὶ τῶν Βρεττανικῶν νήσων, καὶ τῆς τοῦ καττιτέρου
κατασκευῆς, ἔτι δὲ τῶν ἀργυρείων καὶ χρυσείων τῶν κατὰ τὴν Ἰβηρίαν,,
&c. (iii, 57, §§ 3-4).
[2338] See E. H. Bunbury, _Hist. of Anc. Geogr._, i, 1879, p. 12.
[2339] _Hist. of Anc. Geogr._, p. 38.
[2340] _L’Anthr._, x, 1899, p. 401. Cf. H. d’Arbois de Jubainville,
_Les premiers habitants de l’Europe_, i, 1889, pp. 45-6.
[2341] _Engl. Hist. Review_, xix, 1904, p. 140, note.
[2342] _Bibl. Hist._, v. 22, § 2.--Κομίζουσιν εἴς τινα νῆσον
προκειμένην τῆς Πρεττανικῆς, ὀνομαζομένην δὲ Ἴκτιν· κατὰ γὰρ τὰς
ἀμπώτεις ἀναξηραμένου τοῦ μεταξὺ τόπου, ταῖς ἁμάξαις εἰς ταύτην
κομίζουσι δαψιλῆ τὸν καττίτερον. Ἐντεῦθεν δ’ οἱ ἔμποροι παρὰ τῶν
ἐγχωρίων ὠνοῦνται καὶ διακομίζουσιν εἰς τὴν Γαλατίαν· τὸ δὲ τελευταῖον
πεζῇ διὰ τῆς Γαλατίας πορευθέντες ἡμέρας ὡς τριάκοντα κατάγουσιν ἐπὶ
τῶν ἵππων τὰ φορτία πρὸς τὴν ἐκβολὴν τοῦ Ῥοδανοῦ ποταμοῦ.
[2343] See K. Müllenhoff, _Deutsche Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, pp.
471-2; H. Berger, _Gesch. der wissenschaftlichen Erdkunde der
Griechen_, iii, 1891, pp. 34-5; and Pauly’s _Real-Encyclopädie_, iii,
part i, 1897, p. 860. Müllenhoff justly remarks that the account
which Diodorus gives in v, 22 of the mode in which the tin trade was
conducted must have been derived from an eye-witness; and that of all
the ancient writers Pytheas was the only one who saw with his own eyes
what went on at Ictis. Professor Ridgeway assumes that Diodorus’s
account of Ictis was borrowed from Posidonius; but the descriptions
which Elton (_Origins of Eng. Hist._, 1890, pp. 30-1, 34-5, 92) and
Professor Rhys (_Celtic Britain_, 1904, pp. 45-6) have published of
the visit of Posidonius to Britain are purely imaginary; for there
is absolutely no evidence that he ever crossed the Channel. Elton
refers to a passage in the _Solutiones_ of Priscian of Lydia, a writer
of the sixth century (_quaest._ vi, p. 571 of F. Dübner’s edition),
which proves nothing about Posidonius. See J. Bake, _Posidonii Rhodii
reliquiae doctrinae_, 1810; _Fragm. hist. Graec._, ed. C. Müller,
iii, 1849, pp. 245-96; R. Scheppig, _De Posidonio_, 1869, p. 7; _Rev.
celt._, vii, 1886, p. 378; and M. Dubois, _Examen de la géogr. de
Strabon_, 1891, p. 327.
[2344] Professor Rhys (_Celtic Britain_, 1904, p. 45) says that,
according to Diodorus, the tin was brought ‘to the outlet of the Rhone,
that is to say, to the meeting of the Rhone and the Saone’, &c. But
πρὸς τὴν ἐκβολὴν τοῦ Ῥοδανοῦ ποταμοῦ can only mean ‘to the mouth of the
Rhône’. Ἐκβολή sometimes means the issue of a river from a mountainous
country: it cannot mean that part of a river where it is joined by an
affluent; and I doubt whether the professor would seriously maintain
that ‘the outlet of the Rhône’ is at Lyons.
[2345] v, 38, § 5.--Πολὺς δὲ καὶ ἐκ τῆς Πρεττανικῆς νήσου διακομίζεται
πρὸς τὴν κατ’ ἀντικρὺ κειμένην Γαλατίαν, καὶ διὰ τῆς μεσογείου Κελτικῆς
ἐφ’ ἵππων ὑπὸ τῶν ἐμπόρων ἄγεται παρά τε τοὺς Μασσαλιώτας καὶ εἰς τὴν
ὀνομαζομένην πόλιν Ναρβῶνα.
[2346] _Nat. Hist._, iv, 16(30), § 104.--Timaeus historicus a Britannia
introrsum sex dierum navigatione abesse dicit insulam Mictim in qua
candidum plumbum proveniat; ad eam Britannos vitilibus navigiis corio
circumsutis navigare. E. H. Bunbury (_Hist. of Anc. Geogr._, i, 1879,
p. 603, n. 9) remarks that ‘it is impossible to say what sense we are
to attach to the word “introrsus”, upon which the interpretation of
the whole passage, in a geographical sense, depends’. I shall show
presently (p. 505, _infra_) that only one sense which is not nonsense
can be attributed to _introrsum_.
Müllenhoff (_Deutsche Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, p. 471) holds that
Pliny confused the distance of Ictis from Britain with that of Thule,
which, as he says in an earlier passage (_Nat. Hist._, ii, 75 [77],
§ 187), was ‘six days’ sail northward from Britain’ (_sex dierum
navigatione in septentrionem a Britannia_). See p. 505, _infra_.
[2347] The geographical position of Corbilo cannot be fixed. Desjardins
(_Géogr. de la Gaule rom._, i, 1876, p. 288) was originally inclined
to place it near Beslon in the peninsula of Guérande, because the
neighbourhood is ‘rempli de souvenirs celtiques’. Beslon is no more
on the Loire than Margate is on the Thames; and if the tin had been
landed there, it would have been necessary either to tranship it and
carry it across the Loire, or to take the pack-horses by a roundabout
route up the valley of that river. Afterwards (_ib._, ii, 1878, pp.
139, 484-5, 485, n. 1) Desjardins changed his mind, and identified
Corbilo with St.-Nazaire: ‘cet emplacement’, he remarked, anticipating
one of the objections which I have just made against his former view,
‘cet emplacement s’accorde-t-il beaucoup mieux que celui de Beslon avec
le texte de Strabon, qui porte cet ancien port sur la Loire, et non
sur la mer.’ He relied mainly upon the investigations of an engineer,
M. René Kerviler, who, ‘ayant eu l’occasion de faire des travaux
d’approfondissement à Saint-Nazaire, y a découvert des substructions
qui avaient fait vraisemblablement partie de l’ancien port de
_Corbilon_.’ See _Rev. arch._, nouv. sér., xxxiii, 1877, pp. 145-53,
230-9, 342-53. M. Kerviler himself identified the remains with those of
the _Brivates portus_ of Ptolemy, _Geogr._, ii, 8, § 1.
[2348] _Geogr._, iv, 2, § 1.--πρότερον δὲ Κορβιλὼν ὑπῆρχεν ἐμπόριον
ἐπὶ τούτῳ τῷ ποταμῷ, περὶ ἧς εἴρηκε Πολύβιος, μνησθεὶς τῶν ὑπὸ Πυθέου
μυθολογηθέντων, ὅτι Μασσαλιωτῶν μὲν τῶν συμμιξάντων Σκιπίωνι οὐδεὶς
εἶχε λέγειν οὐδὲν μνήμης ἄξιον ἐρωτηθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ Σκιπίωνος περὶ τῆς
Βρεττανικῆς, οὐδὲ τῶν ἐκ Νάρβωνος οὐδὲ τῶν ἐκ Κορβιλῶνος, αἵπερ ἦσαν
ἄρισται πόλεις τῶν ταύτῃ.
[2349] Cf. _Folk-lore_, i, 1890, pp. 85-6, and H. F. Tozer, _Hist. of
Anc. Geogr._, p. 36.
[2350] Cf. K. Müllenhoff, _Deutsche Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, p. 471,
and D. Detlefsen in W. Sieglin’s _Quellen und Forschungen_, &c., Heft
9, p. 77.
[2351] _Origins of Eng. Hist._, 1890, p. 34.
[2352] _Celtic Britain_, 1904, p. 46.
[2353] Mr. Alfred Tylor blunders even more hopelessly than Elton. ‘The
transhipment of tin’, he says (_Archaeologia_, xlviii, 1885, p. 233),
‘was described by ancient writers as taking place at Vectis, six days’
sail from Cornwall.’
[2354] _Folk-Lore_, i, 1890, pp. 95-7.
[2355] _Ib._, pp. 98-101.
[2356] See pp. 250, 359-60, _supra_.
[2357] Mr. Alfred Tylor (_Archaeologia_, xlviii, 1885, p. 233) argues,
in favour of the identification of Ictis with the Isle of Wight, that
‘Stans Ore Point is said to be named from Stannum (tin)’; and Elton
(_Origins of Eng. Hist._, 1890, p. 230) thinks that ‘the course of the
metal-trade may be indicated by the names of places on the coast-road
leading eastward from the Exe, as ... Stans Ore Point’. Now, as O.
Schrader points out (_Prehist. Ant. of the Aryan Peoples_, 1890, p.
217), _stannum_ probably did not get the meaning of ‘tin’ before the
fourth century A.D.; and even if the derivation in question could be
established, it would not prove that Ictis was the Isle of Wight. Tin
was doubtless conveyed eastward from Cornwall; but not for the supply
of the Mediterranean markets.
[2358] _Archaeologia_, xlviii, 1885, p. 236.
[2359] vi, 2, § 6.--ᾬκουν δὲ καὶ Φοίνικες περὶ πᾶσαν μὲν τὴν Σικελίαν
ἄκρας τε ἐπὶ τῇ θαλάσσῃ ἀπολαβόντες καὶ τὰ ἐπικείμενα νησίδια ἐμπορίας
ἕνεκεν τῆς πρὸς τοὺς Σικελούς.
[2360] B. Jowett, _Thucydides translated into English_, i, 1881, p. 409.
[2361] _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1865 (1866), p. 71.
[2362] _Trans. Roy. Geol. Soc. Cornwall_, iii, 1828, pp. 91-4.
[2363] _Principles of Geology_, i, 1875, pp. 546-7.
[2364] The italics are mine. Müllenhoff (_Deutsche Altertumskunde_,
i, 1890, pp. 471-2) asserts that ‘Ictis can only be looked for at the
promontory of Belerium’ [the Land’s End], and that ‘it is undoubtedly
one of the small islands off the Land’s End, which are marked on the
Ordnance Map (sheets 32 and 33)’. It must be presumed that Müllenhoff
came to this singular conclusion because Pytheas landed at Belerium.
But there is no reason to suppose that he landed at the precise spot
which we call the Land’s End; and if he did he certainly went on to
visit the tin mines. If Müllenhoff had known the Cornish coast, or
even studied the map carefully, he would have seen that tin could not
have been conveyed in carts down the cliffs opposite the small islands
to which he refers, and that, as Dr. Barham says (_Trans. Roy. Geol.
Soc. Cornwall_, iii, 1828, p. 91), ‘there is not ... any other island
[besides St. Michael’s Mount] on the Cornish, or any neighbouring
shores to which carts can pass at low water; there is no other spot, at
all answering to the description of Diodorus, which becomes alternately
an island and a peninsula with the changes of the tide.’
George Smith (_The Cassiterides_, p. 114) points out that ‘twelve
miles to the west of St. Michael’s Mount, and eighteen miles to the
east of it, comprehend almost the whole of the ancient tin mining
district’. Professor Rhys, on the other hand, states (_Celtic Britain_,
1904, p. 44) that the tin districts ‘in ancient times were chiefly
Dartmoor, with the country around Tavistock, and that around St.
Austell, including several valleys looking towards the southern coast
of Cornwall’; and he adds that ‘in most of the other districts where
tin existed it is supposed to have lain too deep to have been worked
in early times’. I do not know whether among these ‘other districts’
he includes the one near St. Michael’s Mount; but it is certain
that the tin in this district was worked in early times. It was the
district of Belerium, where the tin-workers mentioned by Diodorus
lived; and he says that there were veins of tin in the hard rock near
the surface (αὕτη δὲ πετρώδης οὖσα διαφυὰς ἔχει γεώδεις, ἐν αἷς τὸν
πόρον κατεργαζόμενοι καὶ τήξαντες καθαίρουσιν [v, 22, § 2]. Cf. Strabo,
iii, 5, § 11, and _Ency. Brit._, 9th ed., vi, 425). Mr. P. W. Flower
(_Hist. of the Trade in Tin_, 1880, p. 26) tells us that from pre-Roman
days ‘Cornish men have been sinking deeper and deeper in their search
for cheaper metal’; while Prof. Haverfield (_Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd
ser., xviii, 1900, p. 122), after remarking that ‘the tin districts of
Dartmoor [were] worked largely in the middle ages’, says, ‘The Dartmoor
tin is, I believe, far more difficult to work than the Cornish, and
this fact may explain the Roman neglect of it.’ See also, for evidence
that Cornish tin was won in the Bronze Age, _Archaeologia_, xvi, 1812,
p. 137, pl. 10; xlix, 1885, p. 181; and _Archaeol. Journal_, xxxi,
1874, pp. 53, 60. I am astonished to find that M. Salomon Reinach
(_L’Anthr._, xvii, 1906, pp. 235-6), noticing a paper the writer of
which maintains that no tin was worked in Britain until after the date
of Domesday Book, says, ‘Cette manière de voir, bien que contredite par
les textes, mérite réflexion.’
[2365] _Archaeologia_, lix, part ii, 1905, pp. 281-8.
[2366] _Principles of Geology_, i, 1875, pp. 543-4.
[2367] _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1865 (1866), p. 71.
[2368] _Geol. Mag._, 1879, pp. 74-5.
[2369] _Chips from a German Workshop_, iii, 1870, pp. 330-57. Elton,
even in his second edition (_Origins of Eng. Hist._, 1890, p. 37),
repeated the obsolete argument alluded to in the text.
[2370] See p. 31, _supra_.
[2371] See p. 222, _supra_.
[2372] iv, 16 (30), §§ 103-4. Prof. Ridgeway (_Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd
ser., xx, 1904, p. 343) affirms, Prof. Rhys (_Celtic Britain_, 1904,
p. 304) apparently denies that _Ictis_ and _Vectis_ were phonetically
connected. See Addenda, p. 740.
[2373] See p. 499, n. 5, _supra_.
[2374] _Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 85.
[2375] See p. 221, _supra_.
[2376] _Dicuili liber de mensura orbis terrae_, ed. G. Parthey, 1870,
pp. 42-4 (7, 11-4). Dicuil was an Irish monk, who wrote A.D. 825.
[2377] _Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 146.
[2378] Φιλόξενοί τε διαφερόντως εἰσὶ καὶ διὰ τὴν τῶν ξένων ἐμπόρων
ἐπιμιξίαν ἐξημερωμένοι τὰς ἀγωγάς.
[2379] This is admitted, or rather maintained, by Prof. Ridgeway.
[2380] See p. 499, nn. 2 and 5, _supra_.
[2381] _Deutsche Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, p. 223.
[2382] _Folk-Lore_, i, 1890, p. 105.
[2383] See p. 501, _supra_.
[2384] _B. G._, iii, 8, § 1. Cf. Strabo, iv, 4, § 1.
[2385] _Geogr._, iv, 5, § 1.
[2386] I cannot see how Mr. Reginald Smith (_Guide to the Ant. of the
Early Iron Age_ [Brit. Museum], p. 85) reconciles his theory, that the
route in ‘the opening years of the first century B.C.’ passed through
Kent with his previous assertion (p. 84) that ‘about 90 B.C.’ it left
the British coast at the Isle of Wight.
[2387] As Professor Ridgeway assumes that Posidonius was the authority
whom Diodorus followed both in v, 22 and in v, 38, he would be
compelled to maintain that in the passage which served as the basis of
the former chapter Posidonius was describing only the route which the
tin trade followed in the time of Pytheas, in the other that which it
followed in his own time. How can the professor prove this?
[2388] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xviii, 1900, p. 119.
[2389] _Celtic Britain_, 1904, pp. 47-50.
[2390] _Folk-Lore_, i, 1890, pp. 83-4.
[2391] _Archaeol. Journal_, xlix, 1892, p. 178.
[2392] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xviii, 1900, pp. 119-20.
[2393] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xviii, 1900, p. 122.
[2394] Numerous Roman inscribed objects of lead have been discovered in
Spain (_Corpus Inscr. Lat._, ii, 4964, and Suppl., 6243, 6247-8); but
so far as I can ascertain, none of tin.
[2395] _Archaeol. Journal_, xlvii, 1890, p. 232.
[2396] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xviii, 1900, pp. 119-20.
[2397] _Archaeol. Journal_, xlvii, 1890, pp. 230-3; xlix, 1892, p. 178;
_Corpus Inscr. Lat._, vii, 13.
[2398] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xviii, 1900, p. 120.
[2399] _Ib._, p. 122.
[2400] _Ib._, p. 118.
[2401] _Ib._ What puzzles me is how Professor Haverfield reconciles his
view that in the third century ‘Cornish tin began to take its place as
an article of commerce in Roman Britain’ (_Mélanges Boissier_, 1903, p.
251) with his own suggestion (_ib._, p. 250) that ‘either the tin ores
had never been so rich as fancy painted, or the accessible deposits had
been worked out [two centuries earlier], or ... Spanish competition had
ousted British tin’. Evidently the accessible deposits had not been
worked out; and British tin must have had superabundant vitality if it
reasserted itself two centuries after it had been ousted.
[2402] _Hist. Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients_, pp. 451-5.
[2403] _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1896, p. 910.
[2404] _Anc. Bronze Implements_, p. 419. Cf. F. J. Haverfield in
_Mélanges Boissier_, p. 249, n. 1. Mr. Reginald Smith (_Guide to the
Ant. of the Early Iron Age_ [Brit. Museum], p. 137) suggests, with
the approval of Mr. C. H. Read, that a bronze statuette, found near
Aust-on-Severn, may have been deposited ‘by Phoenician traders to our
shores’. Cf. _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., xx, 1904-5, p. 192.
[2405] See G. Smith, _The Cassiterides_, p. 54.
[2406] G. Smith, _The Cassiterides_, pp. 47-9. See also pp. 56-7, and
E. H. Bunbury, _Hist. of Anc. Geogr._, i, 12.
[2407] _Géogr. de la Gaule rom._, i, 329.
[2408] See pp. 484-6, _supra_.
[2409] _Tin Mining in Spain_, p. 28.
[2410] _Ora Maritima_, 113-6.--
Tartesiisque in terminos Oestrymnidum
Negotiandi mos erat: Carthaginis
Etiam coloni, et vulgus, inter Herculis
Agitans columnas, haec adibant aequora.
See also H. F. Tozer, _Hist. of Anc. Geogr._, pp. 110-1.
[2411] Prof. Haverfield (_Eng. Hist. Rev._, xix, 1904, p. 746) thinks
that ‘the “Periplus” of Avienus cannot safely be attributed to
Himilco’; but M. Camille Jullian (_Ann. de la Faculté des lettres de
Bordeaux,--Bull. hisp._, v. 1903, p. 109; _Journal des Savants_, nouv.
sér., No. 2, 1905, pp. 95-8) supports my view. I am not sure, however,
that Prof. Haverfield means to express a doubt whether the Periplus was
_ultimately_ based upon Himilco’s report. Cf. _Rhein. Mus._, l, 1895,
p. 336.
[2412] _Hist. Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients_, p. 455.
[2413] E. Hübner, _Monumenta linguae Ibericae_, 1893, p. xxvi; H.
d’Arbois de Jubainville, _Principaux auteurs de l’ant. à consulter sur
l’hist. des Celtes_, &c., p. 42.
[2414] _Nat. Hist._, ii, 67, § 169.--Hanno Carthaginis potentia
florente circumvectus a Gadibus ad finem Arabiae navigationem eam
prodidit scripto, sicut ad extera Europae noscenda eodem tempore
Himilco. I find that Müllenhoff (_Deutsche Altertumskunde_, i, 1890,
pp. 93-5) has anticipated a remark which I was about to make, namely,
that the object of Himilco’s voyage was undoubtedly to open up new
markets for trade, and not merely to explore. See also Lord Avebury’s
_Prehist. Times_, 1900, pp. 57-67, though I think that his argument
might have been more valuable if he had taken note of Mr. Borlase’s
_Tin Mining in Spain_.
[2415] Mr. W. C. Borlase (_Tin Mining in Spain_, pp. 24-6), remarking
that ‘there is an extremely rare form of [the palstave], namely with
two loops, and that has been found exclusively in Cornwall and Devon
(in the mining districts especially), in Ireland, and in the western
and north-western portion of the Iberian Peninsula’, and that ‘bronze
celts of this class belong ... to ... 1250 to 1050 B.C.’, concludes
that ‘at that period then--the very period to which has been assigned
the foundation of Gades--Cornwall and the west coast of Spain were
already in communication’. Perhaps; but not necessarily Cornwall and
Gades. Similar celts have also been found in France (J. Evans, _Anc.
Bronze Implements_, pp. 96-7).
Müllenhoff also argues (_Deutsche Altertumskunde_, i, 1890, pp. 5-8)
that the passage in the _Odyssey_ (x, 81-6) which describes the
country of the Laestrygones, where the days in summer were very long
and the nights very short, would seem to be based upon stories told
by Phoenician mariners; but, as I have already remarked (p. 218), if
Homer’s lines were founded upon fact, it is more probable that the
stories came to him from Scandinavia.
[2416] _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1896, p. 910.
[2417] _The Builder_, Aug. 26, 1865, p. 604.
[2418] C. F. Wiberg (_Der Einfluss der klassischen Völker_, &c., 1867,
p. 13) thinks that ‘the promontory of Herakles’, or Hartland Point
(Ptolemy, _Geogr._, ii, 3, § 2), may owe its name to the Phoenician
worship of Hercules; but I do not know that any one except Prof. Boyd
Dawkins (_Early Man in Britain_, p. 461) attaches any importance to
this suggestion.
[2419] _L’Anthr._, x, 1899, p. 401.
[2420] i, 13, § 5.--οἰκοῦντες γὰρ τὴν πόλιν οἱ Κορίνθιοι ἐπὶ τοῦ ἰσθμοῦ
ἀεὶ δή ποτε ἐμπόριον εἶχον, τῶν Ἑλλήνων τὸ πάλαι κατὰ γῆν τὰ πλείω ἢ
κατὰ θάλασσαν, τῶν τε ἐντὸς Πελοποννήσου καὶ τῶν ἔξω, διὰ τῆς ἐκείνων
παρ’ ἀλλήλους ἐπιμισγόντων, &c.
[2421] B. Jowett, _Thucydides translated into English_, i, 1881, p. 10.
[2422] See p. 126, _supra_.
[2423] See p. 485, n. 5, _supra_.
[2424] _Nat. Hist._, vii, 56 (57), § 194.
[2425] _Fabulae_, ed. M. Schmidt, 1872, CCLXXIV (p. 149).
[2426] _Variarum_ iii, 51 (J. P. Migne, _Patrologiae cursus completus_,
lxix, 1848, col. 594).
[2427] See C. Müller’s edition of Diodorus, i, 1842, p. 316 (Reliquiae
libri vii, 13). The commencement of the maritime supremacy of the
Phoenicians is here dated 58 years after the commencement of that of
the Phrygians, and 279 years after the Trojan War.
[2428] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxxix, 1882, p. 18; _Essex Naturalist_, i,
1887, pp. 266-76.
[2429] _Trans. Essex Archaeol. Soc._, N. S., vii, 1900, p. 252.
[2430] See pp. 151, n. 4, 253, 256, _supra_.
[2431] _Essex Naturalist_, i, 252.
[2432] _Trans. Essex Archaeol. Soc._, N. S., vii, 253-4.
[2433] _Nat. Hist._, xvii, 8 (4), § 45. Cf. _Essex Naturalist_, i, 249.
[2434] _Ib._, pp. 249-50.
[2435] _Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_, N. S., x, 1904, pp. 98-101.
[2436] _Essex Naturalist_, i, 250.
[2437] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxxix, 1882, p. 19.
[2438] _Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_, N. S., x, 1904, p. 98. Cf.
_Times_, Sept. 30, 1905, p. 3, cols. 3-4.
[2439] _Essex Naturalist_, i, 250-1.
[2440] _Geol. Mag._, 1898, p. 453.
[2441] _Geol. Mag._, 1898, p. 453.
[2442] Worthington G. Smith, _Man, the Primeval Savage_, pp. 326-7.
[2443] J. A. H. Murray, _New Eng. Dict._, iii, 192-3.
[2444] _Geol. Mag._, 1898, p. 457.
[2445] _Trans. Essex Archaeol. Association_, N. S., vii, 1900, p. 253.
[2446] _Vict. Hist. of ... Essex_, i, 310-1.
[2447] _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, i, 4.
[2448] A. Joanne, _Dict. géogr. ... de la France_, 1869, p. xli.
[2449] _Géogr. de la Gaule rom._, i, 349 and n. 3, 391.
[2450] In particular C. de Laroière in _Annales du comité flamand de
France_, x, 1868-9 (1870), pp. 249-322.
[2451] See _Bull. de l’Acad. Roy. ... de Belgique_, 3^e sér., viii,
1884, pp. 681-9. Desjardins (_Géogr. de la Gaule rom._, i, 391) admits
that it is only ‘probable’ that it existed at that time. Cf. R.
Blanchard, _La Flamande_, 1906, pp. 134-46.
[2452] _Rev. sc._, 2^e sér., xv, 1878-9 (1879), pp. 90-3. According
to M. V. J. Vaillant (_Classis Britannica_, 1888, pp. 66-7), an
inscription (_SALINATORES CIVITATIS MORINORVM_), ‘cité par I. Gruter,
nous rapporte à une époque où la mer pénétrait librement jusqu’au delà
de Saint-Omer et où les marais salants étaient exploités sur les rives
de ce large golfe par les Morins et les Ménapiens.’ M. Vaillant gives
neither the reference nor the date of the inscription: it was found at
Ariminum in Cisalpine Gaul, and makes mention of the emperor Vespasian;
and it is reproduced in Gruter’s _Inscr. ant. totius orbis Romani_, ii,
1707, p. MXCVI, 4. Needless to say, it does not prove that the ‘gulf’
existed in Vespasian’s time, but only that there were salt-works in the
territory of the Morini.
[2453] See pp. 565-7, 572, 586-7, _infra_.
[2454] _Boulogne-sur-mer et la région boulonnaise_, i, 359-61.
[2455] A. Joanne, _Dict. géog. ... de la France_, p. xlii.
[2456] _Hist. eccl._, i, 25. Cf. Solinus, ed. Th. Mommsen, p. 114.
[2457] _Archaeol. Cant._, xii, 1878, p. 3. See also _Twenty-third
Report East Kent Nat. Hist. Soc._, 1881, p. 48.
[2458] _Ant. of Richborough_, &c., 1774, pp. 137-9; _Archaeologia_, i,
1770, pp. 79-83.
[2459] _Hist. of Sandwich_, 1792, p. 865.
[2460] _Archaeol. Journal_, liii, 1896, p. 207.
[2461] _Itin. Ant._, ed. P. Wesseling, 1735, p. 472.
[2462] The reference is incorrect. For ‘30’ read ‘230’.
[2463] _Archaeol. Journal_, liii, 1896, p. 207.
[2464] Sheet 290.
[2465] _Archaeol. Journal_, liii, 1896, pp. 212-3.
[2466] _Archaeol. Cant._, xxiv, 1900, p. 110.
[2467] _Ant. of Richborough, Reculver and Lymne_, 1850, pp. 53-4. See
also _Archaeol. Cant._, xiv, 1882, pp. 368-9; xxiv, 1900, p. 108; and
_Archaeologia_, li, 1888, p. 465. Beale Poste (_Britannia antiqua_,
1857, p. 282) states that in one of the sand-hills, half a mile north
of Sandown Castle, a large number of coins of Victorinus, Probus,
Tetricus, ‘and others of the lower empire’ were found in 1839.
[2468] See _Archaeol. Cant._, viii, 1872, pp. 13-4. Boys, quoted by
Roach Smith (_Ant. of Richborough_, &c., p. 53) remarks that, ‘in
digging to lay the foundation of Richborough sluice, the workmen, after
penetrating through what was once the bed of the river that runs close
by ... came to a seashore that had been suddenly covered with silt.’
[2469] ‘Just north of the Isle of Richborough’, says Dowker (_Journ.
Brit. Archaeol. Association_, xl, 1884, p. 272), ‘is a large artificial
excavation in the hill. I gave a description of this when I wrote the
account of the ... excavation at the Castrum; and I drew attention to
its being a Roman harbour. It is just opposite a farm that goes by the
name of “Fleet”.’
[2470] _Archaeol. Journal_, liii, 1896, p. 356.
[2471] _Ib._, xxxiii, 1876, p. 71.
[2472] _Ib._, facing page 64.
[2473] _Archaeol. Cant._, xxiv, 1900, p. 108.
[2474] _Dict. Nat. Biogr._, xlviii, 15.
[2475] _Archaeologia_, xxi, 1827, p. 505.
[2476] _The Cinque Ports_, 1888, p. 229.
[2477] I am glad to find that this remark has been anticipated by Mr.
C. R. S. Elvin (_Records of Walmer_, 1890, p. 30).
[2478] _Itinerary_, 2nd ed., vii, 1744, fol. 127 (p. 116). Professor
Burrows may perhaps have followed Hasted, who says (_Hist. of Kent_,
iv, 1799, p. 163) that ‘_Upper Deal_ was composed of the habitations
of a few poor fishermen only, though at a less distance from the sea
than at present, owing to the great increase of beach thrown on this
shore afterwards’; and in note _e_ he observes that ‘Leland ... seems
to confirm this’. Leland, as I show in the text, does no such thing.
Hasted goes on to say that ‘Even so late as the year 1624, a house
... on the _west_ side of the _Lower Street_ (the farthest at this
time from the sea shore) is described in a deed of that date to abut
_ad le sea bank versus orientem_’. Very likely: but the fact does not
prove that the west side of Lower Street was an inch nearer the sea in
1624 than it is now; for the breadth of ‘_le sea bank_’ is not stated.
Anyhow Deal Castle has not moved since 1624: therefore, if Hasted is
right, the sea must then have made a sudden bend landward immediately
north of Deal Castle, and formed a bay; which is absurd. The west side
of Lower Street is now about 550 feet from the high-water mark of
ordinary tides (_Six-Inch Ordnance Survey_, Sheets 58 and 58A).
[2479] The distance from the ‘high-water mark of ordinary tides’ to the
nearest point of Upper Deal appears to be about 3,900 feet (_Six-Inch
Ordnance Survey_, Sheet 58).
[2480] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxxiii, 1876, p. 71.
[2481] _Ib._, p. 58.
[2482] _Ib._, p. 59.
[2483] _Proc. Geologists’ Association_, ix, 1885-6 (1887), pp. 174-5.
[2484] ‘It is certain,’ wrote Dowker in 1876 (_Archaeol. Journal_,
xxxiii, 59), ‘that when the sea swept the Stonar beach, Deal had no
existence.’ Even men of science sometimes use the word ‘certain’ a
little rashly. At that time Dowker asserted that the Stonar beach ‘must
have travelled from the cliff between Dover and Deal’. In 1887 (_Proc.
Geologists’ Association_, ix, 174-5) he ‘pointed to the stones of which
it is composed as evincing their origin from the cliff at Pegwell....
To imagine it to have travelled from the south, we must,’ he said,
‘have a shore-line cutting far back beyond the Deal beach, of which at
present there was no evidence.’
[2485] _Itin. curiosum_, 2nd ed., 1776, pp. 126-7.
[2486] It must be borne in mind that Stukeley wrote before the great
increase of shingle in the neighbourhood of Walmer.
[2487] _Ib._; C. R. S. Elvin, _Records of Walmer_, pp. 2-3, 5.
[2488] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series_, of James I, 1611-8,
p. 324 (vol. lxxxii, 129), under date 1615; _ib._, Charles I, 1625-6,
p. 321 (vol. xxv, 82), under date 1626; _ib._, 1627-8, p. 200 (vol.
lxv. 62), under date 1627. In the British Museum is a print, called
‘N.W. View of Deal Castle’, published in 1735, from which it would
appear that at that time the castle was as close to the sea as it is
now,--neither more nor less.
[2489] _Records of Walmer_, p. 5.
[2490] _Coast Erosion_, p. 3.
[2491] _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1888 (1889), p. 910. The
following table, compiled by Major A. C. Hepper, R.E. (_ib._, 1885,
p. 440), illustrates the movements of the shingle during the period
between 1741 and 1884:--
_Increase_ _Decrease_
_Place_ _From_ _To_ _Feet_ _Feet_
Walmer Castle 1741 1841 308 --
” ” 1841 1859 34 --
” ” 1859 1872 33 --
” ” 1872 1884 10 --
Deal Castle 1741 1859 85 --
” ” 1859 1872 -- 40
” ” 1872 1884 35 --
Sandown Castle 1741 1859 -- 145
” ” 1859 1872 -- 50
” ” 1872 1884 -- 5
No. 2 Battery 1859 1884 140 --
The encroachment of the sea north of Deal between 1848 and 1856 was due
to the extraordinary prevalence of north-easterly winds.
[2492] _Britannia antiqua_, 1857, p. 282.
[2493] In regard to this statement, and also that of Roach Smith,
recording the discovery of coins at Stonar (see p. 520, _supra_), Sir
John Evans has written to me, ‘I have no personal knowledge of either
of the finds of Roman coins that you mention. Roach Smith, however,
and Beale Poste are competent authorities in such a case, and I see no
reason why you should not accept their statements.’
[2494] _Archaeol. Cant._, xxv, 1902, p. 1.
[2495] _Ib._, pp. 4-5. This discovery stultifies Hasted’s remark
(_Hist. of Kent_, iv, 1779, p. 173), that ‘towards the village of
Walmer [as one comes from Deal] is a flat, many feet lower than the
high-water mark, which the beach thrown up along the shore has fenced
from the sea, and which probably when _Caesar_ landed on this coast
might be all covered with water’. Cf. C. R. S. Elvin, _Records of
Walmer_, p. 3.
[2496] See also _Archaeol. Cant._, xxvi, 1904, pp. 11-2.
[2497] Part i, 9th ed., 1900, p. 339.
[2498] _Britannia antiqua_, pp. 288-9.
[2499] _The Channel Pilot_, part i, 1900, p. 338.
[2500] _Geogr. Journal_, ix, 1897, p. 655.
[2501] G. B. Gattie, _Memorials of the Goodwin Sands_, 1890, pp. 3, 5-6.
[2502] _Principles of Geology_, 1875, i, 530-1.
[2503] _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, ed. B. Thorpe, ii, 1861, p. 203.--An.
M.XCIX.
[2504] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxi, 1864, pp. 235-6.
[2505] _Treatise of the Roman Ports and Forts in Kent_, 1693, p. 24.
[2506] _Itin._, 1744, vii, 113.
[2507] _Villare Cantianum_, 1669, map facing p. 1.
[2508] See the fantastic map inserted between pages 330 and 331 of
Guest’s _Origines Celticae_, vol. ii, in which ‘Lomea’ is placed N.W.
of the Goodwins.
[2509] _Report of ... the Brit. Archaeol. Association ... _, Sept.,
1844, p. 371.
[2510] _De rebus Albionicis_, 1590, pp. 24, 27-8.
[2511] According to Chambers’s _Ency._, v, 1901, p. 296, Lomea has been
identified with ‘_Infera insula_ of the Romans’. The writer does not
inform us by whom _infera insula_ was mentioned.
[2512] Part i, 1900, p. 337.
[2513] _Treatise of the Roman Ports and Forts of Kent_, pp. 20-1.
[2514] _Hist. Maps of England_, p. 2.
[2515] Richard Lilburne (_Topographie ... of ... Kent_, 1659, pp.
262-3), alluding to the well-known legend as to the origin of the
Goodwin Sands, says, ‘the most probable relation of the rise of the
same is thus. _Goodwin_ ... was ... owner of a great quantity of flat
Lands in the County (neer the _Isle_ of _Thanet_) defended from the sea
by a great wall, which lands afterwards (in the year 1099) was parcell
of the possessions of the Abbot of St. _Augustine_ (but reteyned the
name of _Goodwin_ ...), and that Abbot, being then also owner of the
Rectory of _Tenterden_, and having begun the building of this steeple
... the thoughts, and actions, of him, and his agents were so set upon
the finishing of that work, that they neglected the care of watching,
and preserving the aforesaid wall, and (3. of November in that year)
the sea broke over, and ... drowned the aforesaid lands (overwhelming
the same) with a light sand ... and the place thereby obteyned the
name of _Goodwin Sands_ ... and thus (accidentially) this _Tenterden_
steeple is said to be the cause of _Goodwin Sands_.’
[2516] _Hist. of Deal_, 1864, p. 106.
[2517] See p. 524, _supra_.
[2518] _Coast Erosion_, 1899, p. 12.
[2519] _Archaeol. Journal_, xlii, 1885, pp. 284-5. According to Mr.
Clement Reid (_Archaeologia_, part ii, 1906, p. 285) ‘the relative
level of sea and land in the south of England appears to have remained
unchanged’ since ‘late Neolithic times’. See, however, Addenda, p. 740.
[2520] There is not much force in Professor Boyd Dawkins’s argument
(_Early Man in Britain_, p. 483), that an island on the site of the
Goodwin Sands would not have escaped the notice of Ptolemy. Ptolemy
does not mention Sheppey (or else Thanet) and other islands.
[2521] See pp. 657-9, _infra_, and cf. R. Blanchard, _La Flamande_, pp.
128, 133.
[2522] _The Cinque Ports_, p. 8.
[2523] _Twenty-third Report East Kent Nat. Hist. Soc._, 1881, p. 57.
[2524] _Nouveau Dict. de Géogr. univ._, ii, 1884, p. 542.
[2525] According to M. Léon Lejeal, the author of an interesting
article on ‘Le littoral’ in _Boulogne-sur-mer et la région boulonnaise_
(i, 365), ‘certains hydrographes affirment qu’au Grisnez, la falaise
s’entame de 0,25 centimètres par an.’ I presume that this was the
authority upon which M. de St.-Martin relied.
[2526] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxxiii, 1876, p. 60.
[2527] _Naut. Mag._, 1850, p. 216.
[2528] In Capt. McDakin’s _Coast Erosion,--Dover Cliffs_, 1899, pp.
7-9, a list is given of the notable falls which have been recorded. In
1853 there was a heavy fall near Holy Trinity Church, Dover; in 1872 at
the East Cliff; in 1896 at the South Foreland; and (_Times_, Jan. 11,
1905, p. 7, col. 1, Jan. 13, p. 7, col. 2) in 1905 there were landslips
at St. Margaret’s Bay, near Hope Point, and at Fan Bay.
[2529] Dowker (_Twenty-third Report East Kent Nat. Hist. Soc._, 1881,
p. 63) attributed this loss of shingle to the Admiralty Pier at
Dover. ‘The formation of the Dover Harbour,’ he says, ‘has favoured
the accumulation of beach west of that point; the current, moreover,
after passing the obstacle, is deflected inland, and thus, at St.
Margaret’s Bay, a former collection of beach is being removed towards
Deal.’ On the other hand, Sir John Coode, who is described in the
_Dictionary of National Biography_ (Suppl., ii, 52) as ‘probably the
most distinguished harbour engineer of the nineteenth century’, states
(_Parl. Papers_, lviii, 1873, p. 455[3]) that ‘so far from the pier
having acted as a check to the passage of the shingle, there has been a
considerable loss to the westward of it within the last 20 years’. ‘I
have no hesitation,’ he adds (_ib._, p. 456[4]), ‘in stating, in the
most distinct and positive terms, that this decrease [of shingle on
various parts of the coast south-west of St. Margaret’s Bay] has not
been caused by “the extension of the Admiralty Pier at Dover”, inasmuch
as the various facts that have been brought out in the course of my
recent investigation lead distinctly and unmistakably to the opposite
conclusion ... having regard to the facts previously stated, as to the
diminution of shingle to the westward of Folkestone, near Sandgate and
Hythe, &c. ... I have arrived at the conclusion that this [decrease of
shingle between Dover and St. Margaret’s Bay] is due to the remarkable
accumulation of shingle, and consequent projection towards the
south-east of Dungeness’ (_ib._, p. 457[5]).
About the year 1721 the supply of shingle was temporarily cut off by
the fall of part of the Castle Cliff. See Capt. John Perry, _Account of
the Stopping of Daggenham Breach_, &c., 1721, p. 119.
[2530] _Report of ... the Brit. Association_, 1885 (1886), p. 439.
See also pp. 406-7. According to J. B. Redman (_Proc. Inst. Civ.
Engineers_, xi, 1851-2 [1853], p. 164) ‘it appears that at an early
period there was no shingle at all at Dover ... which there is
historical evidence to prove was the case; its gradual advance from the
westward eventually blocked up the entrance’, &c. Where the ‘historical
evidence’ is to be found Redman omits to say; and I cannot find it; but
it is certain that the movement of shingle along the coast began long
before the historic period (_Geogr. Journal_, xxviii, 1906, p. 489).
Capt. McDakin (_Coast Erosion,--Dover Cliffs_, p. 5) remarks that ‘the
Roman Pharos on the Castle Cliffs and the foundations of a similar
building in the Redoubt on the Western Heights, give us no indication
that the edge of the cliff has receded since those earliest of Roman
buildings occupied their present site’.
[2531] Clement Reid in _Vict. Hist. of ... Sussex_, i, 25, and _Geogr.
Journal_, xxviii, 1906, pp. 488-9.
[2532] _Vict. Hist. of ... Sussex_, i, 469.
[2533] See _Geogr. Journal_, xxviii, 1906, p. 490.
[2534] _Ib._, p. 489. Cf. A. J. Jukes-Browne, _Handbook of Phys.
Geol._, 1892, p. 171.
[2535] Angusti montes (_B. G._, iv, 23, § 3).
[2536] See p. 329, _supra_.
[2537] Experiments recently conducted by Captain McDakin (_Coast
Erosion,--Dover Cliffs_, pp. 3-4, 12) showed that ‘the average erosion
of four years was unexpectedly small, only amounting to half an inch in
a year’. He admits, indeed, that the average rate, since erosion began,
‘has probably been much more rapid.’ His general conclusions are, ‘that
the heaviest falls ... take place after long continued rain.... That
the springs issuing from the base of the cliffs play an important part
in undermining and bringing down the cliffs; and that the sea charged
with a small amount of shingle [which it discharges like a gun] attacks
the undercliff and removes it, but where the shingle accumulates in
large quantities, it defends and supports the base of the cliffs,’ &c.
[2538] Ed. Wesseling, p. 473. See also _Corpus inscr. Lat._, vii, 1228.
[2539] _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 157, note.
[2540] _Domesday Book of Kent_, ed. L. B. Larking, 1869, p. 93, and
Extension, p. 2.
[2541] I need hardly say that Digges’s statement, which refers only to
the inlet where the port of Dover had been, does not support Redman’s
assertion (p. 529, n. 4, _supra_).
[2542] _Archaeologia_, xi, 1792, p. 212, note _a_. Archcliff Fort is
about 400 yards west of the first groyne on the western side of the
Lord Warden Hotel.
[2543] _Naut. Mag._, 1850, p. 269. See also John Leland, _Itin._, vii,
1744, fol. 128, p. 117.
[2544] About 1 mile 4,100 feet in a straight line from the present
high-water mark of ordinary tides (_Six-inch Ordnance Survey_, Sheet
68).
[2545] Nearly 2 miles beyond Crabble (_ib._, Sheets 67-8).
[2546] _Archaeol. Cant._, xx, 1893, p. 129.
[2547] _Archaeologia_, v, 1779, p. 325; John Lyon, _Hist. of ...
Dover_, i, 1813, p. 9; _Archaeol. Cant._, xx, 1893, p. 131.
[2548] _Ib._, xviii, 1889, p. 202.
[2549] See also T. Hyde Page, _Considerations upon the State of Dover
Harbour_, &c., 1784, p. 6.
[2550] See _Phil. Trans._, xxix, 1716, p. 469; lxxvi, 1786, p. 220;
W. Lambarde, _Perambulation of Kent_, ed. 1826, p. 154; _Mem. Geol.
Survey,--The Geology of the Weald_, 1875, pp. 302, 315-6; _Proc.
Geologists’ Association_, xiii, 1895, pp. 40-7; Capt. McDakin, _Coast
Erosion,--Dover Cliffs_, pp. 7-9; _Pall Mall Gazette_, Jan. 18, 1906,
p. 12, col. 2.
[2551] _Trans. Geol. Soc._, v, 1821, p. 17.
[2552] The quotation is from T. Lewin, _The Invasion of Britain by
Julius Caesar_, 2nd ed., 1862, p. lvii.
[2553] Romney Marsh Proper extends eastward of the Rhee Wall, which
runs from Appledore to New Romney.
[2554] _Mem. Geol. Survey,--The Geology of the Weald_, p. 251.
[2555] _Phil. Trans._, xxxv, 1727, pp. 551-2.
[2556] _The Invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar_, 1862, p. lii. We
learn from the late F. Drew (_Mem. Geol. Survey,--The Geology of the
Weald_, p. 206) that ‘whatever the soil may be near the surface, it is
almost invariably the case that, at a depth of 10 or 20 feet, there is
loose sand, often containing recent marine shells’, &c. See note 8,
_infra_.
[2557] _Athenæum_, Aug. 5, 1865, pp. 184-5.
[2558] See _Geol. Mag._, 1869, p. 128. The writer, ‘W. T.,’ was
evidently the late geologist, William Topley.
[2559] See _Proc. Geologists’ Association_, xv, 1898, pp. 212-3, 222.
As far as I can discover, the only absolutely trustworthy boring which
has been made (_Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, xliii, 1887, p. 204) shows
that at Holmestone, near Lydd, which is outside the limits of Romney
Marsh Proper, the recent strata, overlying Hastings beds, were as
follows:--Shingle, 15 feet; Boulders, 4 feet; Brown Sand, 13 feet;
Clay, 4 feet; Black and Grey Sand, 20 feet; Pebbles, 1 foot.
‘Mr. Elliott,’ says Drew (_Mem. Geol. Survey,--The Geology of the
Country between Folkestone and Rye_, 1864, p. 16), ‘tells me that he
bored 70 feet in the Marsh, of which the last 50 were in sand.’ ‘I
contend, however,’ replies Dowker (_Proc. Geologists’ Association_,
xv, 212), ‘that this does not prove anything, since the sand probably
belonged to the Hastings Beds.’
[2560] _Mem. Geol. Survey,--The Geology of the Weald_, p. 304. Topley
goes on to point out that F. H. Appach, in _C. J. Caesar’s Brit.
Expeditions_, &c., p. 16, adopted a theory which had been originally
put forward by James Elliott, but had been discovered by Elliott
himself to be erroneous, attributing ‘the silting up of the area’ to
‘the presence of some supposed islands of Hastings Sand near Romney’.
[2561] _Mem. Geol. Survey,--The Geology of the Country between
Folkestone and Rye_, pp. 19-20.
[2562] See p. 543, n. 1, _infra_.
[2563] See p. 62, _supra_.
[2564] See p. 543, _infra_.
[2565] See _Proc. Inst. Civil Engineers_, xl, 1875, pp. 69-70.
[2566] _Ib._, pp. 109, 111. Lord Avebury, who refers to this paper in
_The Scenery of England_, 3rd ed., 1904, p. 152, reports Sir Joseph
Prestwich’s views as to the movement of shingle incorrectly. Prestwich
considered it ‘well established’ that the general movement of the
shingle along our south coast was eastward, although in the west bay of
Portland it travels in the opposite direction.
[2567] C. Roach Smith, _Report on Excavations ... at Lymne_, 1852, p.
41.
[2568] _Proc. Inst. Civil Engineers_, vi, 1847, p. 467.
[2569] T. Lewin, _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. lxviii-lxix.
See also p. lvi.
[2570] _Archaeologia_, xl, 1866, pp. 361-74.
[2571] Lewin observes (_The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp.
lvii-lviii) that as far eastward as West Hythe Oaks the shingle ‘fulls’
all curve westward, having been bent in that direction by the inrush
of the tides; while from West Hythe Oaks to Sandgate they all curve
towards the east. This, he says, proves that when they were formed, the
mouth of the estuary near Hythe had already been closed. Appach, on
the other hand (_C. J. Caesar’s Brit. Expeditions_, p. 21, § 9), does
not believe that the shingle spit reached West Hythe Oaks. Referring
to the change of curvature in the shingle fulls, he says that it was
‘evidently due to the cessation of the indraught’, which was ‘obviously
caused by the erection of the ancient wall at West Hythe’. Hence, he
concludes, ‘the fulls to the north of the point [where the change of
curvature takes place] ... were not formed until after the wall at West
Hythe was built; and as this is part of the north-eastern boundary of
Romney Marsh, it follows that the fulls in question were formed after
the formation of Romney Marsh.’ Lewin also mentions ‘the ancient wall
at West Hythe’; but his final theory is that the erection of this dam
became necessary because the shingle spit, after it had reached West
Hythe Oaks, was burst by the waters, fed by the streams mentioned
above (p. 532), which accumulated in the space between West Hythe Oaks
and Hythe (see p. 547, _infra_). Appach holds that Romney Marsh was
not formed until after the Romans had abandoned Britain; and he is
therefore constrained to argue that Hythe Haven did not exist during
the Roman occupation, and that the Portus Lemanis was at Lympne. Both
of these theories will be refuted in this article (pp. 543-8, _infra_).
[2572] It is hardly necessary to point out that Dungeness is of recent
formation. Various theories have been advanced as to its origin (see
Mr. F. P. Gulliver’s paper in the _Geogr. Journal_, ix, 1897, pp.
536-46, and _Proc. Inst. Civil Engineers_, xi, 1852, pp. 212-21); and
attempts have been made to determine the time at which the oldest
of the shingle ‘fulls’ which constitute the ‘ness’ was formed, by
calculating the rate at which the point has advanced seaward since
observations began to be recorded. Elliott remarks (_ib._, vi, 1847,
p. 476) that ‘from the best existing data’ Dungeness would appear to
extend annually about two yards further out to sea; and that, as the
rate of increase was probably more rapid at first, we may conclude that
about nineteen hundred years have elapsed ‘since the sea first left
the original “full” at Lydd’. According to Redman (_ib._, xi, 1852, p.
174), the increase has not been regular, and ‘during certain periods
the Ness has even been stationary’: from the middle of the seventeenth
to the middle of the nineteenth century, he adds, the average annual
increase was nearly six yards. This is probably an exaggeration. Sir
John Coode (_Parl. Papers_, lviii, 1873, p. 457) ascertained, from
particulars recorded at the Trinity House, that ‘from the year 1792
to 1850 the point advanced seaward 530 feet, or say, at the rate of 9
feet per annum; whilst from 1850 to 1871, the advance was 280 feet,
or at the rate of from 13 to 14 feet per annum’. Topley (_Mem. Geol.
Survey,--The Geology of the Weald_, p. 314) thinks that ‘the oldest
fulls are 1,000 years or more old’. Similarly Drew (_ib._, p. 308) says
that the shingle which forms Dungeness ‘must have been ... collected
since the Rother first came to Romney’. See also H. J. Mackinder,
_Britain and the British Seas_, 1902, pp. 42-3. ‘In early Roman times,’
he remarks, ‘Dungeness appears not to have existed’; and he suggests
that its formation was due to ‘the diversion of the Rother mouth for
the purpose of reclaiming Romney Marsh’.
[2573] _Cot._, Aug. I, i, 24-5.
[2574] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. lvii-lx, cxx; _Proc.
Inst. Civil Engineers_, xi, 1852, p. 169. Cf. _Mem. Geol. Survey,--The
Geology of the Weald_, p. 312. Dowker (_Twenty-third Report East Kent
Nat. Hist. Soc._, 1881, p. 66) suggests that the Hythe beach may have
come from the east!
[2575] _Proc. Geologists’ Association_, xv, 1898, pp. 211-23.
[2576] It would be a waste of time to catalogue these blunders, which
will be obvious to any one who knows the literature of the subject:
but I may remark that Dowker devotes several pages to a refutation of
Elliott’s earlier theory, which Elliott himself corrected in the notes
with which he furnished Lewin; and that he ignored or was ignorant of
Elliott’s matured conclusions. He says (p. 214) that Elliott’s ‘first
paper was written to assist Mr. Lewin ... and his theory was printed
with Mr. Roach Smith’s “History of Further Excavations and History of
the Roman Castrum at Lympne”’. Elliott’s first paper (_Proc. Inst.
Civil Engineers_, vi, 1847) was not written to assist Lewin; nor was
his second, which was printed, not in a book which neither Roach Smith
nor any one else ever published, but as an appendix to Roach Smith’s
_Report on Excavations made on the site of the Roman Castrum at Lymne_,
1852. The notes which Elliott wrote to assist Lewin were printed in the
second edition of Lewin’s _Invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar_, which
appeared in 1862, and which Dowker never mentions. The unhappy man
cannot even refer correctly to his own works. In his bibliographical
note (p. 223) he quotes under his own name a paper ‘On the River
Limen’, in _Archaeol. Cant._, vol. xviii, in which no such paper is to
be found.
[2577] _Proc. Geologists’ Association_, xv, 1898, p. 219.
[2578] _Ib._
[2579] _Proc. Geologists’ Association_, xv, 1898, p. 222.
[2580] _Ib._, p. 214.
[2581] _Ib._
[2582] _Ib._, p. 221. See p. 527, _supra_.
[2583] See A. H. Jukes-Browne, _Handbook of Phys. Geology_, 1892, pp.
138-9, 219. The lower course of the Great Stour is a good example.
[2584] See p. 543, _infra_.
[2585] _Archaeol. Cant._, xiii, 1880, pp. 271-2.
[2586] _Proc. Geologists’ Association_, xv, 1898, pp. 221-2.
[2587] _Hist. of Kent_, iii, 1790, p. 532.
[2588] _Britannia antiqua_, pp. 262-3.
[2589] _Hist. of Romney Marsh_, 1849, pp. 16, 20.
[2590] _Mem. Geol. Survey,--The Geology of the Country between
Folkestone and Rye_, pp. 19-20.
[2591] _Ravennatis anonymi cosmographia_, ed. M. Pinder and G. Parthey,
1860, v, 31 (p. 438, 19).
[2592] _Geogr. Journal_, ix, 1897, p. 545.
Mr. H. E. Malden, who believes that Caesar landed somewhere near Hurst,
which is in Romney Marsh, about two miles and a half west of Lympne,
affirms (_Journal of Philology_, xvii, 1888, pp. 176-7, n. 1) that, in
A.D. 893, ‘Hastings the pirate came here with his fleet ... and sailed
four miles up the Rother to the Weald.’ There is not the slightest
evidence that ‘Hastings’ came ‘here’ with his fleet. The record of his
expedition is in the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ (ed. B. Thorpe, ii, 1861,
p. 69). ‘In this year’ [893], says the chronicler, ‘the great army,
of which we long before spoke ... came up to the mouth of the Limen
with two hundred and fifty ships. The mouth is in the east of Kent,
at the east end of the great wood which we call Andred.... The river,
of which we before spoke, flows out from the weald. On the river they
towed up their ships as far as the weald, four miles from the outward
mouth, and there stormed a work.’ Mr. Malden (_op. cit._, p. 176, note)
avows his belief that ‘the Romans embanked the marsh’, and immediately
afterwards says that ‘the _Portus Lemanis_ after that became accessible
only from the east, inside the shingle spit opposite Hythe’. It would
appear, then, that, according to Mr. Malden, the mouth of the Limen,
up which the Danes sailed, was ‘opposite Hythe’. But, according to the
_Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, to which he refers, it was at Appledore (see
p. 542, n. 4, _infra_); and doubtless the Danes reached it by sailing
up the channel, formed by the Rhee wall (see p. 538, _supra_), which
then connected the Limen with the sea.
[2593] C. Roach Smith, _Report on Excavations ... at Lymne_, pp. 39-40.
[2594] _Proc. Geologists’ Association_, viii, 1883, p. 93. Topley,
indeed, frankly admits that one argument may be adduced in support of
the theory that the Rother flowed out opposite Lympne. This argument
is identical with that of Drew, which I have quoted in the text; but,
as Topley’s exposition is the more lucid, I give it here. He observes
(_Mem. Geol. Survey,--The Geology of the Weald_, pp. 303-4) that on
Romney Marsh the shingle ‘has chiefly accumulated to the _windward_ of
tidal harbours, whilst the blown sand has accumulated to leeward of
those harbours’; and then, remarking that, on the south of West Hythe,
the ‘fulls’, or ridges of shingle, ‘curve well round to the north-west,
as though to a harbour here,’ and that ‘on the north of this there
is again a little blown-sand’, he admits that these facts lend some
support to the popular view: but, he adds, ‘no trace of the ancient
channel is to be found along the northern side of the marsh.’ But
Topley seems not to know his own mind; for he afterwards says (_ib._,
p. 304) that ‘it is by no means unlikely that the ancient Rother had
more than one mouth. There may have been one at Lympne, one at Romney,
and one near Rye.’ However, in his final utterance on the subject
(_Proc. Geologists’ Association_, viii, 1883, p. 93) he says, ‘there is
no evidence of any old river along the northern side of the Marsh.’
[2595] _Twenty-third Report East Kent Nat. Hist. Soc._, 1881, p. 66.
See also _Proc. Geologists’ Association_, xv, 1898, pp. 216-7.
[2596] Cf. John Harris, _Hist. of Kent_. 1719, p. 366.
[2597] C. Roach Smith, _Report on Excavations ... at Lymne_. p. 42.
[2598] _Itin. Ant._, ed. Wesseling, p. 473.
[2599] _A Treatise of the Roman Ports and Forts in Kent_, p. 42.
[2600] _Rerum angl. script._, &c., ed. H. Savile, 1601, p. 846
(Chronicle of Ethelwerd, lib. iv, cap. iii, _s.a._ 893, line 57 ff.).
[2601] _Perambulation of Kent_ (written in 1570), 1826, p. 165.
[2602] _The Itin. of John Leland_, iii, 1744, p. 158.
[2603] Mr. G. R. Wright (_Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_, xl,
1884, p. 247) suggests that ‘Shepway’ may have been derived from the
Saxon word, _sceap_, ‘a sheep’, and may have ‘meant a sheep-way’.
[2604] See p. 542, n. 4, _infra_.
[2605] _The Itin. of John Leland_, vii, 1744, p. 132.
[2606] J. M. Kemble, _Codex dipl. aevi Saxonici_, i, 1839, pp. 92-3,
LXXVII; pp. 308-9, CCXXXIV.
[2607] in loco qui dicitur sandtun. et in eodem loco sali coquenda, &c.
[2608] termini vero terrae illius hec sunt. ab oriente terra regis. ab
austro fluvius qui dicitur limenaee. ab occidente et in septentrione
hudan fleot.
[2609] Lewin (_Archaeologia_, xl, 1866, pp. 373-4) admits that the
earlier of the two charters mentioned in the text ‘appeared at first
sight to negative the hypothesis that the marsh was under cultivation
in the time of the Romans’: but he adds that he consulted Elliott,
who removed his doubts in the following letter:--‘The grant refers to
_Romney_ and not to _Lymne_. The boundaries will do for Romney, but
not for Lymne. If at Lymne, the salt-pans must have been in the marsh,
and then on the east, south, and west would have been the sea, and on
the north Lymne Hill. At Romney ... the description agrees. Sandtun
would be the Sand hills, called the Warren, to the east of Romney,
and the boundaries of the land would be as stated, viz.:--the King’s
land on the east would be the territory to the east, about 100 acres,
which was vested in the Crown until the reign of Elizabeth, when it
was granted to Romney Corporation; the river on the south would be
the Limen.... Hudanfleot, referred to as on the north and west, would
be the fleet which may still be traced there, though it has lost its
name,’ &c. Lewin (_The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. lvi) remarks
that in the neighbourhood of Romney ‘are still pools of stagnant water
... called Fleets’. As, however, the mouth of the Limen, in A.D. 893,
according to the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ (see p. 541, _supra_) was at
Appledore, we must assume that the Limen mentioned in the charter was
simply the body of water conducted into the channel enclosed within the
embankments of the Rhee Wall.
That ‘the marsh was under cultivation [or, at all events, occupation]
in the time of the Romans’, is not a ‘hypothesis’ at all: it is a
fact attested by the discovery of numerous Roman remains. See p. 551,
_infra_.
Professor Montagu Burrows (_The Cinque Ports_, p. 12) speaks of
‘Hudanfleot, afterwards called West Hythe’, and says (_ib._, p. 50)
that ‘Hudanfleot’ means ‘the haven of the estuary’. Needless to say, he
gives no authority; and how ‘the haven of the estuary’ could have been
both ‘on the west and on the north’ of ‘the piece of land’ referred to
in the charters he does not explain.
[2610] See pp. 545-6, _infra_.
[2611] See Roach Smith, _Report on Excavations ... at Lymne_, pp. 39-40.
[2612] _Ant. of Richborough_, &c., pp. 236, 239. See also J. M. Kemble,
_Codex diplo. aevi Saxonici_, i, 103, No. LXXXVI. The _Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle_ (ed. Thorpe, ii, 71, _s.a._ DCCC.XCIV) mentions ‘the great
army ... which had before sat at the mouth of the Limen, at Appledore’.
[2613] Roach Smith, _Report on Excavations ... at Lymne_, p. 41.
[2614] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. lxiii; _Archaeologia_,
xl, 1866, p. 369. I have remarked elsewhere (pp. 609, and 622-3) on
Lewin’s inconsistencies. In his final utterance on the subject of
Romney Marsh (_Archaeologia_, xl) he outdoes himself. On page 369 he
says that the mouth of the Limen was at Appledore: on page 370 he says
that ‘the river Limen must have flowed along the foot of the hills, and
have discharged itself at Lymne’.
[2615] Drew (_Mem. Geol. Survey,--The Geology of the Country between
Folkestone and Rye_, pp. 19-20), on the other hand, says that ‘Forest
trees flourished on this surface, for the moor-logs in the peat have
all the appearance of having grown on the spot. If this be so, it
follows that since that time there has been a depression of the land,
because the peat that occurs at Appledore, and along the shore between
Rye and Dungeness ... is at too low a level for the plants to have
grown at these places while the sea had access there.... There is
no reason to believe that any of the depression of land took place
... from the time of the Romans downwards, for no human remains nor
works of art have been found deep in the Alluvium.’ Dowker (_Proc.
Geologists’ Association_, xv, 1898, p. 221) argues, in support of
Drew’s opinion, that if the trees had been carried down by the Rother,
‘we should expect them to have been covered with mud or silt, which
does not occur to any extent.’
[2616] See p. 535, _supra_.
[2617] See M. Burrows, _The Cinque Ports_, p. 11; _Archaeol. Journal_,
liii, 1896, pp. 364-5: F. Haverfield (_Hist. Atlas of Modern Europe_,
ed. R. L. Poole, 1896, pl. 15), &c. [Prof. Haverfield calls the
harbour Portus Lemanae, not Portus Lemanis. Stukeley, however (_Itin.
curiosum_, 1776, p. 133), believed that the Portus Lemanis was ‘about
West Hithe’; and Somner (_Treatise of the Roman Ports and Forts in
Kent_, p. 37) says that some of ‘our English Chorographers’ were of
the same opinion. So also was the famous geographer, Konrad Mannert
(_Geogr. der Griechen und Römer_, Zweyter Theil, Zweyter Heft, 1795,
p. 161). Somner (p. 38) argued that the port was at New Romney; but in
order to sustain this opinion he was forced to read _XXI_ instead of
_XVI_ (Roman miles),--the distance, according to the _Itinerary_ of
Antonine (ed. Wesseling, p. 473) from Durovernum (Canterbury) to Portus
Lemanis.]
[2618] _C. J. Caesar’s Brit. Expeditions_, &c., pp. 43-5, §§ 3-10.
[2619] 26,080, according to Appach; but he assumed that a Roman mile
was equal to 1,630 yards, whereas it was really 1,617. Cf. Smith’s
_Dict. of Greek and Rom. Ant._, 3rd ed., ii, 159-60.
[2620] According to Appach, whose arithmetic was a little shaky, 25,840.
[2621] _Itin._, vii, 1744, p. 132.
[2622] _Perambulation of Kent_, p. 165.
[2623] _Ordnance Survey of England_, Sheet 289.
[2624] C. Roach Smith, _Ant. of Richborough_, &c., p. 255, n. 1.
[2625] _Athenæum_, Sept. 22, 1894, p. 394.
[2626] _Archaeologia_, xl, 1866, p. 377.
[2627] See p. 542, n. 4, _supra_.
[2628] C. Roach Smith, _Report on Excavations ... at Lymne_, pp. 39-45.
[2629] T. Lewin, _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. cviii.
[2630] This Theodosius was not Theodosius the Younger, as Elliott says,
but the father of Theodosius the Great.
[2631] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. lvi-lvii.
[2632] _Archaeol. Journal_, liii, 1896, p. 370.
[2633] _Proc. Roy. Inst. of Great Britain_, xvi, 1900, pp. 36-7. Cf. C.
Roach Smith, _Collectanea Antiqua_, vii, 1880, pp. 158-9, and _Corpus
inscr. Lat._, vii, 18.
[2634] _Itin. curiosum_, 1776, pp. 132-3.
[2635] See also T. Lewin, _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p.
lxvii. In his article in _Archaeologia_ (xl, 1866, pp. 364-5) Lewin
argues that if the Portus Lemanis had been at the foot of Lympne Hill,
‘we should expect to find at least some vestiges, however faint, of the
port itself’; but, he adds, ‘I have never heard or read (though I have
often inquired) that any remnant of a pier or sunken vessel, or even
any anchor or other part of a ship’s tackle was ever discovered in this
part.’
[2636] _Archaeologia_, xl, 1866, pp. 361-74.
[2637] See p. 536, _supra_.
[2638] Both these maps are reproduced, in part, in the map which faces
p. 531, of this book.
[2639] _Archaeologia_, xl, 1866, pp. 371-2.
[2640] _Ib._, pp. 360-7. I omit those arguments by which Lewin
endeavours to prove that the Portus Lemanis was not at Lympne.
[2641] Cf. E. Guest, _Origines Celticae_, ii, 116-7, 358.
[2642] As far as I can see, if the western end of the port had been
at West Hythe, the ‘deluged’ area would have been that between West
Hythe Oaks and Hythe, which in the map prepared by Elliott for Lewin’s
book (_The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. liii) is depicted as
the western arm of the harbour, but which in the map that accompanies
Lewin’s article on the _Portus Lemanis_ (_Archaeologia_, xl, 1866, p.
369) is represented as covered partly by the ‘Duck Marsh’ and partly by
shingle.
[2643] Ogilby (_Britannia_, 1675, p. 40) speaks of ‘_Hith alias Hide_
or _East-Hith_’.
[2644] Lewin refers, in support of his statement, to Harris’s _Hist.
of Kent_, p. 367; but what Harris says is simply this:--‘that the
present _Hythe_ was used as a Port, even before the Departure of the
Romans.... Dr. _Plott_ thinks reasonable to conclude; from the paved
Way made after the _Roman_ Fashion all along up the Hill, not only to
Saltwood Castle ... but a Mile farther onwards, and leading into the
_Stonestreetway_.’
[2645] Does _Portus Lemanis_ mean ‘the port at the lagoons’ (E. Guest,
_Origines Celticae_, ii, 117), the plural having been used because,
while on the east of Hythe Oaks extended the pool harbour, the marsh
was still flooded on the west before the erection of the Rhee Wall?
That _Lemanis_ or _Lemannis_ is not a nominative, but a locative
plural, seems to be shown by the _Notitia dignitatum_ (ed. O. Seeck,
1876, Oc. xxviii, 5), where _Lemannis castellum_ is mentioned side by
side with _Regulbi castellum_.
[2646] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. lxii, note.
[2647] _Lives of the Engineers_, i, 1861, p. 7.
[2648] _Archaeologia_, xl, 1866, p. 369, note _b_.
[2649] _C. J. Caesar’s Brit. Expeditions_, p. 13, § 6.
[2650] _Ib._, p. 12, § 6.
[2651] _Kentish Archaeology_, iv, 1880, p. 13.
[2652] _Perambulation of Kent_, p. 208.
[2653] _Geogr._, ii, 3, § 3.
[2654] See Mr. H. Bradley’s article in _Archaeologia_, xlviii, 1885,
pp. 379-82, 389.
[2655] _Hist. of Imbanking and Drayning_, &c., 1662, pp. 16-7.
[2656] _Agricola_, 31,--corpora ipsa ac manus silvis ac paludibus
emuniendis inter verbera ac contumelias conteruntur.
[2657] R. Furley, _Hist. of the Weald of Kent_, i, 29.
[2658] _C. J. Caesar’s Brit. Expeditions_, pp. 42-3.
[2659] _Ib._, pp. 137-8, § 11.
[2660] _Archaeologia_, xl, 1866, pp. 367-8.
[2661] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxxiii, 1876, pp. 60, 63. Cf. Roach
Smith, _Ant. of Richborough_, &c., p. 245; _Journ. Brit. Archaeol.
Association_, i, 1845, pp. 40-2; and A. J. Dunkin, _Report of the ...
Brit. Archaeol. Association_, Sept., 1844, pp. 116-9. Besides pottery,
many human skeletons, and also tusks of boars and horses’ teeth were
discovered. Roach Smith (_Retrospections_, i, 1883, p. 207) concludes
from these discoveries that the marsh ‘could not possibly have been
submerged in the time of the Romans’. Not, certainly, at the time when
the articles in question were deposited there: but why not before? ‘The
time of the Romans’ amounted to nearly four centuries.
[2662] _C. J. Caesar’s Brit. Expeditions_, p. 136, § 9.
[2663] _Archaeologia_, xl, 1866, p. 372. According to Elliott (_ib._,
p. 365), a coin of Carausius, who ruled in Britain from A.D. 287 to
293, was found near Dymchurch.
[2664] R. Furley, _Hist. of the Weald of Kent_, i, 29. Against these
facts Appach’s argument (_C. J. Caesar’s Brit. Expeditions_, p. 134, §
3) that if Romney Marsh had existed ‘in the earlier period of the Roman
settlement’ Stone Street, assuming that it existed, ‘would have been
carried onward to Romney, the seaport,’ is of no avail. There is no
evidence that Romney was ‘the seaport’ until long after the departure
of the Romans.
[2665] See A. E. E. Desjardins, _Géogr. de la Gaule rom._, i, 348-50,
and footnotes.
[2666] _Veterum Galliae locorum ... descriptio_ (printed in _C. Iulii
Caesaris ... comm._, Lutetiae, 1544), s.v. _Itius portus_.
[2667] _Thesaurus geogr._, 1596, s.v. _Iccius_.
[2668] _Portus Iccius Iulii Caesaris demonstratus_, 1627.
[2669] See pp. 517-8, _supra_.
[2670] _Notitia Galliarum_, 1675, p. 249.
[2671] _Britannia_, ed. R. Gough, 1789, i, 221.
[2672] _Dissertatio de Portu Iccio_, 1694.
[2673] _Mém. de litt. tirés des registres de l’Acad. Roy. des Inscr. et
Belles-Lettres_, xxviii. 1761, pp. 397-409.
[2674] _Essai ... sur l’arrondissement communal de Boulogne-sur-mer_,
1810.
[2675] _Géogr. des Gaules_, i, 448-57.
[2676] Giraldus de Barri, _The Itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin_, 1806,
i, lxxix.
[2677] _Germania antiqua_, 1631, lib. ii, cap. xxviii, pp. 440-7.
[2678] _Notitia Galliae_, 1651, p. 856.
[2679] _Norman Conquest_, i, 1870. p. 486, n. 1.
[2680] _Journal of Philology_, xvii, 1888, pp. 163-78; xix, 1891, pp.
138-45, 193-9, 200-10; xx, 1892, pp. 63-4.
[2681] Pauly’s _Real-Encyclopädie_, iii, 1897, p. 864.
[2682] _Philologus_, xlix, 1890, p. 693.
[2683] _Hist. of Anc. Geogr._, pp. 230-1.
[2684] _Röm. Gesch._, iii, 1889, pp. 269-70, note (Eng. trans., v,
1894, p. 63, note).
[2685] See p. 602, n. 5, _infra_.
[2686] It has been argued that _commodissimum_ in this passage means
not ‘most convenient’, but simply ‘very convenient’. I have not the
slightest doubt that the former is the right interpretation, just
as in _B. G._, iv, 21, § 3, _brevissimus_ (in Britanniam traiectus)
unquestionably means ‘the shortest’, and not ‘a very short’ (passage to
Britain): but if I were wrong my mistake would be unimportant. It will
hardly be denied that if Caesar had found a port from which the passage
was more convenient than from the Portus Itius, he would have chosen
it. See p. 574, _infra_.
[2687] Caignart de Saulcy (_Les campagnes de Jules César dans les
Gaules_, 1862, p. 181) infers from this that the Portus Itius must have
been so situated that vessels sailing thence for Dover _would have had
the north-west wind right in their teeth_; and he remarks that, if
Wissant was the Portus Itius, this condition was fulfilled. But it is
hardly necessary to say that the condition is imaginary. The Portus
Itius must have been so situated that while the north-west wind (or
rather the wind called _Corus_, which may have blown from any quarter
between N.W. and W. by N. ⅓ N.) was blowing, Caesar’s vessels could not
have sailed thence to that part of the Kentish coast which he wished to
reach; and it is certain that they could not sail closer than within
about seven points of the wind. See _The Voyage and Shipwreck of St.
Paul_, by James Smith, 4th ed., 1880, p. 215; and, on the winds as
described by various ancient writers, Vitruvius, _De Architectura_,
i, 6, §§ 5, 9-10, P. F. J. Gossellin, _Recherches sur la géogr._, iv,
1813, p. 410, and diagram facing p. 416, and J. Vars, _L’art nautique
dans l’ant._, 1887, pp. 31-4.
[2688] _B. G._, iv, 21, §§ 1-4; 22, §§ 3-4; 23, § 1; 28; 36, § 4; v, 2,
§§ 2-3; 5; 7, § 3; 8, §§ 1-2, 6; 23, § 4.
[2689] _Geogr._, iv, 5, § 2.--τὸ Ἴτιον, ᾧ ἐχρήσατο ναυστάθμῳ Καῖσαρ ὁ
Θεός, διαίρων εἰς τὴν νῆσον· νύκτωρ δ’ ἀνήχθη, καὶ τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ κατῆρε
περὶ τετάρτην ὥραν, τριακοσίους καὶ εἴκοσι σταδίους τοῦ διάπλου τελέσας.
[2690] _Geogr._, ii, 9, § 1.
[2691] _Gesch. Roms_, 1837, iii, 294, n. 13.
[2692] _C. J. Caesaris comm. de b. G._, ed. 1880, p. 277.
[2693] See pp. 662, 664-5, _infra_.
[2694] _Journal of Philology_, xvii, 1888, p. 164.
[2695] _Portus Itius_, p. 5.
[2696] J. F. Henry argues (_Essai ... sur l’arrondissement communal
de Boulogne-sur-mer_, 1810, pp. 54-5) that Caesar could only have
estimated the distance from the Portus Itius to Britain by making the
voyage; that, as he was carried out of his course on the second voyage,
the one by which he estimated the distance must have been the first;
and consequently that in 55 as in 54 B.C. he must have sailed from the
Portus Itius.
But Henry forgot that Volusenus, whom Caesar sent in 55 B.C. to
reconnoitre the British coast, may have made the estimate. Or Caesar
may have accepted the estimate of merchants, of seamen, or of Commius:
it is useless to guess.
[2697] _Portus Itius_, p. 9.
[2698] In support of the view that Caesar reckoned the distance to the
nearest port of Britain, Heller (_Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde_,
xviii, 1865, pp. 172-3) argues (1) that if he had intended to indicate
the distance to his landing-place, he would probably have written,
not (quo ex portu commodissimum) _in Britanniam_ (traiectum esse
cognoverat, &c.) but _ad eum locum quo est descensum_ (‘to the spot
where the disembarkation took place’); (2) that when Strabo estimated
the length of Caesar’s voyage at 320 stades, or 40 Roman miles, he must
either have found (milium passuum) _XXXX_, which is not in any extant
MS., in his copy of the _Commentaries_, or have concluded, from other
information, that Caesar had underestimated the distance; and in either
case the fact that he expressly mentions the time which Caesar took
to reach his _anchorage_ shows that he did not take into account the
additional 7 miles which separated the anchorage from the landing-place.
It will be seen, however, that, although I agree with Heller’s
conclusion, the proofs by which I shall establish the identity of the
Portus Itius are wholly independent of it.
[2699] See pp. 592-3, _infra_.
[2700] See p. 619, _infra_.
[2701] Cf. Mommsen, _Röm. Gesch._, iii, 1889, pp. 269-70, note (Eng.
trans., v, 1894, p. 63, note).
[2702] _Nat. Hist._, iv, 16 (30), § 103.
[2703] _B. G._, v, 13, § 2.
[2704] See pp. 561-3, _infra_.
[2705] See pp. 554-5, _supra_.
[2706] _Archaeologia_, xxxiv, 1852, p. 235.
[2707] Speaking of Druidism, Caesar says (_B. G._, vi, 13, §§ 11-2)
_disciplina in Britannia reperta atque inde in Galliam translata
existimatur, et nunc qui diligentius eam rem cognoscere volunt
plerumque illo discendi causa proficiscuntur_. With this word the
chapter ends; but it is undeniable that those who wished to study the
tenets of Druidism did go to Britain.
[2708] _Ib._, iv, 21, §§ 3-4.--Ipse cum omnibus copiis in Morinos
proficiscitur, quod inde erat brevissimus in Britanniam traiectus. Huc
naves undique ex finitimis regionibus et quam superiore aestate ad
Veneticum bellum fecerat classem iubet convenire.
[2709] _C. J. Caesaris comm._, &c., p. 278, note.
[2710] Lewin (_The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. v-vi), justly
ridicules Airy’s desperate contention (_Athenæum_, Sept. 10, 1859, p.
337) that _in his locis_ is ‘a studiously indefinite expression’.
[2711] _B. G._, iv, 22, § 1.
[2712] _Archaeologia_, xxxiv, 1852, p. 235.
[2713] _B. G._, vi, 9, § 6.
[2714] _Ib._, iv, 22, §§ 1, 5.--Dum in his locis Caesar navium
parandarum causa moratur, ex magna parte Morinorum ad eum legati
venerunt ... reliquum exercitum Titurio Sabino et Aurunculeio Cottae
legatis in Menapios atque in eos pagos Morinorum a quibus ad eum legati
non venerant ducendum dedit.
[2715] _Ib._, v, 24, § 2.
[2716] The italics are mine.
[2717] _Essays on the Invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar_ (privately
printed), 1865, p. 27.
[2718] _B. G._, v, 24, §§ 1-2.--Subductis navibus concilioque Gallorum
Samarobrivae peracto, quod eo anno frumentum in Gallia propter
siccitates angustius provenerat, coactus est aliter ac superioribus
annis exercitum in hibernis conlocare legionesque in plures civitates
distribuere. Ex quibus unam in Morinos ducendam C. Fabio legato dedit,
alteram in Nervios Q. Ciceroni, tertiam in Esuvios L. Roscio, quartam
in Remis cum T. Labieno in confinio Treverorum hiemare iussit, tres in
Belgio conlocavit, &c.
[2719] _Ib._, vi, 44, §§ 1, 3.
[2720] _Geogr._, iv, 5, § 2.--τῶν ὁμορούντων τοῖς Μεναπίοις Μορινῶν,
παρ’ οἷς ἐστι καὶ τὸ Ἴτιον, &c.
[2721] _Athenæum_, Sept. 5, 1863, p. 302.
[2722] _Origines Celticae_, ii, 1883, p. 358.
[2723] _e.g._, iv, 2, § 2.--παρὰ μὲν οὖν τοῖς Πετροκορίοις σιδηρουργεῖά
ἐστιν ἀστεῖα καὶ τοῖς Κούβοις Βιτούριξι, παρὰ δὲ τοῖς Καδούρκοις
λινουργίαι; and iv. 3, § 3,--τὴν δ’ ἐπὶ τῷ Ῥήνῳ πρῶτοι τὴν ἁπάντων
οἰκοῦσιν Ἐλουήττιοι, παρ’ οἷς εἰσιν αἱ πηγαὶ τοῦ ποταμοῦ ἐν τῷ Ἀδούλᾳ
ὄρει. See also viii, 3, § 11.
[2724] _B. G._, iv, 36, § 4.
[2725] General Creuly (_Rev. arch._, nouv. sér., viii, 1863, p. 310)
agrees with Airy.
[2726] _Archaeologia_, xxxiv, 1852, p. 237.
[2727] See H. Meusel, _Lex. Caes._, i, 843.
[2728] _Ib._, ii, 167.
[2729] ‘They crossed the Rhine ... 30 miles below the place where the
bridge had been built.’
[2730] ‘It was announced ... that a large column was moving up the
river, and that the sound of oars was audible in the same direction;
and that troops were being ferried across the river in barges below.’
[2731] ‘He led out the remaining legions in light marching order;
stationed a large number of baggage-cattle in the river on the upper
and the lower side [of the ford]; and made the army cross over.’ Cf.
_Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde_, xviii, 1865, pp. 163-4.
[2732] _B. G._, v, 2, § 3.
[2733] Sometimes Airy makes Caesar anchor off St. Leonards; sometimes
off Bexhill. We may give him his choice.
[2734] _Archaeologia_, xxxiv, 1852, pp. 237-8. I find, to my amazement,
that Desjardins agrees with Airy. ‘The text,’ he argues (_Géogr. de la
Gaule rom._, i, 360-1), ‘does not say precisely that the _Portus Itius_
is 30 miles from Britain; it only says (1) that Caesar had ascertained
that it was a very convenient port; and (2) that Britain was about 30
miles from the continent. Here we have two distinct statements.’
It is worth mentioning that Airy, in quoting the passage, omits
_transmissum_, while Desjardins retains it. It was originally deleted
by Faërn, who has been followed by various editors, in defiance of the
_MSS._ See C. E. C. Schneider, _Comm. de bellis C. I. Caesaris_, ii,
1849, p. 11.
[2735] Airy seems to have felt the necessity of bolstering up his
argument; for he remarks (_Essays on the Invasion of Britain_, &c.,
p. 27) that ‘before the Triangulation of the year 1787, it was a fair
and an insoluble question, whether the distance from the Continent to
Britain was less than twenty or greater than forty miles’. Perhaps;
but long before the aforesaid Triangulation sailors used to make
wonderfully good guesses about this ‘insoluble question’. Cluver tells
us that while staying with Sir Thomas Waller, Warden of the Cinque
Ports, he questioned all who could give him trustworthy information,
and particularly seamen, as to the passages between England and France.
The unanimous reply was that the distance between Dover and Calais was
28 English miles, and that _the most convenient passage was between
Dover and Boulogne_, and was 32 English miles (_Germania antiqua_,
1631, lib. ii, cap. xxviii, p. 445). Similarly, the Arab geographer,
Edrisi, who died about 1180, affirmed that the distance between Wissant
and England was 25 Roman miles (_Geogr. Nubiensis ..._, 1619, pp.
253-4).
[2736] _Essays on the Invasion of Britain_, &c., p. 27.
[2737] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. xii-xiii.
[2738] _Archaeologia_, xxxiv, 1852, p. 236.
[2739] See E. A. Freeman’s _Norman Conquest_, iii, 386-99.
[2740] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. xi-xiii, xvii.
[2741] _Dict. arch. de la Gaule_, ii, 45-7.
[2742] _Röm. Gesch._, iii, 1889, p. 270, note (Eng. trans., v, 1894, p.
63, note).
[2743] _Geogr._, iv, 5, § 2.
[2744] See pp. 577-9, _infra_.
[2745] _Rev. arch._, nouv. sér., viii, 1863, pp. 307-8.
[2746] ... the spirits of the dead ‘stretched out their hands in
longing for the further shore’ (_Aen._, vi, 314).
[2747] _Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde_, xviii, 1865, p. 164.
[2748] (They also wear the skins of wild beasts), ‘the riparian tribes
in a careless fashion, those of the interior with more elegance’ (c.
17).
[2749] As a matter of fact, if the _Portus Itius_ was the estuary of
the Liane, there _was_ an ‘objet disjonctif’ between it and Ambleteuse,
namely, the headland north of Boulogne harbour.
[2750] Creuly also observes (_Rev. arch._, nouv. sér., viii, 1863, p.
307) that, while Ambleteuse was 31 Roman miles from Fort Sutherland
on Romney Marsh, Boulogne was 36. But Caesar, as I shall prove (pp.
622-44), did not land on Romney Marsh; and the futility of arguments of
this kind has been already pointed out (pp. 557-8).
[2751] It is worth noting that while Creuly pins his faith to
Ambleteuse, he is not so foolish as to ask us to believe that Caesar’s
800 ships found room there. They anchored, he tells us (p. 310), in the
roadstead. But Caesar says expressly (_B. G._, v, 2, § 3; 5. § 2) that
they assembled in the Portus Itius.
[2752] _Gall. Krieg_, 1880, p. 143.
[2753] See J. F. Henry, _Essai ... sur l’arrondissement communal de
Boulogne-sur-mer_, p. 123.
[2754] In order to counteract the effect of the flood, it would of
course have been necessary to keep the ships’ heads much closer to
the wind than within seven points and a half, which would have been
impossible.
[2755] See _Mém. de la Soc. des ant. de la Morinie_, i, 1833 (1834), p.
253; A. E. E. Desjardins, _Géogr. de la Gaule rom._, i, 349-50, n. 3;
J. J. Chifflet, _Portus Iccius_, pp. 25-6; and V. de St. Martin, _Nouv.
Dict. de Géogr. univ._, i, 1879, p. 568.
[2756] _Mém. couronnés par l’Acad. Roy. ... de Bruxelles_, vi, 1827,
pp. 149-50; Allent, _Appendice à l’essai sur les reconnaissances
militaires_, pp. 667-8 (in tome i [1830] of _Mémorial du Dépôt Gén. de
la Guerre_); V. de St. Martin, _Nouv. Dict. de Géogr. univ._, ii, 542.
[2757] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxi, 1864, p. 223. This suggestion,
which was hailed by Freeman (see p. 553, _supra_) as a brilliant and
conclusive discovery, was by no means new. Guest had been anticipated
by Du Fresne (D. Haigneré, _Recueil hist. du Boulonnais_, ii, 1897,
p. 431, n. 1) and by the Abbé de Fontenu (_Mém. de litt. tirez des
registres de l’Acad. Roy. des Inscr. et Belles-Lettres_, xiii, 1734-7
[1741], plan between pages 416 and 417).
[2758] According to de Saulcy (_Les campagnes de Jules César dans les
Gaules_, p. 172, n. 1), the inhabitants of the country believe that it
extended only from the mouth of the ‘ruisseau du Phare’ to that of the
‘ruisseau d’Herlan’,--a distance of less than a mile and a quarter.
[2759] _Lettre à M. Bouillet ... sur l’article Boulogne de son
Dictionnaire_, 1827, p. 20, n. 30. Cf. _Annales de géogr._, ii, 1893,
p. 313. I have not been able to discover any historical evidence which
would show that no dunes, small or great, existed at Wissant before the
time of Edward III; but it is certain that immense quantities of sand
were accumulated there in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth
centuries. See _Boulogne-sur-mer et la région boulonnaise_, i, 372.
[2760] _Annales de la Soc. géol du Nord_, xxviii, 1899, pp. 85-7.
[2761] _Annales de géogr._, ii, 1893, p. 312; _Annales de la Soc. géol.
du Nord_, viii, 1882, p. 1; xxviii, 1899, pp. 86, 88; J. Gosselet,
_Esquisse géol._, &c., 4^e fasc., 1903, p. 406.
[2762] _Ib._, pp. 411, 416.
[2763] _Étude sur le Portus Itius_, p. 89.
[2764] _Annales de géogr._, ii, 1893, p. 314; _Boulogne-sur-mer et la
région boulonnaise_, i, 372; R. Blanchard, _La Flamande_, p. 314.
[2765] _Geol. Mag._, iii, 1866, pp. 113-4.
[2766] _Boulogne-sur-mer et la région boulonnaise_, i, 372-3.
[2767] It must have been very narrow when the coast extended further
seaward, if indeed it existed.
[2768] _Mém. de l’Acad. d’Arras_, xxxv, 1863, p. 273. Haigneré (_Étude
sur le Portus Itius_, pp. 87-8) very properly warns his readers not to
place any reliance upon a certain ‘Vue du port de Wissant’, a copy of
which exists in the Museum at Boulogne. ‘C’est une œuvre de fantaisie.’
[2769] _Chronique de l’abbaye de Saint-Riquier_, 1894, p. 241 (lib. iv,
cap. xxiii).
[2770] _Essai ... sur l’arrondissement communal de Boulogne-sur-mer_,
p. 55.
[2771] _C. J. Caesaris comm._, &c., pp. 278, 285.
[2772] P. Ferrarius, _Lexicon geogr._, 1670, i, 370.
[2773] ‘The fact,’ says a writer in the _Edinburgh Review_ (Oct.,
1900, p. 442), ‘that it was in mediaeval times a “frequented port” is,
strictly speaking, not a fact at all ... the contemporary references
to it which have been collected by French scholars show that it was
neither a town nor a harbour, but an open beach, which travellers in a
hurry could use with a favourable wind.’ These remarks are inaccurate:
see p. 580, _infra_. The mediaeval port, or portlet, if local tradition
is to be trusted, was, however, simply the mouth of the rivulet,
variously called the Rieu de Sombre, Rieu d’Herlan, and Ruisseau du
Moulin, which flows through the modern town of Wissant, enlarged and
deepened (F. A. F. Mariette, _Lettre à M. Bouillet_, &c., p. 30, n. 20;
D. Haigneré, _Étude sur le Portus Itius_, p. 91); and the tradition
has been confirmed by the explorations of M. Rigaux (_Annales de la
Soc. géol. du Nord_, xxviii, 1899, p. 88). In the dunes which border
on the creek formed by the rivulet there have been found certain old
balks of oak, mentioned by Haigneré (_op. cit._) and C. de Saulcy (_Les
campagnes de Jules César dans les Gaules_, p. 172), which may have
belonged to the quays of the mediaeval harbour.
According to Le Quien, the inhabitants of Wissant in his time (early
in the eighteenth century) affirmed that the entrance of the harbour
had been at the mouth of the Rieu de Ghibelen,--the rivulet nearest to
Cape Grisnez (_Mém. de litt. tiréz des registres de l’Acad. Roy. des
Inscr. et Belles-Lettres_, xiii, 1734-7 [1741], p. 417). I agree with
Haigneré that the harbour, such as it was, was at the mouth of the Rieu
d’Herlan. As he says (_Étude_, &c., p. 91),‘Pour s’assurer de l’endroit
où était le port, il n’y avait qu’à se demander où était le village.
Or, le village a toujours occupé l’emplacement sur lequel il est encore
bâti de nos jours, savoir: partie à l’est du _ruisseau_ d’Herlan ... où
les maisons se reconstruisent avec les débris des précédentes,’ &c. See
also _Bull. de la Soc. de géogr. de Lille_, xix, 1893, p. 199.
[2774] C. de Saulcy, in an article in which he endeavours to prove
that the Portus Itius was Wissant (_Les campagnes de Jules César dans
les Gaules_, p. 161), frankly admits that not one of the natives of
Wissant whom he interrogated had ever heard that there was such a name
as ‘Esseu’, or that the Flemings called Wissant ‘Itzen’ (or ‘Isten’).
A. Wauters, indeed, referring to B. E. C. Guérard’s _Cartulaire de
Folcuin_, p. 161, a work which I have failed to procure, affirms
(_Bull. de l’Acad. Roy ... de Belgique_, 2^e sér., xlvii, 1879, p.
114) that in a charter of the ninth century property in a place called
Istem was granted to the abbey of St. Bertin: but he fails to prove
the identity of Istem with Wissant; and even if that identity could be
established, no competent etymologist would admit that it supplied an
argument for identifying Wissant with the Portus Itius.
[2775] This derivation, which is now generally accepted, is mentioned
by Lambert of Ardres, a chronicler of the thirteenth century,
who speaks of _Britannicum secus portum, qui ab albedine arenae
vulgari nomine appellatur Witsant_ (J. P. von Ludewig, _Reliquiae
manuscriptorum_, &c., viii, 1728, p. 383. Cf. J. F. Pommeraye, _Hist.
de l’abbaye royale de S. Ouen de Rouen_, 1662, p. 457), but is disputed
by Le Quien (_Dissertation sur le Port Iccius_, pp. 342-3, printed in
_Mém. de litt. et d’hist._, viii, 1749, by P. Desmolets). Remarking
that Flodoard, a writer of the tenth century, calls Wissant _Guicsum_,
he maintains that _Guicsum_ is identical with _Vvicsum_, which would
mean ‘the port of Sum’, just as _Quantovic_ (Étaples) means ‘the port
of the river Canche’. I agree, however, with Desjardins (_Géogr. de la
Gaule rom._, i, 352, note) that it is not certain that by _Guicsum_
Flodoard meant Wissant.
[2776] _Essai ... sur l’arrondissement communal de Boulogne-sur-mer_,
p. 83.
[2777] J. Malbrancq, _De Morinis_, i, 1639, p. 27; _Mém. de la Soc. des
ant. de Picardie_, iii, 1856, pp. 469-70; A. E. E. Desjardins, _Géogr.
de la Gaule rom._, i. 356-7, note.
[2778] _Origines Celticae_, ii, 362-4.
[2779] _Origines Celticae_, ii, 363. Guest apparently forgot that if
Wissant was the Portus Itius, Caesar’s ships, when they returned from
the second expedition, must have been hauled up on the beach (_B. G._,
v. 24, § 1).
[2780] _The Reader_, Oct. 10, 1863, p. 414.
[2781] _Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde_, xviii, 1865, p. 181.
[2782] Cf. Livy. xxxvi, 45, § 8,--ad Canas classis venit; et, cum iam
hiems appeteret, fossa valloque circumdatis naves subductae; _B. C._
iii, 23, § 3,--(Libo) adeo loci opportunitate profecit uti ad Pompeium
litteras mitteret, naves reliquas, si vellet, subduci et refici
iuberet; and Horace, _Carm._, i, 4, 1-2,--
Solvitur acris hiems grata vice veris et Favoni,
Trahuntque siccas machinae carinas.
[2783] _Journal of Philology_, xix, 1891, pp. 141-2.
[2784] _Geogr._, iv, 5, § 2.
[2785] _Geogr._, iii, 3, § 5.
[2786] _Ib._, ii, 6, § 2.
[2787] iii. 6.
[2788] See p. 556, _supra_.
[2789] _Journal of Philology_, xix, 1891, p. 142.
[2790] _Geogr._, ix, 1, § 15.--τὸ μὲν οὖν παλαιὸν ἐτετείχιστο καὶ
συνῴκιστο ἡ Μουνυχία παραπλησίως ὥσπερ ἡ τῶν Ῥοδίων πόλις, προσειληφυῖα
τῷ περιβόλῳ τόν τε Πειραιᾶ καὶ τοὺς λιμένας πλήρεις νεωρίων ... ἄξιόν
τε ἦν ναυστάθμον ταῖς τετρακοσίαις ναυσίν, &c.
[2791] _Descr. Graeciae_, ii, 38, § 2.
[2792] _Geogr._, viii, 6, § 2.
[2793] Evidently ναύσταθμον had a wider range of meaning than _statio
navium_. Plutarch (_Aristides_, 23) implies that a ναύσταθμον could
be burned, from which Haigneré (_Recueil hist. du Boulonnais_, iii,
1897, p. 455) infers that ‘un ναύσταθμος n’est pas une rade foraine, ni
une anse, mais un lieu fermé, où se trouvent des arsenaux maritimes’.
This was sometimes the meaning of the word, but only rarely. Pliny
(_Nat. Hist._, iii, 8 [14], § 89) mentions a harbour in Sicily, called
Portus Naustathmus. See also Stephanus, _Thesaurus Graecae linguae_, v,
1842-6, col. 1383-4. Professor Haverfield (_Eng. Hist. Rev._, xviii,
1903, p. 335) insists that Strabo (iv, 5, § 2) meant by ναύσταθμον ‘the
whole region of the Itian highland in which Caesar had his _portus
Itius_ and his _ulterior portus_’.
[2794] _B. G._, v, 2, § 3; 5, § 2.
[2795] It is quite true, as General Creuly observes (_Rev. arch._,
nouv. sér., viii, 1863, p. 306) that the author of _Bellum Africum_ (c.
10, § 1) applies the name of _portus_ to a mere anchorage (cf. Col.
Stoffel, _Hist. de Jules César,--Guerre civile_, ii, 110-1, and pl.
20). But _Bellum Africum_ was not written by Caesar; and the question
is, what Caesar meant by the word _portus_. Now there are certainly two
instances in which he applies that word to a harbour very different
from the estuary of a river. The harbour of Nymphaeum (now the bay
of Medua) on the eastern coast of the Adriatic has a comparatively
wide entrance, and is exposed to the full force of the south wind;
but against all other winds it is perfectly safe, and it might fairly
be called a _portus_ and not a _statio_ (_B. C._, iii, 26, § 4. Cf.
Col. Stoffel, _Hist. de Jules César_, &c. pl. 14 _bis_). The harbour
of Alexandria was formed, as Caesar says (_B. C._, iii, 112, § 2. Cf.
Stoffel, pl. 19), by the island which extended opposite the city, and
was divided into two portions by the mole which connected the island
with the mainland: the western portion must have been exposed to south
westerly winds, but the other offered complete shelter. The conclusion
is that the word _portus_ had a somewhat elastic signification, but
would not have been applied by Caesar to Wissant unless the anchorage
there had been protected, as Dr. Guest imagined, by sand-dunes.
[2796] _The Reader_, Sept, 19, 1863, p. 317.
[2797] M. Bouquet, _Recueil des hist. des Gaules_, xi, 1767, pp. 40C,
75C.
[2798] This is undeniable. See J. F. Henry, _Essai ... sur
l’arrondissement communal de Boulogne-sur-mer_, pp. 66-71; D. Haigneré,
_Etude sur le Portus Itius_, p. 85, n. 1; and _Dict. arch. de la
Gaule_, ii, 45. Henry calculated from the loss known to have been
suffered by Cap d’Alprech and the promontory on which the Tour d’Odre
stood during the two centuries and a half that preceded the year
1810, that in Caesar’s time they must have extended from 700 to 800
metres further seaward than in 1810. This, however, I believe to be an
exaggeration.
[2799] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxi, 1864, pp. 227-8.
[2800] _Le Roman de Brut_, ed. Le Roux de Lincy, 1836, vv. 3937-40.
Similarly Geoffrey of Monmouth (_Hist. Britonum_, iv, § 3) and Matthew
Paris (_Chronica majora_, ed. H. R. Luard, i, 1872, p. 73) supposed
that Caesar, after his second expediion, had returned to Boulogne.
[2801] _Nouv. Biogr. gén._, xxiii, 1858, p. 802.
[2802] See my _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, pp. 387-94.
[2803] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxi, 1864, p. 227.
[2804] _Journal of Philology_, xx, 1892, p. 192. Gosselin (_Recherches
sur la géogr._, iv, 87-90) attempts to prove that Ptolemy confused two
itineraries, and accordingly located the promontory between the Somme
and Gesoriacum instead of on the north of the latter.
Henry (_Essai ... sur l’arrondissement communal de Boulogne-sur-mer_,
pp. 3-6, 33), referring to Pomponius Mela (iii, 7, §§ 59, 68),
maintains that by the word _promontorium_ the ancients sometimes
designated not merely a cape but also all its ‘collateral
dependencies’; and accordingly he argues that the Ἴτιον ἄκρον comprised
Capes Grisnez and Blancnez, and Cap d’Alprech!
Desjardins (_Géogr. de la Gaule rom._, i, 371-2) remarks that not
only was Cap d’Alprech a more prominent headland 2000 years ago than
to-day, but it is actually 9 metres, or about 30 feet, higher than Cape
Grisnez; and he insists that the ancients, being unable to form an
exact idea of the outline of a coast, took note of those geographical
features which appeared to them remarkable, and would therefore have
been more inclined to mention Cap d’Alprech than Cape Grisnez. I
cannot help thinking that Desjardins would not have resorted to this
argument if he had not persuaded himself that the identification of
the Portus Itius with Boulogne depended upon the identification of Cap
d’Alprech with the Itian promontory. The ancients did not know how to
make accurate maps; but they had sufficient powers of observation to
be able to see that Cape Grisnez marked the great bend in the coast of
North-Eastern Gaul.
It is amusing to find that, whereas Desjardins in his first volume
(p. 371) affirmed that the identification of the Itian promontory
with Cape Grisnez, if it were admitted, would necessarily involve the
identification of the Portus Itius with Wissant, in his third volume
(p. 355) he queries his own identification of the promontory with Cap
d’Alprech.
[2805] _Celtic Britain_, 1904, p. 303.
[2806] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxi, 1864, pp. 224-5.
[2807] _Ib._, pp. 221-2.
[2808] _Norman Conquest_, i, xv.
[2809] _Longius delatus aestu_ (_B. G._, v, 8, § 2). According to Long
(_Decline of the Roman Republic_, iv, 1872, p. 204), ‘the expression
“too far” (_longius_) means that he was carried too far north and past
the place where he had landed the year before.’ But as the direction of
the current was ENE. (magnetic), the smallest drift would have been too
far.
[2810] _B. G._, v, 8, § 2.
[2811] See pp. 728-30, _infra_.
[2812] _Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde_, xviii, 1865, pp. 122-3.
There is an obvious objection to this argument, to which Heller replies
by anticipation. One of the three sides of Britain, says Caesar, looks
southward towards Gaul; and one of the ‘angles’ (_alter angulus_) of
this side is by Kent (_B. G._, v, 13, § 1). If Caesar landed, as Heller
believes, between the South Foreland and the North Foreland, he had
himself seen this angle, which is formed by the South Foreland; and
if he believed that the coast, at the North Foreland, turned sharply
towards the west, and had no knowledge of that part of the coast which
trends northward beyond the mouth of the Thames, it is clear that he
must have regarded the North Foreland and not the South Foreland, as
marking the commencement of the northern side, in which case one might
think that he would have described the coast between the South Foreland
and the North Foreland as a separate side, and would have represented
Britain not as triangular but as irregularly quadrilateral. But Heller
argues that the word _angulus_, as used by Caesar, does not mean an
‘angle’ in the geometrical sense of the word, but only a strip of coast
between two angles; and he compares a passage in Livy’s description of
the siege of Saguntum (xxi, 7, § 5),--_Angulus muri erat in planiorem
patentioremque quam cetera circa vallem vergens_.
[2813] Caesar started ‘about sunset’ (_ad solis occasum_): the wind
dropped ‘about midnight’ (_media circiter nocte_); and the drift ceased
at daybreak (_orta luce_). The sun set at 8.16 p.m.; and day broke
about 3.20 a.m. It would be absurd to suppose that the voyage must
have begun at the moment when the sun dipped under the horizon: we may
fairly assume that it began at any time between 7 and 8. Similarly
the drift may be assumed to have begun at any time between 11 p.m.
and 1 a.m. Let us suppose that the wind lasted 5 hours, and the drift
3 hours. For some time before the wind dropped it must have been
gradually dying down; but, as the vessels kept steerage way, it may
be assumed, so Captain Iron, the harbour-master at Dover assures me,
that, even during the drift, there was not a dead calm. Major Rennell,
indeed, affirms (_Archaeologia_, xxi, 1827, p. 503) that when the wind
dropped the ships were ‘left to the resources of their oars’: but
Caesar does not confirm this; and if the oars had been used, why should
the ships have drifted out of their course? Captain Iron says that with
a light south-westerly wind the ships could easily have sailed 6 knots
an hour. The voyage took place about the time of new moon (see pp.
728-30, _infra_), that is to say, a day or two before spring tide. For
the first two hours the ships had to encounter the ebb tide, the rate
of which, however, was not more than one knot an hour; and the flood,
the rate of which increased from about three-quarters of a knot to
nearly 3 knots, helped them from about 9 or 9.30 p.m. We may estimate,
then, that in the 5 hours they sailed not less than 25 knots; while in
3 hours, aided by a faint breeze, they would have drifted about 6 knots
(see p. 656, _infra_). I think, then, that the entire distance which
Caesar sailed up to the moment when he ‘saw Britain lying behind on the
port quarter’, may be estimated at not less than 31 knots, or about 57½
kilometres. After making this calculation, which must be taken for what
it is worth, I find that, according to Napoleon’s map (_Hist. de Jules
César_, Atlas, pl. 16), the distance was 57 kilometres. The reader may
check my estimate by referring to the Admiralty _Tide Tables_, pp.
112-9, and _Tidal Streams, English and Irish Channels_.
[2814] See _Tide Tables for the British and Irish Ports_, p. 119.
[2815] For this reason I attach no importance to Heller’s remark
(_Philologus_, xlix, 1890, p. 692), that, if Caesar had only drifted as
far northward as the latitude of Deal, he would have written, not _sub
sinistra Britanniam relictam conspexit_, but _longius se a Britannia
recessisse animum advertit_.
[2816] _Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde_, xviii, 1865, p. 176;
_Philologus_, xlix, 1890, pp. 691-2.
[2817] _Origines Celticae_, ii, 362.
[2818] _Geogr._, iv, 5, § 2.
[2819] _The Reader_, Sept. 19, 1863, p. 317. ‘What Strabo says,’ writes
Long (_ib._, p. 414), ‘is quite irrelevant to the matter in discussion,
which must be decided by Caesar’s text.’ After which Long proceeds to
devote a column and a half to arguing for his own view of what Strabo
said.
[2820] _Origines Celticae_, ii, 368-70.
[2821] _The Reader_, Oct. 10, 1863, p. 414.
[2822] Long forgets that Strabo does not expressly say that ‘the Itius’
was a usual point of transit; he only says that Caesar used it as his
naval station. If ‘the Itius’ was identical with the port used by the
passengers who ‘cross from the country near the Rhine’, it was ‘a usual
point of transit’; but it is precisely this identity which is the
subject of dispute.
[2823] _Geogr._, v, 3, § 6.
[2824] _Ib._, iv, 6, § 9.
[2825] _Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde_, xviii, 1865, p. 176.
Heller puts the matter very clearly,--‘aber diese Ausdrucksweise ist
auf gewisse leicht erkennbare Wendungen beschränkt. Jedesmal jedoch, wo
καί weder die intendirende Kraft (in der Bedeutung “sogar”) besitzen
kann, noch eine Hinzufügung begleitender Umstände vermittelt (“zugleich
auch”, “denn auch”) noch auch verallgemeinernde Bedeutung hat (“auch
immer”), kann es, wie hier, nur das Hinzutreten einer neuen Person oder
Sache einleiten ... es darf deshalb gar kein Zweifel darüber aufkommen,
dass Strabo in der That den _portus Itius_ von dem gewöhnlichen Hafen
der Moriner hat unterscheiden wollen.’
[2826] _Portus Itius_, p. 13. Schneider, like myself, accepts Heller’s
interpretation of Strabo’s meaning.
[2827] _Essai ... sur l’arrondissement communal de Boulogne-sur-mer_,
pp. 46, 48.
[2828] _Les campagnes de Jules César dans les Gaules_, pp. 183-4.
[2829] D. Haigneré, _Recueil hist. du Boulonnais_, i, 96.
[2830] Napoléon III, _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 1866, p. 168.
[2831] _Congrès arch. de France_, xxvii^e session, 1860 (1861), pp.
69-70.
[2832] _Étude sur le Portus Itius_, pp. 72-7; _Recueil hist. du
Boulonnais_, i, 96-8.
[2833] On the day of Caesar’s first landing in Britain high water
at Dover was about 6.21 a.m. (see pp. 610-1, _infra_); and when
he was approaching the British coast in 54 B.C., the tide turned
south-westward about ten miles east of Deal soon after daybreak, which
was about 3.15 a.m. See pp. 655-9, _infra_. Supposing that Caesar
landed in Britain in 55 B.C. on the 27th, not, as I believe (see p.
601, _infra_), on the 26th of August, it still remains true that the
latter part of the voyage was made on the flood.
[2834] _Bull. de l’Acad. Roy. ... de Belgique_, 2^e sér., xlvii, 1879,
pp. 134-61.
[2835] _Recueil hist. du Boulonnais_, ii, 439-40.
[2836] _Étude sur le Portus Itius_, p. 32.
[2837] See _Œuvres de Froissart,--Chroniques_, ii, 1867, p. 109 (ed.
Kervyn de Lettenhove).
[2838] _Bull. de L’Acad. Roy.... de Belgique_, 2^e sér., xlvii, 1879,
pp. 144-5.
[2839] _Const. Hist. of England_, i, 1880, p. 540.
[2840] _Gesta regis Henrici secundi Benedicti abbatis_, ed. W. Stubbs,
i, 1867, p. 60.
[2841] _Radulfi de Diceto ... opera hist._, ed. W. Stubbs, i, 1876, p.
377.
[2842] _B. G._, iv, 23, § 1.
[2843] ‘It has no port, nor is it easy to see how it ever could
have had one.... Possibly Cape Blanc-Nez may have projected further
seawards two thousand years ago than at present, and so have afforded
it something like a shelter from the south-west wind.’ _Archaeol.
Journal_, xxi, 1864, p. 221, note. But Cape Grisnez would equally
have afforded Wissant ‘something like a shelter from the south-west
wind’; yet Dr. Guest implies that at Wissant there could have been no
harbour unless it had been protected by sand-dunes. And what about the
north-west, the north, and the north-east wind?
[2844] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, xxvi, 1846, p. 256.
[2845] _Origines Celticae_, ii, 363.
[2846] This assumption, with the condition that the ships could work to
windward, is approved by Captain Iron and by Commander Boxer, R.N., the
harbour-master of Folkestone.
[2847] I assume what I shall afterwards prove (see pp. 595-665,
_infra_), that Caesar landed in 55 B.C. between Walmer and Deal. If
he had landed near Hythe or Lympne, the force of my argument would of
course be increased.
[2848] _B. G._, iv, 28, § 2.
[2849] See James Smith, _Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul_, 4th ed.,
1880, p. 113, and Adm. W. H. Smyth, _The Sailor’s Word-Book_, 1867, p.
598.
[2850] A wind blowing from the north-east off Walmer or Kingsdown would
be diverted a point or two southward off the south coast.
[2851] The statement in the text, which will commend itself to every
one who reflects that the heights between Folkestone and Hythe would
have afforded protection from the wind, is made with the approval of
a Deal boatman and an ex-warrant officer who knows every inch of the
Kentish coast.
[2852] _Marine Dictionary_, 1815, p. 220.
[2853] See Addenda, p. 740.
[2854] _Géogr. de la Gaule rom._, i, 356-7, 388.
[2855] _Itin. Ant._, ed. Wesseling, pp. 356-63, 376-7; _La Table de
Peutinger_, ed. Desjardins, p. 12, col. 3, p. 13, col. 1-3, p. 22, col.
1-3. The advocates of Wissant have pointed to two roads which connected
Wissant with Thérouanne. One of these, known as the _voie de Leulene_,
leads from Thérouanne to Sangatte, and, near Guines, throws out a
branch, which terminates at Wissant; the other, called the _chemin
vert_, leads to Wissant direct. Roman remains have been found on the
_voie de Leulene_, but none on the branch; while both on the _chemin
vert_ and on the branch road excavations have been made which proved
that neither was a Roman road. See D. Haigneré, _Étude sur le Portus
Itius_, pp. 100-1, 103; and _Mém. de l’Acad. d’Arras_, xxxv, 1863, pp.
272-3.
[2856] C. du Fresne, _Dissertatio de portu Iccio_, p. 95. See also A.
Wauters (_Bull. de. l’Acad. Roy. ... de Belgique_, 2^e sér., xlvii,
1879, p. 130).
[2857] _B. G._, v, 5, §3; 7, §3; 8, §§1-2.
[2858] I say ‘at least’ advisedly. In order to understate my case, I
have assumed that the legions were of the exceptionally low average
strength of 3,500 men (_B. G._, v, 49, §7; Rice Holmes, _Caesar’s
Conquest of Gaul_, pp. 563-7), and have not counted auxiliaries,
although there were certainly both slingers and archers (_B. G._, iv,
25, §1). Probably we should be within the mark if we estimated the
force at 40,000 infantry and auxiliaries, besides the 4,000 cavalry.
[2859] See E. B. Hamley’s _Operations of War_, 4th ed., 1878, pp. 34,
37.
[2860] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxi, 1864, pp. 224-5.
[2861] _B. G._, v, 23, § 4.
[2862] See A. E. E. Desjardins, _Géogr. de la Gaule rom._, i, 362.
[2863] I am aware that, according to Froissart (_Chroniques_, ed.
Kervyn de Lettenhove, v, 1868, pp. 182-3), timber was conveyed after
the battle of Crecy from the forests of the Boulonnais to Wissant by
men and horses. But Wissant was then connected with the interior by
roads.
[2864] The very earliest mention of Wissant to which its advocates can
point refers to the year 566. But the anonymous life of St. Vulgan,
in which the reference is to be found, is a work of no authority. See
_Mém. de l’Acad. d’Arras_, xxxv, 1863, p. 253, and A. E. E. Desjardins,
_Géogr. de la Gaule rom._, i, 351-2, note.
[2865] _Bull. de l’Acad. Roy. de Belgique_, 3^e sér., xviii, 1889, pp.
415, 421.
[2866] Cf. E. Lavisse, _Hist. de France_ (tome i, by G. Bloch, 1901,
pp. 197-8).
[2867] _Lettre à M. Bouillet_, &c., pp. 26-7. Haigneré (_Étude sur
le Portus Itius_, p. 122) argues that if Caesar started on his first
voyage from Wissant, it is impossible to account for the fact that, on
the return voyage, two of his ships failed to make the same harbours
as the rest, that is to say, Sangatte and Wissant. Those two ships
could not, he insists, have drifted further down the coast, that is to
say, southward of Cape Grisnez, unless the wind had been unfavourable;
and if the wind was unfavourable, how was it that the remaining ships
succeeded in making the harbours? Captain Iron, however, attaches no
importance to this objection.
[2868] _Essai ... sur l’arrondissement communal de Boulogne-sur-mer_,
p. 130.
[2869] _Bull. de la Soc. acad. de ... Boulogne-sur-mer_, i, 1873, pp.
132-3.
[2870] I mean, of course, on any part of the coast which can be
regarded as lying within the limits required by Caesar’s narrative. The
estuary of the Authie is about 11 miles further south than that of the
Canche; and the estuary of the Somme is, as we have seen (pp. 558-63,
_supra_) inadmissible.
[2871] _Géogr. de la Gaule rom._, i, 376-80, and pl. xv. See also
T. Lewin, _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. c-ci, and
_Boulogne-sur-mer et la région boulonnaise_, i, 1899, p. 708. ‘Au xiv^e
siècle,’ says M. Lejeal (_ib._, p. 369), ‘la mer pénétrait encore
jusqu’à Isques.’
[2872] D. Haigneré, _Recueil hist. du Boulonnais_, ii, 416, 420-4.
[2873] _Essai ... sur l’arrondissement communal de Boulogne-sur-mer_,
p. 63.
[2874] See a map in the British Museum, called _Plan général du port de
Boulogne, avec les dispositions proposées ... pour sortir du port dans
une marée 300 batimens portant une armée de 60,000 hommes_, 1822. This
from the small modern port.
[2875] _Archaeologia_, xxxiv, 1852, p. 236.
[2876] E. Reclus, _Nouv. Géogr. Univ.,--La France_, 1877, p. 792.
[2877] For the second expedition the vessels were specially constructed
of light draught (_B. G._, v, 1, § 2); and those which Napoleon built
for the flotilla of 1804 did not draw more than 3 feet of water
(Nap. III, _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 172). Even in Caesar’s first
expedition the draught of the transports could not have been great, as
the men were able to jump off them into the sea and wade ashore.
[2878] A. E. E. Desjardins, _Géogr. de la Gaule rom._, i, 378, 380.
[2879] Capécure is on the left bank, about two miles from the mouth of
the river.
[2880] _Bull. de la Soc. acad. ... de Boulogne-sur-mer_, i, 1873, p.
278, n. 1; D. Haigneré, _Recueil hist. du Boulonnais_, i, 328-32, ii,
422. The latter passage is worth quoting:--‘On travaillait en 1861 au
creusement du sas-éclusé dont la munificence du gouvernement ... a
doté le port de Boulogne ... les ouvriers arrivèrent dans la couche
la plus basse des sables qu’ils déblayaient dans la fouille! Nous y
trouvions le radier de l’ancien port semé d’antiquités gauloises et
de débris romains, portant, sur sa surface, de tuf glaiseux, la trace
visible du roulis des vagues, avec une dépression marquée, formant une
sorte de chenal qui se dirigeait vers l’ouest,’ &c. Airy, who insists
(_Archaeologia_, xxxiv, 1852, p. 236) that Boulogne harbour would have
been too small for Caesar’s purpose, neglected to inform himself that
there was much more space in the estuary in Caesar’s time than there is
now.
Henry’s objection (_Essai ... sur l’arrondissement communal de
Boulogne-sur-mer_, pp. 58-9), that there would not have been enough
water in the harbour at sunset, when Caesar set sail on his second
voyage, therefore collapses; but even if his statement were true,
the inference which he draws from it would be refuted by himself:
for he tells us (p. 52) that in 55 B.C. the ships ‘ont dû partir du
mouillage’. If so, why not in 54 B.C. also?
[2881] _Essays on the Invasion of Britain_, &c., p. 28.
[2882] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. xiii-xvi.
[2883] The distance by the new military road is, as Lewin warns his
readers, much less.
Mariette (_Lettre à M. Bouillet_, &c., pp. 16, 51) actually holds
that the _ulterior portus_ was the harbour of Bononia (see p. 591, n.
1, _infra_), as distinguished from that of Gesoriacum! The _ulterior
portus_, he says, is generally assumed to have been eight Roman miles
from the Portus Itius, simply because the eighteen ships which carried
Caesar’s cavalry were detained eight miles from the Portus Itius by
contrary winds. But, he insists, Caesar does not say that the place
where the eighteen ships were detained was a harbour: he merely
indicates the harbour where the cavalry embarked, without saying where
it was; it was not the same place as that at which the vessels had been
detained some days before.
I only notice this theory because Mariette was a really eminent man. If
it were necessary to refute it, it would be sufficient to say, first,
that, as Caesar tells us (_B. G._, iv, 22, § 4) that the eighteen
ships (which he reserved for his cavalry) were detained by contrary
winds at a place eight miles from the harbour which sheltered the rest
of the fleet, and in the next sentence but two says that he ordered
the cavalry to advance to the _ulterior portus_ (which he had not
mentioned before), and embark, the inevitable conclusion is that the
place where the eighteen ships had been detained was the _ulterior
portus_; secondly, that if the _ulterior portus_ had been virtually
in juxta-position with the port from which Caesar sailed, he would
certainly have taken care that they sailed along with him.
[2884] See pp. 558, 581-2, _supra_.
[2885] See pp. 616, 651, _infra_.
[2886] _B. G._, v, 8, § 2.
[2887] _Nat. Hist._, iv, 23 (37), § 122. Wauters (_Bull. de l’Acad. Roy
... de Belgique_, 2^e sér., xlvii, 1879, pp. 125-6) actually argues
that because Lambert of Ardres, who wrote in the thirteenth century,
called Wissant the _portus Britannicus_, therefore Wissant was the
_portus Morinorum Britannicus_ of Pliny! He forgets that Lambert was
not referring to the time of the Roman Empire: he simply meant that in
his own time Wissant was a frequented port of departure for England.
Courtois insists (_Bull. de la Soc. des ant. de la Morinie_, iii, 1862,
p. 391) that Pliny distinguishes the _portus Morinorum Britannicus_
from Gesoriacum. As well might a modern leader-writer be said to
distinguish London from ‘the metropolis’.
[2888] See A. E. E. Desjardins, _Géogr. de la Gaule rom._, i, 363-8,
371-2, 383-8. Roman tiles, bearing the inscription CL. BR., have been
found at Bréquerecque, east of Boulogne, on the banks of the Liane; and
inscriptions found at Tintelleries and Bréquerecque prove that CL. BR.
stands for _classis Britannica_ (_ib._, p. 364, and V. J. Vaillant,
_Classis Britannica_, 1888, pp. 16-7).
[2889] A. E. E. Desjardins, _Géogr. de la Gaule rom._, i, 367-8.
[2890] _Divus Claudius_, 17.
[2891] _Itin. Ant._, ed. Wesseling, pp. 356-63; A. E. E. Desjardins,
_Géogr. de la Gaule rom._, i, 387.
[2892] Zosimus (_Hist. Nov._, ed. L. Mendelssohn, 1887, vi, 2, §
2) says that Bononia was the first port to be met with in Germania
(Inferior), that is to say, by a traveller coming from the east;
and much stress has been laid upon this passage by the advocates of
Boulogne: but it only proves what we knew already, namely, that if
Wissant had ever been a Gallic port, it fell into complete disuse under
the empire.
[2893] _Géogr. de la Gaule rom._, i, 383.
[2894] _Portus Itius_, p. 12.
[2895] _Chorographia_, iii, 2, § 23.
[2896] _Nat. Hist._, iv, 16 (30), § 102; 23 (37), § 122.
[2897] Napoleon III (_Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 171-2) maintains that
the fact of the great Napoleon’s having selected Boulogne for the
embarkation of the troops with which he intended to invade England is
a strong argument in favour of Caesar’s having done the same. I lay no
stress upon this argument because it is superfluous if it can be shown
that Wissant would not have served Caesar’s purpose equally well; and
that this has been shown those who have read so far will not deny.
It is hardly necessary to add that Boulogne was only one, though the
principal, of several ports selected by Napoleon.
[2898] _Decline of the Roman Republic_, iv, 432. ‘If,’ says Long, ‘it
was named Gesoriacum in Caesar’s time, why did he name it Itium?’
The obvious answer is that he did not name it ‘Itium’. He named it,
or rather its harbour, _portus Itius_,--‘the Itian harbour,’ or, as
Professor Rhys expresses it, ‘the Channel harbour.’
[2899] _Géogr. de la Gaule rom._, i, 383-4, 473.
[2900] _Dict. arch. de la Gaule_, ii, 45-7.
[2901] _Portus Itius_, p. 19.
[2902] Desjardins also finds it necessary to explain why the name
_Gesoriacum_ was succeeded by _Bononia_. His explanation (_Géogr. de la
Gaule rom._, i, 373) is that the port of Gesoriacum was different from
the port of Bononia. Remarking that, according to Eumenius (_Paneg.
Constantii_, c. vi), the port of Gesoriacum was blocked by the emperor
Constantius Chlorus, in order to prevent the escape of Carausias, he
says that ‘sans doute’ this port was then abandoned for the new (and
hypothetical) port of Bononia, ‘aux Tintelleries,’ further down the
Liane. This, he says, explains why the name Bononia was alone used
(except in the itineraries) after the time of Constantine. I have
noticed that Desjardins uses the words ‘sans doute’ when there is a
doubt which he is unable to remove. As he insists that the ports of
Bononia and Gesoriacum were different, he must, I think, have been off
his guard when he quoted, in support of his contention, an anonymous
writer, who mentions the arrival of Constantine at ‘Bononia, which
the Gauls originally called Gesoriacum’ (_Bononiam, quam Galli prius
Gesoriacum vocabant_ [M. Bouquet, _Recueil des hist. des Gaules_, i,
1738, p. 563B]). And in his own edition of the Peutinger Table (p. 13,
col. 2) I find the words _Gesogiaco quod nunc Bononia_.
[2903] _The Reader_, Sept. 5, 1863, p. 254.
[2904] _Nat. Hist._, iv, 16 (30), §102.
[2905] _Hist. Rom._, xxxix, 50, §2.
[2906] Ed. Wesseling, p. 463.
[2907] _The Reader_, Sept. 5, 1863, p. 254.
[2908] The arguments of d’Anville, intended to prove that ten maritime
stades were equivalent to one Roman mile, may be found in his _Traité
des mesures anciennes_, 1769, pp. 71-6. Everybody knows that there
were stades of various lengths, one of which was one-tenth of a Roman
mile (_Itin. Hierosol._, ed. Wesseling, p. 609); but the stade by
which Strabo usually reckoned was one-eighth of a mile (_Geogr._,
vii, 7, § 4.--λογιζομένῳ, ὡς μὲν οἱ πολλοί, τὸ μίλιον ὀκταστάδιον.
Cf. Pliny, _Nat. Hist._, ii, 23 [21], § 85.--Stadium centum viginti
quinque nostros efficit passus). See J. Wex, _Métrologie grecque et
rom._ (trans. P. Mouat), 1886, p. 16; F. Hultsch, _Griech. und röm.
Metrologie_, 1882, pp. 49, 59-60; and Ideler in _Abhandlungen der
Königlichen Akad. der Wissenschaften zu Berlin_, 1826 (1829), p. 15;
1827 (1830), p. 127.
[2909] _The Reader_, Sept. 5, 1863, p. 254.
[2910] _Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde_, xviii, 1865, pp. 174-5.
[2911] Cf. R. Schneider, _Portus Itius_, p. 10. No doubt the ancients
did commonly overestimate distances; but any one who had time to go
through Strabo could pick out exceptions. Thus he tells us (i, 4, §4)
that the distance from Massilia to ‘the middle of Britain’ (εἰς μέσην
τὴν Βρεττανικήν) is 5,000 stades, and (ii, 1, §40) that the distance
from Carthage to Massilia is not more than 9,000. The latter, _in a
straight line_, is about 10,500: the former, measured only as far as
Portsmouth Harbour, about 5,200.
[2912] See p. 558, _supra_.
[2913] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, xxvi, 1846, p. 252.
[2914] D. Haigneré, _Étude sur le Portus Itius_, p. 108.
[2915] See also J. F. Henry, _Essai ... sur l’arrondissement communal
de Boulogne-sur-mer_, p. 190, and _Boulogne-sur-mer et la règion
boulonnaise_, i, 369.
[2916] Haigneré (_Recueil hist. du Boulonnais_, i, 377) questions
whether there is any mention of Ambleteuse as a port earlier than
the sixteenth century; but it is certain that a charter was granted
to the town in the year 1209. See _Bull. de la Soc. acad. de
Boulogne-sur-mer_, i, 1864-72 (1873) pp. 139-46.
[2917] _Rev. arch._, nouv. sér., viii, 1863, p. 309.
[2918] _B. G._, iv, 37.
[2919] _B. G._, iv, 38, §§1-2.
[2920] See p. 561, _supra_.
[2921] _B. G._, ii, 31-3; v, 39, §3.
[2922] _Ib._, ii, 28; v, 38-9.
[2923] _Ib._, iv, 21, §5; 27; 30.
[2924] _Ib._, iv, 37, §1.--‘About 300 soldiers had landed from these
two vessels and were making the best of their way to camp, when the
Morini, who had been quite submissive when Caesar left them on his
departure for Britain, surrounded them,’ &c. (_Quibus ex navibus cum
essent expositi milites circiter CCC atque in castra contenderent,
Morini, quos Caesar in Britanniam proficiscens pacatos reliquerat, spe
praedae adducti ... circumsteterunt_ &c.)
[2925] See T. Lewin, _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. xlii.
[2926] See pp. 574-7, _supra_.
[2927] _B. G._, v, 8, §2.
[2928] _B. G._, v, 23, §6; 24, §1.
[2929] Rice Holmes, _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, pp. 438-9.
[2930] _Röm. Gesch._, iii, 1889, pp. 269-70, note (Engl. trans., v,
1894, p. 63, note).
[2931] _Julius Caesar_, 1892, p. 196.
[2932] _Hist. of Anc. Geogr._, pp. 230-1.
[2933] _Pol. Hist. of England_, i, 1906, pp. 23-4.
[2934] _Formae orbis antiqui_, 1894, xxvi.
[2935] _B. G._, iv, 20, § 4. I agree with Meusel in adopting the
reading (ad) _maiorem_ (navium multitudinem idonei portus), not
_maiorum_. A moment’s reflection will show that we ought to read
_maiorem_, even though there is no better _MS._ authority for it than
the _codex Vratislaviensis I_. Caesar was not anxious to find out what
harbours would accommodate a flotilla of large ships, but what harbours
would accommodate a large flotilla. The draught of his ships was so
small that when they were aground the men could jump overboard and wade
ashore. See _Classical Review_, xv, 1901, p. 176.
[2936] See p. 554, _supra_.
[2937] Mr. H. E. Malden (_Journal of Philology_, xxii, 1894, p. 168)
remarks that the words _cuius loci haec erat natura atque ita montibus
angustis mare continebatur uti ex locis superioribus in litus telum
adigi posset_ have been ‘taken as applying to old Dover harbour’. It
is true that they have been taken in this sense by commentators who
were ignorant of the meaning of _angustis_; but even if they could
be interpreted as meaning a creek or inlet hemmed in by precipitous
heights, they could not apply to ‘old Dover harbour’, which occupied
part of the Priory Valley, and was never hemmed in by ‘precipitous
heights’. Hoffmann unnecessarily conjectures that Caesar wrote not
_angustis_ but _anguste_.
[2938] See pp. 653-4, _infra_.
[2939] See p. 602, n. 5, _infra_.
[2940] _quae tamen ancoris iactis cum fluctibus complerentur,
necessario adversa nocte in altum provectae continentem petierunt_
(_B. G._, iv, 28, §3). The meaning of _adversa nocte_ has been
much discussed. According to C. Schneider (_Comm. de bellis C. I.
Caesaris_, i, 397), who refers to a passage in the _Civil War_, ii,
31, §7--_namque huius modi res aut pudore aut metu tenentur, quibus
rebus nox maxime adversaria est_--the word _adversa_ is equivalent to
_obstante_, that is to say, ‘being unfavourable to them’: but, assuming
that this is the meaning, did Caesar intend to convey that the ships
stood out to sea _though_ night was unfavourable to the voyage, or
_because_ night was unfavourable to their remaining where they were? I
unhesitatingly reject the former alternative, for all Caesar’s voyages
between Gaul and Britain were made by night, and, moreover, on this
particular night there was a full moon: on the other hand, it would
not have been more dangerous to remain at anchor in the night than in
the daytime. I agree with Kraner-Dittenberger (_C. I. Caesaris comm.
de b. G._, 1890, p. 85), who hold that, just as _adverso colle_ (_B.
G._, ii, 19, §3) means ‘up the hill’, and _adverso flumine_ (_ib._,
vii, 60, § 3) ‘up the river’, so _adversa nocte_ means ‘in the face of
night’ (‘der Nacht entgegen’, ‘in die Nacht hinein’), a translation
which reminds one of Browning’s famous line ‘And into the midnight we
galloped abreast’.
[2941] See p. 331, _supra_.
[2942] The meaning of _mollis_ is discussed on p. 630, _infra_.
[2943] See p. 680, _infra_.
[2944] See pp. 661-2, _infra_.
[2945] _B. G._, iv, 20-6, 28-9, 31-6; v, 1, §§ 1-3; 2, §§ 2-3; 5, §§
1-2; 8-11; 12, § 5; 13; 23.
[2946] _Hist. Rom._, xxxix, 51, § 2.
[2947] See Napoléon III, _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 174.
[2948] The time of the full moon was kindly calculated for me by
Messrs. John A. Sprigge, William Frazer Doak, M.A., F.R.A.S., and T.
Charlton Hudson, B.A., F.R.A.S., all of the Nautical Almanac Office.
[2948] _B. G._, iv, 28; 29, § 1.
[2950] _Geogr._, iv, 3, § 4.--δίαρμα δ’ ἐστὶν εἰς τὴν Βρεττανικὴν ἀπὸ
τῶν ποταμῶν τῆς Κελτικῆς εἴκοσι καὶ τριακόσιοι στάδιοι· ὑπὸ γὰρ τὴν
ἄμπωτιν ἀφ’ ἑσπέρας ἀναχθέντες τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ περὶ ὀγδόην ὥραν καταίρουσιν
εἰς τὴν νῆσον.
[2951] See T. Bergk’s article in _Jahrbücher für class. Phil._, 13
Supplementband, 1884, p. 613.
[2952] S. H. Brown, _Diagrams and Tables of Tidal Streams_, &c., 1895,
p. 51.
[2953] _Archaeologia_, xxxiv, 1852, p. 240.
[2954] xliv, 37, §§ 5-6.--C. Sulpicius Gallus ... pronuntiavit nocte
proxima, ne quis id pro portento acciperet, ab hora secunda usque ad
quartam horam noctis lunam defecturam esse.
[2955] At Sheerness on December 30, 1904, six days before new moon,
‘the tide rose to an extraordinary height [owing to a severe gale],
at least 5 ft. above the natural level’ (_Times_, Dec. 31, 1904, p.
4, col. 2). ‘Them tides,’ said an old seaman to me at Dover, ‘is the
queerest tides in the world; I’ve seen myself more flow of water at
nips than at springs. It all depends on the wind.’
[2956] Napoleon III (_Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 175), after citing
two irrelevant passages, asserts that ‘le _post diem quartum_ de César
doit se comprendre dans le sens de quatre jours révolus, sans compter
le jour du débarquement’; and then, remarking that the storm broke
out on the 30th of August, he concludes that ‘quatre jours pleins
s’étaient écoulés depuis le débarquement; cela nous conduit au 26.
César prit donc terre le 25 août.’ To make things perfectly clear, let
us put the matter in this way:--the orthodox view is that, according
to the _common_ Roman method of reckoning, the fourth day after Monday
would be Thursday; Napoleon’s view is that it would be Saturday! It is
neither profitable nor exciting to slay the slain. I will therefore
only remark that Napoleon’s interpretation of the words _post diem
quartum_ is peculiar to himself, and that it has been demolished by
Merivale (_Contemporary Review_, iii, 1866, pp. 125-6) and, still more
effectively, by Heller (_Philologus_, xxvi, 1867, pp. 674-6).
Long (_Decline of the Roman Republic_, iv, 169), remarking that ‘the
Romans sometimes reckoned inclusively and sometimes not’, concludes
that ‘the expression “on the fourth day” is ambiguous’. The famous
jurist, F. C. von Savigny (_System des heutigen römischen, Rechts_,
iv, 1841, pp. 602-16), collected a large number of examples of both
methods, which both Merivale and Heller have overlooked; and L.
Holzapfel (see p. 719, n. 1, _infra_) shows that Cicero often used
the exclusive method, which, for numbers from ten upwards, appears to
have been invariable (Th. Mommsen, _Die röm. Chron. bis auf Caesar_,
2nd ed., 1859, p. 163, n. 17, and L. Holzapfel, _Röm. Chron._, 1885,
p. 353). Those, however, who are familiar with the language of the
_Commentaries_ will have no difficulty in concluding that Caesar
himself, in that work, used the inclusive method. In _B. G._, vi, 33, §
4, he writes, _discedens post diem VII sese reversurum confirmat_; and
in vi, 35, § 1, _diesque adpetebat VII quem ad diem Caesar ... reverti
constituerat_. Therefore, as Merivale observes, ‘_dies VII = post diem
VII_.’ See also Th. Mommsen, _Die röm. Chron. bis auf Caesar_, 2nd
ed., 1859, p. 163, n. 317; L. Holzapfel, _Röm. Chron._, pp. 353-6;
_Philologus_, xlix, 1890, p. 74; and Rice Holmes, _Caesar’s Conquest of
Gaul_, 1899, pp. 723-5.
[2957] _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 186, n. 2.
[2958] _Gall. Krieg_, 1880, i, 147, n. 8.
[2959] xl, 1, § 3.
[2960] _Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie_, &c., cliii, 1896, p. 270.
[2961] _B. G._, v, 8, § 3.
[2962] See p. 599, _supra_.
[2963] S. F. Surtees, _Julius Caesar: did he cross the Channel?_ 1866;
_Julius Caesar: showing beyond reasonable doubt, that he never crossed
the Channel, but sailed from Zeeland, and landed in Norfolk_, 1868.
[2964] J. Wainwright, _Julius Caesar; did he cross the Channel.
Reviewed_, 1869.
[2965] _Geogr. der Griechen und Römer_, Zweyter Theil, Zweyter Heft,
1795, p. 29.
[2966] _Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde_, 1865, p. 100.
[2967] _C. J. Caesar’s Brit. Expeditions_, &c., 1868. By F. H. Appach.
[2968] _Decline of the Roman Republic_, iv, 441.
[2969] _Julius Caesar_, 1892, p. 196, note.
[2970] H. F. Pelham, _Outlines of Roman History_, 1895, p. 257.
[2971] _Julius Caesar_, p. 196.
[2972] See pp. 518-52, _supra_.
[2973] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxi, 1864, pp. 235, 237; _Origines
Celticae_, ii, 366. Dr. Guest’s notions about the Thames were perhaps
incorrect. See p. 696, _infra_.
[2974] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxxiii, 1876, pp. 61, 63-4.
[2975] _Twenty-third Report East Kent Nat. Hist. Soc._, 1881, p. 57.
[2976] This, as I have shown, is an assumption which we have no right
to make.
[2977] _The Cinque Ports_, p. 8.
[2978] I have already shown (pp. 528-30, _supra_) that this estimate is
enormously exaggerated.
[2979] _Athenæum_, Sept. 5, 1863, p. 303.
[2980] _Archaeologia_, xxxiv, 1852, p. 241.
[2981] See pp. 601-2, _supra_.
[2982] _Archaeologia_, xli, 1867, p. 272.
[2983] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. lxxxi-lxxxiii.
[2984] _Ib._, p. lxxxvi.
[2985] _Journal of Philology_, xvii, 1888, p. 172.
[2986] _Archaeologia_, xxxix, 1863, p. 289.
[2987] _Ib._, pp. 300-2.
[2988] ‘Winds,’ says Beechey (_ib._, xxxiv, 1852, p. 239), ‘greatly
affect the time of turn of the stream.’ ‘Strong winds,’ says Mr. S. H.
Brown, Trinity House Pilot (_Diagrams and Tables of Tidal Streams_,
&c., 1895, p. 4), accelerate and prolong the stream running in the
same direction, retard the opposing stream,’ &c. See also _The Channel
Pilot_, part i, 1900, p. 541, from which we learn that ‘on some
occasions ... 8 hours north-eastern and only 4 hours south-western
streams have been found’.
[2989] _Archaeologia_, xxxix, 1863, p. 290.
[2990] _Ib._, pp. 290, 294, 301.
[2991] According to Admiral Smyth (_ib._, p. 301), 6 hours and 5¾ hours
respectively.
[2992] Part i, 1900, p. 354.
[2993] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. lxxxiv, lxxxvi.
[2994] _Archaeologia_, xxxix, 1863, pp. 290, 294.
[2995] It is remarkable that most of the writers who have dealt with
the question of Caesar’s landing-place should have taken so little
pains to inform themselves about the tides. Thus Cardwell, who was in
1860 Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford, says that ‘If you
know what was the time of high-water at Folkestone at any full moon
during the present year, you know the time of high-water at the same
place whenever the moon was full a hundred or a thousand years ago.
It is also a fact that each successive tide is later by twenty-five
minutes than the one which had preceded it’ (_Archaeol. Cant._, iii,
1860, p. 7). Both these statements are grossly inaccurate, as the
professor might have seen if he had taken the trouble to devote half
an hour to the study of the _Admiralty Tide Tables_. Thus, taking the
August full moon of the years 1883-1900, the time of high tide at
Folkestone varied between 11.5 a.m. in 1896 and 10.17 a.m. in 1900;
while the time of high tide of the fifth day before the full moon
varied between 6.21 a.m. in 1893 and 4.46 a.m. in 1898; and high tide
on the morning of August 19, 1896, was 90 minutes later than high tide
on the morning of August 18, not 50 minutes, as it should have been
according to Cardwell. If he had said that ‘_on the average_ each
successive tide is later by twenty-five minutes than the one which had
preceded it’, he would have told the truth.
[2996] See p. 666, _infra_.
[2997] On the day when the stream turned westward soonest--only 3
hours 40 minutes after high water--the force of the wind was all but
imperceptible (_Archaeologia_, xxxix, 1863, p. 290).
[2998] See p. 608, n. 3, _supra_.
[2999] See p. 608, n. 3, _supra_.
[3000] See pp. 600-1, _supra_.
[3001] _Archaeologia_, xxxiv, 1852, p. 236.
[3002] _Journal of Philology_, xix, 1891, pp. 141-2.
[3003] See the note at the end of Airy’s article in _Archaeologia_,
xxxiv, 1852; Sir C. Lyell, _Principles of Geology_, 1875, p. 534; and
_Proc. Inst. Civil Engineers_, clix, 1905, p. 129.
[3004] _Archaeologia_, xxxiv, 1852, pp. 239, 242.
[3005] _B. G._, iv, 23, § 2.
[3006] Viscount Wolseley, _The Soldier’s Pocket-Book_, 1886, p.
491.--‘Good eye-sight can distinguish bodies of troops at 2,000
yards; at that distance a man or horse appears like a dot; at 1,200
yards cavalry is distinguished from infantry,’ &c. I am aware that in
certain primitive districts, for instance the islands of Inishbofin
and Inishshank off the coast of Galway, the average range of vision is
abnormally great (_Proc. Roy. Irish Acad._, 3rd ser., iii, 1893-5, p.
324); but we may reasonably assume that Caesar could not see eight or
nine times as far as a modern Englishman.
[3007] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. xxxiv.
[3008] See p. 610, _supra_, and _Tide Tables for the British and Irish
Ports_, p. 225.
[3009] _Archaeologia_, xxxiv, 1852, p. 239.--‘At full and change of the
moon,’ says Admiral Beechey, ‘close in shore off Hastings the stream
turns to the west at 11^h; but the turn becomes later as the distance
off shore increases, and at 5 miles distance the stream turns to the
west at 1^h.... The stream runs to the west about 6½ hours,’ &c.
[3010] Airy himself, as we have seen, makes no allowance for any
variation which may have been produced by wind or other causes from
the normal hour of the turn of the stream. I am willing to make any
reasonable allowance; but the intelligent reader will have seen that no
such allowance would disturb the conclusion which I have reached in the
text.
[3011] See pp. 648-9, _infra_.
[3012] _B. G._, iv, 28, § 2.
[3013] _Ib._
[3014] According to Falconer’s Marine Dictionary, 1815, p. 220, the
lee-way of a ship in a gale varies from 5½ to 6½ points. The amount of
course depends upon the force of the gale, the build of the ship, and
other circumstances.
[3015] See Addenda, p. 740.
[3016] I need hardly say that if Caesar’s transports had been anchored
off Pevensey on the night of the full moon a north-north-easterly gale
could not have driven them ashore unless they had been inside the
harbour, which Caesar would have mentioned.
[3017] Instead of ‘eight’ Airy should of course have written ‘seven’.
[3018] _Archaeologia_, xxxiv, 1852, pp. 239, 241-2.
[3019] Lewin (_The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. xxxii-xxxiii)
points out that if Caesar approached the British coast anywhere near
Pevensey, ‘he must have anchored, in the first instance, somewhere off
the high cliffs between Hastings and Cliff’s End,’ because at no point
between Hastings and Pevensey are the ‘precipitous heights’ off which
he anchored to be found. But, continues Lewin, if he anchored at any
point between Hastings and Cliff’s End, ‘eight Roman miles would not
carry him so far as Pevensey Marsh.’ [For ‘eight’ read ‘seven’.]
[3020] _Athenæum_, Sept. 10, 1859, p. 338.
[3021] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. xxiv-xxv.
[3022] _Athenæum_, Sept. 10, 1859, p. 338.
[3023] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. xxvi.
[3024] E. A. Freeman’s _Norman Conquest_, iii, 532-4; _Journal of
Philology_, xx, 1892, pp. 63-4.
[3025] See p. 571, _supra_.
[3026] When Professor Ridgeway resuscitated Airy’s theory, he
found himself called upon to meet the objection which we have just
considered. Mr. Malden (_Journal of Philology_, xix, 1891, pp. 197-8)
told him that Caesar would never have landed ‘opposite the Great
Wealden Forest, where resistance would be easy and supplies scarce’.
The professor replied (_ib._, p. 206) that a passage in Caesar’s
narrative proves that he _did_ land opposite the Wealden Forest. The
passage will be found in the ninth chapter of Caesar’s Fifth Book,
in which he describes the combat which took place on the banks of a
stream, about 12 miles from his camp, the day after his second landing.
The Britons, on being driven from the banks, withdrew into woods
(_repulsi ab equitatu se in silvas abdiderunt_). Mr. Malden (_Journal
of Philology_, xx, 1892, p. 63) makes the obvious reply:--‘All that
Caesar tells us is that there were woods in which the Britons took
refuge ... but Caesar does not lead us to believe that he landed in
a place where his march inland was barred by an all but impenetrable
forest 30 to 40 miles wide.’
[3027] _Athenæum_, Sept. 5, 1863, p. 302.
[3028] _Archaeologia_, xxxiv, 1852, p. 240.
[3029] Napoleon III, _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 553.
[3030] _Ib._, p. 553.
[3031] _Journal of Philology_, xx, 1892, p. 197.
[3032] The late arrival of some of Caesar’s ships (_B. G._, iv, 23, §
4) can only be accounted for on the assumption that during the voyage
the wind shifted to an unfavourable quarter,--an assumption which is
verified by Caesar’s express statement (iv, 26, § 5) that the cavalry
transports were unable ‘to make the island’, and had to put back.
[3033] _Essays on the Invasion of Britain_, &c., pp. 35-6.
[3034] _B. G._, v, 9, §§ 2-4.
[3035] _Ib._, vii, 57, § 4; 58, §§ 1-2.
[3036] _Ib._, v, 8, § 2.
[3037] _Essays on the Invasion of Britain_, &c., p. 33.
[3038] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. xxvii-xxviii.
[3039] See _Tidal Streams_, &c., and _Admiralty Tide Tables_, pp.
112-3, 119.
[3040] _B. G._, v, 22, §§ 1-2.
[3041] _Athenæum_, Sept. 10, 1859, p. 338.
[3042] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. xxvii.
[3043] _B. G._, v, 11, §§ 8-9.
[3044] _Archaeologia_, xxxiv, 1852, p. 240.
[3045] _B. G._, v, 2, § 3.
[3046] _Ib._, 23, §§ 5-6.
[3047] _Att._, vi, 8, § 4.
[3048] _Aen._, v, 763-4.
[3049] _Ib._, vii, 6-7.
[3050] _Essays on the Invasion of Britain_, &c., pp. 31, 34-5.
[3051] Cf. R. Y. Tyrrell and L. C. Purser, _Correspondence of Cicero_,
iii, 1890, p. 246, note.
[3052] _Att._, x, 18, § 1.
[3053] _B. G._, iii, 15, § 3.
[3054] _Tranquillitas_, in the singular, does of course sometimes mean
‘fine weather’: but in such cases the context makes the meaning clear;
and if Caesar had intended to express this meaning, he would, as his
_usus loquendi_ shows, have written _nactus idoneam ad navigandum
tempestatem_. Cf. H. Meusel, _Lex. Caes._, ii, 689.
[3055] _Journal of Philology_, xix, 1891, p. 205.
[3056] According to Jean Brant of Antwerp, who published an edition
of the _Commentaries_ in 1606, some scholars affirmed that _XXXX_ was
to be found in ‘good _MSS._’ (_C. I. Caesaris quae exstant_, ed. G.
Jungermann, 1606, p. 501 of notes): but this vague statement, which
C. Schneider (_Comm. de bellis C. I. Caesaris_, ii, p. 10) naturally
discredits, is incapable of confirmation. The reading _XXXX_ is not
attested in any critical edition.
[3057] See p. 558, _supra_.
[3058] _Journal of Philology_, xix, 1891, pp. 205-6.
[3059] _Ib._, xx, 1892, p. 63.
[3060] _Ib._, xix, 1891, pp. 197-8.
[3061] See _B. G._, v, 8, § 2.
[3062] See pp. 574-7, 616, _supra_.
[3063] _Journal of Philology_, xix, 1891, pp. 210-1.
[3064] Caesar’s men certainly did not begin to row at 3 a.m. Daybreak
did not occur before 3.15; and, as Mr. Peskett remarks (ib., xx, 1892,
p. 198), ‘the starting on the right course with the turn of the tide of
a large and probably somewhat scattered fleet is not a momentary act
which you can assign to a particular minute of the day.’
[3065] _B. G._, v, 8, § 5.
[3066] _Ib._, iv, 23, § 2.
[3067] _Ib._, v, 8, § 3.
[3068] See _Journal of Philology_, xix, 1891, pp. 206-10.
[3069] As a matter of fact it would have been against them much longer.
See _Admiralty Tide Tables_, pp. 112, 115, 118, and S. H. Brown,
_Diagrams and Tables_, &c., 1895.
[3070] The professor denies that Caesar’s men could have taken all the
time from daybreak to noon to row with the tide from a point off the
South Foreland to Romney Marsh; and, on the assumption that they landed
on the eastern end of the marsh, he is unquestionably right. But there
is no evidence that they began to row at daybreak (see p. 620, n. 3,
_supra_): we are not obliged to assume that because _all_ the ships,
including stragglers, had reached Britain by about noon, rowing went on
in all till twelve o’clock; and the professor would have done better to
conclude, not that they rowed to Pevensey, but that they drifted as far
as the latitude of Deal, and rowed to a point on the eastern coast of
Kent.
[3071] The theory that Caesar landed between St. Leonards and
Bulverhythe, which was advocated by R. C. Hussey (_Archaeol. Cant._, i,
1858, pp. 94-110), requires no comment; for the same arguments that are
fatal to Airy’s theory are fatal also to it.
[3072] See p. 609, _supra_.
[3073] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. ciii.
[3074] _Archaeologia_, xl, 1866, pp. 364-5.
[3075] I have reproduced the relevant part of Lewin’s map on the map
facing p. 531.
[3076] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. lxxv.
[3077] _Ib._, pp. lxxiii-lxxiv.
[3078] _B. G._, iv, 26, § 5.
[3079] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. lxxiv.
[3080] _Ib._, p. xciii.
[3081] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. lxxiv.
[3082] _B. G._, v, 11, § 5.
[3083] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. 87.
[3084] _B. G._, v, 9, § 1.
[3085] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. cxxiii. If the reader
will consult Lewin’s map in _Archaeologia_, xl, 1866, p. 369, or my
reproduction of it, he will see that even if Lewin’s final view of the
topography of Hythe harbour could be accepted (see pp. 547-8, _supra_),
the absurdities involved in his theory of Caesar’s disembarkation would
still remain.
[3086] I mean of course that this would have been their true course.
[3087] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. 59-60.
[3088] Information supplied by Commander Boxer, R.N., Harbour-Master at
Folkestone.
[3089] See Falconer’s _Marine Dictionary_, 1815, p. 220.
[3090] The harbour-master of Dover, who fully endorses my argument,
thinks that four points would be a fair estimate.
[3091] See p. 613, _supra_.
[3092] See pp. 606-11, _supra_.
[3093] _Archaeologia_, xxxix, 1863, pp. 309-311.
[3094] See p. 611, _supra_.
[3095] _Philologus_, xxii, 1865, p. 307.
[3096] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. lxxxix.
[3097] _Ib._, p. 31
[3098] _Ib._, p. xlviii.
[3099] See p. 632, _infra_.
[3100] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. 39-40.
[3101] This statement, as Caesar’s narrative (_B. G._, iv, 26, §
5) shows, is incorrect; and Lewin himself corrects it when he says
(p. xlvii) that on the day of Caesar’s first voyage ‘the eighteen
transports ... set sail, according to orders, but had been forced to
put back by stress of weather’.
[3102] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. xlvi-xlvii.
[3103] In regard to Caesar’s use of the word _nanciscor_, see H.
Meusel, _Lex. Caes._, ii, 688-9. Long (_Decline of the Roman Republic_,
iv, 434), commenting on the inference which Lewin draws from the word
_nactus_, says that ‘this is not a certain conclusion’, and quotes
_B. G._, v, 9, § 4 (_repulsi ab equitatu se in silvas abdiderunt,
locum nacti egregie et natura et opere munitum, quem domestici belli,
ut videbatur, causa iam ante praeparaverant_). I doubt whether this
passage is relevant.
[3104] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. 39-40.
[3105] Lewin afterwards saw that if Caesar landed at Hythe, he could
not have anchored off Dover, and accordingly transferred his anchorage
to a point off Folkestone. See p. 635, _infra_.
[3106] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. 33-4.
[3107] _Ib._, p. xc.
[3108] I am glad to find that Heller (_Zeitschrift für allgemeine
Erdkunde_, xviii, 1865, p. 111) has anticipated my argument.
[3109] Obviously it would have been invisible if Caesar had anchored
off Dover. See n. 1, _supra_.
[3110] _B. G._, iv, 23, § 5.
[3111] p. 629, _infra_.
[3112] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. 44.
[3113] _Pharsalia_, ii, 571-2.
[3114] _Caesar_, 16.
[3115] _Hist. Rom._, xxxix, 51, § 2.
[3116] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. cxxi.
[3117] iii, 2, § 23.
[3118] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. 43-4.
[3119] _Ib._, Preface (p. vi), p. lxxiii; _Archaeologia_, xxxix, 1863,
p. 313.
[3120] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. 64-5.
[3121] _Caesar_, 16.
[3122] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxi, 1864, p. 239.
[3123] _Decline of the Roman Republic_, iv, 166.
[3124] _B. G._, v, 9, § 1.
[3125] For the meaning of _molli_ see p. 630, _infra_.
[3126] _Comm. de bellis C. I. Caesaris_, ii, 45-6.
[3127] On the meaning of _apertus_, as used by Caesar, cf. H. Meusel,
_Lex. Caes._, i, 283-4. In _B. G._, i, 41, § 4, _loca aperta_ means
a country free from woods and other features which would have made
marching difficult: in _B. G._, ii, 18, § 2, and vii, 18, § 3, _collis
apertus_ means a hill free from woods.
[3128] See _B. G._, ii, 10, § 4; 23, § 2; 27, § 5; v, 32, § 2; 49, § 6;
51, § 1; vi, 8, §§ 1, 3; vii, 45, § 9; 49, § 1; 52, § 2; 53, § 1; 83,
§ 2; 85, § 4; and numerous passages in the _Civil War_ (cf. H. Meusel,
_Lex. Caes._, ii, 170-2, s.v. _iniquitas_, _iniquus_).
[3129] See pp. 546, 622, _supra_.
[3130] See p. 655, n. 3, _infra_.
[3131] Schneider maintains (_Comm. de bellis C. I. Caesaris_, ii,
45-6) that ‘molle idem esse quod leniter acclive, imprimis apto
exemplo demonstravit Heldius, 7, 46, _ad molliendum clivum_ non aliter
dictum docens’. I do not think that Schneider is right in arguing
that _mollis_ should be _translated_ by ‘gently sloping’, though that
meaning is doubtless implied. My friend, Professor Postgate, who agrees
with me, has kindly referred me to a passage in Ovid (_Ep. ex Ponto_,
i, 2, 61-2)--
_Cum subit Augusti quae sit clementia, credo
Mollia naufragiis litora posse dari--_
which seems to justify my explanation. Professor Postgate has also
written me a most interesting letter, in which he remarks that while
_aperto_ describes the approach to the shore, which was not blocked
by rocks, _molli_ connotes both a gentle slope and a soft surface: he
refers to a passage in Pomponius Mela (i, 19, § 102), where the Black
Sea is described as _non molli neque harenoso circumdatus litore_.
[3132] See _Pharsalia_, ed. C. E. Haskins, 1887, p. 67, note to line
571, and cf. Ovid, _Fasti_, iv, 278. The word _incerti_ apparently
refers to the tides.
[3133] See C. Kempf’s edition of Valerius Maximus, 1854, pp. 26-33, and
_Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde_, xviii, 1865, p. 96.
[3134] The statements of Plutarch, Dion Cassius, and Valerius Maximus,
to which Lewin refers, are as follows:--‘Ἐν δὲ Βρεττανίᾳ τῶν πολεμίων
εἰς τόπον ἑλώδη καὶ μεστὸν ὑδάτων ἐμπεσοῦσι τοῖς πρώτοις ταξιάρχοις
ἐπιθεμένων στρατιώτης, Καίσαρος αὐτοῦ τὴν μάχην ἐφορῶντος, ὠσάμενος
εἰς μέσους καὶ πολλὰ καὶ περίοπτα τόλμης ἀποδειξάμενος ἔργα, τοὺς
μὲν ταξιάρχους ἔσωσε, τῶν βαρβάρων φυγόντων, αὐτὸς δὲ χαλεπῶς ἐπὶ
πᾶσι διαβαίνων ἔρριψεν ἑαυτὸν εἰς ῥεύματα τελματώδη καὶ μόλις ἄνευ
τοῦ θυρεοῦ, τὰ μὲν νηχόμενος, τὰ δὲ βαδίζων, διεπέρασε. Plutarch,
_Caesar_, 16. κἀνταῦθα [_i.e._ at the landing-place in 55 B.C.] τοὺς
προσμίξαντάς οἱ ἐς τὰ τενάγη ἀποβαίνοντι νικήσας ἔφθη τῆς γῆς κρατήσας,
&c. Dion Cassius, xxxix, 51, § 2. Bello quo C. Caesar ... Britannicae
insulae caelestis iniecit manus, cum quattuor commilitonibus rate
transvectus in scopulum vicinae insulae, quam hostium ingentes copiae
obtinebant, postquam aestus regressu suo spatium, quo scopulus et
insula dividebantur, in vadum transitu facile redegit, ingenti
multitudine barbarorum affluente, ceteris rate ad litus regressis solus
immobilem stationis gradum retinens, undique ruentibus telis et ab omni
parte acri studio ad te invadendum nitentibus, quinque militum diurno
proelio suffectura pila, una dextera hostium corporibus adegisti. Ad
ultimum destricto gladio audacissimum quemque modo umbonis impulsu,
modo mucronis ictu depellens hinc Romanis, illinc Britannicis oculis
incredibili, nisi cernereris, spectaculo fuisti. Postquam deinde
ira ac pudor cuncta conari fessos coegit, tragula femur traiectus
saxique pondere ora contusus, galea iam ictibus discussa et scuto
crebris foraminibus absumpto, profundo te credidisti ac duabus loricis
onustus inter undas, quas hostili cruore infeceras, enatasti, visoque
imperatore armis non amissis, sed bene impensis, cum laudem merereris
veniam petiisti quod sine scuto rediisses &c. _Factorum et dictorum
memorabilium_, iii, 2, § 23.
[3135] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. 65, n. 1.
[3136] _Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde_, xviii, 1865, pp. 96-7.
[3137] Cf. Herodotus, viii, 129, § 1,--Ἀρταβάζῳ δὲ ἐπειδὴ πολιορκέοντι
ἐγεγόνεσαν τρεῖς μῆνες, γίνεται ἄμπωτις τῆς θαλάσσης μεγάλη ... ἰδόντες
δὲ οἱ βάρβαροι τέναγος γενόμενοι &c. (‘while Artabazos was besieging
the town, there came to be a great ebb of the sea backwards ... and
the barbarians, seeing that shallow water had been produced’, &c. [G.
C. Macaulay, _The Hist. of Herodotus_, ii, 1890, p. 285]). See also
Strabo, iii, 5, § 11,--ὁ ναύκληρος ἑκὼν εἰς τέναγος ἐξέβαλε τὴν ναῦν.
[3138] See p. 654, _infra_.
[3139] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. 60, lxx-lxxi, lxxiii,
lxxv, xc, cxxi.
[3140] _B. G._, iv, 24, § 3.
[3141] _Ib._, 33, § 3.
[3142] It should be noted by the way that Caesar’s remark about
‘steep places’ (_B. G._, iv, 33, § 3) is purely general, and does not
necessarily refer to any combat which took place between his troops and
the Britons.
[3143] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. 59-60.
[3144] According to the map facing p. liii of Lewin’s book, Hythe haven
was about 3 miles long, and in many places more than a quarter of a
mile broad.
[3145] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. 27.
[3146] _Ib._, pp. 87-8, 90.
[3147] _Essays on the Invasion of Britain_, &c., p. 36.
[3148] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. xxix.
[3149] _Ordnance Survey_ (25 inches to one mile), Sheet LV, 11;
personal observation.
[3150] _B. G_., vii, 69, § 1.
[3151] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. xxx.
[3152] _B. G._, v, 9, §§ 2-6.
[3153] _Mém. de litt. tirés des registres de l’Acad. Roy. des Inscr. et
Belles-Lettres_, xxviii, 1761, p. 408.
[3154] _B. G._, v, 9, §§ 1-2.
[3155] _Ib._, v, 8, § 2.
[3156] _Ib._, v, 1, § 2.
[3157] See p. 576, n. 1, _supra_.
[3158] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. xcviii. Cf.
_Philologus_, xxii. 1865, pp. 305-6.
[3159] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. 33, 39-40, xlviii.
[3160] _Ordnance Survey_ (one inch), Sheets 289, 306.
[3161] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. xlviii.
[3162] _Ib._, p. 52.
[3163] _Ib._, p. xlviii.
[3164] _B. G._, iv, 20, § 4; 21, § 1.
[3165] _Ib._, 26, § 5.
[3166] _Ib._, 35, § 1.
[3167] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. 62.
[3168] See pp. 549-52, _supra_.
[3169] Lewin himself remarks (_The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp.
lxiv-lxv) that when the marsh was enclosed, it ‘was at the same time
intersected by sluices’.
[3170] See p. 623, _supra_.
[3171] Lympne Hill rises 288 feet in 1823, and between Hythe and
Seabrook the hill rises 282·2 feet in 1723. See _Ordnance Survey of
England_ (6 inches to 1 mile), Sheet LXXIV, SW. and SE. The angles are
9° 5′ 25″ and 9° 25′ 7″ respectively.
[3172] _B. G._, v, 9, § 8. Cf. ii, 11, §§ 2-3.
[3173] _Philologus_, xxii, 1865, pp. 305-6.
[3174] _B. G._, iv, 28, § 2.
[3175] ‘A little lower down and more towards the west.’
[3176] ... ‘one side is opposite Gaul. One corner of this side, by
Kent--the point which almost all ships from Gaul make for--has an
easterly, and the lower one a southerly outlook.’
[3177] _B. G._, iv, 32.
[3178] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. 56, 62-4.
[3179] See pp. 546, 622, _supra_.
[3180] See pp. 622-3, _supra_.
[3181] _Julius Caesar_, 1892, p. 196.
[3182] _Outlines of Roman History_, 3rd ed., 1900, p. 257, n. 2.
[3183] See pp. 605-11, _supra_.
[3184] _Journal of Philology_, xvii, 1888, pp. 167-78.
[3185] See pp. 622-4, _supra_.
[3186] See pp. 535-7, 545-9, _supra_.
[3187] _B. G._, vii, 83, § 2. Cf. 85, § 4,--_exiguum_ [v.l. _iniquum_]
_loci ad declivitatem fastigium magnum habet momentum_ (‘a slight
downward inclination of the ground has a great effect’).
[3188] _Ib._, v, 9, § 1.
[3189] See p. 539, n. 7, _supra_.
[3190] See p. 640, n. 4, _infra_.
[3191] See p. 629, _supra_.
[3192] _Six-inch Ordnance Survey_,--Kent, Sheet LXXIII, SE.
[3193] _C. J. Caesars Brit. Expeditions_, pp. 72-3, § 6.
[3194] See pp. 543-5, 551-2, _supra_.
[3195] _C. J. Caesar’s Brit. Expeditions_, p. 138, § 1
[3196] _Ib._, p. 49, §§ 4-5.
[3197] See W. Topley, _Geology of the Weald_, pp. 402-3, and R.
Furley, _Hist. of the Weald of Kent_, i, 12, and map facing p. 26. The
strip of country extending two or three miles northward from Hurst to
Kennardington is still thickly covered by woods: no less than eleven
are named on the One-Inch Ordnance Map (Sheet 305).
[3198] Furley (_ib._, p. 13, n. *) has noted this objection. Lewin
would perhaps have argued that the buildings were in Romney Marsh, as
he finally concluded that the marsh had perhaps been enclosed by the
Britons in pre-Roman times; but the absurdity of this theory has been
already demonstrated. See pp. 549-52, _supra_.
[3199] _C. J. Caesar’s Brit. Expeditions_, pp. 48, 65, § 14. Appach
(_op. cit._, pp. 56, § 5, 71, §§ 3-4) assumed that Caesar in 55
B.C. steered for Hythe, intending to land there if the Britons were
friendly, and otherwise to sail either to Deal or Bonnington; that he
was ‘of course completely ignorant of the turn of the stream in the
Channel’; that while he was at anchor he gave orders for a landing at
Deal; but that when the stream turned westward he changed his mind
and issued new orders for a landing at Bonnington! Appach failed to
see that since Caesar, when he was at anchor, saw how the stream was
running, Volusenus could have done the same. To say that Caesar was
‘completely ignorant’ is to assume that Volusenus was a fool. Besides,
did not Caesar’s Gallic seamen know the Channel by heart?
[3200] _B. G._, v, 13, § 1.
[3201] _C. J. Caesar’s Brit. Expeditions_, pp. 69-70, § 1.
[3202] _B. G._, iv, 23, § 3.
[3203] In _B. G._, vii, 36, § 2, Caesar describes the various elevated
points of the mountain mass of Gergovia by the words _omnibus eius iugi
collibus_, though they could not be called separate hills; and Long
(_Decline of the Roman Republic_, iv, 438, note), referring to _B. G._,
iii, 18, § 8, remarks that ‘“fossae” often signifies every part of a
“fossa” which surrounds a camp’.
[3204] Viewed from the sea about half a mile off the Foreland, there
are eight. See p. 736, _infra_.
[3205] The steepest rises 282·2 feet in 1723, forming an angle of 9°
25′ 7″ (p. 636, n. 1, _supra_).
[3206] _C. J. Caesar’s Brit. Expeditions_, pp. 77-8, § 6.
[3207] _Ib._, pp. 75, note a, 78-9, § 7.
[3208] See G. Dowker in _Archaeol. Journal_, xxxiii, 1876, p. 58, and
his _Coast Erosion_, p. 3.
[3209] _B. G._, iv, 24, § 2.
[3210] _C. J. Caesar’s Brit. Expeditions_, p. 102, § 5.
[3211] I am glad to find that Heller (_Philologus_, xxii, 1865, pp.
309-10) has anticipated my argument. If, he remarks, the Romans
had already known where Caesar’s landing-place was, the expression
_sub sinistra_, coupled with _Britanniam relictam_, might have been
superfluous; but it was precisely from these words that they first
learned whereabouts to look for it.
[3212] Ἀννίβας δὲ παραδόξως, τοὺς μὲν χρήμασι πείσας τῶν Κελτῶν, τοὺς
δὲ βιασάμενος, ἧκε μετὰ τῶν δυνάμεων, δεξιὸν ἔχων τὸ Σαρδόνιον πέλαγος,
ἐπὶ τῶν τοῦ Ῥοδανοῦ διάβασιν. Polybius, iii, 41, § 7. Even the best
modern historians, in trying to bring a scene vividly before the
imagination, sometimes mention geographical facts which are known to
everybody.
[3213] See p. 656, _infra_.
[3214] See p. 616, _supra_.
[3215] See Th. Mommsen, _Chronica minora_, iii, 1898, p. 114, and _La
Grande Encyclopédie_, xxiv, 927.
[3216] Iulius Caesar ... venit ad Brittanniam cum sexaginta ciulis,
et tenuit in ostium Tamesis, in quo naufragium perpessae sunt naves
illius dum ipse pugnabat apud Dolobellum, qui erat proconsul regi
Brittannico &c. (_Chronica minora_, ed. Th. Mommsen, iii, 1898, p.
162). Besides _apud_ there is another reading, _contra_; and one _MS._
has _Dorobellum_ instead of _Dolobellum_. Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his
fabulous account of Caesar’s first invasion (_Hist. Brittonum_, iv,
3), says that ‘Cassibellaunus’ came _ad Dorobellum oppidum_. It is
not surprising that an uneducated writer like S. Pritchard (_Hist. of
Deal_, pp. 1, 10, 39) should assure his readers that Caesar called his
landing-place _Dola_; but when a scholar like Dr. Guest (_Archaeol.
Journal_, xxi, 1864, p. 242) gravely points to ‘the use of the
phrase “apud dolo”’ in the Vatican _MS._ of Nennius, and argues that
_dolo_ means Deal, I am amazed. The reading _dolo_ is not so much as
mentioned in Mommsen’s _apparatus criticus_; but let us provisionally
accept it, and then consider how Dr. Guest would have construed the
passage:--_Iulius Caesar ... pugnabat apud Dolo, qui erat proconsul
regi Brittannico_ &c. _Dolo_, says Dr. Guest, means Deal; _Dolo_, says
Nennius, was _proconsul_, or commander-in-chief, under the British
king. Whatever Nennius may have written, it is clear that he believed
Caesar to have landed somewhere on the north of the South Foreland,
and probably on the coast of East Kent; for, as Battely pointed out
(_Antiquitates Rutupinae_, 1711, p. 46), the mouth of the Thames, in
which Nennius places the landing, had a wider signification in the
Middle Ages than it has now; and William of Malmesbury (_De gestis
Pontificum Anglorum_, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, 1870, lib. ii, § 73 [p.
140]) actually made it extend as far as Dover.
[3217] _Le Roman de Brut_, ed. Le Roux de Lincy, 1836, vv. 4651-3.
[3218] _Itin._, vii, 1744, p. 127 (116-7). See also Camden’s
_Britannia_, ed. R. Gough, i, 218.
[3219] According to Geoffrey of Monmouth (_Hist. Brittonum_, iv, 3,
9) and Matthew Paris (_Chronica Majora_, ed. H. R. Luard, pp. 72-4),
who seems to have copied Geoffrey’s amusing fable, Caesar landed _in
ostium Tamensis fluminis_ on the occasion of his first expedition,
and, when he invaded Britain for the third time (!), in the harbour of
Richborough (_in Rutupi portu_).
[3220] _B. G._, iv, 20, § 4; 21, §§ 1-2, 5-8.
[3221] See p. 635, _supra_, and F. H. Appach, _C. J. Caesar’s Brit.
Expeditions_, p. 47, §§ 4, 6. Appach observes that at Dover ‘there was
a very fine harbour’, but that it was ‘probably dangerous to enter in
bad weather’. But the fact remains that it was continually entered; and
when Caesar sailed to Britain the weather was good.
[3222] It is possible that the reason why Caesar approached Britain a
little eastward of Dover harbour was that he intended to run into the
harbour on the ebb, or westerly-going stream. Long (_Decline of the
Roman Republic_, iv, 438), like Appach, fatuously remarks that Caesar
‘was ignorant of the turn of the stream in the Channel’. See p. 641, n.
1, _supra_.
[3223] _Essays on the Invasion of Britain_, p. 29.
[3224] _Hist. of the War in the Peninsula_, i, 1851, pp. 120-1.
[3225] See E. B. Hamley, _Operations of War_, 1878, p. 221, and C.
Oman, _Hist. of the Peninsular War_, i, 1902, pp. 228-9.
[3226] This appears to have been Kiepert’s view (see his large wall-map
of Gaul). But even if Caesar had anchored off Kingsdown, he would have
first reached Britain (_attigit Britanniam_) off the South Foreland.
[3227] _B. G._, iv, 23, § 4.
[3228] _Journal of Philology_, xvii, 1888, p. 174.
[3229] See pp. 638-9, _supra_.
[3230] See pp. 605-11, _supra_. Heller (_Zeitschrift für allgemeine
Erdkunde_, xviii, 1865, pp. 116-25), after an elaborate argument,
which, if his premisses are correct, is unanswerable, arrives at the
conclusion that, assuming high water to have occurred at Dover on the
27th of August, 55 B.C., at 7.31 a.m., the stream off Dover turned
between 4.26 and 5.21 p.m.; and that, as the turn must have been
accelerated by the favourable wind which Caesar mentions (_B. G._, iv,
23, § 6), ‘one may say, without fear of error, that the stream turned
at 4.26 p.m.’: but it is unnecessary to examine his argument, because
he was not acquainted with the results of the observations which, as we
have seen, were made in 1862 by Surveyor Calver.
Neither have I taken any notice of the argument by which the late
Professor Cardwell (_Archaeol. Cant._, iii, 1860, pp. 14-7) endeavoured
to prove that if high tide had occurred at Dover on the day of Caesar’s
landing at 7.31 a.m., he must at 3 p.m. ‘have gone up Channel on the
first of the flood and proceeded to the eastward’; for the evidence
upon which the professor relied has been shown by Airy (_Archaeologia_,
xxxix, 1863, pp. 304-6) to have been misleading.
[3231] See pp. 600-3, _supra_.
[3232] _Archaeologia_, xxxix, 1863, p. 290.
[3233] See p. 608, _supra_.
[3234] Napoleon III, _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 553. In the latitude
of Paris the ninth hour lasted on the 26th of August till 3.27 p.m.
[3235] See pp. 610-1, _supra_.
[3236] See H. Houssaye, _Waterloo_, 38th ed., 1902, pp. 195, n. 4, 275,
n. 2, 277, n. 2, 313, n. 1, 366, n. 1, 413, n. 1. These discrepancies
arose, I presume, from lapses of memory.
[3237] Cf. _B. G._, v, 13, § 4.
[3238] Cf. Varro, _De lingua Latina_, vi, 89.
[3239] _Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde_, xviii, 1865, p. 127.
Heller’s argument may be summarized as follows:--Caesar does not say
that he weighed anchor in the ninth hour; had he done so, he would
not have used the words ‘weighing anchor’ (_sublatis ancoris_) in the
later passage in which he describes how he quitted his anchorage: he
only says that he waited at anchor till the ninth hour for the overdue
ships. Meanwhile, as he tells us, he issued his orders to the officers
of the vessels which had already arrived; and, as orders had also to be
given to the captains who were late in arriving, and they were obliged,
after receiving their orders, to get back to their ships, delay was
inevitable. That the turn of the stream did not take place until after
the ninth hour is to be inferred from Caesar’s having used the words
(His dimissis et ventum et aestum) _uno tempore_ (nactus secundum),
which refer only to _et ventum et aestum_ (_Philologus_, xxii, 1865, p.
308).
Dr. Guest (_Origines Celticae_, ii, 347, note) puts the matter well.
‘_In anchoris exspectare dum_ can only,’ he observes, ‘mean, to wait
at anchor for the happening of the event. If we add the words _ad
horam nonam_, surely we make the ninth hour the limit, not of lying
at anchor, but of waiting for the event.... Caesar probably steered
for Dover with the view of landing his men as the vessels came in,
but finding his landing opposed, he awaited the arrival of his other
vessels _in anchoris_, _i.e._ in the roadstead. The emphasis [laid on
_in anchoris_] marks the change of plan occasioned by the unexpected
opposition he met with.’
[3240] Lewin, indeed, objects (_The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862,
p. xci) that ‘had another interval of two hours occurred [after the
ninth hour] Caesar could not fail to have mentioned it’. But, in the
first place, as the reader will have seen, it is unnecessary to assume
that the interval lasted as long as two hours, or even one; and, in the
second place, there was no reason why Caesar should mention it, except
for the benefit of stupid readers, whom he invariably left to their own
devices. Some interval there must have been unless the captains of the
laggard ships were left without the instructions which had been given
to the rest.
[3241] See pp. 610-1, _supra_.
[3242] If, then, he really did weigh anchor in the ninth hour, and if
in the ninth hour the stream was running down the Channel on the 26th
of August, he must have landed on the 25th; and it has been shown (p.
600-3, _supra_) that he may have done so.
[3243] George Long, who was a very able man, was nevertheless capable,
if hard pressed in controversy, of writing sheer nonsense. Having only
the most superficial knowledge of the tides, he submissively accepted
the assertion that, at the time when Caesar weighed anchor off the
Kentish cliffs, the stream was running westward; yet he insisted
that Caesar landed at Deal! Let him speak for himself. ‘When Caesar
says that the tide (_aestus_) was favourable, he means that he had
water sufficient to keep near the shore. There is only one meaning of
_aestus_ in Caesar.... Caesar says that he went with wind and tide
favourable. If “tide” means stream, his statement is not true. If he
means by “tide” what I have said--and there is not the least doubt of
that--I should like some sufficient reason to be given why he could
not go to Deal, though the stream was against him’ (_The Reader_,
Sept. 5, 1863, pp. 254-5). This singular argument was demolished with
somewhat needless vigour by Dr. Guest (_Origines Celticae_, ii, 1883,
pp. 364-5). If in the often quoted passage, _longius delatus aestu orta
luce sub sinistra Britanniam relictam conspexit_, the word _aestus_
does not mean ‘the tidal _stream_’, it means nothing. That it does mean
what I have said Long virtually admits when, in his edition of the
_Commentaries_ (p. 225), commenting on this very passage, he observes
that Caesar ‘was carried out of his course by the flood tide’.
[3244] _B. G._, iv, 23, § 6.
[3245] _Decline of the Roman Republic_, iv, 434.
[3246] _Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde_, xviii, 1865, p. 129. See
also _Archaeol. Journal_, xxi, 1864, p. 238.
[3247] See H. Meusel, _Lex. Caes._, ii, 1245-7.
[3248] _Hist. Rom._, xxxix, 51, § 2.--ἄκραν οὖν τινα προέχουσαν
περιπλεύσας, &c.
[3249] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. 52.
[3250] See pp. 558, 582-3, 613, 618-9, 624-5, 639, 643, _supra_.
[3251] This statement has been approved by Commander Boxer, R.N.,
Harbour-Master of Folkestone, to whom I submitted it. See Addenda, p.
740.
[3252] In March, 1898, a north-easterly gale sent the waves rushing
over the sea-wall at Deal and across the road. W. H. Wheeler, _The
Sea-Coast_, 1902, p. 301. Cf. C. Seymour; _New Topographical ... Survey
of Kent_, 1776, p. 410.
[3253] See p. 329, _supra_.
[3254] See p. 614, _supra_.
[3255] _Essays on the Invasion of Britain_, &c., p. 29.
[3256] See pp. 644-7, _supra_.
[3257] _Archaeologia_, xxxiv, 1852, pp. 240-1.
[3258] See pp. 309, 645, _supra_.
[3259] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. xc.
[3260] _B. G._, iv, 23, § 5. On p. lxxv Lewin himself maintains that
Caesar, before he sailed from Gaul, ‘was well enough informed of the
smaller havens on the British coast,’ &c.
[3261] _B. G._, iv, 23, § 6.
[3262] See _One-Inch Ordnance Survey_, Sheet 290.
[3263] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. xciii; _Archaeologia_,
xxxix, 1863, pp. 312-3.
[3264] _Ib._, p. 313.
[3265] _Ib._; _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. 50. Dr. Guest,
on the other hand, maintains (_Archaeol. Journal_, xxi, 1864, p. 239)
that ‘the marshy lands off Deal’ correspond exactly with Caesar’s
description. Caesar does not describe any marshy lands.
[3266] _Archaeologia_, xxxix, 1863. p. 313.
[3267] See pp. 523-5, _supra_.
[3268] _B. G._, iv, 24, § 3.
[3269] _Ib._, § 2.
[3270] See p. 629, _supra_.
[3271] ‘PLANUS proprie est aequus ... in quo nihil eminet,’ &c.
(Forcellini, _Totius latinitatis lexicon_, iv, 1868, p. 695). That the
shore where Caesar landed was only relatively _planum_ is proved by the
existence of the ‘shallow places’ (_vada_), the situation of which was
known to the Britons but not to the Romans (_B. G._, iv, 26, § 2).
[3272] See pp. 630-1, _supra_.
[3273] iii, 2, § 23.
[3274] T. Lewin, _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. li, 87.
[3275] G. B. Gattie, _Memorials of the Goodwin Sands_, 1890, p. 297,
note.
[3276] _Rev. arch._, nouv. sér., viii, 1863, p. 302.
[3277] _B. G._, iv, 28.
[3278] See p. 536, n. 1, _supra_.
[3279] See pp. 600-1, _supra_.
[3280] _Rev. arch._, nouv. sér., viii, 1863, pp. 302-3.
[3281] See p. 643, _supra_.
[3282] See p. 616, _supra_.
[3283] _Admiralty Tide Tables_, p. 119.
[3284] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. 82, xcii. Lewin
also remarks that ‘had he been making for Deal, he would in drifting
up channel have been advancing in the right direction’. This remark
is only worth noticing as an instance of Lewin’s ignorance. Any one
who has the most rudimentary knowledge of the tidal streams will see
that once Caesar had drifted past the Foreland, the stream would have
carried him further and further away from Deal.
[3285] _Archaeologia_, xxxiii, 1851, p. 242.
[3286] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. xcii.
[3287] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. xcii.
[3288] _Tidal Streams, English and Irish Channels._
[3289] Not more than about three-quarters of the whole drift, according
to the harbour-master of Dover.
[3290] See p. 576, n. 1, _supra_.
[3291] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. xcii.
[3292] See pp. 728-30, _infra_.
[3293] _Admiralty Tide Tables_, p. 119; _Tidal Streams_, &c. Lewin
tells us, in another passage (_The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp.
82-3) that, according to the captain of one of the steamers running
between Folkestone and Boulogne, ‘the maximum drift for a single tide,
_i.e._ for the six hours that the stream runs in the same direction, is
eighteen miles, and the minimum nine miles.’ ‘The fleet,’ he adds, ‘was
heavily freighted, and therefore, sinking deep into the water, would
receive the full shock of the tide ... the expedition was on the very
day of the full moon [which he wrongly assigns to the 18th instead of
the 21st of July], when, of course, it was a spring tide. The drift,
therefore, would be the maximum or near it. Now, if we draw a straight
line from Boulogne to Limne, and then a line of sixteen miles, or
thereabouts, at right angles to it up the channel, it will take us to a
point off the South Foreland.’
It will be observed that Lewin here assumes that Caesar was steering
not for Hythe but for Lympne, and accordingly he is forced to make the
length of the drift sixteen instead of twelve miles! Facts, from his
point of view, were rather elastic than stubborn things. The expedition
did not take place ‘on the very day of the full moon’, but about the
time of new moon (see p. 729, _infra_). This mistake, indeed, is
immaterial; but the estimate of eighteen miles is, as we have seen,
greatly exaggerated; and, moreover, Lewin forgets that Caesar’s ships
did not drift for the whole of one tide, but only from ‘about midnight’
till ‘daybreak’.
In a footnote to p. 82 he says that, according to ‘an experienced
pilot’, a loaded vessel ‘would drift about 12 or 14 miles in the six
hours, when the tide is at its greatest velocity’. Yes,--‘in the six
hours’; but not in four hours. And even 12 miles is an excessive
estimate. ‘As a rough general rule,’ says Admiral Sir Frederick Bedford
(_The Sailor’s Pocket-Book_, 8th ed., 1898, pp. 232-3), ‘in the fair
way of both the Irish and English Channels a vessel will be carried
nine miles by the stream in a whole tide at Springs.’
[3294] _Comm. de C. I. Caesaris bellis_, vol. ii, p. 41; _C. I.
Caesaris b. G., libri VII_, ed. A. Doberenz and B. Dinter, vol. ii, p.
40.
[3295] The direction of the ebb stream between the Goodwins and the
shore varies between SW. and SW. ½ W. magnetic, or, approximately,
between SW. by S. ½ S. and SSW. true; and its rate at springs varies
from 1½ to 3 knots. _Admiralty Tide Tables_, p. 113.
[3296] The late George Dowker (_Archaeol. Journal_, xxxiii, 1876, pp.
67-8, 70) maintained that Caesar drifted ‘at the back of the Goodwin
beyond the North Foreland’, and that he ‘returned on the other side of
the Goodwin’, and anchored off Stonar. On this theory it is impossible
to account for the efforts which the rowers were obliged to make; and,
as I have shown (pp. 575-6, _supra_), it is impossible that Caesar
should have drifted beyond the North Foreland.
[3297] See pp. 525-8, _supra_.
[3298] See pp. 574-7, _supra_.
[3299] _Admiralty Tide Tables_, p. 119.
[3300] _Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde_, xviii, 1865, p. 124;
_Philologus_, xxii, 1865, pp. 309-10.
[3301] See p. 576, n. 1, _supra_.
[3302] _Ib._
[3303] I have not thought it necessary to have a calculation made of
the hour of high tide at Dover on the 7th of July. Whether the stream
turned a little earlier or later than 4.30 a.m. is unimportant. Every
one admits that it turned not very long after daybreak.
[3304] _Admiralty Tide Tables_, p. 119.
[3305] See p. 657, _supra_.
[3306] General von Göler apparently thought that Caesar had gone
through the channel, between the North and the South Goodwins, which is
known as ‘the Swash’ (see his map,--_Gall. Krieg_, 1880, Taf. 1). It is
extremely doubtful whether this channel existed in 54 B.C.
[3307] See S. T. S. Lecky, _Wrinkles in Practical Navigation_, 1884, p.
414.
[3308] See the caution in the Atlas entitled _Tidal Streams_.
[3309] _Archaeologia_, xxxiv, 1852, pp. 243-4, 246.
[3310] _B. G._, v, 18, § 1.
[3311] _The Reader_, Sept. 5, 1863, p. 255.
[3312] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxi, 1864, p. 241.
[3313] In 1905 in the parish of Walmer alone three fields were planted
with wheat, one of which, as I was informed by Mr. J. W. Minter of the
Railway Hotel, covered eighteen acres. Moreover, as Mr. H. E. Malden
observes (_Journal of Philology_, xvii, 1888, pp. 170-1), ‘marks of
ancient cultivation on the sides of downs, where no farmer would
think of ploughing now, are common enough everywhere.’ See also A.
Pitt-Rivers, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, ii, 235, and p. 90,
_supra_.
[3314] _Ordnance Survey of England_, 6 inches to 1 mile, Sheet LVIII.
[3315] _B. G._, iv, 32, §§ 3-4.
[3316] See pp. 697-8, _infra_.
[3317] _B. G._, v, 22, §§ 1-2.
[3318] _Rev. arch._, nouv. sér., viii, 1863, p. 303.
[3319] _Philologus_, xxii, 1865, pp. 309-10.
[3320] _B. G._, vi, 34, 43.
[3321] _Athenæum_, Feb. 27, 1869, p. 317.
[3322] _B. G._, v, 12, § 5.
[3323] _Origines Celticae_, ii, 370-2.
[3324] _Britain and the British Seas_, 1902, p. 315.
[3325] J. Prestwich, _Geology_, ii, 1888, p. 502; Clement Reid, _The
Origin of the Brit. Flora_, 1899, pp. 69, 146. Cf. J. Evans, _Anc.
Bronze Implements_, p. 339, and _Reliquary_, N. S., vii, 1901, p. 92.
[3326] The late Professor Rolleston (_Sc. Papers_, ii, 1884, p. 780)
argued that by _praeter_ Caesar meant ‘besides’. It is true that he
used the word several times in this sense (H. Meusel, _Lex. Caes._, ii,
1186-7): but when he did so the meaning was always unmistakable; and,
as Mr. Colbeck remarks, in his school edition (p. 49), ‘to say “there
is timber of all sorts _besides_ the beech and the fir” is hardly a
natural expression, unless these two trees were the commonest form of
timber [or were non-existent in Gaul], which they were not.’
[3327] _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 186, n. 2. Napoleon’s map (pl. 16)
contradicts his text.
[3328] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxxiii, 1876, pp. 65-6, 71.
[3329] _B. G._, iv, 25, § 1.
[3330] _B. G._, iv, 24, § 3; 26, § 2.
[3331] Mr. H. E. Malden (_Journal of Philology_, xvii, 1888, p. 167)
says that ‘the distance is given at seven or eight Roman miles in
different MSS. of the _Commentaries_’. Why did he not specify the
_MSS._ which have _VIII_ or _octo_? No such _MS._ is mentioned in any
critical edition.
[3332] _Antiquitates Rutupinae_, 1711, pp. 23-4, 44-6, 49-50.
[3333] Similarly, John Harris (_Hist. of Kent_, 1719, p. 274) says
that ‘Caesar himself saith of his Men that they could not _firmiter
insistere_, which implies the Ground was not Hard, Solid, and Good’.
But Caesar only says that his men could not _firmiter insistere_
while they were struggling in the water with the enemy; and in these
circumstances a man could not _firmiter insistere_ in a swimming bath,
the floor of which is ‘hard, solid, and good’.
[3334] _B. G._, v, 13, § 1. If, as I believe, _quo_ means _ad quem_,
referring to _angulus_ and not to _Cantium_, if, that is to say, Caesar
intended to convey that almost all ships from Gaul steered for the
‘corner’, Battely is demanding from Caesar a nicety and precision of
geographical statement which it would be idle to expect from an ancient
writer. Dover is quite close to the _angulus_, even if we must rigidly
limit the latter to the coast between the South and the North Foreland.
[3335] _Hist. Rom._, xxxix, 51, §2.--ἄκραν οὖν τινα προέχουσαν
περιπλεύσας παρεκομίσθη· κἀνταῦθα τοῖς προσμίξαντάς οἱ ἐς τὰ τενάγη
ἀποβαίνοντι νικήσας ἔφθη τῆς γῆς κρατήσας, &c. Τενάγη, as we have seen
(p. 631, _supra_) is simply Dion’s translation of Caesar’s _vada_.
[3336] See pp. 628-31, _supra_.
[3337] Ed. Wesseling, p. 473.
[3338] V. J. Vaillant, _Classis Britannica_, pp. 41-2 and illustration
facing p. 48.
[3339] See A. Holder, _Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz_, ii, 1257-8.
[3340] See pp. 678-82, _infra_.
[3341] It may be argued that if Caesar had landed near Sandwich he
would have landed in Richborough harbour. This objection, such as it
is, would apply equally to Hythe and Pevensey; but it might have been
dangerous to land in a harbour with a narrow entrance in the presence
of an enemy; and Caesar may have had other reasons (see Lord Wolseley’s
_Soldier’s Pocket-Book_, 1886, p. 240). Moreover, the shore of the
harbour must have been very marshy.
[3342] _B. G._, v, 9, § 1.
[3343] p. 630, _supra_.
[3344] ‘The anchorage in the Small Downs is much more secure than
in the Downs, being more sheltered, with better holding ground, and
shoaler water,’ &c. _The Channel Pilot_, 9th ed., 1900, part i, p. 344.
I am informed by Mr. Jordan, one of the Deal boatmen, that ships driven
ashore between Sandown Castle and Sandwich would suffer far less damage
than off Walmer or Deal; and they would probably have suffered somewhat
less even when the Deal shingle was much less steep.
[3345] Prof. B. Niese devotes the greater part of his valuable review
(_Hist. Zeitschrift_, xciii, 97-101) to a criticism of this section of
my book.
[3346] _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, pp. 179-80.
[3347] _Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie_, &c. cliii, 1896, pp. 269-71.
Cf. _Rev. celt._, xxii, 1901, p. 87.
[3348] iv, 16, § 7.
[3349] The MS. reading is _miratos_, which is obviously absurd. The
emendation generally accepted is _munitos_. Professor Tyrrell in an
admirable note (_The Correspondence of Cicero_, ii, 1896, p. 134)
remarks that it is incredible ‘that any copyist found the obvious
_munitos_, and wrote the inexplicable _miratos_. But if he found
the ἅπαξ εἰρημένον _muratos_, he would be nearly certain to write
_miratos_, a common word very near it in form, and that without at all
troubling himself as to the sense of the passage; just as a compositor
will set up “serious effusion” if one writes “serous effusion”’. And,
anticipating the objection that _muratos_ is a post-classical word,
he says, ‘We must remember that we have in these letters a unique
department of literature. A man might easily write in a letter that the
approach to Britain was “absolutely _ramparted_ with masses of cliff”,
though he would not use that word in a formal composition.’ See also
pp. vii-x of the preface to Professor Tyrrell’s second volume.
[3350] _Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie_, &c., cliii, 1896, p. 277.
Dr. Vogel actually takes _molibus_ to mean not ‘masses of cliff’ but
‘defensive works’!
[3351] See § 5 of the letter in question--_Drusus reus est factus
a Lucretio. Iudicibus reiciendis a. d. V. Non. Quinct._ See also
_Hermes_, xl, 1905, pp. 17-9.
[3352] _Q. fr._, ii, 14, §§ 3-4.
[3353] _B. G._, v, 4, § 1.
[3354] _Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie_, &c., cliii, 1896, pp. 278-80.
[3355] See _Jahresberichte d. philol. Vereins_, pp. 240-1 (in
_Zeitschrift f. d. Gymnasialwesen_, 1897).
[3356] _The Correspondence of Cicero_, ii, 1886, p. 126.
[3357] _Q. fr._, iii, 3, § 1.--Sed me illa cura sollicitat angitque
vehementer, quod dierum iam amplius L intervallo nihil a te, nihil
a Caesare, nihil ex istis locis non modo litterarum, sed ne rumoris
quidem adfluxit.
[3358] _Ib._, iii, 1, §§ 17, 25.
[3359] _Att._, iv, 18, § 5.
[3360] _B. G._, v, 22, § 1.
[3361] _Ib._
[3362] _Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie_, &c., cliii, 1896, p. 282.
[3363] See pp. 731-3, _infra_.
[3364] Cf. H. Meusel, _Lex. Caes._, i, 967.
[3365] _B. G._, v, 22, §§ 3-5.
[3366] _Att._, iv, 18, § 5. Cicero does not mention that a large number
of prisoners had also been taken; but Dr. Vogel admits this to have
been the fact. Cf. _Q. fr._, iii, 9, § 4, and _B. G._, v, 23, § 2.
[3367] _Ib._, v, 22, §§ 3-5.
[3368] _Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie_, &c., cliii, 1896, p. 288.
[3369] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. 66.
[3370] _B. G._, iv, 36, §§ 1-3.
[3371] _Hist. Rom._, xxxix, 52, §§ 2-3.
[3372] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. 66.
[3373] _Hist. Rom._, xxxix, 51, § 3.
[3374] _B. G._, iv, 38, § 4. A. J. Dunkin, an antiquary whom Sir Leslie
Stephen thought worthy of a place in the _Dictionary of National
Biography_, devoted a large portion of the second volume of his
_History of the County of Kent_ to an impeachment of Caesar’s veracity;
but his charges are based upon sheer inability to construe easy Latin,
general lack of scholarship, or, in some cases, pure invention. Cf.
_The Gentleman’s Magazine Library_, ed. G. L. Gomme,--Romano-British
Remains, part ii, 1887, pp. 520-2.
[3375] See O. E. Schmidt, _Der Briefwechsel des M. Tullius Cicero_,
1893, pp. 377-92, and Rice Holmes, _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899,
p. 243.
[3376] See pp. 731-3, _infra_.
[3377] p. 319.
[3378] _B. G._, iv, 24, § 2.
[3379] From a foot and a half to two feet, so Commander Boxer, R.N.,
the harbour-master of Folkestone, tells me.
[3380] See pp. 595-665, _supra_.
[3381] _Britannia_, ed. R. Gough, i, 219. Cf. E. Hasted, _Hist. of
Kent_, iv, 1799, p. 163, note _d_.
[3382] _Ib._, p. 162 and note _c_.
[3383] _Archaeol. Cant._, xiii, 1880, pp. 8-16.
[3384] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxxiii, 1876, pp. 66, 68.
[3385] See pp. 736-7, _infra_.
[3386] _B. G._, iv, 33.
[3387] Daremberg and Saglio, _Dict. des ant. grecques et rom._, ii,
815-7.
[3388] See E. Babelon, _Descr. des monn. de la république rom._, i,
1885, pp. 243, 435-6, 462-4, 552.
[3389] _B. G._, v, 19, § 1.
[3390] In the one passage (_ib._, iv, 33, § 2) in which he calls the
drivers _aurigae_ he is obliged to do so in order to distinguish them
from the warriors.
[3391] _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 192.
[3392] v, 29, § 1. Cf. 1 Kings, xxii, 34.
[3393] E. Babelon, _Descr ... des monnaies de la république rom._, i,
549, 552.
[3394] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, x, 1881, p. 128.
[3395] _Chorographia_, iii, 6, § 52--[Britanni] dimicant non equitatu
modo aut pedite, verum et bigis et curribus Gallice armatis: covinnos
vocant, quorum falcatis axibus utuntur.
[3396] _Pharsalia_, i, 426--et docilis rector _rostrati_ Belga covinni.
_Rostrati_ is a conjecture, the MSS. having _monstrati_.
[3397] _Punica_, xvii, 416-7.--Caerulus haud aliter, cum dimicat incola
Thyles | Agmina falcigero circumvenit arta covinno.
[3398] _Agricola_, 35-6.
[3399] See W. Smith, _Dict. of Greek and Rom. Ant._, 3rd ed., i, 560.
[3400] _Monumenta Germaniae Hist.--Iordanis Getica_, ed. Th. Mommsen,
1882, ii, 15--bellum inter se ... saepius gerunt, non tantum equitatu
vel pedite, verum etiam bigis curribusque falcatis, &c.
[3401] M. Théodore Reinach (_Rev. celt._, x, 1899, pp. 123-30) points
out that the testimony of Frontinus (_C. Caesar Gallorum falcatas
quadrigas eadem ratione palis defixis excepit inhibuitque_ [_Strat._,
ii, 3, § 18]), if it is genuine, is negatived by Caesar’s silence, and
that it is probably an interpolation; that it may be inferred from a
passage in Martial (_O iucunda, covinne, solitudo_, | _Carruca magis
essedoque gratum_ | _Facundi mihi munus Aeliani_, &c. [xii, 24]) that a
_covinnus_ was simply ‘un cabriolet attelant à deux’; that Arrian (_Ars
tactica_, 19) expressly distinguished British war-chariots from scythed
chariots; and that neither Polybius, nor Livy, nor Diodorus Siculus,
nor Dion Cassius ever describe the war-chariots of the Celts as
scythed, although they often mention them. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville
(_La civilisation des Celtes_, pp. 339-41) quaintly argues that the
silence of Caesar can be explained by the assumption that scythed
chariots, being as dangerous to friends as to foes, were only used
exceptionally.
[3402] A. Nicaise, _L’époque gaul. dans le dép^t de la Marne_, 1884,
pp. 23-4. Cf. _Rev. celt._, x, 1889, pp. 233-6, and _L’Anthr._, xiii,
1902, p. 66.
[3403] Pitt-Rivers (_Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, iii, 109) is
‘almost tempted to suggest’ that a scythe blade, which he found at
Woodyates, ‘may be one of the war scythes which were attached to the
[British] chariots, as mentioned by Strabo.’ But Strabo (xvii, 3, § 7)
does not say that the Britons had scythed chariots, but the Pharusii
and Nigretes of Mauritania.
[3404] p. 342.
[3405] The diameters of the British chariot-wheels that have been found
vary between 2 ft. 11 in., and 2 ft. 4 ½ in.
[3406] J. B. Davis and J. Thurnam, _Crania Britannica_, ii, pl. 6 and
7, pp. 2-3, 6; J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 134-5.
[3407] This discovery proves that Arrian (_Ars tactica_, 19) and
Dion Cassius (lxxvi, 12, § 3) were right in saying that British
chariot-horses were small. Cf. p. 152, _supra_. For further details of
the discoveries of British chariot-wheels, axles, &c. (by which various
quaint conjectures in von Göler’s _Gall. Krieg_, 1880, p. 156, n. 3,
are stultified), see _Archaeologia_, xxi, 1827, pp. 41-2; W. Greenwell,
_Brit. Barrows_, pp. 454-7; and a valuable article by Canon Greenwell,
a proof of which he has kindly sent to me, and which, I presume, will
be published in vol. lx of _Archaeologia_.
[3408] _Gall. Krieg_, 1880, p. 137, n. 1.
[3409] _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 153, n. 7.
[3410] _B. G._, iv, 34, § 3.
[3411] _Gall. Krieg_, 1880, p. 138, n. 4.
[3412] See p. 680, _infra_.
[3413] _B. G._, v, 9, §§ 1-5.
[3414] See pp. 595-665, _supra_.
[3415] _Essays on the Invasion of Britain_, pp. 35-6.
[3416] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, pp. 87-8, 90.
[3417] _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 186, note 4.
[3418] _The Invasion of Britain_, &c., 1862, p. xciv.
[3419] _B. G._, vii, 69, § 2.
[3420] _Inventorium Sepulchrale_, ed. C. Roach Smith, 1856, p. 35.
Faussett goes on to say (p. 36) that, ‘as a proof of this Aylesbourne
[the Little Stour at Kingston] having been much deeper and broader
than it ever now is, I myself saw the shells of muscles (_sic_) turned
plentifully out of the ground in digging a hole for a post, at the
distance of at least ten rods from the present channel, and at the
perpendicular height of at least three feet above its usual level.’ But
this argument is irrelevant. No geologist would deny that the Little
Stour, when it was cutting out its channel, was ‘broader than it ever
now is’. But when? Perhaps at the inconceivably remote epoch when the
Thames was depositing gravel at a height of 100 feet above its present
level.
[3421] _Villare Cantianum_, 1776, p. 62.
[3422] _B. G._, iv, 38, §2; v, 24, §1.
[3423] _Ib._, 9, §3.
[3424] See Addenda, p. 742.
[3425] _Caesar in Kent_, 2nd ed., 1887, pp. 165-8. I should not notice
this work if it had not been quoted even by antiquaries of repute, and
included by Mr. Gross in his generally valuable bibliography.
[3426] _Caesar in Kent_, p. 163.
[3427] Bryan Faussett, _Inventorium Sepulchrale_, p. 39, n. 2. See also
pp. 36, n. 1, 37, 144-59. ‘That these tumuli,’ says Roach Smith (_ib._,
p. 37), ‘were not cast up in consequence of any battle fought on the
spot, is evident from ... their containing the remains not only of men
... but also of women and children.’
Hasted (_Hist. of Kent_, iii, 1790, p. 752, note _a_) says that ‘all
the learned agree that _Barham down_ was his [Caesar’s] main camp,
to which from his landing in _the Downs_ by _Mongeham_, _Sutton_,
_Eythorne_, _Barston_, and _Snowdown_, there is a continual course
of military works’, &c. (see also vol. iv, 1799, p. 163). But in the
time of the ‘learned’ contemporaries and predecessors of Hasted, it
was not yet understood that the question whether this or that mound
was a ‘military work’, and the further question whether it had been
constructed by Romans, should be settled not by imagination, but by
pick and shovel.
Professor Flinders Petrie (_Archaeol. Cant._, xiii, 1880, p. 12)
remarks that ‘the works on Barham Down, half a mile NE. of Kingston,
appear to be ancient’; but, being a competent archaeologist, he does
not suggest that they were made by Caesar.
[3428] _Caesar in Kent_, p. 186. When Mr. Vine (_ib._, p. 185) gravely
appeals to ‘the direct statement recorded on the chart found in Dover
Castle, that “Caesar, having landed at Deal, afterwards conquered the
Britons on Barham Down”’, one can only wonder why he does not also cite
a ‘direct statement’ more ancient even than Camden’s ‘chart’,--the
statement of Nennius, that Caesar’s second invasion took place three
years after the first.
[3429] Vol. ii, 1814, p. 9.
[3430] Mr. George Payne (_Collectanea Cantiana_, p. 172) speaks of
‘a great _oppidum_ in Pine Wood, Littlebourne’; but no trace of an
entrenchment in this wood is to be found in the 6-Inch Ordnance Map
(Sheet 47).
[3431] See pp. 664-5, _supra_.
[3432] _Proc. Soc. Ant._, 2nd ser., iii, 1864-7, p. 506.
[3433] _Archaeol. Cant._, vii, 1868, pp. li-lii.
[3434] See p. 674, _supra_.
[3435] _Ib._
[3436] ‘Night marches,’ says Lord Wolseley (_The Soldier’s Pocket
Book_, 1886, p. 325), ‘require at least half as much time again as the
same distance would require by daylight.’
[3437] No military earthworks exist at Chilham. See _Archaeol. Cant._,
xiii, 1880, pp. 11-2.
[3438] It is hardly necessary, I suppose, to mention the argument which
various writers, from Camden to Lewin, have based upon the name of
the tumulus near Chilham, called ‘Julliberrie’s Grave’. ‘I am almost
persuaded,’ wrote Camden, ‘that Laberius Durus ... was buried here’
(_Britannia_, ed. R. Gough, i, 215). Laberius Durus, as the reader will
remember, was the name of the tribune who was killed in the action
fought on the day on which Caesar, after he had constructed his naval
camp, returned to the neighbourhood of the place where he had defeated
the Britons on the day after his second landing (_B. G._, v, 15, § 5).
‘Julliberrie’s Grave’ is a neolithic long barrow (_Archaeologia_, xlii,
1869, p. 176, note b), and was erected more than a millennium before
Laberius Durus was born.
[3439] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxxiii, 1876, p. 69. Canon Isaac Taylor
(_Words and Places_, 3rd ed., 1873, p. 237) says that ‘the name of
FORDWICK, the “bay on the arm of the sea”, proves that in the time of
the Danes the estuary must have extended nearly as far as Canterbury’.
Canon Taylor’s etymologies are not to be taken upon trust; but,
granting his conclusion, it does not follow that the estuary was not
fordable at Fordwich, just as the estuary of the Somme was forded near
its mouth by the English army before the battle of Crecy.
[3440] _Archaeologia_, xxi, 1827, p. 505.
[3441] _Gall. Krieg_, 1880, p. 148.
[3442] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxi, 1864, p. 240. Mr. Malden (_Journal
of Philology_, xvii, 1890, p. 168) speaks of Caesar’s narrative as
‘excluding the mile broad estuary of the greater Stour at Grove Ferry
where Dr. Guest placed the battle’. Dr. Guest did no such thing. George
Long (_C. J. Caesaris comm. de b. G._, 1880, p. 226), in a note on
Caesar’s account of the battle, says of Grove Ferry that ‘the locality
fits the description’; and Dr. Guest, commenting on Long’s note, says
(_Origines Celticae_, ii, 1883, pp. 366-7), ‘I know of no reason for
his fixing it at this place, which appears to me to have hardly one of
the necessary requisites.’
[3443] _Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde_, xviii, 1865, pp. 129-30.
[3444] _Retrospections_, ii, 15.
[3445] No _oppidum_ is marked anywhere near Sturry, either on the
One-Inch Ordnance Map (Sheets 273 and 289) or on the map which
illustrates Mr. George Payne’s ‘Archaeological Survey of Kent’
(_Archaeologia_, li, 1888, facing p. 446).
[3446] _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 186, n. 4.
[3447] _Ib._, n. 2.
[3448] See pp. 664-5, _supra_.
[3449] _Archaeologia_, xxxiv, 1852, pp. 243-4. See p. 660, _supra_.
[3450] Read Clausewitz, _On War_ (translated by Col. J. J. Graham, iii,
1873, p. 9); Sir E. B. Hamley, _Operations of War_, 1878, pp. 233-76;
Lord Wolseley, _The Soldier’s Pocket-Book_, 1886, pp. 393-7; and Gen.
Clery, _Minor Tactics_, 12th ed., 1893, pp. 230-5.
[3451] _Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_, xliv, 1888, pp. 290-1. See
also _Archaeol. Cant._, ix, 1874, pp. 13-5, and _Archaeol. Journal_,
lix, 1902, pp. 213-7.
[3452] See p. 337, _supra_.
[3453] _B. G._, v, 9, § 8; 10; 11, §§ 1, 5-7.
[3454] _Ib._, 9, § 1.
[3455] _Ib._, 9, §§ 2-7.
[3456] _Comm. de bellis C. I. Caesaris_, ii, pp. 48-9.
[3457] _C. J. Caesaris comm. de b. G._, 1880, p. 228.
[3458] _Ib._, p. 227.
[3459] _Gall. Krieg_, 1880, p. 150, n. 2.
[3460] _Philologus_, xxxi, 1872, pp. 536-7.
[3461] Or ‘exposed the Romans to the same danger, whether they
retreated or pursued’. See pp. 690-1, _infra_.
[3462] _B. G._, v, 16, §§ 1-3.
[3463] _C. J. Caesaris comm. de b. G._, 1880, pp. 234-5.
[3464] _B. G._, iv, 32, § 5.
[3465] J. Evans, _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, pp. 234, 239, 271-2;
_ib._, Suppl., pp. 520, 535-6.
[3466] Dion Cassius, lxii, 12, § 3.
[3467] Tacitus, _Agricola_, 36.
[3468] See p. 677, _supra_.
[3469] _Gall. Krieg_, 1880, p. 154, note.
[3470] _Ib._, p. 153.
[3471] _C. I. Caesaris comm. de b. G._, 1890, p. 205.
[3472] _C. I. Caesaris b. G. libri VII_, II. Heft, 1890, p. 48.
[3473] _Gai Iuli Caesaris de b. G. comm._, iv, v, 1887, p. 90.
[3474] _B. G._, i, 48, §§ 4-7.
[3475] Quoted by von Göler (_Gall. Krieg_, 1880, p. 154). He does not
give the reference, and I have failed to discover it.
[3476] _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 188.
[3477] _B. G._, v, 17, § 2.
[3478] _C. I. Caesaris comm. de b. G._, 1890, p. 205.
[3479] _B. G._, v, 11, § 8.
[3480] _Ib._, v, 18.
[3481] _Philologus_, xxii, 1865, p. 310. ‘Es wird öfter behauptet, dass
er selbst durch seinen marsch vom landungsplatz bis zur Themse die
breite des landes gemessen habe; zu einer solchen voraussetzung geben
seine worte keine veranlassung [naturally! he would not have taken the
trouble to indicate the grounds upon which he based his estimate]: er
berichtet hier, wie an andern orten, nur was er von andern erfahren
hat.’ Heller seems to forget that this conclusion also is not
authorized by Caesar’s words. If Caesar had formed his estimate from
hearsay, he, or his interpreter, would have had to reduce the terms in
which the estimate of his native informant was expressed to Roman miles.
[3482] O. Manning and W. Bray, _Hist. and Ant. of ... Surrey_, ii,
1809, p. 759.
[3483] _Britannia_, ed. R. Gough, 1789, i, 168.
[3484] _Hist. eccl._, lib. i, cap. ii (ed. C. Plummer, 1896).--In huius
ulteriore ripa Cassobellauno duce inmensa hostium multitudo consederat,
ripamque fluminis ac pene totum sub aqua uadum acutissimis sudibus
praestruxerat; quarum uestigia sudium ibidem usque hodie uisuntur, et
uidetur inspectantibus, quod singulae earum ad modum humani femoris
grossae, et circumfusae plumbo in-mobiliter erant in profundum fluminis
infixae, &c.
[3485] _Archaeologia_, i, 1770, p. 188.
[3486] _One Inch Ordnance Survey_, Sheet 269.
[3487] _Archaeologia_, ii, 1773, pp. 143-53.
[3488] E. W. Brayley, _Topographical Hist. of Surrey_, ii, 1841, p.
344, n. 29.
[3489] _The Soldier’s Pocket-Book_, 1886, p. 312.
[3490] _Origines Celticae_, ii, 384-5, 388, 391-2.
[3491] _Origines Celticae_, ii, 384.
[3492] _Ib._, pp. 384-5.
[3493] _Origines Celticae_, ii, 391-2.
[3494] Hurleyford is about 2½ miles west of Great Marlow.
[3495] _Origines Celticae_, ii, 388.
[3496] _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 191, n. 2.
[3497] _Origines Celticae_, ii, 386-7.
[3498] _Ib._, p. 387.
[3499] _Archaeol. Journal_, xlii, 1885, pp. 269-302; xlvi, 1889, pp.
75-6; xlvii, 1890, pp. 43-7, 170; _Proc. Geologists’ Association_, xi,
1891, p. 224.
[3500] _Caesars gall. Krieg_, 1880, p. 155, n. 2.
[3501] _Archaeologia_, xl, 1866, pp. 51-2.
[3502] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, xxvi, 1846, pp. 256-7.
[3503] W. Maitland, _Hist. of London_, i, 1756, p. 8; _Journ. Brit.
Archaeol. Association_, N. S., iii, 1897, p. 102.
[3504] _Ib._, xvi, 1860, p. 135; Camden’s _Britannia_, ed. Edmund
Gibson, i, 1772, p. 329.
[3505] Manning’s _Surrey_, ii, 760.
[3506] _Origines Celticae_, ii, 388.
[3507] _Ib._, pp. 404-5.
[3508] _Bregant-forda and the Hanweal_, 1904, pp. 1, 22-7. Mr. Sharpe
reasonably suggests that Bede referred not to the Coway but to the
Brentford stakes.
[3509] _B. G._, v, 18.
[3510] _Gall. Krieg_, 1880, p. 155.
[3511] _Ib._, n. 2.
[3512] _Comm. de César_, i, 1785, p. 334.
[3513] _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 191-2.
[3514] _Gai Iuli Caesaris de b. G. comm._, iv, v, 1887, p. 92.
[3515] _Comm. de bellis C. I. Caesaris_, ii, 1849, p. 80.
[3516] Tum nostri cohortati inter se, ne tantum dedecus admitteretur,
universi ex navi desiluerunt. Hos item ex proximis navibus cum
conspexissent, subsecuti hostibus adpropinquaverunt.
[3517] See _B. G._, v, 17, § 5.
[3518] _B. G._, v, 19-21.
[3519] See _Archaeol. Journal_, xxii, 1865, pp. 299-301.
[3520] _Archeaologia_, i, 1770, p. 189.
[3521] _B. G._, v, 21, § 1. The habitat of the Cassi is unknown; and
it is very doubtful whether Cassiobury preserves their name. Sir John
Evans (_Archaeologia_, liii, 1892, p. 247) remarks that ‘at the time of
the invasion of Julius Caesar this [Hertfordshire] ... appears to have
been occupied by the Cassi, who not improbably were the same tribe as
... the Catyeuchlani’, or Catuvellauni. With all due deference to so
high an authority. I take leave to say, first, that is no evidence that
the Cassi occupied Hertfordshire; secondly, that there is no evidence
for identifying them with the Catuvellauni; and lastly, that the Cassi,
who surrendered before the capture of Cassivellaunus’s stronghold,
cannot have been identical with the people who were under the immediate
control of Cassivellaunus.
[3522] _Gall. Krieg_, 1880, p. 157, n. 2.
[3523] _Archaeologia_, xl, 1866. pp. 65-6.
[3524] There is no evidence that Cassivellaunus had _conquered_
the Trinovantes, though he had killed their king, the father of
Mandubracius.
[3525] See pp. 703-5, _infra_.
[3526] _Archaeologia_, xl, 1866, pp. 51-2.
[3527] _Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association_, xvi, 1860, pp. 136-7, 142.
[3528] At Redbourn in Hertfordshire is ‘an oval encampment probably
pre-Roman’ (_Archaeologia_, liii, 1892, p. 259); and near Therfield in
the same county there is a British camp ‘on right of road from Baldock’
(_ib._, p. 261; J. E. Cussans, _Hist. of Herts_ [Hundred of Osney], i,
116). It is perhaps just possible that if these camps were excavated,
some light might be thrown upon the question.
[3529] xiv, 33, § 1.--Suetonius ... Londinium perrexit, cognomento
quidem coloniae non insigne, sed copia negotiatorum et commeatuum
maxime celebre.
[3530] _E.g._ by W. H. Black in _Archaeologia_, xl, 1866, pp. 50-2.
[3531] _Ib._, pp. 59-66.
[3532] Tacitus, _Ann._, xiv, 33. ‘The chief commercial town,’ says
Professor Haverfield (_Vict. Hist. of ... Northampton_, i, 164), ‘was
from the earliest times, Londinium.’
[3533] _Hist. Rom._, lx, 21, §§ 3-4. Lewin would have found more
conclusive proof of the pre-eminence of Camulodunum in Sir John Evans’s
_Coins of the Ancient Britons_.
[3534] See W. J. Loftie’s _Hist. of London_, i, 1883, map facing p.
1; and _Historic Towns,--London_, 1887, map facing p. 16. See also
_Archaeol. Journal_, lx, 1903, pp. 137-204, and particularly 155-6.
[3535] _Historic Towns,--London_, p. 2.
[3536] Vol. i, p. 16.
[3537] _Words and Places_, p. 185.
[3538] _Archaeol. Journal_, lx, 1903, p. 174.
[3539] _Origines Celticae_, ii, 405-6.
[3540] _London_ is commonly derived from two Celtic words--_llyn_,
_din_--meaning ‘the lake fort’ (see _Geogr. Journal_, xiii, 1899, p.
299). One objection to this etymology is that Mr. F. C. J. Spurrell
(_Archaeol. Journal_, xlii, 1885, pp. 300-2) has proved that the lake,
which was described so picturesquely by J. R. Green (_The Making of
England_, i, 1897, p. 113) did not exist. Moreover, Dr. Henry Bradley
(_Morning Post_, Jan. 8, 1907, p. 4, col. 3) tells us that ‘the only
explanation which is philologically possible is that it [Londinium]
denoted a plot of ground belonging to a person named Londinos, which
means “fierce”’.
[3541] I say ‘a _purely_ Celtic name’ in contradistinction to such
hybrid names as Augusto-_dunum_ (Autun), &c.
[3542] See pp. 664-5, _supra_.
[3543] _The Making of England_, i, 1897, p. 117, n. 1.
[3544] _Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden_, ed. Churchill Babington, vol.
ii, 1869, pp. 44-6.--Secunda via principalis dicitur Watlingstrete....
Incipit enim a Dovoria, transiens per medium Cantiae ultra Thamisiam
juxta Londoniam ad occidentem Westmonasterii, &c.
[3545] _Archaeol. Journal_, xxxiv, 1877, p. 166.
[3546] Sir J. Evans, _Anc. Stone Implements_, 1897, p. 586; Worthington
G. Smith, _Man, the Primeval Savage_, pp. 190, 214.
[3547] J. Evans, _Anc. Bronze Implements_, pp. 95, 158, 174-5, 245,
248-9, 272, 278-81, 303, 312, 321, 327-8, 330, 339, 351, 356, 400-1,
411, 424, 450, 467; _Coins of the Anc. Britons_, pp. 70, 83, 122,
125, 232; _ib._, Suppl., p. 559; _Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron
Age_ (Brit. Museum), p. 98. Mr. F. W. Reader (_Archaeol. Journal_,
lx, 1903, p. 213) argues that ‘it is difficult to conceive that if
any considerable British town preceded [the Roman] _Londinium_, all
traces of it in the shape of pottery fragments, &c., should ... have
been so entirely obliterated’, &c. But the same argument would apply to
Calleva, Camulodunum, and other towns which were certainly British.
[3548] See p. 359, _supra_.
[3549] Cf. Ammianus Marcellinus, xxvii, 8, § 7,--Lundinum, vetus
oppidum quod Augustam posteritas appellavit; _ib._, xxviii, 3, §
7,--Augusta, quam veteres appellavere Lundinum.
[3550] See pp. 600-3, _supra_.
[3551] _B. G._, iv, 29-36.
[3552] Le Verrier _apud_ Napoleon III, _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 522.
See the next footnote.
[3553] T. Bergk (_Jahrbücher für classische Philologie_, 13
Supplementband, 1884, p. 618, n. 2) remarks that Caesar himself
regarded the 24th, not the 26th, of September as the date of the
equinox. His authority is, I suppose, Vegetius, iv, 39, who says that
the autumnal equinox occurred _VIII Kal. Oct._: but, according to
Pliny (_Nat. Hist._, xviii, 25 [59], §§ 220-1), it fell on the 28th
of September, and according to Varro (_Rerum rust._, i, 28, §§ 1-2),
on the 27th. Columella (_De re rust._, ix, 14) places it _about_ the
24th of September (_circa VIII calend. Octobris_); and the 24th was,
according to Mommsen (_Die röm. Chron. bis auf Caesar_, 1859, p. 301),
the date adopted in the Julian calendar. But that date was fixed by the
calculations of Sosigenes: what right, then, has Bergk to assume that
Caesar regarded it as the date of the equinox in 54 B.C., nine years
before his reform of the calendar took effect?
[3554] Napoleon’s reasoning is based upon assumptions, one of which
is certainly incorrect, while all are doubtful. We know that Caesar
started on his return voyage soon after midnight _(B. G._, iv, 36, §
3). ‘If,’ says Napoleon (_Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 180, note), ‘we
assume that he had a favourable wind, as he had on his return from the
second expedition, and that his voyage lasted nine hours, Caesar would
have reached Boulogne about nine o’clock in the morning. As the fleet
could only enter the harbour on a rising tide, all that we need do in
order to ascertain approximately the date of his return, is to find
out on what day of September, 699, there was high tide at that hour at
Boulogne. Now in that harbour there is always a high tide about nine
o’clock in the morning two or three days before full moon and before
new moon. Therefore, as the full moon of September, 699, took place on
the 14th of the month, Caesar must have returned to Gaul about the 11th
or 12th of September.’
There is no fault to be found with the conclusion (except that it is
uncertain), but much with the argument. To begin with, as there had
been a full moon on the 31st of August, it is obvious that not the full
moon but the new moon of September took place on the 14th of the month.
This error, indeed, is immaterial; but Napoleon has no right to assume
that Caesar reached Boulogne about nine o’clock in the morning, for
the circumstances of his return voyage in the second expedition were
totally different from those of the preceding year. In 54 B.C. there
was a dead calm (_summa tranquillitate_, _B. G._, v, 23, § 6), and the
ships were rowed: in 55 they sailed. Moreover, it is untrue that the
fleet could only enter the harbour of Boulogne at high tide (see p.
586, _supra_).
[3555] Vol. i (3rd ed.), p. 343. See also J. P. Postgate, _M. Annaei
Lucani de bello civili liber VII_, 1900, p. xiv, n. 3; A. G. Peskett,
_C. I. Caesaris comm. de bello civili liber tertius_, 1900, p. 68; and
H. Meusel, _C. I. Caesaris comm. de b.c._, pp. xiv, 367 ff.
[3556] _Sat._, i, 13, §§ 12-3.--sed octavo quoque anno intercalares
octo affluebant dies ex singulis, quibus vertentis anni numerum apud
Romanos super Graecum abundasse iam diximus. Hoc quoque errore iam
cognito haec species emendationis inducta est. Tertio quoque octennio
ita intercalandos dispensabant dies, ut non nonaginta sed sexaginta sex
intercalarent, compensatis viginti et quattuor diebus pro illis qui per
totidem annos supra Graecorum numerum creverant.
[3557] See Th. Mommsen, _Die röm. Chron. bis auf Caesar_, 1859, pp.
45-6, and _Rev. hist._, xlii, 1890, p. 401.
[3558] Censorinus, _De die natali_, xx, 4, § 6.--Quod delictum
ut corrigeretur, pontificibus datum negotium eorumque arbitrio
intercalandi ratio permissa.
[3559] _Ib._, § 7.--Sed horum [pontificum] plerique ob odium vel
gratiam, quo quis magistratu citius abiret diutiusve fungeretur aut
publici redemtor ex anni magnitudine in lucro damnove esset, plus
minusve ex libidine intercalando rem sibi ad corrigendum mandatam
ultro quod depravarunt &c. See also Plutarch, _Caesar_, 59; Ammianus
Marcellinus. xxvi, 1, § 12; and Macrobius, _Sat._, i, 14, § 1.
[3560] Asconius, _in Milonianam_, p. 35 (_M. Tullii Ciceronis opera_,
ed. J. C. Orelli and J. G. Baiter, vol. v, pars ii, 1833).
[3561] It may be well to give the proof. Cicero (_Att._, v, 13, §
1) tells us that the period from the 18th of January, 702, the day
on which Clodius was murdered, to the 22nd of July, 703, reckoning
inclusively, comprised 560 days; and the reader may satisfy himself
that this statement is untrue if there was an intercalary month in
703, and true if there was not. From these data and from the further
statement made by Cicero in his speech _Pro Milone_, 98, that the day
on which he delivered the speech, namely the 8th of April, 702, was the
101st day since the murder of Clodius, it follows that the intercalary
month in 702 amounted to 23 days. It is stated by Curio in a letter
to Cicero (_Fam._, viii, 6, § 5) and by Dion Cassius (xl, 62, §§ 1-2)
that there was no intercalary month in 704. It can be proved from the
chronological statements which have come down to us regarding the
movements of Caesar and Pompey in 705 that there was no intercalary
month in that year. Plutarch (_Caesar_, 35, § 1) tells us that Caesar
made himself master of Italy in 60 days. Shortly before the 17th of
January, 705, the day on which Pompey fled from Rome, Caesar crossed
the Rubicon (_Att._, ix, 10, § 4; Caesar, _B. C._, i, 14, § 3); and it
has been proved (Stoffel, _Guerre civile_, i, 202-3; O. E. Schmidt,
_Der Briefwechsel des M. Tullius Cicero_, 1893, p. 104, n. 2) that the
exact date was either January 10 or January 11. On the 18th of March he
took Brundisium (_Att._, ix, 15, § 6),--65 days, reckoning inclusively,
after his passage of the Rubicon, if there was no intercalary month,
but 87 or 88 if there was one. Again, he took Corfinium on the 21st of
February, quitted it the same day (_ib._, viii, 14, § 1), and marched
direct to Brundisium, where he arrived on the 9th of March (_ib._, ix,
13, § 13A). The distance between the two places, measured along the
route which Colonel Stoffel believes Caesar to have followed, is 465
kilometres, or about 289 miles. O. E. Schmidt (_Der Briefwechsel des M.
T. Cicero_, pp. 385-9) decides for another route; but the difference of
opinion between him and Colonel Stoffel does not affect my argument. If
there was an intercalary month in 705, Caesar occupied 39 or 40 days on
the march, which, considering the notorious rapidity of his movements,
is incredible: if there was not, he occupied 17 days (see Stoffel,
_Guerre civile_, i, 196-7). That there was no intercalary month either
in 706 or in 707 is evident from a statement in one of Cicero’s letters
to Atticus (x, 17, § 3), written on the 16th of May, 705,--‘At present
the equinox is delaying us, which has been very stormy’ (_Nunc quidem
aequinoctium nos moratur, quod valde perturbatum erat_). The equinox
actually occurred on the 24th of March. If there was no intercalary
month either in 706 or in 707, the 16th of May, 705, fell on the 24th
or the 25th of March, 49 B.C. of the Julian calendar. If there was
an intercalary month in either of those years, it fell on the 2nd
or the 3rd of March. [Le Verrier, who also holds that there was no
intercalation in 706 or 707, says that May 16, 705, fell on April 16,
49 B.C.; but Le Verrier assumed, wrongly, as we shall see, that ‘the
year of confusion’ contained only 422, not 445 days.]
[3562] _De die natali_, xx, 4, §§ 8-10.--[adeo aberratum est] ut C.
Caesar ... duos menses intercalarios dierum LXVII in mensem Novembrem
et Decembrem interponeret, cum iam mense Februario dies III et XX
intercalasset, faceretque eum annum dierum CCCCXLV, &c.
[3563] Napoleon III, _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 521-3; or Stoffel,
_Hist. de Jules César,--Guerre civile_, ii, 387-9.
[3564] _B. G._, v, 23, § 5.
[3565] Cicero, _Att._, iv, 18, § 5.
[3566] On the theory of Ideler the sixth day before the Kalends of
October, 700, corresponded with the 29th of August, 54 B.C. See his
_Handbuch der ... Chron._, ii, 1826, pp. 115-7, &c.
[3567] _Divus Iulius_, 40.
[3568] _De die natali_, xx, 4, § 8. According to Macrobius (_Sat._, i,
14, § 3), the year 708 contained 443 days; according to Solinus (i, 45)
344. These figures are obviously incorrect.
[3569] xliii, 26, §§ 1-2.--Τὰς ἡμέρας τῶν ἐτῶν οὐ πάντῃ ὁμολογούσας
σφίσι ... κατεστήσατο ἐς τὸν νῦν τρόπον ἑπτὰ καὶ ἑξήκοντα ἡμέρας
ἐμβαλών, ὅσαιπερ ἐς τὴν ἀπαρτιλογίαν παρέφερον. ἤδη μὲν γάρ τινες καὶ
πλείους ἔφασαν ἐμβληθῆναι, τὸ δ’ ἀληθὲς οὕτως ἔχει.
[3570] Colonel Stoffel (_Guerre civile_, ii, 299-304), while agreeing
with Le Verrier’s conclusion, argues that the statement of Suetonius is
in perfect accord with that of Dion; for, he remarks, Suetonius tells
us that three months were intercalated in 708, namely, the ordinary
month which should have been intercalated in that year, and two others
between November and December; and, says Colonel Stoffel, three
intercalary, months of 22, 23, and 22 days respectively would have
amounted to 67 days.
[3571] _Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie_, &c., cxxix, 1884, p. 588.
[3572] _Cäsars gall. Krieg und Theile seines Bürgerkriegs_, ii, 1880,
p. 199. See also A. W. Zumpt (_Jahrbücher für classische Philologie_,
vii. Supplementband, 1873-5, p. 556), who, in my opinion, proves
his point. Mommsen (_Die röm. Chron. bis auf Caesar_, 1859, p. 277)
maintains that the mere fact that the two extraordinary intercalary
months were called _prior_ and _posterior_ respectively, not _secundus_
and _tertius_, proves that the intercalary month inserted before March,
708, was not regarded as belonging to the calendar year 708 at all, but
only to the consular year; in other words, that the calendar year began
on the 1st of January in 709 for the first time. This view is severely,
and I think justly, criticized by Bergk (_Jahrbücher für classische
Philologie_, 13 Supplementband, 1884, pp. 631-5).
[3573] _Att._, x, 17, § 3.
[3574] Le Verrier should of course have written ‘23 jours’.
[3575] Col. Stoffel, _Guerre civile_, ii, 389.
[3576] Le Verrier overlooks or ignores the fact that in his very next
letter (x, 18, § 1), also written at Cumae, Cicero described the
weather as ‘an absolutely dead calm’ (_mirificae tranquillitates_).
[3577] Mr. Shuckburgh (_The Letters of Cicero_, i, 1899, p. 327) says
by mistake, ‘the 26th of September,’ forgetting that in the unreformed
Roman calendar there were not 30, but only 29 days in September.
[3578] _Att._, iv, 18, § 5. The MS. reading is (a litoribus Britanniae)
_proximo_, which is nonsense. Dr. Vogel, however, attempts to translate
the untranslatable. ‘What other meaning,’ he asks (_Neue Jahrbücher für
Philologie_, &c., cliii, 1896, p. 283), ‘can the somewhat extraordinary
expression _datas a litoribus Britanniae proximo_ have than that the
letter was written in the neighbourhood of the coast of Britain, and
therefore not quite at the sea?’ The words will not bear this or any
other meaning; and it is obvious that Caesar would have gained nothing
by writing when he was ‘not quite at the sea’; unless, indeed, in
order to save a few hours’ delay in the transmission of an unimportant
private letter, he had sent on a messenger to the coast with orders to
embark on a special galley! For _proximo_ Boot substituted _proximis_,
a conjecture which is generally accepted. Whatever Cicero may have
written, it is certain that the letters which he received from his
brother and from Caesar were written in Britain; but T. Bergk, to whom
the conclusions which commend themselves to plain men are generally
distasteful, insists (_Jahrbücher für classische Philologie_, 13
Supplementband, 1884, p. 616) that _litoribus Britanniae proximo_ means
‘the coasts nearest _to_ Britain, that is to say, Boulogne’; and he
defends this interpretation by the argument that Caesar had a rooted
dislike of mentioning unknown names. But, as Bergk himself maintains,
Boulogne was the Portus Itius; and, as Caesar twice mentioned the
Portus Itius in his _Commentaries_ (_B. G._, v, 2, § 3; 5, § 1), it is
difficult to see why he should have shrunk from doing so in a letter.
Bergk’s theory leads him to the absurd conclusion that Caesar quitted
Britain for Gaul on the day before he wrote this letter, that is to
say, on the 29th (or 30th) of August of the Julian calendar. Absurd,
because, as I show in the text (p. 713), Cicero would in that case
have written, not (exercitum _e_ Britannia) _reportabant_, but
_reportaverant_; and because Caesar, who had not quitted Britain in the
preceding year until, at the earliest, September 11, would not have
felt obliged to sail four weeks before the equinox ‘because the equinox
was at hand’, and would certainly have thought it perfectly safe to
wait several days longer for the return of the ships which carried the
first detachment of his army back to Gaul, and which he could ill spare.
[3579] _B. G._, v, 23, § 5.
[3580] Cicero, _Att._, iv, 18, § 5; _B. G._, v, 23.
[3581] Cicero, _Q. fr._, iii, 3, § 1.
[3582] Cf. Unger (_Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie_, &c., cxxix, 1884,
p. 586), and Zumpt (_Jahrbücher für classische Philologie_, vii
Supplementband, 1873-5, p. 564).
Bergk (_ib._, 13 Supplementband, 1884, p. 618), remarking that Napoleon
admits that Caesar quitted Britain in 55 B.C. as early as the 12th
of September, says that the rise of Arcturus, which, according to
Pliny (_Nat. Hist._, xviii, 31 [74], § 310), took place on that day,
marked the commencement of the stormy season, and that it is therefore
inconceivable that Caesar would have postponed his departure until
the middle of the month. I do not attach the least importance to this
argument. Caesar went by the equinox, not by the rise of Arcturus,
and he waited as long as he thought safe. Moreover, Bergk apparently
forgets that the date fixed by Pliny for the rise of Arcturus was
borrowed from the Julian calendar, the astronomical calculations for
which were not made until 46 B.C. [It should be noted that, according
to Columella (_De re rust._, xi, 2), whom Bergk also quotes, the rise
of Arcturus took place on the 17th of September, but the 13th presaged
the approach of stormy weather (_tempestatem significat_).]
[3583] Vol. ii (3rd ed.), pp. 251-2. See also Varro, _Rerum rust._, ii,
1, and W. Soltau, _Röm. Chron._, 1889, p. 38, n. 1.
[3584] _Hist. Rom._, xl, 47, § 1.
[3585] _Ib._, xlviii, 33, § 4.
[3586] _Nat. Hist._, xviii, 25 (57), § 211.--ea ipsa ratio postea
comperto errore correcta est, ita ut duodecim annis continuis non
intercalaretur.
[3587] _Collect. rerum memorabilium_, i, 45-6.--vitium admissum est per
sacerdotes. Nam cum praeceptum esset, anno quarto ut intercalarent unum
diem, et oporteret confecto quarto anno id observari, antequam quintus
auspicaretur, illi incipiente quarto intercalarunt, non desinente.
Sic per annos sex et triginta cum novem dies tantummodo sufficere
debuissent, duodecim sunt intercalati.
[3588] _Divus Augustus_, 31.--Annum a Divo Iulio ordinatum, sed postea
neglegentia conturbatum atque confusum, rursus ad pristinam rationem
redegit.
[3589] _Ib._, 40.--annumque ad cursum solis accommodavit, ut
trecentorum sexaginta quinque dierum esset, et intercalario mense
sublato unus dies quarto quoquo anno intercalaretur.
[3590] _De die natali_, xx, 4, § 10.--Praeterea pro quadrante diei, qui
annum verum suppleturus videbatur, instituit, ut peracto quadrienni
circuitu dies unus, ubi mensis quondam solebat, post Terminalia
intercalaretur.
[3591] _Sat._, i, 14, §§ 6, 13.--[Caesar] statuit ut quarto quoque
anno sacerdotes ... unum intercalarent diem ... sic annum civilem
Caesar habitis ad lunam dimensionibus constitutum edicto palam posito
publicavit et [error] huc usque stare potuisset, ni sacerdotes sibi
errorem novum ex ipsa emendatione fecissent. Nam cum oporteret diem
qui ex quadrantibus confit quarto quoque anno confecto antequam
quintus inciperet intercalare, illi quarto non peracto sed incipiente
intercalabant. Hic error sex et triginta annos permansit ... sed
hunc quoque errorem ... correxit Augustus, qui annos duodecim sine
intercalari die transigi iussit, ut illi tres dies ... sequentibus
annis duodecim nullo die intercalato devorarentur.
[3592] See W. Soltau, _Röm. Chron._, p. 171, and L. Holzapfel in
_Philologus_, xlix, 1890, p. 67.
[3593] See p. 713, _supra_.
[3594] xl, 47, § 1.--καὶ ἡ ἀγορὰ ἡ διὰ τῶν ἐννέα ἀεὶ ἡμερῶν ἀγομένη ἐν
αὐτῇ τῇ τοῦ Ἰανουαρίου νουμηνίᾳ ἤχθη.
[3595] xlviii, 33, § 4.--ἡμέρα ἐμβόλιμος παρὰ τὰ καθεστηκότα ἐνεβλήθη,
ἵνα μὴ ἡ νουμηνία τοῦ ἐχομένου ἔτους τὴν ἀγορὰν τὴν διὰ τῶν ἐννέα
ἡμερῶν ἀγομένην λάβῃ &c.
[3596] Mommsen, falling into an inexplicable confusion of thought,
insists (_Die röm. Chron. bis auf Caesar_, 1859, pp. 283-6) that the
extraordinary intercalation mentioned by Dion took place not in 713
but in 714. Dion’s words, he says (_ib._, p. 283, n. 5), belong to a
passage which immediately follows his description of the events of 714;
which deals with the events of 713 and 714; which begins with the words
ἔν τε τῷ πρὸ τούτου ἔτει (713); and which ends with the words ταῦτα
μὲν ἐν τοῖς δύο ἔτεσιν (713-4) ἐγένετο. He says that Dion’s words,
taken by themselves, allow us to refer the extraordinary intercalation
either to 713 or to 714; but he maintains that it must be referred to
714, because otherwise the sequence of the nundinal letters would be
inexplicable. But the truth is, as the simple arithmetical calculation
which I have given on pp. 713-4 shows, that the sequence is perfectly
explicable if the extraordinary intercalation took place in 713,
hopelessly inexplicable if it took place in 714. Except Unger, all
recent chronologists (see, for instance, _Hermes_, xxiii, 1888, p.
51 and n. 1) have recognized Mommsen’s blunder. Dion says that the
extraordinary intercalation took place ἐν τῷ πρὸ τούτου ἔτει: Mommsen
himself affirms that τὸ πρὸ τούτου ἔτος was the year 713; yet he will
have it that the extraordinary intercalation took place in 714!
[3597] The year 702, as we have already seen, contained 378 days; each
of the five years 703, 704, 705, 706, and 707 contained 355 days; the
year 708 contained 445 days; one of the four years 709, 710, 711, and
712 contained _ex hypothesi_ 366 days, and the other three 365; and if
there had been no intercalation in 713, that year would have contained
365 days. Then the number of days from the Kalends of January, 702, to
the last day of December, 713, would have been 378 + 355 × 5 + 445 +
366 + 365 × 4 = 4,424 days, which is a multiple of 8.
[3598] _Röm. Chron._, pp. 171-3.
[3599] Holzapfel, A. Mommsen, and Unger.
[3600] See _Philologus_, xlix, 1890, p. 88.
[3601] See p. 715, _supra_.
[3602] καὶ δῆλον ὅτι [ἡμέρα ἐμβόλιμος] ἀνθυφῃρέθη αὖθις, ὅπως ὁ χρόνος
κατὰ τὰ τῷ Καίσαρι τῷ προτέρῳ δόξαντα συμβῇ (_Hist. Rom._, xlviii, 33,
§ 4).
[3603] _Röm. Chron._, i, 1883, pp. 11-8.
[3604] _Hermes_, xxiii, 1888, p. 56, note.
[3605] See p. 716, _supra_.
[3606] _Philologus_, xlix, 1890, p. 85.
[3607] _Philologus_, xlix, 1890, p. 72.
[3608] _Hermes_, xxiii, 1888, p. 50.
[3609] _Hermes_, xxiii, 1888, p. 48.
[3610] Assuming that the pontiffs misunderstood Caesar’s regulation,
and did not simply set it aside, is it possible to explain their
mistake? It is often taken for granted that the Romans only used the
inclusive method of reckoning. This, however, is an error: Holzapfel
shows that our method was generally adopted by Cicero, except of course
in the case of dates. Generally, however, in ordinary speech, when
the number in question was less than ten, the tendency was to employ
the inclusive method; and, as the same tendency prevailed in official
phraseology, Holzapfel argues (_Philologus_, xlix, 1890, p. 74) that it
would not have been unnatural for the pontiffs to interpret Caesar’s
regulations in this sense. See also Th. Mommsen, _Die röm. Chron. bis
auf Caesar_, 1859, pp. 162-3, 317; L. Holzapfel, _Röm. Chron._, pp.
353-4; and p. 602, n. 5, _supra_. But, apart from the question of Roman
methods of reckoning, is it likely that the pontiffs should have been
ignorant of the astronomical reason which led Caesar to enact that one
year in every four must contain an intercalary day? Holzapfel thinks
that it is. ‘We shall hardly do the pontiffs an injustice,’ he says
(_Philologus_, xlix, 1890, p. 74), ‘if we assume that they knew about
as much of the actual duration of the [solar] year as Censorinus, who
treats the matter as not yet thoroughly ascertained.’ The passage
in Censorinus (_De die natali_, xix, 2), to which Holzapfel refers,
runs as follows:--_Hoc tempus quot dierum esset, ad certum nondum
astrologi reperire potuerunt_. He then quotes various astronomers, all
of whom agreed of course that the number of days was 365, but differed
in regard to the fraction of a day by which the duration of the year
exceeded 365 days. Perhaps the pontiffs did not know that Sosigenes,
upon whose calculations Caesar relied, estimated that fraction at one
quarter (see p. 725, _infra_). If they set aside Caesar’s regulation
not from ignorance but deliberately, their motive must have been to
avoid the coincidence of the Kalends of January in every third year
with a nundinal day.
[3611] _Philologus_, xlix, 1890, p. 72 and n. 1.
[3612] _Sat._, i, 13, § 17.--quotiens incipiente anno dies coepit qui
addictus est nundinis, omnis ille annus infaustis casibus luctuosus
fuit, maximeque Lepidiano tumultu opinio ista firmata est.
[3613] To spare the reader the trouble of doing a sum, I give the
proof. The 1st of January, 702, fell, as we have already seen (p. 713),
on a market-day; therefore, if the 1st of January, 711, did the same,
the number of days that elapsed from the 1st of January, 702, to the
last day of December, 710, inclusive, must have been divisible by 8.
The year 702 contained 378 days; each of the years 703-7 contained 355
days; 708 contained 445; and _ex hypothesi_ 709 and 710 each contained
365. Now 378 + 355 × 5 + 445 + 365 × 2 = 3,328, which is exactly
divisible by 8.
[3614] Cf. Th. Mommsen, _Die röm. Chron. bis auf Caesar_, 1859, pp. 25,
286. Unger remarks (_Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie_, &c., cxxix, 1884,
p. 760) that the outburst of 676 [or rather 677] was too insignificant
to have been selected by Macrobius as an illustration. Moreover, says
Holzapfel, the particular _tumultus_ owing to which the superstitious
dread of the coincidence of _nundinae_ with the Kalends of January was
intensified must have been preceded by other calamities associated with
the same coincidence. In the earlier part of 702, when the Kalends of
January fell on a market-day, there were no consuls, which might well
awaken apprehensions. In 705, when the same coincidence occurred, the
Civil War broke out. The _Lepidianus tumultus_ of 711 was accompanied
by proscriptions; therefore the superstition would have been confirmed,
as Macrobius says, by that _tumultus_.
Undoubtedly,--if, as Holzapfel maintains, it is true that in 711 the
Kalends of January fell upon a market-day. But this is the very point
at issue; and Holzapfel seems to ignore the possibility that the
_Lepidianus tumultus_ of 677 may also ‘have been preceded by other
calamities associated with the same coincidence’. Moreover, Matzat
objects that of the events of 711 the outbreak of Lepidus was the least
important, and that if Macrobius had intended to refer to that year,
he would have said _tumultus Antonianus_. Holzapfel replies that when
Lepidus joined Antony, the war which the latter had begun assumed a
new phase, and Lepidus became commander-in-chief of the united armies
(Velleius Paterculus, ii, 63, § 1; Appian, _B. C._, iii, 84), a fact
which justifies the phrase, _Lepidianus tumultus_. Further, to show
how flagitious the conduct of Lepidus appeared to contemporaries, he
refers to Cicero, _Fam._, xii, 8, § 1 (_Scelus adfinis tui Lepidi ...
cognosse te arbitror_), 9, § 2 (_Nos, confectum bellum quom putaremus,
repente a Lepido tuo in summam sollicitudinem sumus adducti_), and 10,
§ 3 (_Praeclare viceramus, nisi spoliatum, inermem, fugientem Lepidus
recepisset Antonium. Itaque numquam tanto odio civitati Antonius fuit
quanto est Lepidus; ille enim ex turbulenta re p., hic ex pace et
victoria bellum excitavit_).
[3615] _Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie_, &c., cxxix, 1884, p. 760.
[3616] _Hermes_, xxiii, 1888, pp. 60-1.
[3617] _Pharsalia_, viii, 808.
[3618] _Philologus_, xlix, 1890, p. 69.
[3619] Matzat’s theory, Holzapfel insists (_Philologus_, xlix, 1890,
pp. 71-2), forces him to contradict himself. First, he argues (_Röm.
Chron._, i, 1883, p. 17) that Caesar fixed the time of his first
intercalation _simply_ with the object of preventing the Kalends of
January, 711, from falling on a market-day; in other words, he holds
that the intercalary day contemplated by Caesar was a movable one.
But if so, we must disregard the testimony of Dion, who says that
the intercalation of 713 was ‘contrary to the regulations’ (παρὰ τὰ
καθεστηκότα). Accordingly in _Hermes_, xxiii, 1888, p. 51, Matzat
silently abandons his earlier view, and assumes that Caesar intended to
intercalate in 714, 718, 722, &c. But if this cycle had been observed,
the 1st of January, 714, 717, 720, and so on, would have fallen on
a market-day; and therefore Matzat’s revised theory is obviously
irreconcilable with his original view, that Caesar intercalated in 710
in order to prevent the Kalends of January, 711, from falling on a
market-day.
Matzat has not, so far as I can discover, made any rejoinder to
Holzapfel’s article; but it is not impossible to answer this argument.
Supposing that Caesar intercalated in 710 in order to prevent the
Kalends of January, 711, from falling on a market-day, why should we
disregard the testimony of Dion? Caesar’s regulation was that the
intercalation should take place every four years. If, no matter for
what reason, the first intercalation took place in 710, the second
would fall due in 714. By transferring it to 713, Caesar’s regulation
would be contravened. Nor is the theory that Caesar intended to
intercalate in 714, 718, 722, &c., necessarily inconsistent with the
view that he intercalated in 710 in order to prevent the Kalends of
January, 711, from falling on a market-day; for, as I have remarked in
the text, he may perhaps have failed to look ahead.
[3620] _Röm. Chron._, pp. 328-9; _Philologus_, xlix, 1890, pp. 77-8.
[3621] The writers of the article CALENDARIUM in Smith’s _Dictionary
of Greek and Roman Antiquities_ (i, 344), who assume that Caesar’s
calendar came into operation on the 1st of January, 45 B.C., argue
that his motive for making the year begin on that day ‘was probably
the desire to gratify the superstition of the Romans by causing the
first year (_sic_) of the reformed calendar to fall on the day of the
new moon ... the mean new moon occurred at Rome on the 1st of January,
45 B.C., at 6^h 16′ p.m. In this way alone can be explained the phrase
used by Macrobius (_Sat._, i, 14, 13): _annum civilem Caesar habitis
ad lunam dimensionibus constitutum edicto palam posito publicavit_.’
Holzapfel, on the other hand, shows (_Philologus_, xlix, 1890, p. 87)
that ‘Macrobius’s words, if one considers the context, only imply
that Caesar made no alteration in the place of Kalends, Nones, and
Ides, which originally had reference to the lunar phases’. See also
Th. Mommsen (_Die röm. Chron. bis auf Caesar_, 1859, p. 277, n. 2)
and Matzat (_Hermes_, xxiii, 1888, pp. 61-3). Matzat’s arguments were
directed against A. Mommsen, who assumed (_Philologus_, xlv, 1886, pp.
411-38) that the new moon had occurred on the 2nd of January 45 B.C.,
and accordingly argued that Caesar’s calendar began on that day. Mr.
J. K. Fotheringham (_Journal of Philology_, No. 57, 1903, pp. 98-9)
affirms that ‘there was a new moon on the 2nd of January, 45 B.C.,
which Caesar may have calculated for the 1st, and there was another new
moon on the 1st of March’. I have myself calculated the date of the
new moon in question, first by reckoning back the number of lunations
from the new moon of January 6, 1856, which occurred at 11.17 p.m.,
taking the length of a lunation to be 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes,
2·84 seconds, and allowing 2 hours for the secular acceleration of the
moon’s mean motion; and, secondly, by the method explained in Augustus
De Morgan’s _Book of Almanacs_, 1851, pp. xiv-xv. Both methods have led
me to the same result, namely, that there was a new moon on January 2,
45 B.C.
[3622] _Hermes_, xxiii, 1888, pp. 57-8.
[3623] _Sat._, i, 13, § 19.--dies ille quo abundare annum diximus
eorum est permissus arbitrio qui fastis praeerant, uti, cum vellent,
intercalaretur, dum modo eam in medio Terminaliorum vel mensis
intercalaris ita locarent ut a suspecto die celebritatem averteret
nundinarum. Atque hoc est quod quidam veterum retulerunt non solum
mensem apud Romanos verum etiam diem intercalarem fuisse.
[3624] _Ueber die vierjährigen Sonnenkreise der Alten_, 1863, p. 1.
[3625] _Hermes_, xxiii, 1888, p. 56.
[3626] _Röm. Chron._, p. 328; _Philologus_, xlix, 1890, pp. 66-7, 72,
77.
[3627] _Hermes_, xxiii, 1888, p. 57.
[3628] _Hist. Rom._, xlviii, 33, § 4.
[3629] _Philologus_, xlix, 1890, p. 76.
[3630] _Hermes_, xxiii, 1888, p. 57.
[3631] See p. 714, _supra_.
[3632] See pp. 719-21, _supra_.
[3633] _Sat._, i, 14, § 15.--post hoc unum diem secundum ordinationem
Caesaris quinto quoque anno incipiente intercalari iussit, &c.
[3634] _Hermes_, xxiii, 1888, pp. 52-3.
[3635] See p. 719, _supra_.
[3636] A. Mommsen, a brother of the great historian, has devised a
singular theory of the working of the Julian calendar (_Philologus_,
xlv, 1886, pp. 411-38), which Holzapfel (_ib._, xlix, 1890, pp. 85-7)
as well as Matzat (_Hermes_, xxiii, 1888, pp. 61 ff.) has conclusively
refuted.
[3637] See p. 327, _supra_.
[3638] Rice Holmes, _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, 1899, pp. 490-1.
[3639] _B. G._, v, 1-8.
[3640] _Q. fr._, ii, 13, § 1.
[3641] Napoleon (_Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 195, n. 4) arbitrarily
identifies Blandeno with Lodi.
[3642] _Q. fr._, ii, 13, § 1.
[3643] _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 199.
[3644] _Jahrbücher für classische Philologie_, 13 Supplementband, 1884,
pp. 615, 620.
[3645] See O. E. Schmidt, _Der Briefwechsel des M. Tullius Cicero_, pp.
201-5, 378-9. The distance from Placentia to Rome _via_ Luca was 378
miles, _via_ Ariminum 403. See _Itin. Ant._, ed. Wesseling, pp. 124-7,
284, 287-8.
[3646] _Jahrbücher für classische Philologie_, 13 Supplementband, 1884,
pp. 615-20; Napoleon III, _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 199.
[3647] See O. E. Schmidt, _Der Briefwechsel des M. Tullius Cicero_, pp.
378-80. Caesar did occasionally, as Schmidt admits, travel at the rate
of 100 Roman miles a day (Plutarch, _Caesar_, 17; Suetonius, _Divus
Iulius_, 57. Cf. Caesar, _B. C._, i, 3, § 6). In 1852, Lord Dalhousie
rode and drove from Benares to Barrackpore, a distance of 400 miles,
in 80 hours, including stoppages; and in the same year General Godwin
travelled from Meerut to Calcutta--over 950 miles--in 11 days (Sir W.
Lee-Warner’s _Life of the Marquis of Dalhousie_, i, 1904, pp. 403, 422).
[3648] See p. 730, _infra_.
[3649] _Att._, iv, 15, § 10.
[3650] _Q. fr._, ii, 15, § 4.
[3651] _Att._, iv, 15, § 9.
[3652] _Q. fr._, ii, 15, § 3.
[3653] Asconius, _in Scaurianum_, p. 18 (_M. Tullii Ciceronis opera_,
ed. Orelli and Baiter, vol. v, pars ii, 1833).--Summus iudicii dies
fuit a. d. IIII Non. Septembr.
[3654] ‘Caesar,’ writes Cicero, ‘wrote me a letter from Britain on
the 1st of September, which reached me on the 27th’ (_Ex Britannia
Caesar ad me K. Septembr. dedit litteras, quas ego accepi a. d. IIII
K. Octobr._ [_Q. fr._, iii, 1, § 25]). ‘Your fourth letter,’ he tells
Quintus, ‘reached me on the 13th of September, dated on the 10th of
August from Britain’ (_Quarta epistola mihi reddita est Idibus Sept.,
quam a.d. IIII Idus Sext. ex Britannia dederas_ [_ib._, 1, § 13]). And,
as we have already seen, letters from Caesar and Quintus, written on
the British coast on the 25th of September, reached Cicero on the 24th
of October. The extraordinarily long time--33 days--which Quintus’s
‘fourth letter’ took to reach his brother may easily be accounted for:
Cicero was not at Rome when he received it, but at Laterium, near
Arpinum, about 70 Roman miles E. by S. of Rome (_ib._, in, 1, § 4).
Napoleon insists (_Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 196, n, 3) that,
in favourable circumstances, letters only required 20 days for
transmission from Britain to Rome. This view is based upon a passage
in one of Cicero’s letters (_Q. fr._ iii, 1, § 17) which, in the MSS.,
runs as follows:--_tabellarii a vobis venerunt a. d. XI K. Septembr.
vicesimo die_ (‘letter-carriers arrived from you and Caesar on the
22nd of August after a journey of 20 days’). It is obvious, and is
universally admitted, that (unless Cicero made a slip) _Septembr._ is
wrong, and that Cicero meant ‘the eleventh day before the Kalends of
October’, that is to say, September 20. It is equally obvious that he
did not write _vicesimo_, or that, if he did, he made a mistake. For,
at the end of the letter, he says (as we have already seen), ‘Caesar
wrote me a letter from Britain on the 1st of September’; and, as the
letter from Quintus reached him on the 20th of September, it must have
been dispatched, if it really arrived _vicesimo die_, on the 1st of
September, that is to say, on the same day as the letter from Caesar.
But this, as Dr. Vogel remarks (_Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie_, &c.,
cliii, 1896, pp. 273-4), is disproved by the fact that Caesar, in this
very letter, begged Cicero not to be alarmed at not having received
a letter from Quintus by the same messenger, as Quintus was not with
him when he reached the coast (_Ex Britannia Caesar ad me K. Septembr.
dedit litteras ... quibus, ne admirer, quod a te nullas acceperim,
scribit se sine te fuisse, cum ad mare accesserit_). As it is clear,
therefore, that _vicesimo_ is wrong, various attempts have been made to
amend the MS. reading. Bergk (_Jahrbücher für classische Philologie_,
13 Supplementband, 1884, p. 622) arbitrarily changes _vicesimo_ to
_tricesimo_. The most satisfactory conjecture, in my opinion, is that
of C. Bardt (_Quaest. Tullianae_, 1866, p. 32). He believes that what
Cicero wrote was _a. d. XI Kal., septimo vicesimo die_; that a copyist
abbreviated this into _a. d. XI Kal., sept. vicesimo die_; and that
this was corrupted into _a. d. XI Kal. Sept., vicesimo die_.
If Professor Tyrrell, who reads _a. d. XI Kal._ [_Sept._] _vicensimo
die_ (_Correspondence_, ii, 1886, p. 150), reads this note, I am
confident that he will allow his text to be emended in the next edition
of his and Dr. Purser’s great work.
[3655] There can, I think, be little doubt that Quintus wrote and
dispatched this letter on the very day of his arrival, or, at the
latest, before the storm which totally wrecked 40 of Caesar’s ships on
the next night but one after his arrival. If the storm had occurred
when he wrote, he would surely have mentioned it; and there is not a
word in Marcus Cicero’s reply which would lead us to suppose that he
had done so. Moreover, Quintus knew that Marcus was waiting impatiently
for news; and Caesar would naturally have desired to communicate at
once with Labienus whom he had left in command in Gaul.
[3656] _B. G._, v, 8, § 2.--longius delatus aestu orta luce sub
sinistra Britanniam relictam conspexit. Tum rursus aestus commutationem
secutus, &c.
[3657] _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 198.
[3658] _Decline of the Roman Republic_, iv, 205.
[3659] See pp. 600-3, _supra_.
[3660] See pp. 706-7, _supra_.
[3661] _Norman Conquest_, iii, 399.
[3662] Dr. F. Vogel, who rightly concludes that Caesar could not have
sailed on the 20th of July, has recourse to an unsatisfactory argument
to prove his case. We know, he says (_Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie_,
&c., cliii, 1896, p. 275), what misfortunes Caesar had met with in the
preceding year owing to the high tide which was raised by the full
moon: how then can we believe that he would have chosen the day of
full moon for his second expedition? But Dr. Vogel himself argues that
Caesar sailed about the 8th of July, the day after new moon. Did not
the doctor forget that the tidal phenomena at full and new moon are
nearly identical, and that the 8th of July was the very day on which a
springtide occurred? If Caesar was himself unaware of these facts, his
Gallic seamen could have enlightened him. Moreover, he must have known
that at least one full moon would occur while he remained in Britain.
[3663] _B. G._, v, 9-10; 11, §§ 1-7.
[3664] _Q. fr._, iii, i, § 25.
[3665] See pp. 712-3, 726, _supra_.
[3666] _B. G._, v. 22, §§ 3-4.
[3667] _Ib._, 23, § 1.
[3668] _Ib._, 23, § 2.
[3669] _Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie_, &c., cliii, 1896, p. 280.
[3670] _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 194, 199.
[3671] _Ib._, pp. 198-9.
[3672] Trebonius defeated Cassivellaunus about the 20th of July of the
Julian calendar; and we may assume that Caesar did not begin to march
towards the territories of Cassivellaunus until the following day. By
the 5th of August he had returned to his naval camp. In those 17 days
he marched to the Thames; crossed it at or near Brentford; marched on
through the territory of Cassivellaunus into that of the Trinovantes
(Essex); marched thence to the stronghold of Cassivellaunus, which
was not far off; captured it in a single day; and marched back to the
coast. Altogether the distance that he marched cannot have been less
than about 200 miles. Evidently, therefore, he would not have had time
enough to negotiate with Cassivellaunus and to receive the hostages
whom he demanded before he returned to the coast.
Bergk insists (_Jahrbücher für classische Philologie_, 13
Supplementband, 1884, pp. 616-8) that the campaign must have been
finished at the beginning of August of the Julian calendar, because
Caesar (_B. G._, v, 22, § 4) tells us that when it was finished the
summer was nearly at an end, and, according to Caesar himself, autumn
began on the 11th of August. But when Bergk says that, according to
Caesar, autumn began on the 11th of August he seems to forget that
this date was fixed in the Julian calendar, eight years after the
invasion of Britain. He also forgets that the word _aestas_, in the
_Commentaries_, denotes, not a season which ended on a fixed date, but
the period during which campaigning was practicable; and two passages
prove that it extended at least as far as the middle of September. In
the last chapter of his First Book Caesar remarks that in a single
‘summer’ he had finished two important campaigns (_una aestate duobus
maximis bellis confectis_); and it has been proved that the decisive
battle of the second campaign was fought about the 14th of September
(Rice Holmes, _Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul_, p. 642). In the 20th chapter
of the Fourth Book he says that he determined to invade Britain (in
55 B.C.), although only a small part of the ‘summer’ remained, and in
this part of the world ‘winter’ set in early (_Exigua parte aestatis
reliqua Caesar, etsi in his locis ... maturae sunt hiemes, tamen in
Britanniam proficisci contendit_); and we know that he did not land in
Britain until the 26th of August (see pp. 600-3, _supra_). The second
passage, moreover, is one of many which prove that Caesar generally
took no account of spring and autumn, but (like Thucydides) divided the
year into two seasons,--_aestas_, the season in which campaigning was
practicable, and _hiems_. He only once uses the word _ver_ (spring),
namely, in _B. G._, vi, 3, § 4; and only three times--once only in the
_Gallic War_ (vii, 35, § 1), twice in the _Civil War_ (iii, 2, § 3;
87, § 3)--uses the word _autumnus_; and in none of these four passages
is there any reference to campaigning. The Latin word for ‘winter’,
properly so called, is not _hiems_ but _bruma_.
[3673] _B. G._, v, 17, § 5--18, § 1.--Ex hac fuga protinus quae undique
convenerant auxilia discesserunt, neque post id tempus umquam summis
nobiscum copiis hostes contenderunt. Caesar cognito consilio eorum ad
flumen Tamesim in fines Cassivellauni exercitum duxit.
[3674] About the 20th of October Cicero wrote to his brother (_Q. fr._,
iii, 3, § 1), ‘for more than fifty days I have heard nothing from you
or from Caesar’ (_dierum iam amplius quinquaginta intervallo nihil
a te, nihil a Caesare ... adfluxit_). The last letter which he had
received was the one written by Caesar on the 1st of September.
[3675] _Hist. de Jules César_, ii, 194.
[3676] _B. G._, v, 22, §§ 1-3.
[3677] See p. 726, _supra_.
[3678] _Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie_, &c., cliii, 1896, p. 284.
[3679] _Ib._, pp. 284-5.
[3680] _Q. fr._, iii, 8, § 1.--Superiori epistolae quod respondeam,
nihil est; quae plena stomachi et querelarum est, quo in genere alteram
quoque te scribis pridie Labieno dedisse, qui adhuc non venerat.
Delevit enim mihi omnem molestiam recentior epistola.
[3681] _B. G._, v, 8, § 1; 23, § 4.
[3682] _Q. fr._, iii, 8, § 2.
[3683] _B. G._, v, 24, § 2.
[3684] _Ib._, 24, § 1; 46; 47, § 1.
[3685] _Q. fr._, iii, 3, § 4.
[3686] See p. 728, n. 6, _supra_.
[3687] Of course I do not mean that he would not have attempted to do
so in any conceivable circumstances; but that Volusenus would never
have advised him to undertake such an operation when there was the
alternative of landing between Walmer and Sandwich. 5.10.06.
[3688] See pp. 613-4, _supra_.
[Transcriber’s Note:
Page 389, Extra footnote “See p. 61, _supra_.” combined with duplicate
number (FN 1605).
Page 568, Footnote anchor 2773 added at the end of first paragraph.
Obvious printer errors corrected silently.
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.]
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