Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar

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 night2940 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 Göler2958 both rely on the express statement of Dion Cassius2959; 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 third2964 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 book2967 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 Fowler2969 observes that ‘much can be said in favour of this opinion’; and the late Camden Professor of Ancient History in the University of Oxford2970 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 coast2972 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 remarks2977 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 admits2984 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 admits2993 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 Lewin3007 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 deicerentur3012), evidently running before the gale, ‘to the lower and more westerly part of the island’ (ad inferiorem partem insulac quae est propius solis occasum3013): 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 eight3017 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 Airy3022 triumphantly observes that William the Conqueror landed there; but Lewin3023 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 assumed3028 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. Airy3033 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 description3035 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. Caesar3046 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 Cicero3052 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 passage3053 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 continenti3055).

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. Malden3060 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 Britanniam3065 [the words by which Caesar describes the arrival of his fleet] ‘seems to denote nothing more than what he expressed by the words Britanniam attigit3066 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 cognoverat3067 [“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 map3075 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 munitione3082) 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 idoneo3084) 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 Heller3095 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 passage3102 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 affirms3112 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 us3120 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. Guest3122 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 expedition3124 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. Schneider3126 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 Lewin3135 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, Heller3136 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. Lewin3139 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 locus3141), 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 passage3143 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

Airy3147 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. Lewin3148 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 Alesia3150 (the modern Mont Auxois), and which are narrower than the Stour at Wye, by the same name. Moreover, as Lewin3151 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 daybreak3157. It is curious that so adroit a controversialist as Lewin should have inadvertently quoted an opinion which damaged his own case. He tells us3158 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 Britons3168 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. Heller3173 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. Caesar3174 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 spectat3176—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 Lewin3178 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 Fowler3181 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 article3186 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 fecerunt3187). 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 idoneo3188) 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 Caesar3200 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 posset3202). 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 Caesar3209 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 Napier3224 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 Heller3239 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’ (progressus3244), seven miles from his anchorage. Both Long3245 and Heller3246 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 progredi3247 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. Lewin3249 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. Lewin3259 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 VII3261) 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. Lewin3263 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 article3267 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 water3269 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 obstructions3270 (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 shown3272 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 Maximus3273 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 Creuly3280 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-west3283 (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 says3291 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 Itius3301 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 July3303—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 Brentford3316 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

Heller3319 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 Eburones3320—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 objected3321 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. Guest3323 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. Battely3332 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... spectat3334). 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-place3335 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 Rutupiae3339 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 relinquebat3342). 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.’