History of Julius Caesar Vol. 2 of 2. Napoleon III
extended their domination into this island.310
It was only after having landed in Britain that Cæsar was able to form a tolerably exact idea of its form and extent. “Britain,” he says, “has the form of a triangle, the base of which, about 500 miles in extent, faces Gaul. The side which faces Spain, that is, the west, presents a length of about 700 miles. In this direction the island is separated from Hibernia (Ireland) by an arm of the sea, the breadth of which is apparently the same as the arm of the sea which separates Britain from Gaul;” and he adds that “the surface of Hibernia represents about one half the surface of Britain. The third part of the triangle formed by this latter island is eastward turned to the north, and 800 miles long; it faces no land; only one of the angles of this side looks towards Germany.”311 These imperfect estimates, which were to give place in the following century to others less inaccurate,312 led the great captain to ascribe to the whole of Britain twenty times 100,000 paces in circuit. He further gathered some information still more vague on the small islands in the vicinity of Britain. “One of them,” he writes, “is called Mona (the Isle of Man), and is situated in the middle of the strait which separates Britain from Hibernia.” The Hebrides, the Shetland islands (Acmodæ of the ancients), and the Orcades, which were only known to the Romans at the commencement of our era,313 were confounded, in the minds of Cæsar and his contemporaries, with the archipelago of the Feroe isles and Scandinavia. Caledonia (Scotland) appeared only in an obscure distance.
Cæsar represents the climate of Britain as less cold and more temperate than that of Gaul. With the exception of the beech (fagus) and the fir (abies), the same timbers were found in the forests of this island as on the neighbouring continent.314 They grew wheat there, and bred numerous herds of cattle.315 “The soil, if it is not favourable to the culture of the olive, the vine, and other products of warm climates,” writes Tacitus,316 “produces in their place grain and fruits in abundance. Although they grow quickly, they are slow in ripening.”
Britain contained a numerous population. The interior was inhabited by peoples who believed themselves to be autochthones, and the southern and eastern coasts by a race who had emigrated from Belgic Gaul, and crossed the Channel and the Northern Sea, attracted by the prospect of plunder. After having made war on the natives, they had established themselves in the island, and became agriculturalists.317 Cæsar adds that nearly all these tribes which had come from the continent had preserved the names of the civitates from whence they had issued. And, in fact, among the peoples of Britain named by geographers in the ages subsequent to the conquest of Gaul, we meet, on the banks of the Thames and the Severn, with the names of Belgæ and Atrebates.
The most powerful of the populations of Belgic origin were found in Cantium (Kent), which was placed, by its commercial relations, in more habitual intercourse with Gaul.318 The “Commentaries” mention only a small number of British nations. These are the Trinobantes (the people of Essex and Middlesex), who proved the most faithful to the Romans,319 and whose principal oppidum was probably already, in the time of Cæsar, Londinium (London), mentioned by Tacitus;320 the Cenimagni321 (Suffolk, to the north of the Trinobantes); the Segontiaci (the greater part of Hampshire and Berkshire, southern counties); the Bibroci (inhabiting a region then thickly wooded, over which extended the celebrated forest of Anderida);322 their territory comprised a small part of Hampshire and Berkshire, and embraced the counties of Surrey and Sussex and the most western part of Kent; the Ancalites (a more uncertain position, in the north of Berkshire and the western part of Middlesex); the Cassii (Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, central counties). Each of these little nations was governed by a chieftain or king.323
The Belgæ of Britain possessed the same manners as the Gauls, but their social condition was less advanced. Strabo324 gives this proof, that, having milk in abundance, the Britons did not know how to make cheese, an art, on the contrary, carried to great perfection in certain parts of Gaul. The national character of the two populations, British and Gaulish, presented a great analogy: – “The same boldness in seeking danger, the same eagerness to fly from it when it is before them,” writes Tacitus; “although the courage of the Britons has more of pride in it.”325 This resemblance of the two races showed itself also in their exterior forms. Yet, according to Strabo, the stature of the Britons was taller than that of the Gauls, and their hair was less red. Their dwellings were but wretched huts made of stubble and wood;326 they stored up their wheat in subterranean repositories; their oppida were situated in the middle of forests, defended by a rampart and a fosse, and served for places of refuge in case of attack.327
The tribes of the interior of the island lived in a state of greater barbarism than those of the maritime districts. Clothed in the skins of animals, they fed upon milk and flesh.328 Strabo even represents them as cannibals; and assures us that the custom existed among them of eating the bodies of their dead relatives.329 The men wore their hair very long, and a moustache; they rubbed their skin with woad, which gave them a blue colour, and rendered their aspect as combatants singularly hideous.330 The women also coloured themselves in the same manner for certain religious ceremonies, in which they appeared naked.331 Such was the barbarism of the Britons of the interior, that the women were sometimes common to ten or twelve men, a promiscuousness which was especially customary amongst the nearest relatives. As to the children who were born of these incestuous unions, they were considered to belong to the first who had received into his house the mother while still a girl.332 The Britons of the Cape Belerium (Cornwall) were very hospitable, and the trade they carried on with foreign merchants had softened their manners.333
The abundance of metals in Britain, especially of tin, or plumbum album, which the Phœnicians went to seek there from a very remote antiquity,334 furnished the inhabitants with numerous means of exchange. At all events, they were not acquainted with money, and only made use of pieces of copper, gold, or iron, the value of which was determined by weighing. They did not know how to make bronze, but received it from abroad.335
The religion of the Britons, on which Cæsar gives us no information, must have differed little from that of the Gauls, since Druidism passed for having been imported from Britain into Gaul.336 Tacitus, in fact, tells us that the same worship and the same superstitions were found in Britain as among the Gauls.337 Strabo speaks, on the authority of Artemidorus, of an island neighbouring to Britain, where they celebrated, in honour of two divinities, assimilated by the latter to Ceres and Proserpine, rites which resembled those of the mysteries of Samothrace.338 Under the influence of certain superstitious ideas, the Britons abstained from the flesh of several animals, such as the hare, the hen, and the goose, which, nevertheless, they domesticated as ornamental objects.339
The Britons, though
Pliny,
Pliny,
Strabo, IV., p. 199.
Although the greater number of manuscripts read
The
Diodorus Siculus, V. 21. – Tacitus,
IV., p. 200.
Diodorus Siculus, V. 21.
Strabo, IV., p. 200.
Pliny,
Diodorus Siculus, V. 22.
Diodorus Siculus, V. 22. – Strabo, IV., p. 200.
Strabo, IV., p. 199.