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Exploring Caesar's British Conquest Legends

Title: The Legend of Julius Caesar's British Conquest URL Source: file://pdf.46a10a6fbe27b4baa38ad40855caf654/ Markdown Content: # The Legend of Julius Caesar's British Conquest # Author(s): Homer Nearing, Jr. # Source: # PMLA , Sep., 1949 , Vol. 64, No. 4 (Sep., 1949), pp. 889-929 # Published by: Modern Language Association # Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/459639 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Modern Language Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to PMLA > This content downloaded from > 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC > All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE LEGEND OF JULIUS CAESAR'S BRITISH CONQUEST BY HOMER NEARING, JR. > I. THE LEGEND BEFORE GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH > N ONE of the deadly weapons of medieval legend, not even the darts of Yspadaden Penkawr, is more sinister than Crocea Mors, the sword of Julius Caesar. This Yellow Death, a terrible instrument which inflicted incurable and inevitably fatal wounds, was invented by Geoffrey of Monmouth, who says that Caesar lost it in his first battle with the British when it stuck in the cleft shield of the British prince Nennius and was carried off by him. The episode is symbolic of Caesar's entire association with the British as related by Geoffrey and his followers, for at their hands the great Roman's military reputation suffered even worse than his armory in his encounters with the descendants of Brut. Geoffrey, however, was not the first writer to discredit the glory Caesar had won in Britain, nor did he invent every element of the Caesar storyhe narrates. Some of his material derives, at third hand, from Caesar's > own commentaries. In the fourth book of the Gallic War Caesar relates that after his return from Germany he decided to invade Britain, from which the Gauls had received help against him. Some of the British, hearing of his preparations, sent emissaries offering submission. He sent the Gallic chief Commius back with them as his representative and sailed shortly after with two legions. Reaching the island, Caesar found the changeable British in arms. His troops hesitated to disembark until a standard-bearer of the tenth legion leaped into the water urging his brothers-in-arms to charge the shore. Their assault shook the British so severely that the latter restored Commius to Caesar and promised hostages. Before all the hostages were delivered, however, the ships bearing Caesar's cavalry, which had been windbound at his departure from Gaul, were forced back to the continent by a sudden storm after they had come within sight of the Roman camp; and the Roman vessels at hand were damaged by high tide and tempest. Caesar found himself practically marooned on a savage island at the end of the world, without cavalry, without ships, without supplies. And winter was closing in. Desperately he tore the worst damaged ships apart for repair materials and sent his troops into the fields to seize the crops. The British, quick to perceive his predicament, struck at him twice, but were repulsed. Again they made peace overtures. Caesar ordered them to send hostages after him, and sailed with his repaired vessels to Gaul. In the fifth book of the Gallic War Caesar relates his second expedition to Britain. This time his landing was unopposed. He marched inland and > 889 > This content downloaded from > 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC > All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Julius Caesar's British Conquest had taken a woodland fortress when word came to him that a great storm had almost destroyed his fleet again. Returning to the coast, he ordered new vessels from his continental shipyards and spent the next ten days or so preparing defenses for his damaged fleet. Meanwhile the British had laid their intertribal jealousies aside to appoint Cassivel- > launus supreme commander of their forces. Caesar, marching inland once > more, at first drove them before him in a series of skirmishes; but sud- denly, after a lull during which the Romans began to build a camp, the British burst upon them, executed a brilliant maneuver, and were finally driven off only with the arrival of Roman reinforcements. In this type of fighting, Caesar admits, the Roman soldier was no match for the Briton. The engagement cost him Q. Laberius Durus, the only > officer whose loss he records in his account of the expeditions to Britain. The next day the British attacked again, but this time were routed so violently that Cassivellaunus dismissed, or was deserted by, all his troops but 4,000 chariot, and adopted guerrilla tactics. Advancing to the Thames, "which could be crossed by foot at only one place and there only with difficulty," Caesar found the remaining British forces drawn > up on the opposite side. Before them, in the bank of the river, were fixed pointed stakes, and similar stakes had been driven into the river bed. But the Romans, though the water was so deep that only their heads remained above the surface, moved with such speed and force that the > British were unable to withstand them. On top of this defeat Cassivellaunus's past began to make difficulties for him. Some time before this he had put to death the chief (called Imanuentius in the old editions of Caesar) of the powerful Trinobantes, > whose son Mandubracius had fled to Gaul and entrusted himself to Caesar. The Trinobantes now sent legates to Caesar offering to surren and requesting that Mandubracius be restored to them as their ch Caesar, taking forty hostages and a supply of grain, complied with t request. Other tribes soon followed this example. The complete colla > of the British opposition was close at hand. Caesar sought out the strong hold of Cassivellaunus and stormed it; and its capture marked the e of the war, except for the unsuccessful attempt of four Kentish chi acting on Cassivellaunus's orders, to attack Caesar's naval camp. Ca sivellaunus, having persuaded the Gallic chief Commius to interced for him, at last sent ambassadors offering to capitulate; and Caesa > eager to winter in Gaul because of the constant threat of disorders ther > took hostages, imposed a yearly tribute, forbade Cassivellaunus to attem reprisals against Mandubracius and the Trinobantes, and left Britain good. The date of Caesar's final departure from Britain was 54 B.C. Within a > 890 > This content downloaded from > 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC > All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Homer Nearing, Jr. century the process of myth-making was under way. As Cicero remarked in his Brutus, while Caesar's purpose in penning his commentaries was that "others who wanted to write history should have materials from which to work ready to their hands, he perhaps put in his debt only the pedants who like to frizzle such things with curling-irons, and deterred sensible men from writing at all." Probably Cicero had only stylistic curling-irons in mind, but some later writers applied them to fact. Valerius Maximus, writing during the reign of Tiberius, about 30 A.D., includes in the chapter "Of Fortitude" of his Memorable Words and Deeds (iII, ii, 23) the story of a rash exploit of Caesius Scaeva, who was later to win glory in the war against Pompey. During Caesar's war with the Britons, goes the story, Scaeva and four companions took a boat to a rock in the sea near a point which the British had occupied with a strong force. When the tide, by which the rock was divided from the island, had ebbed, a great horde of Britons attacked the five Romans. Scaeva's companions promptly escaped in the boat, leaving him to face the Britons alone. Assailed by missiles on all sides, he put up an incredible resistance, fighting with his sword when his javelin and those of his erstwhile com- rades-in-arms were gone. At last, crushed and battered and speared in the thigh, he leaped into the blood-stained waves, and despite the burden of a double corselet swam to safety. When he had returned to the Roman camp, he begged Caesar's forgiveness for his rashness, and to his surprise was elevated to the office of centurion. In the Gallic War, which records the heroism of a standard-bearer of the tenth legion and the death of the tribune Laberius, there is no hint of this exploit. Nevertheless, the story, like its subject, was elevated to a position of authority. FromNepotianus's epitome of Valerius Maximus it passed into Landolfus's Historia Mis- cella,l an expansion of Eutropius's Breviarium, through which it reached the Elizabethans as the work of "Eutropius, from some pieces of Sueto- > nius which are now lost."2 Tacitus, in his Dialogue on Oratory, has Marcus Aper say in pursuit of a point in his argument (?17): "I myself saw in Britain an old man who claimed to have been in the battle in which the Britons tried to keep the invading Caesar from landing and to beat him from their shores." This of course is not necessarily fiction, but like Valerius Maximus's anecdote it illustrates the propensity of writers for finding apologues, real or imaginary, in Caesar's invasion of Britain. > 1 H. Droysen, ed. Eutropi Breviarium ... cum ... Additamentis, in Monumenta Ger- > maniac Historica, II, lxv and 282. > 2 Camden, Britannia (trans., 1722 ed.), I, col. ii. See Stow, Annales (1631 ed.), sig. B, > and Speed, Historie of Great Britaine (1632 ed.), sig. E2. The reference to Suetonius derives > from Orosius's statement (added to Eutropius by Landolfus) that he is condensing Sue- > tonius. > 891 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Julius Caesar's British Conquest Suetonius (Julius 47) says that Caesar's motive in invading Britain was a desire for British pearls, which he was fond of holding in his hand to guess their weight. Suetonius does not observe that both Pliny (Natural History, IX, 116) and Tacitus (Agricola 12) disparaged the quality of British pearls. At the outbreak of the Parthian War in 162, Polyaenus, a Macedonian living in Rome, dedicated to Marcus Aurelius and his brother his Eight Books of Stratagems, in which he relates (vIII, xxiii, 5) how Caesar, in attempting to cross a great river in Britain, was opposed by the horsemen and chariots of King Kasolaunos. In his army Caesar had a big elephant, an animal unknown to the Britons. Equipped with iron armor and carry- ing on his back a tower wherein were archers and slingers, the elephant > was sent into the river. The Britons were terrified, while "as for the horses, what need to write of them? since even among the Greeks horses fly when they see so much as an unarmed elephant, but one towered and armored, spewing forth arrows and stones, they could not bear to look upon." So the Britons fled and the Romans crossed the river without danger, "having thrown the enemy into panic with one beast." Polyaenus may possibly have confused Julius Caesar with the emperor Claudius, who according to Dio Cassius (Roman History, LX, 21) had elephants brought to Britain. About the beginning of the third century Athenaeus added further to the Caesar legend in his Deipnosophists (vi, 273, b). A Roman among his gastronomes says that "Caesar, the first man in the world to cross over to attack Britain, though he had a thousand ships, took as retinue three slaves in all; this is related by Cotta, his second in command on that occasion, in the treatise on the Roman Constitution, which is written in our native tongue."3 Caesar does mention a L. Aurunculeius Cotta as one > of his generals; but this Cotta was one of the officers left in Gaul to handle the Morini and Menapii during Caesar's first expedition to Britain (Iv, 23, 37), and Caesar says nothing of him in his account of the second. The three slaves perhaps derive from the three companions whom Plu- tarch says Caesar kept with him among the pirates of Cilicia. In 371 Julian the Apostate, in his satirical symposium of the Caesars, pictured Julius as a megalomaniac with a passion for being first in every- thing. In illustration of his passion, Julian has him claim the honor which > in the Gallic War is accorded to a standard bearer: "I was the first Roman who ventured to sail the outer sea. Perhaps this achievem was not so wonderful, though it was a daring deed that may well comm > 3 Trans. Charles B. Gulick (Loeb Classical Library), II, 227. > 892 > This content downloaded from > 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC > All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Homer Nearing, Jr. your admiration; but a more glorious action of mine was when I leapt ashore from my ship before all the others."4 A century later Sidonius Apollinaris addressed to his father-in-law, the Emperor Avitus, a verse panegyric in which the personification of Rome, telling Jove of her past glories, expands the scope of Caesar's conquests beyond Scotland: "Caesar led his victorious standards even against the Caledonian Britons; and though he vanquished Scot, Pict, and Saxon, he still sought foes even where nature forbade him to seek > farther for mankind." None of these stories, however, was so important in the course of later literature as the disparaging evaluations some ancient writers made of Caesar's British invasions, which tended to undermine the authority of the Gallic War. Lucan, whose difficulties with Nero had made the name Caesar anathema to him, sneered in his Pharsalia (II, 527) that Julius "terrified, showed his back to the Britons whom he had sought out." Tacitus, judiciously appraising the importance of Caesar's expeditions in the Romanization of Britain, decided (Agricola 13) that the divine Julius, though he had intimidated and subjected the Britons of the coast, had rather opened up the island to subsequent conquests than bequeathed it as a possession to Rome. And Dio Cassius (Roman History, xxxix, 53) said of Caesar's first invasion that from Britain "he had won nothing for himself or for the state except the glory of having conducted an expedi- tion against its inhabitants; but on this he prided himself greatly and the Romans at home likewise magnified it to a remarkable degree."5 To these remarks may be added the opinion of one of Caesar's colleagues as cited by Suetonius (Julius 56): "Pollio Asinius considered [Caesar's commentaries] to have been composed with little care and little unbiased verity, for Caesar was usually too ready to believe the reported achieve- ments of others and, whether deliberately or through lapse of memory, to relate his own deeds falsely; and [Pollio] thought that he had intended > to rewrite and correct them." None of these legends and opinions, except Valerius Maximus's apologue and Lucan's sneer, seems to have been known to Geoffrey of Monmouth, who based his story of Caesar's invasions on Bede, the Ilistoria Britonum, and Henry of Huntingdon. The direct source of this part of Bede and the Historia Britonum, which were Henry of Hunting- don's sources, was Orosius. At the opening of his account of Caesar (vI, 7) Orosius says, "Suetonius Tranquillus has most fully unfolded this > 4 Wilmer C. Wright (trans.), The Works of the Emperor Julian (Loeb Classical Library), > II, 379. > 5 Ernest Cary (trans.), Dio's Roman History (Loeb Classical Library), II, 378. > 893 > This content downloaded from > 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC > All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Julius Caesar's British Conquest history, the relevant portions of which I have extracted." And yet his material patently derives from the Gallic War. Apparently he was using a MS in which Caesar's commentaries had been prefixed to Suetonius's Twelve Caesars (which begins with the life of Julius). Conceivably, the leaf bearing the identification of the Commentaries, if any, had become detached and lost, and the assignment of the whole thing to Suetonius made hastily by someone unaware that the MS contained more than one work. In any case Orosius follows Caesar's own account of the British invasions, though here and there he makes slight changes which were to have important consequences. Caesar admits that his predicament during the first expedition was quite serious, but does not fail to throw most of the blame on the weather or to give full credit to his own consummate management of the situation. In Orosius's epitome, however, the Britons seem to share honors with the weather, and the condition of the Roman army on departing from Britain is made to appear utterly abject: "First harassed by a bitter fight, then overcome by a disastrous tempest, [Caesar] lost the greater part of his fleet, no small number of his soldiers, and almost all of his cavalry. Returning to Gaul, he sent the legions into winter quarters." In condensing Caesar's account of the second expedition, Orosius reduces the skirmishes attending Caesar's march to the Thames to two battles, viz. the two encounters which Caesar had described in most detail. Of the surprise attack in which Laberius was killed, Orosius says: "In the first battle Caesar's cavalry was vanquished by the Britons and the tribune Labienus slain." (The substitution of Labienus for Caesar's Laberius may have been due to a misreading of some scribal abbreviation; the name Labienus appears frequently in the Gallic War, being that of Caesar's chief of staff.) Of the British attack the following day Orosius says: "In the second battle, to the great peril of his own men, Caesar put the Britons to flight." Thence, he continues, Caesar > proceeded to the river Thames, which, they say, is fordable at only one place. On > the farther bank, an immense multitude of the enemy under the leadership of > Cassovellaunus had taken their position; and they had blocked the bank of the > river and, under the water, almost all the ford with most sharp stakes. When > these had been detected and avoided by the Romans, the barbarians, unable to > endure the charge of the legions, hid themselves in the woods, whence they har- > ried the Romans gravely and repeatedly with their frequent sallies. It should be noted that Orosius does not actually say that the Romans forded the Thames. A reader unacquainted with the Gallic War could not be sure from this passage that Caesar had not rejoined his fleet, sailed up the Thames, avoided the stakes at the shallow, and then landed to put the Britons to flight. > 894 > This content downloaded from > 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC > All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Homer Nearing, Jr. In relating the surrender of the Trinobantes, for Caesar's Trinobantes firmissima civitas (the Trinobantes, a powerful tribe) Orosius wrote Trinobantum firmissima civitas (the powerful tribe of the Trinobantes). Civitas, however, was coming to mean city instead of tribe,6 so that later historiographers took Orosius's phrasing to mean "the powerful city Trinobantum." Orosius also contracted "Mandubracius," the prince whom the Trinobantes asked Caesar to restore to them as their chief, to "Andragius" (Mandubragius). Orosius's account of Caesar's British expeditions is repeated almost verbatim by Bede, who, however, makes some changes in the part relat- ing to Caesar's passage of the Thames. He omits the clause, not true in his day,7 stating that the Thames could be crossed at only one point, > so that it becomes even more difficult for a reader of his account to be sure that Caesar had not sailed up the Thames instead of fording it, and adds to the account of the stakes: "The vestiges of these same stakes are to be seen to this day; upon examination it seems that each of them is as thick as a human thigh and, being cased with lead, is fixed im- movably in the bottom of the river." The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which draws on Bede for its opening passages, makes it clear that the Romans intended to cross the Thames, but states flatly that when they found the stakes in the river, "they would > not fare over the ford." This statement seems to have resulted from a misunderstanding of Bede's remark, repeated from Orosius, that the > Romans "discovered and avoided" the stakes with which the Britons had "blocked" (praestruxerat) the ford. In the next sentence the Chronicle relates, with a bland disregard of such details as the crossing of rive that the British warriors (who, Bede makes clear, were on the other s of the Thames) fled into the woods, and that Caesar captured many o their chief cities after a great struggle, then "left his army dwelling wit the Scots and went south into Gaul." (The reference to the Scots deriv from the substitution, in some of the MSS of Bede, of in Hibernia[m] for in hiberna = winter quarters.) The Anglo-Saxon version of Orosius written by or under the directi of King Alfred relates (v, xii) that when Caesar first came to Britain, "fought with the British and was put to flight in the land called Ken Soon after, he fought again with the Britons in Kent and they were p to flight. Their third fight was near the water called Thames, near t ford called Wallingford. After that the king and the inhabitants of Cirencester surrendered to him, and later all that were in the island > 6 Robert W. Chambers, "Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Brut," History, N. S., > (1920), 38. > 7 Ibid., p. 36. > 895 > This content downloaded from > 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC > All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Julius Caesar's British Conquest The substitution of Cirencester for Trinobantum is a puzzle, though the words might look alike in a bad hand. Perhaps the author of this passage was influenced by a notion that Caesar had driven the Celts into the west, where they dwelt in his own day. Neither the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle nor King Alfred's Orosius seems to have had much influence on later versions of the Caesar legend.8 With Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, the source of the Caesar material in Henry of Huntingdon and Geoffrey of Monmouth was the Historia Britonum, a compilation traditionally associated with a "Nennius" of the late eighth century. The earliest extant text of this work is a MS of Chartres, dating from the ninth or tenth century, which relates that "when the Romans had acquired dominion of the whole world, they sent legates to the Britons to receive hostages and taxes (censum), as they had received from all other nations and islands." But the Britons, who were haughty and vain, scorned the legates of the Ro- mans. Then Julius Caesar, who was the first to obtain and keep absolute imperial power, flew into a rage and went to Britain with sixty ships. He landed in the estuary of the Thames, where his fleet suffered shipwreck while he was fighting with Dolobellus (pugnabat apud Dolobellum), who was proconsul to the British king, who himself was called Bellimus, whose son was Minoamus, who ruled all the islands of the Tyrrhenian Sea. And Julius left without victory, his soldiers slain and his ships shattered. And again after a space of three years he came with a great army in three hun- dred ships and arrived at the mouth of the Thames. There they began war, and there were killed many soldiers of his cavalry, since the above-mentioned consul had placed iron stakes and caltrops9 in the shallows of the river; this invisible device was a great danger to the soldiers of the Romans, and they went away without [peace (MS. Harl. 3859)] on this occasion too. War was waged a third time near a place which is called [T]rinovantum, and Julius received the imperial rule of Britain forty and seven years before the birth of Christ, 5215 from the creation of the world. On three occasions the leaders of the Romans were slain by the Britons. This passage is based on Orosius, though some details are drawn from other sources.'? The proconsul Dolobellus, for example, appears to derive > 8 Except for Calendre's history Des empereors de Rome (see below). The Anglo-Saxon > version of Bede made by King Alfred or at his direction states merely that Britain was > unknown to the Romans until Julius Caesar overran it. Apparently, since details of Caesar's > expeditions were incorporated in the Anglo-Saxon Orosius, they were dispensed with in the > Bede. > 9 Semen bellicosum cethilou (MS. Harl. 3859: semen bellicosum, id est cetilou) which Faral -La Ltgende Arthurienne (Paris, 1929), I, 86-translates as chausses-trapes. Camden > (Britannia) took semen bellicosum to refer to British warriors; Peter Roberts, the first > translator of the Brut Tysilio, derived cetilou from coethawl= stake (cited by Madden, ed. > Layamon's Brut, in, 335). > 10 See Faral, i, 88-90. 896 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Homer Nearing, Jr. from a local tradition which placed Caesar's operations on this occasion near Canterbury or Rochester. The phrase pugnabat apud Dolobellum would mean "fought at the place called Dolobellum" if it were not fol- lowed by the identification of Dolobellum as a proconsul. It seems that the scribe of this passage or of one of its sources confused Durovernum, the ancient site of Canterbury, or Durobrivae, the ancient site of Roches- ter,l with Dolabella, the name of several men mentioned by Orosius. It is interesting to imagine the MS changes by which "Caesar fought at Durovernum" became "Caesar fought with Dolabellus"; but until time machines are invented, and scholars can afford them, no accurate re- construction is possible. We might guess, however, that the original reading was, "Caesar was fighting at Durovernum with Cassivellaunus"; that in one text the "with Cassivellaunus" was omitted; and that a copyist read "Durovernum" as "Dolobellum."'1 The British king "Bellimus, whose son was Minoamus," sprang from a misreading of Orosius. Although the Chartres MS is the earliest extant text of the Historia Britonum, the original phrasing of this passage seems to be more closely followed by the eleventh century Harleian text (3859), which says that the British king "was called Bellinus, and was the son of Minocannus." Apparently desiring to record as many names as pos- sible of the leaders under whom the Britons had repulsed the great Julius, the author or one of the expanders of this section of the Historia Britonurn searched his Orosius carefully. Either he had already found Cassivellaunus and identified him as the proconsul of the British king, as suggested above, or somehow overlooked him. But a little further on, in Orosius's account of Caligula (vII, 5), he found a reference to "Mino- cynobelinus, son of the king of the Britons" (Minocynobelinum Britan- norum regisfilium).l3 This in turn was a misreading of Suetonius's refer- ence (Caligula 44) to "Adminius, the son of Cynobellinus, king of the Britons" (Adminio Cynobellini Britannorum regis filio). Ironically, Orosius's fusion was divided into two names once more, and the newly created British chiefs Minocannus and Bellinus jumped obligingly from one century to another to rule the Britons who had first repulsed Rome.'4 The next work to add to the legend of Caesar's conquest of Britain was the Gesta Pontificum Anglorum (1125) of William of Malmesbury, who > 11 Or Durolevum, a place midway between them. See W. M. Flinders Petrie, "Neglected > British History," Proceedings of the British Academy 1917-1918, p. 254. > 12 This hypothesis is supported by the statement that it was the "above-mentioned > consul" who arranged the defenses of the shallows, for Orosius states that Cassivellaunus > commanded the Britons in the battle at the Thames. > 13 Zimmer, Nennius Vindicatus, p. 272, cited by Chambers, p. 37. > '4 This whimsical use of Orosius apparently annoyed one of the later readers of the > Historia Britonum. See Faral, I, 186, on the Chartres text interpolation. 897 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Julius Caesar's British Conquest says that the hot springs of Bath are believed to have been created by Julius Caesar.l5 As already noted, William's contemporary, Henry of Huntingdon, went to Bede and the Historia Britonum for the account of Caesar in his Historia Anglorum (1129). The first time Caesar invaded Britain, says Henry, "he felt the bitter resistance of the Britons more than he was able to believe" and was "compelled by force to retreat to his ships." During the second invasion the Roman fleet was wrecked so badly that repairs took a long time. With no hope of escape, Caesar exhorted his soldiers sharply and engaged the Britons, who "as usual" were confident of victory. Then while the military tribune Labienus plunged the vanguard violently into the wedge formation of Dolobellus, who was the proconsul of the British king, > and hewed, felled, and pursued the yielding ranks, the troops of the [British] king thrust between his phalanxes and the main army of Caesar. This king was called > Belinus, and he was the brother of King Cassibellaunus and the son of the power- ful king Liud, who had subjected many islands of the sea by war. His troops cut down the surrounded Labienus and all his men, and dispatched them to sudden > death. Julius, seeing the day to be unlucky, and remarking that fighting the Brit- > ish was a matter for craft more than force, suffered greater losses than before and > took to flight. The near-by woods afforded the Romans a hiding place for the moment Before engaging the Britons again, Caesar addressed his troops with a noble speech (which makes up about a third of Henry's account). In- spired by the speech, the Romans went on to victory. When Caesar had returned to Gaul, Henry concludes, war suddenly broke out; whereupon he sent for the legions "which remained in Britain" and put them into winter quarters "so that they could go with him to Rome; concerning which Lucan says: 'Solvunturflavi longa statione Brittanni' "("The golden- haired Britons are released from their tedious station"-though Henry seems to have understood it to mean, "The splendid legions in Britain are released from their tedious station"). Lucan actually says (I, 402): "Solvunturfiavi longa statione Rutheni" ("The golden-haired A quitanians, etc."). Perhaps Henry was using a poorly copied text of the Pharsalia. But he might have been depending on his memory, which certainly played him many tricks in the resume of Geoffrey of Monmouth he later > sent to Warinus Brito. > II. GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH'S CAESAR LEGEND About the time Henry of Huntingdon completed the second his Historia Anglorum (1135) Geoffrey of Monmouth issued hi > 51 Geoffrey of Monmouth attributes them to King Bladud the necroman > Nearing, "Local Caesar Traditions in Britain," Speculum, xxIv (1949), 218. > 898 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Homer Nearing, Jr. Regum Britanniae. One of the best stories in Geoffrey's work is the legend of Caesar's conquest of Britain. The great builder King Lud, says Geoffrey, had two brothers and two sons. His brothers were Cassibellaunus, who fought with Caesar, and Nennius, who quarreled with Lud for changing the name of New Troy (Trinovantum) to Kaerlud, "which contention . .. the historian Gildas has described at sufficient length" (I, 17). At Lud's death Cassibellaunus was crowned king because Androgeus and Tenuan- tius, Lud's sons, were too young to reign. The punctilious new king, however, gave Androgeus Trinovantum and the Duchy of Kent, and Tenuantius Cornwall to hold under him (III, 20). At this time, "as is found in Roman histories," Julius Caesar, having subjugated Gaul, came to the shores of the Ruteni (Aquitanians). Beholding Britain in the sea he inquired concerning its name and inhabitants, and being told > exclaimed: By Hercules, we Romans and Britons rise from the same stock, since we are de- scended from the Trojan race.... But unless I am mistaken they have greatly > degenerated from us and know nothing of warfare, since they dwell in the ocean outside the world. They should easily be brought to give us tribute and show > continued submission to the Roman honor. But first we ought to command them to render tribute unapproached and unharmed by the Roman people, and to > submit to the senate like other nations, lest by shedding the blood of our kinsmen > we offend the ancient nobility of our father Priam [iv, 1]. On receiving the letter containing Caesar's demands, King Cassibellaunus, infuriated, replied that the Roman thirst for gold and silver would be stoutly opposed by the liberty-loving Britons, who as kinsmen should have been offered amity rather than servitude.16 Caesar forthwith sailed to the estuary of the Thames, while Cassibellaunus sped to the town of Dorobellum to hold a council of war. At this council were Bellinus, his princeps miliciae, "by whose prudence and counsel the whole realm was managed," Androgeus Duke of Trinovantum, Tenuantius Duke of Cornwall, and the three under-kings Cridous of Albania (Scotland), Gueithaet of Venedotia (North Wales), and Brittahel of Demetia (South Wales)-all of whom advised an immediate attack to drive Caesar out > before he could seize towns and secure his lines. During the ensuing fight Androgeus and the king's brother Nennius, leading the men of Kent and the citizens of Trinovantum, happened to meet the "emperor" himself and nearly routed his cohort. Nennius, rejoicing that fortune had permitted him to strike even one blow at so great a man, rushed at Caesar, who wounded him in the head. Caesar's > ?6 Cassibellaunus's message bears a certain resemblance to the speech of Calgacus in > Tacitus's Agricola; but it may be fortuitous, for there is no certain trace of Tacitus in > mediaeval catalogues. See J. E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship (1903), I, 636. > 899 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Julius Caesar's British Conquest second blow, however, cleft Nennius's shield, and before he could work his sword loose he was separated from the Briton in the swirl of battle; whereupon Nennius threw his own sword away and, extracting Caesar's from his shield, proceeded to decapitate or fatally wound all the Romans he encountered, among others the tribune Labienus (whom, some MSS add, he cut down in primo congressu). Caesar's sword, which was buried with Nennius when he died of the head wound a fortnight later, was named the Yellow Death, "for no one who had been wounded by it escaped alive." The Britons having won the field by sunset, Caesar's companions persuaded him to return to Gaul. There he was threatened by rebellion, which was encouraged by a rumor that Cassibellaunus was crossing the sea il pursuit of the Romans. But Caesar appeased the nobles with gifts and promised the common people civil liberties, the dispossessed their estates, and the slaves freedom. "Ile who before had robbed them of everything, thundering with the ferocity of a lion, now rejoices that he can return everything, bleating with the humble voice of a gentle lamb." In this account of Caesar's first expedition Geoffrey has expanded the few sentences of his sources to epic proportions. His great builder Lud is apparently the "Ludd of the Silver Hand" of Welsh literature, whom Henry of Huntingdon had substituted for the Minocannus of the Historia Britonun.17 Cassibellaunus, whom Henry had made the son of his King Liud, is now the king's brother; and a new character appears in the story as the third brother Nennius, whose name suggests some mysterious connection in Geoffrey's mind with that dim writer of the eighth century to whom tradition attributes the Historia Britonum. As for the quarrel between Nennius and Lud over the renaming of Trinovantum, no one who has read the De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae can doubt that if Gildas had described it, he would have done so "at sufficient length." Geoffrey's notion that Caesar had beheld Britain from Aquitania (litus Rutenorum) implies that he looked up the correct reading of the line which Henry of Huntingdon had misquoted from Lucan: "The golden-haired Aquitanians are released from their tedious station." Caesar had sailed for Britain from "the territory of the Morini" (Gallic War, IV, 21), as Orosius and his derivatives make clear. And that Geoffrey was aware of the location of the Morini appears further on in his narrative when he places the tower of Boulogne in their territory. But he seems to have thought of Caesar as beholding Britain, not from the point of Gaul which happened to be closest to the island, but from his winter quarters. Lucan, the only ancient author at hand who had said anything specific > 17 See Robert H. Fletcher, The Arthurian Material in the Chronicles (Harvard Studies and > Notes in Philol. and Lit., x, 1906), p. 68. > 900 > This content downloaded from > 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC > All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Homer Nearing, Jr. about the location of Caesar's legions wintering in Gaul, spoke of the Rutheni. And so in Geoffrey's account Caesar strains his eyes at Britain > from southern Gaul. Cassibellaunus's council of war meets at Dorobellum, for Geoffrey's sense of idiom could not accept the statement of the Historia Britonunm that Caesar had "fought apud Dolobellum, who was proconsul to the British king, who himself (et ipse) was called Bellinus." Dolobellum was obviously the name of a place; and, as the et ipse suggested, Bellinus (that slip-of-the-pen from the pages of Orosius) was no doubt the pro- consul rather than the British king that Henry of Huntingdon had made of him. In any case Geoffrey did not want his great king Belinus, the brother of Brennus, whose exploits he had just described (III, i-x), to be > confused with this dubious character from the Historia Britonum. There- fore he has Cassibellaunus gather his forces at "Dorobellum" and demotes Henry's King Belinus to princeps miliciae, though in deference to Henry's authority this Bellinus still helps to rule the whole realm by his prudence > and counsel. As for Labienus, the Laberius of the Gallic War (v, 15) whose name had been changed by Orosius, the shift of his death from the second expedi tion to the first is a skilful use of dramatic license. If Geoffrey were known to have had a memory like Henry of Huntingdon's, we might suspect that he had forgotten at exactly which point in the narrative Labienus was killed, and turned to Bede or Landolfus to read that "Caesar's cavalry was vanquished by the British in the first battle (primo congressu) and the tribune Labienus slain," without noticing that it was the first battle of the second expedition that was being described. The repetition of the words primo congressu in some MSS of Geoffrey, and the circum- stance that no individual battle of the first expedition is described in Bede and Landolfus, would confirm the suspicion. But to attribute the shift of Labienus's death to a mistake is to disregard Geoffrey's aim and genius. He is writing epic, even if in disguise; Nennius has just snatched away the sword of the great Roman emperor. What is he to do with it? Slay unnamed rank-and-file? By no means; the episode must have a climax. It is Labienus the tribune who falls before Nennius's newly acquired sword. The sword itself seems to take its name from the dreaded Yellow Plague (Pestis flava), whose former ravages had been indelibly impressed on the memory of the Britons.18 The threat of rebellion among the Gauls after Caesar's return from Britain also seems to be Geoffrey's invention. There is a very faint sug- gestion of this episode in the Gallic War (iv, 37), where two of Caesar's > 18 Faral (II, 152), who cites the Life of St. Teliavus in the Book of Llandaf (ed. J. Rhys, > p. 107) and the Annals of Tigernach (A.D. 550). > 901 > This content downloaded from > 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC > All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Julius Caesar's British Conquest returning ships lose the course and are attacked on landing by the Morini. But in view of the absence in the HIistoria Regum Britanniae of parallels to the passages in Caesar which are favorable to the British, as well as such misunderstandings as the litus Rutenorum, it is hardly likely that Geoffrey was familiar with the Gallic War. He brings in the threat of > rebellion after Caesar's return to Gaul in accordance with the aim of his work. Caesar, one of his chief foils to the shining nobility of the ancient Britons, has alreadybeen depicted as impious, covetous, and ill-mannered. Now that he has fallen into adversity, he must be depicted as truckling, demagogic, and disingenuous. And so Geoffrey transfers to this point > the Gallic tumults which Orosius and his followers had mentioned after Caesar's final return from Britain, and the erstwhile conqueror's roar changes to a bleat. But the iron will and bitter vengefulness of this great Roman whom the valor of the Britons has put down must not be underestimated. "Not a day passed that he did not brood over his flight, and the victory of the Britons." And so, Geoffrey continues, two years later Caesar prepared to revenge himself upon Cassibellaunus. The British king, hearing of Caesar's intention, hastened to prepare defenses; and in the bed of the Thames, up which Caesar would sail to reach Trinovantum, he fixed stakes of iron and lead as thick as a man's thigh, their points hidden by the surface so that the Roman ships should drive against them and be shattered. Then Julius set sail with an innumerable multitude to slaughter the people who had humbled him. And he would undoubtedly have done so if his fleet had been able to land undamaged. But as his ships sailed up the Thames to Trinovantum they were pierced by the stakes and gulped down by the river, and the Romans drowned by the thousands. At this, Caesar hastened to turn his remaining ships to shore, where the remnant of his army manfully resisted the British attack. Nevertheless the Romans were no match for the British, whose army, hourly augmented by reinforcements, was three times as large as theirs; and so Caesar fled to the remaining ships and sailed to Gaul. There he betook himself to a tower, which, fearing that the volatile Gauls would rebel again, he had built as a refuge at a place called Odnea before going on this second expedition to Britain. The Tower at Odnea makes its first appearance in Geoffrey's account. It is really the lighthouse at Boulogne, apparently the one which Suetoni- us attributes to Caligula. Geoffrey seems to have connected this light- house with Caesar by association with a similar building that once stood near the Castle of Dover (which local tradition ascribed to Caesar'1). Camden says: > 19 See H. Nearing, "Local Caesar Traditions in Britain," Speculum, xxiv (1949), 220. > 902 > This content downloaded from > 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC > All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Homer Nearing, Jr. > Upon another rock over-against this [Castle of Dover], and almost of equal height there are the remains of some very ancient building. One author, upon what grounds I know not, has called it Caesar's Altar, but John Twine of Canterbury, > a learned old man, who in his youth had seen it almost entire, affirmed to me that > it was a watch-tower, to direct sailors by night-lights ["some part whereof is yet remaining," adds his eighteenth-century editor, "now vulgarly called Breden- stone"]. Such another there was over-against it at Bologne in France, built by the Romans, and repair'd a long time after by Charles the Great. . . , now called > by the French Tour d'Order, and by the English, The old man of Bullen.20 This seems to be the tower which, according to the Chronicle of St. Martin of Dover,2l Caesar built as a treasury. Either Geoffrey's mind was on the wrong side of the Channel, or he conceived of Caesar's having > built twin towers on either side of it in the manner of the Pillars of > Hercules. To continue with Geoffrey's story, while Caesar brooded in the Tower at Odnea, Cassibellaunus ordered all the chiefs of Britain to forgather at Trinovantum and offer victory sacrifices to their ancestral gods. Afterwards the celebrants feasted and spent the rest of the day and night playing various kinds of games. Among others, Hirelglas, the nephew of the king, and Evelinus (or Cuelinus), the nephew of Androgeus, duke of Trinovantum and Kent, happened to "contend together in the palestra." (This phrase was interpreted by some of Geoffrey's followers as referring to a wrestling match.) Their game became a serious matter when Evelinus, in a dispute over who had won, snatched up a sword and struck off Hirelglas's head. As soon as news of this scandal reached Cassibellaunus, he charged Androgeus to bring Evelinus before his court to be sentenced by the chiefs of the land. Androgeus, doubting the king's impartiality, replied that he had a court of his own, and that any charges against his men should be brought there. Failing to move Androgeus by threats, the furious king proceeded to devastate his nephew's duchy with fire and sword; and finally, unable to allay Cassibellaunus's wrath, Androgeus wrote for help to his old enemy Julius Caesar. In reply Caesar, by advice of his counselors, demanded hostages; and Androgeus sent him his son Sceva and thirty young kinsmen. Then Caesar sailed to Rich- borough (Rutupi portu) and prepared with Androgeus to attack Canter- bury (Dorobernia). But Cassibellaunus, abandoning a siege of Trino- vantum, met Caesar in a valley near Canterbury and engaged the Romans furiously until Androgeus and his men burst from the woods upon the rear of his uncle's army. The Britons fled to a mountain, which Caesar > 20 Edmund Gibson, ed. Britannia, 2d ed. (1722), I, col. 250. > 21 Thomas D. Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue of Materials Relating to the History of Great > Britain and Ireland (Rolls Ser.), II, 263. > 903 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Julius Caesar's British Conquest surrounded to accomplish by hunger what he had failed to do by arms. At this point Geoffrey's pride in his ancestors overflows. "0 admirable old Britons," he exclaims, "to put to flight twice one who had subjected the whole earth. Him that all the world could not resist, this people even after flight resisted, ready to die for country and for liberty. Thus in their praise sang Lucan of Caesar: 'Terrified, he showed his back to the Britons whom he had sought out.'" After the Britons had been without food for two days, Geoffrey con- tinues, Cassibellaunus, fearing that hunger would drive him into Caesar's hands, sent to Androgeus enjoining him to arrange for peace terms lest his race be humiliated by the captivity of its king. Androgeus, though naturally exasperated by his vengeful uncle's plea, went to Caesar and, embracing his knees, asked for peace terms. Caesar made no reply. Then a threatening note entered Androgeus's voice, and he pointed out that his agreement with the Romans had been to subdue, not kill Cassibel- launus. At last, for fear of Androgeus, Caesar agreed to peace under condi- tion of an annual tribute of three thousand pounds of silver. After spend- ing the winter in Britain, he returned to Gaul to raise an army against Pompey, and finally marched off to Rome, taking Androgeus with him. In Geoffrey's treatment Androgeus becomes not only one of the chief characters in the story for the first time but also one of the arch-traitors of British history.22 His alliance with Caesar is roughly paralleled in a sentence of the Gallic War (v, 20) describing Mandubracius's flight to Gaul to seek Caesar's protection from Cassibellaunus, a sentence which is absent in Orosius and his derivatives. Also, Androgeus's intercession with Caesar in behalf of the king is more lightly paralleled by another sentence in the Gallic War stating that Cassibellaunus made friends with Caesar's trusted Gallic leader Commius before asking for terms (v, 22). It has been suggested that Geoffrey found passages from the Gallic War among the glosses on one of his sources.23 But he would hardly have > needed them. If we must afford him a classical model for the behavior of Androgeus, there is the story of Coriolanus, who was also a great warrior tormented into treason by wounded pride and rendered penitent by the pleas of a close relative. Among works with which Geoffrey may have been familiar, the story of Coriolanus is alluded to twice by Valerius Maximus (I, viii, 4; v, iii, 2), related in detail by Livy (II, xxxiii-xl), and > 22 J. Loth, ed. Les Mabinogion (Paris, 1913), II, 306, thinks that "the substitution, in > the Welsh translations of Geoffrey, of Avarwy for Androgeus would indicate that the legend > of Avarwy's treason was current in Wales and that Geoffrey only dressed it up." It is con- > ceivable, however, that some Welsh translator read Geoffrey's Androgeus as Anarwius. > 23 Faral, II, 155. > 904 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Homer Nearing, Jr. sketched by Eutropius (I, xv), whose work was the basis of Landolfus's > Historia Miscella. But Geoffrey could easily have developed Androgeus without any literary models at all. Treason is no rare phenomenon. And something like Androgeus's behavior was necessary to Geoffrey's patriotic purpose Somehow the Romans had subjected Britain; that was uncontrovertible. But it was hard for him to believe that those "admirable old Britons" had been conquered in fair fight. Might not one part of them have subdued the other for Caesar? Bede and Henry of Huntingdon had both described the surrender of Trinovantum under this Androgeus, who was no doubt more of a villain than met the eye in their sparse accounts-though a British villain at that, a man of lofty sentiments forced into treason be- cause of the awful Celtic tempers of his nephew and his uncle. There were hints in the Charlemagne legends of how such situations might develop: a fatal dispute between two young men arising from a game.24 And once the king had begun to destroy him, what was more natural than that Androgeus should have preserved his self-respect and shown his magnanimity toward defeated enemies in one stroke by sending for the > Romans. The chief hostage sent by Androgeus in response to Caesar's dema seems to be that classic example of foolhardy courage whom Caesa promoted to centurion in the apologues of Valerius Maximus, Caes Scaeva. Geoffrey has dropped his first name and made him a Briton, son of Androgeus.25 It has been suggested that Geoffrey drew upon story of Scaeva in Landolfus's Historia Miscella;26 but in Landolfus t rash hero's name is Scevius, whereas Geoffrey has Sceva, a spelling which would indicate his direct acquaintance with the work of Valerius Ma mus. Possibly Geoffrey did remember Landolfus's statement, retain from Eutropius, that Caesar exacted tribute from the vanquished Briton and yet tribute was so natural a result of conquest that Geoffrey har needed a source for the peace terms between Caesar and Cassibellaun > HI. THE LEGEND FROM GEOFFREY TO THE END OF THE > THIRTEENTH CENTURY A few years after the appearance of Geoffrey's work, wh > 24 Faral cites Renaud de Montauban and Ogier the Dane. > 25 Geoffrey implies that Scaeva accompanied his father when the latter m > Caesar. This implication was followed up in Joseph of Exeter's Antiocheis, > Third Crusade of which a fragment was discovered by Leland and record > his Remains (1870), p. 339. The extant fragment is a list of valiant Briton > Arthur, Brennus, and the hero Scaeva who won fame in Caesar's war wi > one of Caesar's greatest warriors had really been a Briton. > 26 Faral, II, 155. 905 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Julius Caesar's British Conquest Huntingdon visited the Abbey of Bec in Normandy (1139), one of the monks, Robert of Torigni, showed him a book dealing with the ancient British kings. Henry was delighted to discover the existence of such a book, for he had often tried to find the information it contained so that he could answer the questions of his friend Warinus Brito concerning ancient British history. Shortly after, he wrote a letter to Warinus summarizing the contents of this "grand book of Geoffrey Arthur," later incorporating the letter in the fourth edition of the Historia Anglo- rum, as Robert of Torigni did in his chronicle. Henry apparently made his summary of the Historia Regum Britanniae from occasional notes he had taken; for in some passages, especially lists of minor kings and princes, he is quite accurate, while in others he has Geoffrey's stories quite wrong. In summarizing the Caesar legend, how- ever, he may have twisted Geoffrey's narrative, not as a result of poor memory, but in accordance with his own previous conclusions as set forth in the Historia Anglorum. King Liud, the great builder, he says in his summary, had three sons: Cassibellanus, Belinus, and Androgeus. But as to how Julius Caesar vanquished Cassibellanus and Belinus, have I not described these things in the Historia Anglorum? Nevertheless, hear what this > history says. While Androgeus fought on his brothers' side against Julius Caesar, the Romans were vanquished twice. For so favorable an omen, a most splendid rite was celebrated at London, where during the games the son of Duke Andro- > geus slew the son of King Cassibellanus in a contest. At this the king, beside him- self with wrath, threatened his brother Androgeus with death unless he sur- rendered his son for execution. The seeds of discord and hatred thus fomented, > Androgeus sent a letter to Julius Caesar inviting his return; he surrendered London > to the returning invader and with him was victorious in battle over his own peo- ple. Cassibellanus, thus subjected to Caesar, rendered by law an annual tribute > to Caesar of three thousand pounds of silver.27 Henry holds to the genealogy of his Historia Anglorum in ignoring Nennius and insisting that Cassibellanus and Belinus were the sons of Luid. Just in case Geoffrey had discovered an authentic tradition desig- nating Androgeus as another son of Liud, however, Henry follows him in this repect, naming Androgeus the brother of Cassibellanus and Belinus. True enough, this arrangement seemed to involve a problem in requiring Belinus to be the father of both Hirelglas and Evelinus, for Geoffrey had described them as the nephews of Cassibellanus and Androgeus respectively but had arranged their descent in a way that would practical- ly obviate their being brothers. But the solution was easy: Geoffrey had > 27 Chronique de Robert de Torigni, ed. Leopold Delisle (Rouen, 1872), I, 105-106 (also > in Richard Howlett, ed. Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II., and Richard L. > Rolls Ser., vol. iv). 906 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Homer Nearing, Jr. mistaken the sons of Cassibellanus and Androgeus for their nephews. And so in Henry's epitome the two British worthies quarrel as fathers > rather than uncles. The next development of the legend appeared in Wace's Brut (1155).28 The major difference between the Caesar legends of Geoffrey and Wace lies in their attitude toward Caesar. In Geoffrey, Caesar is a somewhat contemptible foil for the true-hearted Britons; in Wace, who is writing for the heritors of Roman culture, he is a great man. Wace opens his account of Caesar with a characterization, not paralleled in Geoffrey, which says that Caesar was a wise, valiant, and generous emperor of Rome who conquered Burgundy, France, England, Saxony, Poitou, Normandy, and Brittany (11. 3909-38).29 He gives Caesar a loftier motive for desiring to subject Britain than mere greed: the Britons Belinus and Brennus, Caesar remembers, had once seized Rome and massacred its senators; it is only right that the Britons be made to restore through tribute what Belinus and Brennus had taken from Rome (11. 3959-70). On Caesar's return to Gaul after his first defeat, where Geoffrey had sneered at him for bribing the rebellious Gauls, Wace admires him for his ability to turn the situation to his advantage.30 Caesar, he says, knew so well how to daunt treachery and level pride by pretended meek- ness, when force was insufficient, that after his bribes and promises the French did him homage and agreed to accompany him to Britain on his next expedition (11. 4254-88). Finally, the line Geoffrey had quoted from > Lucan is not mentioned. Among minor differences, Wace has found in some derivative of Orosius how many ships Caesar took with him on each expedition, as well as the fact that Caesar embarked from the part of Gaul closest to Britain, so that he changes Geoffrey's litus Rutenorum to Flandres. Four other changes seem to be owing to a misunderstanding of Geoffrey: for Dorobel- lum Wace has Douvres (1. 4067); for Cantuaritis (the men of Kent), whom Nennius led, he has Chantorbire (1. 4069); for Rutupi portu (Rich- borough), where Caesar lands the third time, he has Romenel;3l and for Dorobernia (Canterbury), near which Cassibelan is finally defeated, he has Douvres (1. 4678). Nearly all the other differences are expansions of statements or implications in Geoffrey. The most elaborate is the descrip- tion of the Tower at Odnea. When Caesar had appeased the turbulent > 28 The chronicle of Alfred of Beverley contains only a condensation of Geoffrey's account. > 29 The line numbering used here is that of Le Roux de Lincy's edition (Rouen, 1836). > 30 See Margaret Houck, Sources of the Roman de Brut of Wace (Univ. of California Publi- > cations in English, v, 1944), pp. 181-182. > 31 Some MSS have Dover instead of Romney; see Madden's ed. of Layamon, In, 336. > Le Roux de Lincy (1. 4632) and the copy of Wace in MS. BN fr. 794 (fol. 303, col. 3) have > Romenel. 907 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Judius Caesar's British Conquest Franks, says Wace (11. 4289-4318), he had a skilful engineer build him a tower by the sea at Boulogne. Called the Tower of Ordre, it was of a strange shape, very wide at the bottom and tapering upward to the roof, which consisted of a single stone. It had many stories and, in the lower part, many windows. Here Caesar kept his treasury; moreover, he himself lived in it for fear of treason. While he was preparing for the second in- vasion of Britain, he placed favorites in the various cities and sections of the land to act as tax-collectors; and all the wealth thus amassed was hoarded in the Tower of Ordre.32 While Wace does not elaborate Geoffrey's Caesar legend to the point of obscuring his model's architectonic structure, his follower Layamon adds details at will. The most notable development of the legend in Layamon's hands is the tactical ineptitude of King Cassibellaune. When the great Caesar ("Wellaway that ever such a man should go to hell!") has reached shore after running into the iron-hooded stakes in the Thames, Cassibellaune, exhorting his men to remember that Belin and Brenne conquered Rome and all the realms around it, so that Rome rightly belongs to the Britons, sends his troops cheering into battle. But the wily Caesar has trumpets blown to assemble his men and tells them to prepare to fight the Britons on the morrow. A busybody standing near- by runs to tell Cassibellaune what he has overheard, and the king oblig- ingly postpones his attack till the next day. About midnight, however, Caesar sails away to the Tower of Otheres, so that the next morning, when Cassibellaune marches forth to fight, he finds that his delay has > 32 Among the variants found in certain MSS of Wace is the statement in the description of the Tower of Ordre that Caesar "by this tower won the land Which now is known as Engle-land" (4295-96). Another variant consists of four lines in which the founding of Exeter is attributed to Caesar (4940-43). > Among other early French verse Bruts extant, the Mlnnchener Brut ends before and the fragment in MS. Harleian 1605 begins after the reign of Cassibellaunus. But the Brut in MS. Regius 13. A. xxi. has the story of Caesar's invasions. The author of this version uses > material from Bede and Geoffrey, and adds details from either unknown sources-perhaps > the lost version of Geoffrey which began Gaimar's Estorie des Engles-or his own imagina- tion, e.g., the peoples represented in Caesar's second expeditionary force: Moridiens and Pincenaos, Indians, Macedonians, and the barons of Africa, Arabia, Romania, and Hun- > gary, as well as Burgundians (fol. 56). Among Latin works of the latter part of the 12th century which refer to the Caesar > legend is the abridgment of Geoffrey made for the St. Albans compilation, later used by Roger of Wendover, Matthew Paris, and "Matthew of Westminster"; in this abridgment > Rutupi portu is identified as Sandwich. The line which Geoffrey had quoted from Lucan is also quoted by Fitzstephen (in the description of London prefixed to his life of Becket), Giraldus Cambrensis (Description of Cambria), and Ralph de Diceto (Opuscula, ed. Stubbs, Rolls Ser), who nevertheless follows Henry of Huntingdon's letter to Warinus Brito for > the rest of his account of Caesar. Geoffrey's Caesar legend is also referred to in Alexander Neckham's poem De Laudilus Divinae Sapientiae (Distinctio Tertia, 11. 857-862). 908 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Homer Nearing, Jr. let the enemy escape. "Full sooth said the sage," cries the frustrated king, "that told the saw: if thou believest every man, seldom shalt thou do well" (11. 7821-8018). The oafishness of Cassibellaune on this occasion is not really a formal blot, for Layamon deals with it in a vein of sober didacticism consistent with the tone of his whole work; and yet a modern reader of this passage cannot help thinking of Reynard and Bruin. Later, when Androgeus has sent for Caesar, they conceal their respective armies at opposite ends of a great valley; and Cassibellaune, with his customary hebetude, marches blandly between them.33 A decade or so after Layamon finished his Brut appeared the verse history Des empereors de Rome of Lorrain Calendre.34 In his account of Julius Caesar, Calendre says that after subjecting Gaul the conqueror crossed to Britain, his seven legions reinforced by 200,000 men. On the first day of May the Britons, riding in close formation at less than a trot, put the Romans to flight; and the slaughter, so great that at one point Caesar heard the screams in his headquarters, was ended only by the fall of night. The Britons retired joyfully to Canterbury and the next day prevailed again over the Romans. Then Caesar lost his temper, swore "by God" that he would hang or drown any Roman who fled from the Britons again, and promised to even the score with "the Britons and the Scots." On the morrow he himself took to the field and raged so furiously that the Britons were defeated. Their king, who was dwelling in Ciren- cester, surrendered to Caesar and did him homage, and Britain was made tributary to Rome. > The most unusual features of this account are the notion that the con- quest of Britain had been accomplished in the three battles of one expedition, and the reference to Cirencester. The foremost student of Calendre's work accepts the author's concluding statement that he is translating an abridged chronicle (queronique reongnie) from Latin into French, and identifies the Latin work as an abridgment of Orosius, but knows of no extant epitome of Orosius or of any source for the variations in Calendre's account of the conquest of Britain.35 There is, however, an extant abridgment of Orosius which seems to reduce Caesar's British conquest to the three battles of one expedition and refers to the surrender of the king at Cirencester. Incredible as it seems, the conclusion is un- avoidable that Calendre was familiar with the material of King Alfred's Orosius. Since it is hard to picture him as deciphering West Saxon, > 33 Among Layamon's contemporaries, Gervase of Canterbury (Gesta Regum) and Gervase > of Tilbury (Otia Imperialia) make use of Geoffrey's Caesar legend. > 34 F. Settegast dates the work about 1213: "Calendre und seine Kaiserchronik," Roma- > nische Studien, in (1878), 95. It is in BN MS. fr. 794, fol. 342V-360V (MLA Rotographs). > 35 Settegast, p. 99. > 909 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Julius Caesar's British Conquest however, it is better to take his word for the Latin source and suppose that there was at one time an annotated Orosius from which King Alfred took these details, or a translation of King Alfred into Latin, or an Orosius with Latin glosses drawn partly from King Alfred's version. The first or last supposition would explain how Calendre knew he was using an "abridged chronicle," for Orosius states at the opening of his account of Caesar that he is epitomizing Suetonius; but both fail to explain Ca- lendre's notion that the entire conquest of Britain occurred in three days. On the other hand, a Latin translator of King Alfred might have labeled the work as an abridgment of Orosius. Finally, whether through glosses or previous reading, Calendre seems also to be familiar with either Geoffrey or Wace, as his statement that the first battle was ended by nightfall and his references to Canterbury and the Scots indicate. During the second quarter of the thirteenth century appeared a version of Geoffrey in ten books of Latin hexameters known as the Gesta Regum Britanniae. An explicit added to one MS ascribes this epic to Alexander Neckham; but since the work is dedicated to Bishop Cadioc of Vannes, who held the see from 1236 to 1254, Neckham, who died at latest in 1227, can hardly have written it.36 The author, in any case, is a Celt who avowedly writes, not to amuse or to win fame, but to inspire his fellow Celts with a burning desire to regain their ancient glory (11. 4905-18). In pursuit of his aim he adopts a heroic tone; the stories are condensed from Geoffrey, but the style abounds in lively rhetorical expansions. Cassibelanus's reply to Caesar's initial demands, for example, ends with a series of untranslatable puns on Caesar and the verbs caedo and cedo that goes something like this (11. 1242-46): Caesar, who tak'st thy name from homicide, (And may it soon portend thine own decease) Concede us Britain.37 Canst thou be so proud Of having conquered Gaul? that sorry land > So often overcome by our forebears, > Who once, 'tis said, held even thy sires in fee. At this, Caesar, "more furious than an enraged lion," invades Britain but is repulsed. As for the second expedition, the most striking addition to Geoffrey's account of the stakes in the Thames is that they have become barbed (hamatas).3 > 36 Ed. Francisque-Michel (Bordeaux, 1862), p. viii. > 37 Cesar, qui ceso nomen trahis istud ab hoste, > Ne quia cederis, sis Cesar: cede Britannis. > This etymology is different from those usually given; see Arturo Graf, Roma nella Memoria > e nelle Immaginazioni del Medio Evo (Turin, 1882), i, 301 n. > 38 Other 13th century works borrowing from Geoffrey's Caesar legend are the Annales > 910 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Homer Nearsng, Jr. 911 An interesting addition to the Caesar legend which apparently lies outside the development of the mediaeval chronicles and romances is the statement in the fifth chapter of Roger Bacon's Epistola de Secretis Operibus Artis ef Naturae, et de NuZZitate Magiae that "Julius Caesar is thought to have perceived, from the seashore of Gaul, the disposition and situation of the fortresses and cities of Great Britain by means of gigantic mirrors."39 This statement also appears in the section on optics of his Opus Majus (1267). Possibly the idea is connected in some way with the variant of Wace which says that "by this tower [of Ordre, Caesar] won the land which now is known as England." Several versions of the Caesar legend which seem to have originated in the thirteenth century cannot be specifically dated: for example, the prose Brut which was eventually printed by Caxton. Nearly all the extant English MSS of this work (over a hundred, the earliest dating from about 1400) represent a translation of the second of two French redactions.40 The chief difference between the Caesar accounts in the two French versions4' is a garbled phrasing in the second by which two King Luds are created. In both, the villainous Earl of London is left unnamed, while the Earl of Cornwall, who succeeds Cassibalam, is called "Androgen." Stanleienses (Bodl. MS. Digby 11), which notes that Androgeus was taken to Rome by Caesar; the MemoriaJe attributed to Walter of Coventry (Rolls Ser.), in which Cassibel- launus is assigned the children of CymbeIine; and the Historia Anglicana of Bartholomew Cotton (MS. Regius 14. C. i.), who follows GeoErey earplicitly. R. H. Fletcher (Arthurian Material in Ghe Chronicles, p. 168) mentions an EpiGoune HisGoriae BriGannicae (Brut to Henry IIr) which "nowhere makes any changes in Geoffrey's story." The French prose Livere de ress de BrgGanie e le livere de reis de Engletere (Rolls Ser.), sometimes associated with the name of Peter of Ickham, contains a summary of previous extracts drawn apparently from Wace. That the account of Caesar, at least, derives ul- timately from Wace is shown by an early 14th century cognate of the Livere, the Peti! BruJ of Rauf de Bohun (MS. Harl. 902), in which Caesar's motive for fighting King Cassibelin is to take revenge for what the latter's "father," King Beline, had done to Rome. In the Lisere also Cassibellaunus is made the successor of King Belinus, and his tribute is set at 2,000. In the RegisGrqxm Malmesburiense (Rolls Ser.), which contains a summary, in > French, of the Livere, the amount is corrected to 3,000. In the Caesar account of the metrical chronicle bearing the name of Robert of Gloucester,- from the end of the 13th centurya there are resemblances, perhaps specious, to tbe Welsh > version of Geoffrey known as the Brv! Tysilio. 39 J. S. Brewer, ed. Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera Quaedam Hac!anus Inedita (Rolls Ser.), p. > 534. 40 See Paul Meyer, "De Quelques Chroniques Anglo-Normandes qui ont portE le nom de Brut," Bulletin de la Societe des Anciens Textes Frasasais (1878), pp. 115-130, and Fried- > rich W. D. Brie, Geschichte und Quellen der mittelenglischen Prosachronik The Brute of England oder The Chronicles of England (Marburg, 1905), pp. 51-52. 41 Represented by Cotton MSS. Domitian A. ar. and Cleopatra D. iii The English version > was edited by Brie, EETS, 131. This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Julius Caesar's British Conquest Another Caesar work which cannot be precisely dated, but which seems to have originated early in the thirteenth century, is the French prose Li Fet des Romains, the earliest complete life of Caesar extant from the middle ages.42 The most striking development of the legend of Caesar's British exploits in this work is his method of dealing with the stakes in the Thames. On Caesar's orders the Romans, protecting themselves against the missiles of the Britons with raised shields, enter the river, feel for the stakes hidden beneath the surface, tie wooden splints full of sulfur around them, and apply Greek fire, so that despite the water the > stakes are burnt down to the river bed.43 This author's account of Caesar in Britain, however, is based mainly on the Gallic War, with touches from Geoffrey of Monmouth or Wace. Li Fet is the first work in which the authority of Geoffrey comes clearly into conflict with the authority of Caesar and succeeds in intruding upon it. The latter, it is true, eliminates Geoffrey's Nennius: it is Cassibellau- nus who slays the Roman tribune Laberius (though Geoffrey's spelling of the British commander's name replaces Caesar's "Cassivellaunus," and the tribune is called "Labienus" in one of the MSS of Li Fet). But in narrating the surrender of the Trinobantes, the author was torn between his two authorities. Caesar said (v, 20) that after he had crossed the Thames, the powerful tribe of the Trinobantes sent legates to him offer- ing to surrender and requesting that he restore as their chief the prince Mandubracius, who had fled to Caesar in Gaul when Cassivellaunus killed his father, the king of the tribe; taking forty hostages and a supply of grain, Caesar granted their request. Geoffrey's legend was somewhat parallel: Androgeus, duke of Trinovantum and Kent, was driven by Cassibellaunus's persecution to offer Caesar his help in subduing the king; taking thirty noble youths and Androgeus's son as hostages, Caesar joined Androgeus and put Britain under tribute. And so our author de- cided to work Androgeus into Caesar's narrative. Cassibellaunus's per- secution of Androgeus suggested that the latter might have been the chief of the Trinobantes whom Caesar's Cassivellaunus killed. And he > had been duke of both Trinovantum and Kent. Therefore the author says that "those of the country of Kent" sent to Caesar offering to surrender. "Their country was powerful, and Androgeus had been princ and sire of it; but Cassibellaunus had killed him because he had heard that the other had shown constant love for Caesar since his first coming into Britain, and his son Mandubracius had fled to Caesar in Boulogne after the death of his father." Thus Androgeus, whose name had origi > 42 Paul Meyer, "Les Premieres Compilations Frangaises d'Histoire Ancienne," Romania > xiv (1885), 26. > 43 Edd. L.-F. Flutre and K. Sneyders de Vogel (1938), I, 187. See also II, 113. > 912 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Homer Nearing, Jr. nated in Orosius's contraction of "Mandubracius," has become his own father. The connection, if any, between this development and the name Imanuentius, which is given to Mandubracius's father in the early edi- tions of the Gallic War, is not clear. An interesting development in the British section of Li Fet which does not derive from Geoffrey of Monmouth is the identification of the standard bearer of the tenth legion (who inspired the Romans to attack the Britons at the first landing) with Valerius Maximus's hero Scaeva. As in the case of Geoffrey's story of Androgeus, the author seems to have taken counsel with himself as to which episode in Caesar the story of Scaeva would fit best.44 The Welsh adaptations of Geoffrey also seem to have originated in the thirteenth century. These apparently began with a translation of the Historia Regum Britanniae about 1200, but eventually developed into six different versions of Geoffrey's narrative.45 Two of the Welsh versions of Geoffrey are available in English translations: the Brut Tysilio and the Brut y Brenhinedd.46 Some scholars have tried to find in the Brut Tysilio, especially in the account of Caesar's invasions, traces of British legend independent of Geoffrey; but there is no convincing evidence that any of the Welsh Brut episodes parallel to Geoffrey's stories derive from any source other than the Historia Regum Britanniae.47 44 None of these developments are retained in the 14th century Italian adaptation of Li Fet, I Fatti di Cesare, ed. Luciano Banchi (Bologna 1863). Nor is the conquest of Britain dealt with in the 13th century prose Hystore de Julius Cesar of Jehan de Tuim, which Jacot de Forest versified as the Roman de Julius Cesar. See F. Settegast, "Jacos de > Forest e la sua Fonte," Giornale di Filologia Romanza II (1879), 173. > 45 John J. Parry, ed. Brut y Brenhinedd (Cambridge, Mass., 1937), pp. ix-xii. 4 Ed. by Acton Griscom (1929) and J. J. Parry (1937) respectively. 47 See W. M. Flinders Petrie, "Neglected British History," Proceedings of the British Academy 1917-1918, pp. 251-275, refuted by Robert W. Chambers, "Geoffrey of Mon- mouth and the Brut," History, N. S., iv (1920), 34-40. Acton Griscom, in his excellent edition of Geoffrey and the Brut Tysilio (pp. 205-210), replies to some of Chambers's arguments but fails to show that any detail of the Welsh account of Caesar came from a source other than Geoffrey. He argues that since Geoffrey omits Nennius in the list of chiefs at Dorobellum, while the Brut Tysilio substitutes Nennius for the Bellinus whom > Geoffrey does mention there, it is clear that Geoffrey took liberties with an older tradition and was corrected by the Welsh translator. But Wace too mentions Nennius among the chiefs at Cassibellaunus's muster, though he does not substitute him for Bellinus. If any explanation of the omission of Bellinus in the terse Welsh abridgment is necessary, it is > possible that the translator considered the reference to Bellinus confusing (because of the previous account of King Belinus and his brother Brennus) and deleted it. Beyond Wace's > maneuvering of Nennius, examples of similar "corrections" of Geoffrey could be multiplied indefinitely; e.g., see Perrett, "The Story of King Lear," Palaestra, xxxv (1904), 162-164. J. J. Parry, in his review of Griscom's ed.-JEGP, xxx (1931), 95-98-replies to other > points in Griscom's argument for a Celtic source of Geoffrey's stories. 913 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Julius Caesar's British Conquest Some of the Welsh triads also seem to derive from the Historia Regum Britanniae. The triad in the Red Book which describes as one of the three "evil decisions" of the Britons their granting "Ulkessar" and the Romans a place for the foreshoes of their horses on Thanet, suggests a confusion between Caesar and Hengist; but in the same collection there is a triad which clearly derives from Geoffrey's account: the first of the three men of dishonor in the isle of Britain is "Avarwy, son of Lludd ab Beli, who sent for Julius Caesar and the Romans for the first time in this island, and made the Britons pay an annual tribute of three thousand pounds of silver by his opposition to his uncle Kaswallawn."48 It has been sug- gested that the dissimilarity in spelling between Androgeus and Avarwy points to a British tradition, earlier than Geoffrey's legend, of a traitor named Avarwy;49 but it is quite conceivable that some Welsh translator read Androgeus as Auarwius. Much more prominent than Avarwy in the triads is Caswallawn. In the triads of the Myvyrian Archaeology he is named as one of the three great warrior kings of Britain, and as one of the three Britons elevated to the throne by special legislation since they were not firstborn,50 a notion clearly deriving from Geoffrey; and among the three great feasts of Britain is the one he held after the defeat of Caesar.61 But there seems to have developed about Caswallawn a body of legend distinct from Geoffrey's story. A triad in the Red Book mentions his horse Meinlas ("Whitish") as one of the three gift horses of Britain; in a triad of the Black Book of Caermarthen his horse is named Melynlas ("Yellowish").62 In another triad of the Red Book, Caswallawn is named as the leader of one of the three "silver" armies of Britain (so called not only because they took precious metals with them but because each soldier chosen for them had to be braver than the one last recruited).53 Accompanied by his sister Aryanrot and her two sons, Gwennwynnwyn and Gwanar, Cas- wallawn led his 21,000 men in pursuit of the Caesarians, who had been driven from Britain, and finally stayed in Gascony.54 Possibly this story > 48 J. Loth (trans.), Les Mabinogion, II, nos. 28 and 10. Loth's no. 119, from the Myvyrian > Archaeology, reads like a combination of these two. The other traitors are Vortigern and > Modred. > 49 Loth, nI, 305 n. > 60 Ibid., nos. 122 and 118. In another triad of the Myvyrian Archaeology (Loth, no. 111) > the expulsion of Ganval the Goidel from Britain is attributed to Caswallawn, though he is > apparently confused here with Cadwallawn. Ibid., p. 330 n. > 51 Bulfinch's Mythology (Modern Library, 1934), p. 442. > 52 Loth, I, nos. 57 and 4. > 3 Ibid., p. 232 n. > 4 Ibid., no. 9. A variant is printed in William F. Skene, ed. The Four Ancient Books > of Wales (Edinburgh, 1868), II, 463. 914 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Homer Nearing, Jr. had its origin in Geoffrey's statement that the Gauls were encouraged to rebel against Caesar, after his first return from Britain, by a rumor that Cassibellaunus was crossing the sea in pursuit of him; but it has under- gone considerable embellishment. Indeed, this expedition seems to have been motivated by love. In the Myvyrian Archaeology Caswallawn is said to have taken an army of 60,000 men to rescue Flur, the daughter of Mynach the Dwarf, from Mwrchan, a Gallic prince; he crossed to Armorica, defeated the Romans, recovered Flur, and settled in Gascony, where his descendants still dwell.55 In other triads of the same collection Caswallawn and Fflur are set beside Trystan and Essyllt among the great lovers of Britain; and Caswallawn is said to have disguised himself as a cobbler-goldsmith in order to go to Rome and rescue Fflur from Julius Caesar, for whom she had been abducted by Mwrchan the Thief.56 In the Mabinogi of Branwen, daughter of Llyr, Kaswallawn is described as killing six men whom he approaches wrapped in his invisible mantle; and there are apparently other stories about the king which have not yet been translated. Caesar appears as an incidental character in some of the romances which seem to have originated in the thirteenth century: for example, in the Rei Waldef, dealing with the adventures of a king of Norfolk and his sons, which was translated into Latin prose in the fifteenth century by John Bramis. Bramis's version opens with a brief account of Caesar's attempts to conquer Britain, unsuccessful until he received the help of Androchus, Duke of Kent, "as is described more fully in [Wace's] Brut."57 When Caesar had subjected the land, says Bramis, he set a Roman king over it. This king, hearing of troubles in Norfolk, appointed his kinsman Castor as sub-king of that shire; and Castor built a city which still bears his name, Caistor-near-Yarmouth. In the romance of Huon of Bordeaux Geoffrey's Tower at Odnea reappears as the Castle of Dunother, oc- cupied by the giant Angolafer. Oberon, the son of Julius Caesar, tells > Huon: I charge the, on payne of thy lyfe and lesynge for euer my loue that thou be not so hardy to take the way to the toure of Dunother the whiche is a meruelous grete toure standynge on the see syde. Iulius Cesar causyd it to be made and there in > 65 Loth, i, 147 n. Perhaps it is the Gallic prince Mwrchan whom Jean des Preis (d'Outre- > meuse) refers to in a passage of his Mer (or Myreur) des Histoires describing how Caesar, > after subduing Helvetia (Elnatie) "went to Bretangne [Brittany apparently] and fought > Turlingue Lacobege and Murache, his son, on which occasion he and the Romans slew > forty thousand men, and the rest fled." Ed. Ad. Borgnet (Brussels, 1864), I, 212. > 66 Loth, II, no. 81 and p. 273 n; the cobbler-goldsmith triad as it appears in the Red Book > is Loth, no. 65. > 67 Ed. Rudolf Imelmann in Bonner Studien zur Englischen Philologie, xv (1912), lxxiii > and 14. 915 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Julius Caesar's British Conquest I was longe noryssyd; thou neuer sawest so fayr a toure nor better garnysshyd with chambers and glase windouse and with in hangyd with ryche tapestrey at the entre of the gate there are .ii. men of brasse, eche of them holdynge in there > handys a flayll of Iren, wher with without sesse daye and nyght they bete by such a mesure that whan the one stryketh with his flayll the other is lyft vp redy to stryke and they bete so quyckely that a swalow flyynge can not passe by vn- > slayn.58 > IV. FOURTEENTH CENTURY DEVELOPMENTS AND THE > LEGEND OF CAESAR AND THE SCOTS The early fourteenth century Anglo-Norman chronicle of Trivet follows Henry of Huntingdon's letter to Warinus Brito "Cassibelan, Belyn, and Dodrogon" as the sons of King "L most of Trivet's account of Caesar is different from that o chronicles. He adds that "chains fastened to trees" were stretched across the Thames to trap Caesar's fleet, and that after conquering Britain Caesar commemorated his conquest by building the castles of Dover, Canterbury, Rochester, and London; the castle or the city of "Cesares- bury," now called Salisbury; "Cesarischestre," that is, Chichester; and the castle of Exeter. When Caesar had built the city of Chichester, says Trivet, he noticed that it "was without easement of running water." And so he sent a painting of the city and its environs, together with fine gifts, to Virgil, then in Greece, asking him to provide water for the city by his magi'c. Virgil sent back an enchanted serpent sealed in a box, which was to be opened at the desired source of the new river. The messenger, curious to see what Virgil had sent the emperor, opened the box in a valley below the city; the serpent leaped out and entered the ground; and the river "Avoute" (Lavant) sprang forth and ran uphill to the > city.59 Peter of Langtoft, in his French verse chronicle (Brut to 1307), con- tinues William of Newburgh's attack on the school of Geoffrey of Mon- mouth, stating at the end of the British section of his chronicle that he has used only so much of the British history as is true. The truth that Peter thought he detected in Geoffrey's Caesar legend is the operation of the law of primogeniture. Caesar, he says, claimed Britain on the ground that the rights of Aeneas, the progenitor of both the Britons and the Romans, had descended to himself alone. And after Cassibelan had driven the Romans from the island twice, his nephew Androgeus, reflect- ing that the crown of Britain was rightfully his own since Cassibelan was > 58 Berners trans., ed. S. T. Lee, EETS, ES, 40, p. 96. > G9 George L. Frost, "Caesar and Virgil's Magic in England," MLN, LI (1936), 433. For > the development of these and other builder legends, see H. Nearing, "Local Caesar Tradi- > tions in Britain," Speculum, xxiv (1949), 218-227. 916 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Homer Nearing, Jr. only a surrogate for his father, demanded the throne. Cassibelan thought his nephew was joking, but was disabused when the latter prevailed upon Caesar to invade Britain a third time and subject it to tribute.60 The earliest version of the Perceforest, a long romance in French prose extant in a fifteenth century MS and two sixteenth century printings (1528, 1532), has been assigned to the first part of the fourteenth century not long after the appearance of Jacques de Longuyon's Voeux du Paon (c. 1314), from which it borrows.61 In the Perceforest the Matter of Antiquity is combined with the Matter of Britain, the eight centuries between Alexander and Arthur being telescoped to three generations. For further variety Julius Caesar appears at three points in the story. In the third book (ch. 20-23) three Roman legions arrive in the West, one of which, led by Julles or Julices, "son of Luces, one of the senators of Rome" (i.e., Lucius Piso, Caesar's father-in-law), invades Scotland. But the Romans are no match for the valiant Scots. In desperation Julices issues a challenge to single combat which is accepted by the king of Scotland's son-in-law, Lyonnel du Glar. Lyonnel vanquishes Julices but spares his life because of the valor he has displayed, and that night the Romans slink away, "their leader deeply grieving, discomfited, weep- ing in their ships." In the next book (iv, ch. 27-29) Julius Caesar, the young sovereign of Rome, sails west with a great fleet until Britain appears "on the left hand" (cf. the Gallic War, v, 8).62 Among his retainers is a knight named Luces (not his father) who loves the queen of Great Britain. This Queen Cerces is a Roman lady married to Bethides, the son of Perceforest (ap- pointed king of "England" by Alexander the Great), who is ruling for his aged father. Luces, who met the queen on a previous visit to Britain, has been plotting with her to destroy her husband's realm. Now he urges Caesar to attack the island in vengeance of its former repulse of the > 60 This warping of Geoffrey's legend to fit a preconceived notion was offensive to one of > Peter's scribes, who added verses to the chronicle saying that Wace had told the story of > the British kings much better since he had not tried to sift edifying embellishments from > the strict truth (The Chronicle of Pierre de Langtoft, ed. Thomas Wright, Rolls Ser., I, > xvi-xvii). But Robert Manning of Brunne, who repeats the strictures of Peter's scribe and > translates Wace for the first part of his chronicle (ed. Furnivall, Rolls Ser.), is careful to > include both of Peter's allusions to primogeniture. 61 Gaston Paris, "Le Conte de la Rose dans le Roman de Perceforest," Romania, xxIm > (1898), 81-83. None of the borrowed material concerns Caesar. The 1528 ed. of the Perce- > forest is available in the MLA Rotographs. > 62 Since no attempt is made to identify him with the Julices of the third book, it is > possible that the author of this book was a continuator unfamiliar with the identity of > Julices; but it is likely that both books are the work of one author attempting to give his > story variety: there are also two Julius Caesars in the prose Merlin (English version, ed. > Wheatley, EETS, 10, part 3, p. 420). 917 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Julius Caesar's British Conquest Romans. Meanwhile Gadisfer, the recently crowned king of Scotland, sends a warning to Bethides to be on guard against a Roman invasion; but the message is intercepted by the wicked queen, who substitutes a forged plea for help and advises her husband to go to Gadisfer, leaving the defense of England to her. When Bethides has left she sends letters to all his knights telling them to be ready to guard the ports at the end of the month. But within eight days the Romans have landed without opposition. When news of the Roman landing reaches Scotland, Gadisfer and Bethides deduce the queen's treachery from the forged letter and march south with the Scot army. Queen Cerces is waiting at her window > for Caesar and her lover Luces when a sentinel informs her that her husband is arriving with an army. At this she kills the sentinel, blas- phemes against the gods, and tries to leap from the window. As she writhes to escape from the old knight who is restraining her, a Statian thunderbolt strikes her. She screams so hideously in her death throes that Gadisfer's soldiers hear her in the distance, and her little son by Luces runs up to her in terror. The last act of the wicked queen is to > strangle her own child. In the ensuing battle the Romans outnumber th e Britons and Scots 20,000 to 6,000. Caesar, who is leader of the Romans "not for his great descent but for his high prowess, and because he had good luck in all his deeds, though he was not yet twenty-two years old," > transfixes King Nestor of Norway (Gadisfer's brother) with his lance and splits Bethides open from head to stomach with one blow of his sword. Finally Lyonnel du Glar, the aged King Perceforest, King Nestor (still > fighting despite the lance in his breast), and Gadisfer charge the Romans together, then fall senseless to the ground from loss of blood. They are > borne from the field in chariots driven by white-clad women who, Caesar thinks, are the attendants of Venus, sent by Mars to remove the fallen heroes to another place, "for this country is not at all worthy to have > such noble relics." > Almost half of Caesar's men have been killed or wounded in the struggle, but by the time he has conquered Brittany and Gaul, enough > of the wounded have recovered to warrant an attack on his old enemies > the Nervois (apparently the Nervii of the Gallic War), whom he destroys. At this time he is approached by one of his maternal relatives named Ourseau, the eldest son of a hairy Briton named Oursel whom Luces had brought back to Rome after his first visit to Britain. Ourseau, who has never seen his father's native land, gets Caesar's permission to visit the country he has heard so much about. In Book v (ch. 4) Ourseau returns > to Rome to learn from his father that several of his relatives have been killed in a battle between Caesar and the senators of Rome. Ourseau replies that this is not the only damage Caesar has done to their kins- > 918 i > This content downloaded from > 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC > All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Homer Nearing, Jr. men, for when he arrived in Britain he wandered through the country for more than six months without finding "city, town, borough or house, nor any man or woman who could wait on me." What few people he found dwelt in the forest, like stags and foxes, dressed only in deerskins and living from hand to mouth like dogs. Thus had Julius Caesar destroyed the lands and chivalry of the kings of Scotland and England, who, Ourseau has discovered, are Oursel's father and uncle respectively. Nor does Ourseau think this should be counted as a victory for Caesar; for the latter had failed to find a single Briton who did not prefer death to submission, he had entered the land only by treachery to begin with, and the king Perceforest had left the field last (in the chariots of Venus), still living. Gadisfer and Nestor had died of their wounds, the latter when his mother, the royne faee, drew Caesar's lance from his breast with a magic ointment to relieve his pain. Laying a curse on Caesar to the effect that he should die by the same means, the bereaved queen had given the lance point to Ourseau and told him to take it to his father.63 Later, Ourseau's brother Orsus Bouchesuave gives twelve styluses (greffes), made from the lance head, to Brutus, Cassius, and other senators, and leads them in stabbing Caesar to death.6 The account of Caesar in the French prose Scalacronica of the English knight Sir Thomas Gray (begun 1355) is based on Wace but makes sev- eral departures.65 For example, Gray names Caesar's sword Crochi 63 At this point Geoffrey's story of "Cassiberanus" and "Endroger" is interpolated, ap. parently by a later redactor who failed to notice that it made no sense in the context 4 The sprite Zephir had told Ourseau that Caesar, who bears a charmed life, would be vulnerable for a period of one day and one night heralded by a banging of all the doors and windows in his palace; and Orsus times the assassination accordingly. The notion that the assassins used styluses, which appears also in Li Fet des Romains, Calendre, and the Mer (or Myreur) des Histoires of Jean des Preis (d'Outremeuse), seems to have originated in Suetonius's statement (Julius 82) that Caesar wounded Cassius with his graphium > before succumbing to the daggers of the other senators. In the prose Merlin Caesar is slain near London by Sir Gawein in a battle following King Arthur's defiance of the Roman (EETS, 10, part 3, p. 420). In the early 14th century Liber Imperiale the kings of England and Scotland, among others, march in Caesar's funeral procession (Graf, Roma, I, 283). > 6 In his prologue Gray refers to "Walter archdeacon of Exeter who translated the Brut > from Bretoun into Latin," a reference paralleled by the colophon of the Welsh Brut Tysilio, > though the latter names Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, from whom Geoffrey of Monmouth said he had received the ancient book on which he based his Historia. But whether Gray had seen a Welsh Brut or not, the greater part of his Caesar legend clearly derives from Wace. (The English prose Brut in the 14th century MS. Arundel xxII, College of Arms, > also refers to Archdeacon Walter of Oxford and also clearly derives its Caesar legend from Wace.) The Scalacronica is preserved in MS. Corpus Christi, Cambridge, 133. Neither the extracts from it in Leland's Collectanea nor those edited by Joseph Stevenson for the Maitland Club include the account of Caesar, which appears in the section on Roman > history rather than the subsequent account of the British kings. 919 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Julius Caesar's British Conquest Amour (Crooked Love) instead of Crocea Mors (which may be a scribal mistake, though one would rather credit the author with so ingenious a substitution)66 and says that after the conquest Caesar, wintering in Britain to study the lay of the land, built the Tower of London: "he could do more in one season than any one else in ten times as long." While visiting the extreme northern part of the island Caesar received news from Rome that the senate had chosen another consul, and de- parted so hastily for Rome that he left behind his portable stone "pavil- ion," a structure which, "bearing the name Arthur's-hoven, still remains in the woods of Kalenter."67 The stone pavilion is also mentioned by Gray's contemporary, John of Fordun, in his Chronica Gentis Scotorum (Noah to 1383). When Caesar had conquered the Britons, says Fordun, he marched with a great army to the Firth of Forth and sent envoys to the kings of the Scots and Picts with two letters, one mildly, the other harshly worded, with instructions that if the kings rejected the conditions of the first they should be given the other. The kings, having heard both letters, reply with a message reminiscent of Cassibellaunus's defiance of Caesar in Geoffrey. But be- fore Caesar receives their reply, he learns of an uprising in Gaul and abandons his intended conquest of the Scots and Picts. Before leaving for Gaul, however, he has a round hut built of large stones, without mortar, near the mouth of the Carron to mark the extent of Roman pos- sessions. 66 Le Roux de Lincy, in his ed. of Wace, reads Croce-a-mort as the name of Caesar's sword (1. 4220); but the reading of MS. BN fr. 794 (fol. 301v, col. 2) and of Layamon, > Manning of Brunne, and Waurin, who followed Wace, is Crocea Mors. > 67 Among other 14th century writings containing the Caesar legend, the romance which Ritson printed in the second volume of his Ancient English Metrical Romances as the Chronicle of England and the French prose Petit Brut of Rauf de Bohun (MS. Harl. 902) > are apparently cognate with the Livere de reis de Brittanie e le Livere de reis de Engletere (ed. Glover, Rolls Ser.), since in all of them Cassibelin follows Belinus and Brennus to the > throne. The Petit Brut is chiefly interesting for its list of cities Cassibelin is supposed to > have founded: Exeter, Colchester, Oxford, and Norwich. There is a brief account of Caesar in the Chronicle of Sacred and Profane History ascribed to Thomas Sprott (trans. William Bell, Liverpool, 1851). The account of Caesar in the English prose Brut in MS. Arundel xxII (College of Arms) derives from Wace. I have not seen the English verse chronicle of > Thomas Castelford, the unique MS of which is in the library of the University of Gottingen; > from all descriptions, its account follows Geoffrey's exactly; see Marshall L. Perrin, Ueber Thomas Castelford's Chronik van England (Boston, 1890), p. 36, and Frank Behre, ed. "Thomas Castelford's Chronicle" [Arthurian section], Goeteborgs Hdgskolas Arsskrift, XLVI (1940), no. 2, p. vii. Geoffrey's Caesar legend also appears, wholly or in part, in > Higden's Polychronicon, the Eulogium Historiarum sive Temporis attributed to "Thomas of Malmesbury," and the Chronica attributed to Thomas Sprott (ed. T. Hearne, Oxford, 1719-not to be confused with the Chronicle of Sacred and Profane History ascribed to Sprott). 920 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Homer Nearing, Jr. Another version, particularly among the common people, is that Julius Caesar had this little house carried about with him, stone by stone, by his troops, and rebuilt each day wherever they camped, because he could rest more safely in it than in a tent; but that when he returned to Gaul he was in such a hurry that he decided to leave it behind with the stones just laid together, as can be seen to this day.68 Fordun's Caesar legend was later correlated with that of Caxton's prose Brut by John Major (Historia Majoris Britanniae, 1521) to imply that the Britons had defeated Caesar at first because the Scots and Picts were helping them, and were finally conquered when their northern allies were not helping them. (Major makes no mention at all of the chapters in the prose Brut relating the Earl of London's treachery.) This implica- tion was developed by Hector Boece, in his great Scotorum Historiae (1527), into a legend as elaborate as Geoffrey of Monmouth's. Androgeus becomes an orator who persuades King Ederus of the Scots to aid the Britons in their first struggle with Caesar and, far from being a villain, is captured by the Romans in the second invasion. After conquering the Britons, Caesar marches against the Scots and Picts because they had helped the Britons defeat him the first time he invaded the island. And according to "oure wlgare cornikillis," Boece adds, "Iulius come to the Callendar Wode [Caledoniam syluam], and kest doun Camelon [Camelo- dunum], the principale ciete of Pichtis, eftir that the samyn was randrit to him," at which time he is supposed to have built the round stone house (which, Boece thinks, is rather a temple Vespasian erected near the site of Camelodunum in honor of the emperor Claudius and the goddess Victory). "Nochttheles, becauss na historicians rehercis the weris maid be Iulius aganis the Scottis and Pichtis, we latt pame pas, and will inseyr na thing in this oure werk, bot sa mekill as we maye preif by famous and attentik autoris."69 68 According to the 15th century expansion and continuation of Fordun attributed to Walter Bower, or Bowmaker-ed. Walter Goodall (Edinburgh, 1759), I, sig. 02v-this > structure was called Arthur's Hove because King Arthur liked to visit it for recreation. It may really have been erected by the Romans; see H. Nearing, "Local Caesar Traditions in Britain," Speculum, xxiv (1949), 226. 69 Trans. John Bellenden (edd. R. W. Chambers and E. C. Batho, Scottish Text Soc., > Ser. 3, x, 1938), who except for omissions follows this section of the original rather closely. > Camulodunum, which Boece calls the capital of the Picts, was the ancient site of Colchester; > Boece, or his source, has simply transplanted it, as he did the tribe of the Brigantes, whose > prince Cadallanus leads the Scots to aid the Britons in his account. According to Camden, the Brigantes had inhabited Yorkshire, Durham, Lancashire, Westmorland, and Cumber- > land. Holinshed, though he repeats Boece's legend, remarks: "Hector Boetius . . . coueting > to haue all such valiant acts as were atchiued by the Britains to be ascribed to his countrie- > men the Scots, draweth both the Silures and Brigantes, with other of the Britains so farre > northward, that he maketh them inhabitants of the Scotish countries. And what particular 921 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Julius Caesar's British Conquest > V. FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURY DEVELOPMENTS To return to Geoffrey of Monmouth's legend, the Breta Sogur Norse translation of the Historia Regum Britanniae of uncert which was added about 1400 to the miscellany called the H follows Geoffrey's account of Caesar faithfully except for ad changing a few details. The wound which Nennius receives from sword, for example, is fatal because the weapon has been tem venom (eitrhert); and when Caesar demands hostages for And good faith, the latter sends him "his daughter" Segirna an knights, rather than his son Scaeva and thirty young kinsmen.70 The most important of the fifteenth century treatments of the legend in England appears in Lydgate's Serpent of Division, a p of Caesar written sometime after the death of Henry V to illus dire consequences of civil discord. The episode of Androgeus's t gives Lydgate an opportunity to apply his moral to the history of But for all his surqvedous pride he [Caesar] was twyous bette of at his [in Britain] by the worthynes of the worshipfull Bretaonne kyng ca bolan. And pleinly to declare & specifie the trouthe, he mighte nevu taryve at his luste, til this manly king Cassibolan & Androgius the Cornewaile felle at debate among hemselfe; wherby I may conclude th vnite & acorde stode vndefowled and vndividid in the bondis of Bre my3ti conquerowre Iulius was vnable and impotente to venqvische h whiche example 3e may evidently consideren & seen ]at devision liche a fied toforne, is originall cause in prouynces & regions of all destruciovn.7 And there follows an account of Caesar's invasions which, as th fication of Androgeus with the Duke of Cornwall shows, deriv the prose Brut. Lydgate's avowed source, however, is "pe wor Eusebius," by whom he may mean Henry Beaufort, Bishop of chester, nominated Cardinal of St. Eusebius in 1426.72 Beaufo > names soeuer they had, yet were they all Scots with him" (England, repr. Lon > 1808, I, 464). See also Humphrey Lhuyd's Commentarioli (1572, trans. by Thom > printed with John Lewis's History of Great Britain, 1729, sig. EV). Other writers the legend of Caesar and the Scots are Polydore Vergil (early trans. ed. Sir H Camden Soc., O.S. 36, 1846, p. 57). John Lewis (History of Great Britain, 1729 > and William Slatyer (History of Great Britanie, 1621, sig. L3, marg.). Beyond Bellenden's translation and Holinshed, Boece's Caesar legend rea William Stewart's metrical translation of the Scotorum Historiae (1535, ed. W > Turnbull, Rolls Ser.), John Leslie's History of Scotland (1578, trans. James Dalry E. G. Cody, Scottish Text Soc., v, 1888), and David Chalmers (or Chambers mond's Historie Abbregee (1579, Scots trans. printed by the Maitland Club, 18 > Chronicle of the Kings of Scotland). It was also drawn upon by William Warne > England, 1602 ed., sgg. F7V-F8, and Continuance of Albions England, 1606, sig. D > 70 Ed. in Annalerfor Nordisk Oldkyndighed Og Historie (Copenhagen, 1848), pp 71 Ed. Henry N. MacCracken (London & New Haven, 1911), pp. 50-51. > 72 For a different view, see MacCracken's ed., pp. 7 and 15. 922 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Homer Nearing, Jr. have given him a notebook containing extracts from the prose Brut and other chronicles; for Lydgate is obviously not familiar with all the material of the prose Brut or of Trivet's Anglo-Norman chronicle, from which he takes the list of castles and towns Caesar is supposed to have built in Britain.73 Among Italian and French writers of the latter part of the fifteenth and the early years of the sixteenth century there are a few new de- velopments in the Caesar legend. Ponticus Virunius, an Italian who translated the pre-Arthurian section of Geoffrey of Monmouth about the turn of the century, possibly for a Venetian family of British origin,74 is apparently the first writer to describe the appearance of Caesar's British opponents: when Cassibellaunus surrenders to Caesar, the latter is struck by the king's slender height (proceritatem) and his austere mien; while Androgeus is "small in body but great in spirit." The Caesar legend in the Recueil des Croniques et Anchiennes Istories de la Grant Bretaigne (to 1471) of Jehan de Waurin, Lord of Forestel, is based on Wace, but also contains passages from Geoffrey and from the author's own imagina- tion. In Waurin's imagination the Tower of Ordre was built, not after Caesar's first defeat by the Britons, but before he planned his first in- vasion; for he sees the island for the first time from its windows, which faced in that direction. (This passage may derive from the variant in Wace which states that by the Tower of Ordre Caesar "won the land which now is known as England.") Waurin's elaborate description of the rites of thanksgiving which Cassibellant decrees after the second defeat of the Romans is reminiscent of the opening chapters of Leviticus.75 Alain Bouchart, who draws on both Geoffrey and Li Fet des Romains for the account of Caesar in his Grandes Croniques de Bretaigne, has a new idea about the identity of Geoffrey's Tower at Odnea: no one, he says, 73 See George L. Frost, "Caesar and Virgil's Magic in England, MLN, LI (1936), 432. Lydgate refers to the moral of Caesar's conquest of Britain also in his verse Life of St. > A lbon and St. Amphabel (I, 106-140, quoted in MacCracken's ed. of the Serpent, pp. 16-17), > citing Lucan as his source, apparently for the sake of the rime. > Other 15th century writings by Englishmen which refer to the Caesar legend are Cap- > grave's Chronicle of England (Rolls Ser.); the CIhronica Regun Angliae attributed to Thomas > Otterbourne (ed. T. Hearne in Duo Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores Veteres, Oxford, 1732); the Anonymi Chronicon Godstovianum, ed. Hearne, with Roper's More (Oxford, 1716), > which says that Caesar's sword was still kept in the Tower of London; Hardyng's metrical chronicle, which mentions two fights between Caesar and Nennius; the Cronycullys of Englonde (ed. James Gairdner, Camden Soc., N.S. 28, 1880); the Historia Regum Angliae of John Rous, or Rosse, ed. Hearne, 2d ed. (Oxford, 1745); and Robert Fabyan's Con- > cordance of Histories (printed as the New Chronicles of England and France, 1516). 74 Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue (Rolls Ser.), I, 58. The printer Commeline, cited by > Hardy, says that the author died in 1490. His work was printed in 1534, 1585, 1587, and > 1844 (in J. A. Giles's Caxton Soc. ed. of Geoffrey). > 75 Ed. William Hardy (Rolls Ser.), I, 136-137. 923 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 924 Julius Caesar's British Conquest has felt constrained to write that this is the castle of Cherbourg.76 This identification may have been inspired by the chronicles of Sir John Froissart, who states that Cherbourg was founded by Julius Caesar (ch. cccxxx). Among the Elizabethans who took up pens against Polydore Virgil's attack on Geoffrey of Monmouth's veracity, Sir John Prise (Historicae Brytannicae Defensio, 1573) made the most elaborate defense of Geoffrey's Caesar legend. In view, says Prise, of the aspersions which some ancient writers cast on Caesar's accuracy, of the agreement of Geoffrey and Caesar with respect to some proper names, and of the similar order of events in both their accounts, it is clear that Geoffrey "did not (as they affirm) excogitate these things from his own cerebrum for the first time"; while his departures from Caesar's details show that he drew his material from other very ancient, non-Roman authors.77 76 Ed. H. Le Meignen (Nantes, 1886), fol. 13v, col. 1. Bouchart is also the first writer to identify the ancient laws adduced by Androgeus in contradiction of Cassibellanus's > mandate to bring Evelinus before the royal court; he cites the laws mentioned in Geoffrey, I, xviii, II, xvii, and III, xiii. His work, written apparently in the first part of the 16th century, was printed 1514, 1518, 1531, 1532, and 1541. Somewhat earlier than Bouchart's chronicle is the Debat des Ilerauts d'Armes de France et d'Angleterre, in which the French herald points a shrewd parallel between Cassibellaunus and the Plantagenets by recalling that "Julius Caesar, the valiant prince, who is of the number of the worthies, was twice discomfited on entering Britain, which is at present called England, as the [French prose] Brut relates; and the third time he subjugated them and made them obedient to Rome." In the next century an Englishman, John Coke, came upon a copy of this French debate in a printer's shop and, perceiving it "to be compyled of harty malyce, nothyng ensuyng the true cronycles of the one realme nor the other," searched out many histories to write his Debate Betwene the Heraldes of Englande and Fraunce (1550), in which the English herald condenses Hardyng's version of Caesar's invasions as an example of British valor. Both debates were edited by Leopold Pannier and Paul Meyer (Societt des Anciens Textes Frangais, 1877). Other 15th century French works containing the Caesar legend are Jean Wauquelin's translation of Geoffrey (MS. Lansdowne 214) and Pierre le Baud's Cronicques O' Ystoires des Bretons, ed. Charles de la Lande de Calan (Rennes, 1907). Le Baud, who was dissatisfied with his first compilation, made in 1480, prepared a second (printed 1638) between 1498, when he was given access to the royal archives, and his death in 1505. His account of Caesar, like Bouchart's, derives from Geoffrey and Li Fet des Romains. 77 Sig. Eii. Geoffrey's Caesar legend is also defended by John Lewis (History of Great- > Britain, written c. 1610; printed 1729, sig. Lv) and by John Speed (History of Great Britain, 1611; 1632 ed., sig. E4v), who cites Sir Clement Edmondes's observations on the Gallic > War, rv, xii (1600), to the effect that Geoffrey's derivation of the Britons from the Trojans is supported by the circumstance that the manner of British chariot fighting described by Caesar was peculiar to Eastern nations. Before Prise, Caesar's accuracy had been ques- tioned by Humphrey Lhuyd (Commentarioli, 1572; Englished by Thomas Twyne as The Breviary of Britayne, 1573, which was printed with Lewis's History, 1729; see sig. M of the 1729 ed.). This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Homer Nearing, Jr. Holinshed distrusts the accuracy of both Caesar and Geoffrey;78 Richard White of Basingstoke accepts both without question. In the prefatory epistle to Book iv of his Historiarum Britanniae Insulae Libri (Douai, 1597), White, piecing together isolated sentences from Cicero's letters, concludes that the great orator had once toyed with the idea of inditing an epic on Caesar's conquest of Britain, and professes his ac- count to be a substitute for it. His fourth book certainly has more narra- tive complexity than Cicero could have achieved, for he manages to work into Caesar's account every later legend he has come upon. He concocts his story from Caesar, Valerius Maximus, Pliny, Tacitus, Suetonius, Polyaenus, Athenaeus, Geoffrey, and Boece, and exercises an ingenuity in fitting these accounts together that reminds the reader of Li Fet des Romains. Cassivellaunus's nephew is called Androgeus Mandubratius; for White believes that Caesar used surnames, Geoffrey first names. At the end of the story Caesar, returning to Rome, goes to great expense to have curtains (aulaea) made from British sails (velis) with his British victories painted on them, and assigns many of his British captives to duty in the theaters, to hang and manipulate these curtains. The Caesar legend was also put to good use by some of the biographers, moralists, and poets of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. In John Bale's Illustrium Maioris Britanniae Scriptorum Summarium (1548) Cassibellanus, Nennius, and Androgeus become literary gentle- men. Cassibellanus, it appears, was not only studious of antiquities and noble exploits but also well versed in rhetoric, writing to Julius Caesar an elegant work titled De servitute nonferenda, liber 1., of which Geoffrey of Monmouth (iv, ii), who lived in an age when much more of it was extant, records a small portion. Cassibellanus's brother Nennius was the original author of the Historia Britonum: he "is said to have been the first to collect the famous deeds of the British nobility (incited to do so by the example of Reutha, king of the Scots) and to write in his native tongue a Historia perpulchra, liber 1. concerning the origin and progress of the British. This book another Nennius, pontiff of Bangor [or Bancorn- burg], turned into Latin and continued to his own time." Androgeus, says Bale, was graceful in speech and lucky in war; two of his works are extant: the oration Adversus Romanorum Tyrannidem (in Hector Boece, > 78 England, ch. 13 and 17. Lambarde (Perambulation of Kent, 1576), Camden (Britannia, > 1586), Stow (Survay of London, 1598), and John Clapham (History of England ... under > the Roman Empire, 1602) hold the Gallic War to be authoritative. In his Annales (1580) > Stow takes his account of Caesar from "Eutropius" (i.e., Landolfus's Historia Miscella). > His old competitor Grafton (Chronicle at Large, 1569) follows Fabyan's account of Caesar > for the most part, but quotes from Lydgate the list of towns and castles ascribed to Caesar. > 925 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Julius Caesar's British Conquest III, ii) and the message to Caesar proposing an alliance (in Geoffrey, Iv, viii).79 Three of the Mirror for Magistrates tragedies by John Higgins deal with the Caesar legend. In the tragedy of Nennius, which concludes the first edition of The First Part of the Mirror (1574), Higgins breaks with the grim spirit of the De Casibus tradition which he is continuing, and turns to the past for inspiration rather than admonition. (It is significant, with respect to Higgins's departure, that Geoffrey's patriotic enthusiasm suddenly mounts when he reaches the reign of Cassibellaunus.) In relat- ing the circumstances of his own death, the ghost of Nennius agrees with the author of the Breta Sigur as to the reason for the deadliness of Caesar's sword: The strokes thou strokst me, hurt me nought at all: For why thy strength was nothing in respect, But thou hadste bathde thy sword in poyson all: Which did my wounde, not deadly els infect.... The venime of the which had such a force, It able was to perce the harte of oke: No medcines might the poyson out reuoke, Wherfore though scarce he perced had the skin: In fiftene dayes my braynes it ranckled in.80 To the second edition of the First Part of the Mirror (1575) Higgins added the tragedy of Irenglas (Geoffrey's Hirelglas), which returns to admoni- tion, though the ghost is not the villain but the innocent victim of the apologue. Like Fabyan and Grafton, the ghost of Higgins's Irenglas says he was murdered, not by his cousin Elenine, but by the latter's brawling friends. The tragedy of Julius Caesar, which Higgins added among others to the 1587 edition of the whole Mirror, contains a summary of the legend.8' Another Elizabethan moralist who makes edifying use of the Caesar legend is Gabriel Harvey's brother Richard, the almanac maker. Harvey's 79 Sgg. C4v-Dv. John Pits (De Illustribus Britanniae Scriptoribus, 1619) repeats these > biographies from Bale, but disagrees that Nennius was prompted to write his history by > the example of Reutha. Rather, he thinks Nennius wrote it when his brother Lud changed > the name of Trinovantum (New Troy) to Luddinum (London), so that the Trojan descent > of the British would not be forgotten (sig. I2v). > 80 Lily B. Campbell, ed. Parts Added to the Mirror (Cambridge, 1946), pp. 199 and 201. > 81 The ghost of Irenglas had put the fatal quarrel with Elenine after the first British > victory; Caesar's ghost puts it after the second, as in Geoffrey and his followers. Caesar's > ghost says that the stakes by which his fleet was wrecked were placed, not in the Thames, > but "in the strands and in the seas, where landing places be" (as also in Thomas Heywood's > Life of Merlin, 1813 ed., pp. 14-15); and as in Fabyan and Grafton, this trick is practised > in the first rather than the second invasion. 926 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Homer Nearing, Jr. Philadelphus, or a Defence of Brutes, and the Brutans History (1593) is an elaborately outlined analysis of Geoffrey's ancient British dynasties; each dynasty is analyzed under three main heads: "Anthropology" (moral character), Chronology, and Topography. Cassivelan and his kinsmen appear under the "Anthropology" of "The Fovrth Genealogy or issue of Capor." Among the virtues of Cassivelan's Britons are "Wordes," exemplified by their reply to Caesar's letter demanding submission, and "Victories: Cassiuelan made the Romans hie to their ships at their first battell, and at the second: beware the third" (sig. 13). Among their vices are "Deceit: The Brutans set great long sharp stakes closely in the bankes where the Romanes should arriue and so troubled them extreamely in theyr landing: a poore and pittifull inuention to stay an Host," and "Obscure glory: When Stenny [Nennius] was dead, he was buried at Caerlud: and the sword which he puld from Caesar with his deaths wound was buried with him, that it might be a remembrance of one venturous action euen in a hole" (sgg. Iv and I3v). Sometimes, however, Harvey is hard put to decide the moral issues of these Britons. Both Nennius and Lud are commended for justice, Lud because he changed the name of New Troy to Caerlud, Nennius because he opposed the change: "It is iustice, both to respect our auncestors, and iustice to con- sider our own glory: This were a pretty question for discourse, which name ought to take place, and stand in force, if it were well handled" (sig. H4). Among the epic and dramatic poets of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, the Caesar legend is used by Warner, Spenser, and Shakespeare.82 Milton (History of Britain, 1670, Bk. II) notes scornfully > 82 Warner, Albions England, iII, ch. 17. Spenser, Faerie Queene, II, x, 49; see H. Nearing, "Caesar's Sword," MLN, LXIII (1948), 403-405. Shakespeare, King John, v, vii, 112-114 (see H. Nearing, "A Note on King John" N&Q, cxcII [1947], 256-257), and Cymbeline, I, i, 28-30; II, iv, 20-23; II, i, 22-23, 47-53. In Richard III (III, i, 68-74) and Richard II (v, i, 2) Shakespeare alludes to the tradition that Caesar built the Tower of London. See H. Nearing, "Julius Caesar and the Tower of London," MLN, LXIII (1948), 228-233. This > note errs in citing Gray as the earliest known recorder of the tradition; Trivet's reference > to the "chastel" of London is half a century earlier. In Fletcher's Bonduca one of the British commanders is named Nenius. Geoffrey's > legend is summarized in John Ross's poem, Britannica, sive De Regibus Veteris Britanniac > (Frankfurt, 1607). In the De Literis Antiquae Britanniae (published with Phineas Fletcher's > Sylva Poetica, 1633) of Giles Fletcher the elder, who wrote the poem apparently during his > college days, Caesar appears as a water nymph attending the River Cam. A play attributed > to Jasper Fisher, Fuimus Troes (printed 1633), dramatizes Geoffrey's legend. In Richard > Johnson's Tom a Lincolne King Arthur visits Androgius Earl of London. At the end of the century Cassibelan appears as a character in the play Boadicea Queen of Britain. See > Roberta F. Brinkley, Arthurian Legend in the Seventeenth Century (Baltimore, 1932), pp. 92, > 97, 121. 927 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Julius Caesar's British Conquest that the "British Author [Geoffrey], whom I use only then when others are all silent, hath many trivial discourses of Caesars beeing heer, which are best omitted." But at the end of the century the great German scholar Fabricius, quoting Geoffrey's letter from Cassibellaunus to Caesar remarks: "The epistle written to Caesar in the name of the kings of the Picts and Scots, which is extant in John of Fordun, exudes less antiq- > uity. "83 There is of course a great body of Caesar legends unconnected with the conquest of Britain. Among other things the great Julius was the son of a baker, the son-in-law of Judas Maccabaeus, the paramour of Morgan la Fay, the inventor of the proper methods of blazonry, a builder of metal roads, a super-clerk who could write four epistles at once, the founder of Paris, Cherbourg, Rouen, Seville, Florence, Magdeburg, Wollin, the dread Castle of Adamant, and other cities, castles, and temples.84 But no other Caesar legend seems to have reached the com- plexity of that concerned with his conquest of Britain. The latter, how- ever, lacked the universal popularity of Arthur's story and the excep- tional good luck of Leir's. And if the student of literary history conjures up in his mind those great warriors of the ancient world whom the middle ages invented or recreated-Alexander writing to Aristotle of the wonders of India, Arcite praying before the statue of Mars, Troilus on the walls sighing his soul toward the Grecian tents-he may neglect to join with them a figure on the shores of Gaul, fingering his poisoned sword as he squints speculatively at the mysterious island across the Channel. No pseudo-Callisthenes gave his story the endorsement of antiquity; no Chaucer breathed immortality upon him. The romancers, and Shakespeare, were generally more interested in that "hook-nosed fellow of Rome" in whose image he was created and whose career was even more exciting than his. And yet his adventure was persistently re- corded by a multitude of writers in various countries from the twelfth century on. His legend is one of those curious, pathetic stories which no > 83 Johann Albert Fabricius, Bibliotheca Latina, ed. Ernesti (1773), I, 273. Since he quotes > Geoffrey, Fabricius apparently did not intend his remark to be sardonic. 84 See MacCracken's ed. of Lydgate's Serpent, p. 42; Huon, ed. S. T. Lee, EETS, ES, > 40, pp. xxxi and xxxiv; "A Scotch Copy of a Poem on Heraldry," ed. Furnivall in EETS, > ES, 8, p. 95; Graf, Roma, I, 265 n; Trevisa's trans. of Higden (Polychronicon, ed. Lumby, > Rolls Ser., iv, 213); the chronicle of John Brompton (ed. Roger Twysden in Historiae > Anglicanae Scriptores X, 1652, sig. Nn3); Graf, Roma, I, 266, 272; Hans Matter, Englische Grilndungssagen (Heidelberg, 1922), pp. 342, 365; Huon, EETS, ES, 41, pp. 410-411. > For further British legends (e.g., the story that Caesar's troops brought the Roman > nettle to Britain and the modern notion that he built a tower on the Isle of Man) see H. > Nearing, "Local Caesar Traditions in Britain," Speculum, xxiv (1949), 218-227. > 928 This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Homer Nearing, Jr. 929 one would ever make great but which nearly every times, refused to let die.85 PENNSYLVANIA MILITARY COLLEGE Chester, Pa. 85 This article began with a suggestion of Professor Matthew W. Black, who, having looked in vain for references to English traditions in Wesemann's Caesarfaben des Mit- telalters, remarked that someone should write a Caesarfabedn des Englischen Mittelalers I am indebted to Dr. Black also for making the resources of the Furness Library available to me; to Dr. A. C. Baugh, Dr. Black, and Dr. T. M. Parrott for reading the original manu- script of the article; to Dr. W. J. Roach for referring me to Calendre's Empereors and help- ing me decipher the MSS (in microfilm) of both that work and Gray's Scalacronica; and to Mr. E. H. Morse, the reference librarian of the University of Pennsylvania, and his assistants, for tracking down other sources. This content downloaded from 71.95.191.4 on Sat, 18 Jan 2025 06:34:40 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms