VII
What a wonderful letter you sent me about Britain! I was terrified for your sake concerning the sea and coast of that island…You write about such amazing things you saw there—the countryside, wonders of nature, interesting places, customs, tribes, battles—and of course your commander himself.
—CICERO TO HIS BROTHER, QUINTUS
Caesar returned to northern Italy in the autumn of 56 B.C. to supervise affairs in Cisalpine Gaul, but more importantly, to keep a close eye on events in Rome. Cato was still venomous in his opposition to Caesar, but with the conqueror of Gaul wrapped in his proconsular immunity, the leader of the optimates was unable to strike at him directly. Instead in September of 56, Cato brought charges against Caesar’s trusted counselor Balbus, claiming that he had obtained his Roman citizenship illegally from Pompey sixteen years earlier. The charge was spurious, but was a typically Roman maneuver designed to attack an opponent through his subordinate and force one’s enemy to waste his political capital on trivialities. The triumvirate responded by twisting Cicero’s arm until he agreed to defend Balbus in court, which he did successfully.
During the previous winter, the triumvirate had laid plans for Pompey and Crassus to be elected as joint consuls and begin service at the start of the new year. The optimates, however, were once again ready to demonstrate that they could cause considerable trouble for Caesar and his colleagues even if they could not block them outright. Marcellinus, one of the two consuls for the current year, declared that Pompey and Crassus had violated the law by canvassing for the magistracy outside of the strict campaign season and were therefore ineligible for election. The violation was a minor technicality, but Marcellinus was determined to thwart the triumvirate’s agenda as long as he held the consulship. Pompey and Crassus, undoubtedly with Caesar’s collusion, responded by hiring a tribune of the plebs to veto the entire election process for the year so that no one could be chosen for any office. This activated a clause in the Roman constitution providing for an interregnum (transitional government) followed by a special election early in 55 B.C. after the term of Marcellinus had expired. This action secured several extra months for the triumvirate to plan a strategy of intimidation and dirty tricks to overcome their opposition.
In January of 55 B.C., as the special elections drew near, Cato fought tooth and nail to promote his own brother-in-law, Lucius Domitius—a fierce optimate with the family cognomen Ahenobarbus (“Bronze Beard”)—as an alternative candidate for consul. As Domitius and Cato worked to secure last-minute votes the night before the election, Pompey ordered his well-paid thugs to attack the optimate leaders in the dark streets, wounding Cato and killing his torchbearer, while Domitius fled to the safety of his own home. The next morning, the center of Rome was packed with triumvirate supporters. Caesar had conveniently granted leave to young Publius Crassus to lead a force of loyal soldiers back to Rome for his father’s election. The presence of hundreds of Caesar’s veteran legionaries in the Forum was enough to assure the consulship for Pompey and Crassus. Once Caesar’s partners were elected to Rome’s highest office, they easily manipulated the selection of the remaining magistrates. When the bruised Cato came forward for the vote on his candidacy as praetor, Pompey declared that he had heard thunder and promptly dissolved the assembly for the day. But imaginary omens did not interfere soon thereafter when the triumvirate bribed enough voters to elect their supporter Publius Vatinius in Cato’s place.
Pompey and Crassus spent the next few weeks pretending they wanted nothing for themselves, but were all the while arranging for others to promote their agenda before the Roman people. The tribune Trebonius pushed through a bill granting the two consuls a proconsular governorship of five years each for Spain and Syria. Cato objected, of course, but the optimates were bested once again by bribery, intimidation, and outright violence. Pompey’s choice of Spain as for his governorship shows surprisingly little enthusiasm on his part for new conquests, but the selection of Syria by Crassus plainly meant that Rome’s most famous tycoon was setting his sights on the mighty Parthian empire. Crassus had made his immense fortune in Rome and had led troops in combat with Spartacus, but he craved a glorious military campaign on a par with Pompey’s eastern war and Caesar’s conquests in the north. Soon after this legislation was passed, the partners lived up to their earlier agreement and secured a further five years for Caesar in Gaul. With these affairs settled, the remainder of the triumvirate consulship was fairly quiet, though the year ended with an optimate victory when Domitius Ahenobarbus was at last chosen as consul along with Cato as praetor.
When the messenger bearing news from the north arrived at Caesar’s headquarters in Italy, he broke the seal and quickly read the dispatch. He must have wondered then if he was ever going to enjoy a peaceful year in Gaul. The report said that the Usipetes and Tencteri, Germanic tribes from just east of the Rhine, had crossed the river into Gaul near modern Düsseldorf, fleeing from the powerful Suebi. Caesar writes that the Suebi, who dominated western Germany, were the most numerous, warlike, and toughest of the Germans, living chiefly on milk and beef while shunning such luxuries as wine and warm clothes. The tribe had been a thorn in Caesar’s side since his conflict with Ariovistus and now they were pushing other Germans into the still-troubled lands of the Belgae. The Usipetes and Tencteri had moved into the territory of the Menapii near the mouth of the Rhine. Then, after looting what supplies they could find, they headed south toward the heart of Gaul.
Because of these troubling developments Caesar decided to depart northern Italy while snow still covered the Alps. He was particularly worried by the German incursion into Gaul since it threatened to destabilize the whole country. Caesar writes that some Belgic tribes had even sent recruiting parties across the Rhine seeking other German tribes who might aid them in a new revolt against Rome. As soon as he arrived from Italy, Caesar summoned leaders from all the Gaulish tribes to a conference reportedly to “soothe their spirits and encourage them,” but he undoubtedly issued some stern warnings as well against any treachery. He then requisitioned auxiliary cavalry from among the Gauls, added them to his legions, and moved swiftly against the Germans.
Caesar soon received an embassy from the Germans declaring that they had no wish to fight him, but that they were not a people who avoided armed conflict when it was thrust upon them. The one exception, they ruefully admitted, were the dreaded Suebi, who had driven them into Gaul—not even the gods could resist such titans. The ambassadors told Caesar they were willing to settle as Roman allies anywhere in Gaul he might direct them, but they were definitely not going back across the Rhine. Four hundred years later, the Romans would probably have jumped at such an offer, as the policy in late imperial times was to settle friendly tribes along the frontier to guard against more hostile groups across the border. Caesar, however, was not interested in a compromise. As with the Helvetii three years before, he told the representatives of the two tribes that there was no room for them in Gaul—their only option was to cross back into Germany. He graciously offered to help settle them among the Germanic Ubii on the east bank of the Rhine. Together, he suggested, their united armies might be able to resist the Suebi.
The envoys of the Usipetes and Tencteri were understandably cool to this proposal. They said they needed to consult with their tribes and promised to return in three days. In the meantime, they asked Caesar not to move his camp any closer to theirs. Caesar was quite suspicious of this request, especially since his scouts had told him that most of the German cavalry were several days distant on a raiding mission. If they could keep Caesar away until their cavalry rejoined the army, the Germans would be a potent force.
The next day Caesar resumed his march toward the German camp and again met a German embassy beseeching him to wait. They had thought about his offer, they claimed, and were seriously considering the idea of settling across the Rhine among the Ubii. They just needed a few days to work out the details. Caesar knew this was again a ruse to buy time, but agreed to move his army forward only four miles to be near water. The envoys then promised not to attack his men—but when Caesar’s cavalry moved out ahead of his main force, the Germans struck. Startled by the speed of the German charge, the Roman cavalry was caught completely off guard. The Germans rushed forward, leaped off their mounts, and quickly stabbed the Roman horses, forcing the ill-prepared cavalrymen to fight on foot. In this way the Germans managed to kill many horsemen, including two Gaulish noblemen Caesar counted as friends.
Caesar felt betrayed by the Germans and vowed he would show them no mercy from that point forward. When their ambassadors approached the Roman camp the next day to explain that the battle had been a misunderstanding and that they needed just a few more days to consider his proposal, Caesar had them arrested. He then personally led his eager men against the enemy camp. His soldiers, hostile to Germans at the best of times, were bitterly angry at their violation of the previous day’s truce. Caesar himself was determined to make a frightening example of these marauding tribesmen so that no others would be tempted to cross the Rhine. When legions of heavily armed Romans burst into the German camp that morning, it was a slaughter on a scale unknown during the last four years of the Gaulish war. Some of the Germans tried to make a desperate stand amid the baggage carts, but tens of thousands were cut down as they fled, including many women and children. The few who escaped were pursued relentlessly by the Roman cavalry until they plunged into the Rhine and drowned. Caesar does not mention taking any prisoners.
After the crushing defeat of the Usipetes and Tencteri, Caesar decided to cross the Rhine into Germany itself. He gives his Roman readers several reasons why he thought this unprecedented action was necessary. First, he wanted to demonstrate to the German tribes that the Romans were willing and able to enter their homeland whenever they might choose. Up until that time it had always been the Germans who had crossed the Rhine into Gaul, but a Roman army on the east bank of the river would send a powerful message that armies could move in both directions. Second, the cavalry of the defeated Usipetes and Tencteri that had failed to join their countrymen before Caesar destroyed them had now taken refuge across the Rhine with their old neighbors the Sugambri. Caesar had sent a message to this tribe demanding they turn over these horsemen to him for punishment, but they had refused. The Sugambri had responded that if Caesar thought it wrong for Germans to interfere in Gaul, what gave him the right to claim any authority in Germany? A reasonable argument, but one Caesar rejected. The third motive Caesar gives for crossing into Germany was that the beleaguered Ubii had formally requested his presence there to show the bellicose Suebi that Rome stood behind them. As they said, his unmatched reputation in war had spread even to the most distant corners of Germany since his defeat of Ariovistus three years earlier.
The one reason Caesar doesn’t give for crossing the Rhine was probably the most compelling of all—it would be a spectacular publicity stunt. In the decades since the Cimbri and Teutones had threatened to overrun Italy, the barbaric Germans had become the ultimate bogymen in the Roman imagination. Senators and commoners alike lived in fear of the day the next wave of German hordes would cross the Rhine and sweep south to pillage and burn their land. But no one—until Caesar—had ever considered the possibility of actually taking the fight to the Germans. Caesar had no plans to conquer Germany, but if he could be the first general to raise the standards of the legions on the far side of the Rhine, he would go down in history. More immediately, it would keep his name on Roman tongues at a time when his triumvirate partners Pompey and Crassus were much in the public eye as consuls.
The Ubii had offered to ferry the Romans across the Rhine, but to Caesar this simply wouldn’t do. The sight of his legions crossing the river in a flotilla of little boats was not the image he wanted to leave with the Germans. In any case, he deemed it a bad strategy since it made his army dependent on unproven allies for their very survival. What Caesar needed was a means for his army to cross the Rhine that was safe, under his control, and—perhaps most important—impressive. It was then that he conceived his audacious plan to build the first bridge across the Rhine.
The Romans had been building substantial bridges for many centuries, but what Caesar was proposing was unprecedented. In a period of just a few days, he proposed to span a swift-moving river at least eight hundred feet wide and up to twenty-five feet deep. Moreover, he was determined to build this bridge during a war in the middle of a vast wilderness. This was a far more difficult task than building a bridge across the much smaller Saône in the early days of the war to pursue the Helvetii. That project had taken only a single day, but any competent Roman engineer would have told Caesar that spanning the Rhine—if it were possible at all—would require many weeks of hard labor.
Any doubters in the Roman camp, however, did not reckon on Caesar’s own engineering skills and his talent for accomplishing seemingly impossible tasks. His soldiers immediately set to work in the surrounding forest near modern Koblenz felling countless trees and shaping them into timber. These were brought to the riverbank, where rafts fitted with hoists and cranes were waiting. The current of the Rhine was so strong that Caesar drove the first piles into the riverbed at an angle facing the flow of the stream and further secured them on the downriver side with bracing supports. When facing piles had been placed in the river upstream, crossbeams were fixed on top to connect them. The soldiers then rowed out into the river to drive in the next piles and linked them to the previous pair with sturdy timbers. On top of all this planks and woven branches formed the roadway on which the troops would march. Caesar even drove additional piles into the Rhine just a few feet upriver from the bridge to act as a barrier against any floating debris that might damage his masterpiece.
From before sunrise to after sunset each day thousands of Roman soldiers labored to construct the bridge section by section across the Rhine. The Suebi scouts watching from the opposite bank were amazed by what they saw and rushed to report the news to their chieftains. After only ten days, Caesar’s bridge across the Rhine was complete. Caesar left strong garrisons on either end of the long wooden bridge to defend against any Gaulish or German attempts to destroy it and trap his army; then he and his men marched boldly into Germany.
Caesar’s intention in crossing the Rhine was never a full-scale war, only a brief foray to intimidate the natives. In this goal, he succeeded admirably. The Sugambri, who had been sheltering the cavalry of the Usipetes and Tencteri, were so frightened they evacuated all their towns and hid deep in the forest. Caesar satisfied himself with burning their empty villages and razing their crops. Even the mighty Suebi ordered all their women and children into the woods while their warriors huddled together far from the Rhine to await the coming Roman army. But after almost three weeks of marching unopposed through the German countryside, Caesar felt he had made his point. He returned with the army to his bridge on the Rhine and crossed back into Gaul. He then destroyed the bridge to prevent any enemy from using it and left the dark forests of Germany behind him.
The summer of 55 B.C. was almost over, but Caesar was determined to solidify his hold on the Roman imagination by staging one more military spectacle before the winter began—a foray across the sea to the mythic island of Britain. He writes that his primary reason for the campaign was to punish those Britons who had aided the Gaulish tribes in their previous rebellions, but he also notes that a brief reconnaissance of the island would be most helpful in any future operations there. Caesar was undoubtedly sincere, but again the true value in such an expedition was the publicity it would generate back in Rome. How could Cato and the optimates—not to mention Pompey and Crassus—hope to complete with a man who could lead his troops to a land as mysterious to the average Roman as the far side of the moon?
The fact that Britain was so exotic to the classical world also made any military campaign there risky. Gaul and even Germany had been visited by Greeks and Romans for centuries, but Britain was almost completely unknown. Some Romans even claimed that the island didn’t exist except in fables. Caesar therefore summoned the handful of Gaulish merchants who had traveled there to learn what he could about the island, but with few substantive results:
He could not discover the size of Britain, nor the names or numbers of the tribes there, nor their tactics in war, nor their customs, nor the ports that might be suitable for landing a large fleet.
Ignorance about Britain was no surprise since to the civilized cultures of the Mediterranean it was truly at the end of the earth. The only way for explorers or merchants to reach the island before Caesar was a long and dangerous trek across Gaul or an even longer and more perilous voyage through the Pillars of Hercules, up the Iberian and Gaulish coasts, and finally across the stormy English Channel. Caesar had a few pieces of information about Britain brought back over the previous five hundred years by those few voyagers who had managed to travel there and return. Chief among these was the Greek scientist Pytheas of Massalia, who had sailed to Britain, Ireland, and perhaps even Iceland during the age of Alexander the Great. From Pytheas, Caesar knew that the Britons used to call their island Albion—a Celtic term meaning “the upper world”—though by the first century it was called Britannia, “land of the painted people.”
Armed with so little information, Caesar felt it expedient first to survey the south coast and to establish ties with British tribal leaders. For the former task, he sent his aide Gaius Volusenus to search out the best harbors. As events would soon reveal, the young man did a rather poor job since he was afraid to leave his ship. At the same time, Caesar sent a Gaulish nobleman named Commius from the Belgic Atrebates tribe to meet with the kings of the southern British tribes. Caesar held him to be a trustworthy man of great courage and discretion who was known and respected among the Britons. Since many of the southern British tribes were Belgic in origin and spoke the same language as their cousins in Gaul, Caesar hoped to use Commius to stress the practical benefits of yielding to Rome without a fight. But although Commius was braver than Volusenus, he was no more successful—as soon as he arrived in Britain, he was thrown into chains.
With this inauspicious start to Caesar’s British adventure, things soon began to get still worse. The Roman army advanced across Gaul to a camp around the modern seaport of Boulogne on the English Channel and there gathered enough ships for two legions, plus a large cavalry contingent. Caesar was so anxious to set sail during a break in the stormy weather that he weighed anchor with only his infantry, giving orders for the cavalry to follow immediately. Unfortunately, the ships assigned to transport his horsemen across the channel were prevented from reaching the Gaulish port by a contrary wind. Undoubtedly cursing his luck, he nevertheless decided to launch the invasion without cavalry support, trusting to fate that they would arrive in Britain close behind him.
Thus it was on a clear morning in the late summer of 55 B.C. that Julius Caesar became the first Roman to see the white cliffs of Dover. This impressive sight must have awed the general and his troops, until they drew closer to shore and noticed the thousands of British warriors gathered along the top of the cliffs for miles in each direction. Realizing at once that it would be suicide for his men to storm the cliffs, Caesar anchored off the coast until the rest of his infantry transports arrived. He then headed seven miles up the coast of Kent to a level stretch of beach that seemed more suitable for landing his troops, probably around present-day Deal. The British warriors, observing the Romans from on top of the headlands, followed them along the coast and were waiting as the first ships reached their shore.
Caesar soon discovered that the heavy Roman ships that had performed so poorly in the shallow waters against the Veneti were even more of a liability on the gently sloping British beach. All the landing craft bearing his troops suddenly ground to a halt far from shore in water several feet deep. The amused British, familiar with the beach and sitting high on their horses, quickly rode out and cut down the Roman soldiers from the first ship as they struggled to shore. With a heavy load of equipment on their backs and the waves knocking them off balance, the Romans were no match for the British cavalry. Even more intimidating were the British charioteers, who tore through the surf launching spears at the Romans and cutting down any man they could reach. The Romans had heard about war chariots from the ancient tales of Homer, but they were terrified to see such a weapon actually being used against them.
When Caesar saw that his first landing on British soil was turning into a bloody fiasco, he brought some of his lighter ships around to the side of the enemy forces and launched a continuous volley of arrows, stones, and deadly artillery to drive the Britons away from his struggling men. This brought some relief to the troops, but they were still reluctant to throw themselves into the deep, pounding surf. At this point, the unarmed standard-bearer of Caesar’s prized tenth legion said a quick prayer to the gods and shouted to his comrades: “Soldiers, follow me unless you want this eagle to fall into the hands of the enemy. I at least am going to do my duty for my country and general.” He then leaped into the water and began struggling to shore. There was no greater disgrace than for a legion’s eagle to be captured by an enemy, so the Romans reluctantly jumped off their ships and began fighting their way to the beach.
In spite of the renewed spirit the standard-bearer had given the troops, their fight to gain the shore was a chaotic struggle hampered by the more maneuverable British warriors. After what seemed like hours of hand-to-hand fighting, the two legions finally forced their way onto dry land. They were then able to form a line with their shields and push the natives off the shore to form a secure beachhead. Caesar, who had been directing the battle from a nearby ship, at last set foot on British soil and surveyed the dismal scene. Many off his best troops lay dead in the surf, others were seriously wounded, and everyone was exhausted. Still, he was thrilled to have reached Britain at last and claimed it was only his lack of cavalry that forced him to remain near the beach that evening instead of pressing inland.
The British knew that they were no match for the Romans in a prolonged land war, so the same war leaders who had attacked Caesar at the shore now came to him with offers of peace. Caesar must have been weary of hearing defeated Celts claim that battles were just a misunderstanding, but the British chieftains said it was the common mob who had foolishly pushed them into an unmerited conflict with Rome. They brought forward their prisoner Commius and returned him unharmed with their apologies. If Caesar had been in Gaul with his full army and abundant supplies, he probably would have stormed the nearest citadel and sold all the natives into slavery. But he knew his position in Britain was tenuous at best, since winter was fast approaching and he had no cavalry support. He therefore accepted the surrender of the British and only demanded hostages from their tribes.
The missing Roman cavalry that had been waiting in Gaul finally set sail four days after Caesar arrived in Britain. The wind was light and fair as they left Gaul, but as they were almost across the channel a violent storm arose and blew the ships in all directions. Some ended up back on the Gaulish coast, while a few were driven far to the west of Caesar’s position. These ships made a valiant effort to reach their commander, though after enduring a tempestuous night in the channel they abandoned the attempt and also returned to Gaul. At Caesar’s camp, the same storm struck his own troop transports drawn up on shore. With more bad luck for Caesar, the tempest hit at high tide during the full moon, creating the highest possible surge for the storm to ride on. Caesar should have learned more about the fury of the ocean from his war with the Veneti, but all he could do now was watch his precious ships battered against rocks and each other. By the time the storm cleared in the morning, several ships were completely destroyed and many of the rest were badly damaged. The Roman troops came down to the beach and stared in dismay at the remains of their fleet. They were perfectly aware that their only link to the civilized world was gone. They now faced a long, cold winter in Britain with few supplies and little food, surrounded by hostile tribes who could pick them off at their leisure.
The Romans were obviously in desperate straits, so the British secretly begin gathering their troops. They continued to visit the Roman camp over the next few days and spoke of their unwavering loyalty. The promised hostages were unexpectedly delayed, so they claimed, but assured Caesar they would be forthcoming. All the while warriors were pouring into the area from all the neighboring tribes. If they could defeat Caesar and his two legions, they were confident that Rome would not trouble their island again.
One lesson Caesar had learned from Roman military history was that the best commanders knew how to recover from disaster. He was suddenly everywhere at once organizing and encouraging his men. Well-armed foraging parties were dispatched to nearby fields to gather grain, while timber and bronze was stripped from the most severely damaged ships to repair those that could be saved. The few transports that were still in working order were dispatched to Gaul to bring supplies, sails, rigging, and anchors. With only a few days of diligent work, Caesar was confident that most of the damaged ships would be sufficiently seaworthy to limp back across the channel.
While the ship repairs were still ongoing, Caesar sent his seventh legion into the British countryside to seize whatever food they could find. They came across one large field that was still uncut, so the soldiers set to work harvesting grain. They didn’t realize that the British had deliberately left this field untouched as bait to lure the Romans into a trap. The busy soldiers were suddenly surrounded by thousands of native warriors circling them on horseback and in chariots, hurling spears at the Romans all the while. Miles away at the Roman camp, the guards on the walls noticed an unusual amount of dust rising from the direction in which the soldiers had set off. Caesar immediately knew he had been betrayed by his newfound British allies and ordered his troops to follow him to the dust cloud.
The besieged soldiers were meanwhile learning just how devastating Celtic war chariots could be. The drivers did not charge into the Roman ranks, but instead created an unnerving noise and confusion rushing past the troops while the warriors they carried cast spears into their lines. With practice, the British could rush down steep hills in their chariots, turn on a moment’s notice, and even dash out onto the yoke while their horses galloped at full speed. Warriors would often leap out of their chariots and attack the enemy on the ground while their drivers hung back to pick them up in an instant. As Caesar says, fighting in chariots gave the British the mobility of cavalry with all the advantages of heavy infantry.
Fortunately for his troops, Caesar arrived just in time to drive the British into the forest and prevent a crushing defeat. The Romans then returned to camp while the native chiefs sent messengers far and wide collecting even more troops to push Caesar and his men into the sea. Storms raged across the land for the next few days, keeping Romans and British alike huddled in their tents, but with the first break in the clouds they attacked the Roman camp in full force. As in Gaul, however, the natives were no match for the disciplined legions drawn up in tight ranks in front of their walls. The British broke and scattered into the countryside, later sending emissaries promising Caesar they would keep the peace and send him double the original number of hostages once he reached Gaul. Caesar had little faith in their promises (only two tribes ever sent hostages) but he had no further time to waste in Britain. With his repaired ships at last ready, Caesar’s two legions sailed back across the channel to Gaul. The Senate announced twenty days of public thanksgiving when they heard the news of Caesar’s safe return, graciously overlooking the fact that he had almost lost a quarter of his army on an ill-conceived and poorly planned venture at the end of the world.
Cato, as usual, was not impressed by Caesar’s achievements. While all of Rome was celebrating Caesar’s victories in Germany and Britain, Cato rose to denounce him on the Senate floor. The optimate leader claimed that Caesar had in fact provoked the wrath of the gods by attacking the Usipetes and Tencteri during a truce and therefore should be handed over to the Germans themselves for punishment. This speech was a purely political move as Cato cared no more for the Germans than he did for the common people of Rome, but it elicited a bitter reaction from Caesar. No one was able to get under Caesar’s skin like Cato—a fact that Cato knew well and used to his own advantage on a number of occasions. When Caesar’s letter responding to Cato’s charges was read to the Senate a few weeks later, it was full of vicious abuse and unworthy insults against his accuser. Cato calmly listened to the dispatch, then by his composed demeanor and point-by-point rebuttal proceeded to make Caesar look like a spoiled and vulgar child. Even Caesar’s friends who were present wished that he had not risen to Cato’s provocation. In the end, nothing came of Cato’s charges, but he had managed to tarnish Caesar’s glory.
Caesar himself was still in Gaul preparing for a new invasion of Britain the following summer. He had learned from his pointed failures during the first expedition and was now determined to launch a successful campaign to avenge his embarrassment at the hands of the British. To leave the British tribes with the impression that they had driven him off their island was not only a black mark on his military record but was an invitation for trouble in the future. Britain could easily become a major inspiration and source of support for Gaulish rebels.
Caesar knew that his preparation and ships had been inadequate for the first invasion, so he set about designing an entirely new kind of vessel for war in the stormy seas off Gaul. The plans he presented to his lieutenants in Gaul called for ships that were an ingenious combination of Roman and Veneti craft, along with some innovative touches of his own. The sides of his new ships would ride low in the water to allow for quick unloading of men and material. They would also be broader to handle more cargo, especially cavalry horses, and have less draft so that they could be beached in shallow water. Unlike Veneti ships, they would be fitted with both sails and oars to allow for rapid movement with or without wind. Caesar did not want a repeat of either the interminable Veneti campaign or his disastrous landing the previous summer in Britain.
Having set his legions to work on the English Channel constructing his new fleet, Caesar quickly made his way south to his Italian province for the winter. He traveled to the Po Valley settling legal disputes and supervising civic projects, all the while strengthening ties with a land that was an important political base and the source for most of his troops. During this tour he learned that an Alpine tribe called the Pirustae were raiding his nearby province of Illyricum. This was little more than an annoyance at present, but he could not afford to allow the situation to worsen and distract him from more pressing ventures in Britain and Gaul. Caesar quickly reached Pirustae territory, then called their leaders to a conference, warning them that unless they wanted him to wage a crushing war on them as he had done against troublesome tribes in Gaul, they would immediately cease their raids and make reparations. Caesar’s reputation was such that the Pirustae did not hesitate a moment—they assured him the incursions would stop, quickly settled all damages, and surrendered hostages to ensure their good behavior in the future.
Caesar soon returned to northern Italy, where he faced a more delicate problem. He had long been a friend of the influential family of the poet Catullus in Verona. Whenever he passed through the area on his tours of Italian Gaul he always stayed at their home and enjoyed their warm hospitality. Young Catullus had long since left his rustic town at the foot of the Alps for the cosmopolitan air of Rome, where he was now a well-known poet in the city’s most fashionable literary circle. Catullus, who would die later that year, had suffered a heartbreaking romance with a woman he calls Lesbia in his poems—almost certainly Clodia, sister of the unpredictable Clodius. Unlucky in love, Catullus had also failed to reap any expected profit from recent service on the staff of the Roman governor of Bithynia. The poet had nursed a bitter and jealous feud with a third-rate bard named Mamurra, who for years had been growing rich on Caesar’s staff, first in Spain, then in Gaul. As long as Catullus aimed his invectives at Mamurra alone, his verse aroused little but amusement at his clever wit:
Who can look at this, who can bear it,
unless he’s a shameful, greedy gambler,
who can bear that Mamurra holds the riches
of long-haired Gaul and distant Britain?
But recently he had decided to include Caesar himself in his biting satire:
They’re a pretty pair of sodomites,
Mamurra bent over and wretched Caesar behind.
The family of Catullus was mortified that their son would slander their longtime patron so viciously for public amusement. Caesar was indeed deeply offended by these poems, especially as they called to mind his alleged affair with King Nicomedes—a bitterly resented slur that he had been battling all his life. But Caesar was not a man to hold a grudge, especially as he admired the poet’s obvious talents. When Catullus was persuaded by his father to apologize that spring, Caesar invited him to dinner the same day to let the young man know all was forgiven. His relations with the poet’s family in Verona continued for many years as warmly as ever.
Caesar also cultivated a new relationship with Cicero during the winter between his two British campaigns. The triumvirate had pressured Cicero to support its plans two years before, but Caesar went well beyond treating Cicero merely as a useful tool. For so many years the man who had risen to the consulship from obscurity had been held in bemused contempt by the Roman nobility. Caesar recognized Cicero’s hunger for respect and began honoring the famed orator accordingly. The two became frequent correspondents during Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul and Britain. Cicero even sent samples of his poetry over the Alps, which Caesar compared to the best of Greek verse. Caesar also welcomed Cicero’s brother, Quintus, into his service that winter as a senior military legate. Although Quintus was a literary man who translated the Greek plays of Sophocles into Latin during spare moments in the field, he proved to be a gifted soldier.
It was probably during his journey back to Gaul in the spring of 54 B.C. that Caesar again demonstrated his own literary talent by composing a now-lost work entitled On Analogy, recommending clarity and simple language as the chief goals for orators and writers rather than the elaborate ornamentation then in style. One surviving fragment of the book puts it bluntly: “Avoid strange and unfamiliar words as a sailor avoids rocks at sea.” The fact that he was able to dictate this work to secretaries while riding on horseback or jostling in a cart in the midst of pressing military duties makes the book all the more remarkable. Caesar dedicated the work with genuine admiration—and perhaps a touch of irony—to the loquacious Cicero.
When Caesar arrived back at the Channel in the early summer of 54 B.C., he was thrilled to see that the fleet was almost ready to sail. His men had built six hundred transport vessels and twenty-eight ships designed for naval combat—a virtual armada that would soon carry over twenty thousand men to Britain. He summoned the leaders of all the Gaulish tribes to assemble together at his camp with a pre-arranged number of cavalry from each as auxiliary units for the invasion. From every part of Gaul, men streamed to Caesar’s camp to join the grand adventure in hope of plunder—gold, pearls, slaves. The one tribe that had refused Caesar’s summons were the Belgic Treveri near the border with Germany. Caesar not only needed their contribution to his invasion force as they had the best cavalry in Gaul, but he could not afford to leave a rebellious tribe in his rear to stir up trouble. One group of the Treveri, led by Indutiomarus, had set themselves against Rome, while a pro-Caesar faction rallied around a noble named Cingetorix. Since it would be several weeks before the fleet was ready, Caesar set off with his army across Gaul to quell the Treverian rebellion. Indutiomarus had prepared for the upcoming Roman attack by gathering his men in the broad Ardennes forest, but as the legions approached, many warriors of the tribe began to slip away and declare their loyalty to Caesar. By the time the Romans reached Treverian territory, Indutiomarus was seeking terms of surrender. Caesar spared his life—a kindness he would later regret—and appointed Cingetorix as ruler in his place.
Caesar soon returned to the Channel to resume his preparations for the British invasion, chief of which was to ensure that every Gaulish leader of questionable loyalty would accompany him to Britain. Caesar believed in keeping his friends close and his enemies even closer. At the top of the list of potential troublemakers was Dumnorix of the Aedui, a man who had troubled Caesar since the beginning of the Gallic War. Caesar knew very well that Dumnorix was a courageous and influential man bent on seizing power for himself in Gaul if given half a chance. Dumnorix came to Caesar and begged to be left in Gaul—he was afraid of sea travel, he had religious obligations at home—but Caesar demanded that he prepare to sail. Dumnorix then tried a different strategy by spreading rumors throughout the camp that Caesar wanted to transport the Gaulish leaders to Britain so that he might kill them there with impunity. Whether the tribal leaders were foolish enough to believe this or not, many began to question the wisdom of following Caesar any farther.
When the day of departure finally came, however, the Roman troops and all the Gaulish auxiliary boarded the ships—except for Dumnorix and a contingent of the Aedui. They had managed to slip away from camp in the confusion of departure and were now heading south toward home. Caesar halted the ships when he heard the news and sent back a large force of cavalry to chase down Dumnorix. Their orders were to bring him back alive, if possible, but to stop him at all costs. The Aeduan leader was much too dangerous a man to leave untended in Gaul while most of the Roman army was across the sea. When the pursuers caught up with Dumnorix, they surrounded him and ordered his surrender. Dumnorix refused and shouted as they cut him down:
I am a free man of a free people!
His words would soon become a rallying cry for all of Gaul.
A gentle southwest breeze blew Caesar’s fleet steadily across the Channel that evening until the wind suddenly died around midnight. The ships now rode the tide through the darkness as they drifted blindly to the east. When the sun rose, Caesar saw that he had overshot Britain, which lay far on the western horizon, and ordered his ships to row for the coast as fast as they could. With tremendous effort by all, the fleet finally arrived in Kent by midday. This time their arrival was greeted by an eerie silence, with not a British warrior to be seen anywhere. Leaving a sufficient contingent on the beach to make a fortified camp and guard the ships, Caesar marched inland that same afternoon with most of his troops.
Somewhere near what would one day be the cathedral town of Canterbury, Caesar finally saw the British. The natives were much more cautious than the previous year, dashing out of a thick forest on horseback and in chariots to strike the Roman lines, then rushing back for the cover of the trees. The legions easily repulsed these attacks but Caesar, rightly fearing an ambush, forbade them to pursue the enemy into the woods. The army instead built a well-fortified camp and prepared to continue its march the next day. But at sunrise, word arrived from Caesar’s fort on the beach that nearly all the ships had been damaged yet again by a sudden squall during the night. Instead of taking this second catastrophe to his fleet in as many years as a warning sign from the gods, Caesar returned with his army to the shore and ordered shipwrights to be brought from Gaul along with whatever supplies they needed to mend the vessels. Caesar did, however, finally take to heart that ships could not be left lying unprotected on North Sea beaches. He spent the next ten days in a round-the-clock construction project to secure his fleet against damage from either storms or enemy attacks. When he next left camp with his army, he was confident that his means of transport back to Gaul was finally safe.
Caesar then headed across Kent toward a broad river called the Tamesis, now the Thames. He knew that on the far side of this stream somewhere to the west of modern London was the citadel of Cassivellaunus, king of the Cassi. Caesar had learned that Cassivellaunus held a loose hegemony over all the tribes of southern Britain. This united front made Caesar’s job much more difficult, but he was determined to crush all resistance in the south before returning to Gaul for the winter.
At this dramatic point in his yearly report to the Senate, later published in his Gallic War, Caesar interrupts his own description of battles and naval disasters to highlight his talents as an ethnographer and scientist. Caesar obviously enjoyed using what he learned about Britain and its natives to stir the imagination of his Roman audience and thereby increase his own prestige. Much of what he says has been verified by modern scholarship and archaeological excavations, but regardless of his accuracy his readers in Rome would have been fascinated by the strange and wonderful world he describes across the sea.
Caesar knew almost nothing about Britain when he planned his first invasion in 55 B.C., but by the time of writing his report he had visited the island twice and interviewed many British natives to gather information. He begins his description with the different types of people found on the island:
The parts of Britain far from the sea are inhabited by tribes who claim to be indigenous, but those along the coast are recent migrants from Belgic Gaul who came for profit and war.
The claim that the southern Britons had close cultural ties to Gaul is undeniable. What little linguistic evidence we possess of the ancient British language, the ancestor of Welsh, shows that it was a variant of the Celtic tongue spoken in Gaul. Archaeologists have also shown that weapons, art, clothing, burial practices, and many other features were similar on both sides of the Channel. Excavations also provide abundant evidence of trade between Gaul and southern Britain, including wine. The Britons in turn exported grain, cattle, precious metals, hunting dogs, and slaves to Gaul and beyond. We can be certain that however little Caesar knew of the Britons before his first expedition, the inhabitants of at least the southern part of the island were well aware of Rome.
Caesar also mentions that the Britons used coins, again confirmed by archaeology, and that their weather was more moderate than that of Gaul (thanks to the then unknown Gulf Stream). He comments on the roughly triangular shape of the island and is tolerably accurate on its overall size, even though he saw only a small portion of the southeast. He notes that a large island called Hibernia lies just to the west, providing one of our earliest descriptions of Ireland. He also was keenly interested in variations of daylight hours according to latitude and so imported from Gaul a clepsydra—an ingenious water clock used by the ancients to measure time in all weather, day or night. Through careful experiments he discovered that summer nights in Britain were indeed slightly shorter than those on the continent.
Some of his most fascinating comments on the island for both ancient and modern readers concern the customs of the inhabitants themselves. Caesar records that the Britons considered certain birds, along with all hares, sacred and would never eat them. This may well be true since there are countless tales of sacred birds in Celtic mythology. The reference to hares is also borne out in the next century when the rebellious British queen Boudicca released a hare as part of an divination ceremony before battle. He notes that all British warriors, north and south, dye their skin with a bluish coloring derived from the leaves of a plant called vitrum (woad) that gives them a terrifying appearance in battle. Finally, Caesar claims that on their native farms, up to a dozen related men could live in a communal lifestyle freely sharing wives. As this has no parallels in other early Celtic societies, it may be that Caesar misunderstood the inner workings of British households or was deliberately pandering to his Roman readers, who quite expected such scandalous behavior from distant barbarians.
Caesar proceeded with caution through the early autumn countryside of Kent on the way to his battle with Cassivellaunus and his British allies. The native warriors struck at the Romans on the march but always in small hit-and-run attacks designed to lure the legions into the confines of the dense forests. On one occasion they did assault a small group of soldiers setting up camp and managed to slay a number of Romans in the melee, but they were pushed back and never tried such a daring attack again. What drove Caesar to distraction was the uncanny way the British warriors would divide themselves into multiple assault teams and strike at different parts of the Roman lines at once. The legions were trained to fight in set battles or protracted sieges, not dozens of simultaneous skirmishes.
When Caesar finally reached the Thames somewhere near London he discovered from native prisoners that there was only one spot on the river suitable for fording, and that only with great difficulty. He could see the warriors of Cassivellaunus waiting on the far side of the river eager for the Romans to press across so they could strike them down in the water. They had even fixed sharp stakes just below the waterline to impale the Romans as they struggled up the bank. With the autumn storms on the Channel fast approaching, Caesar knew he had no time to repeat his bridging of the Rhine nor did he have enough boats for his men. Instead, he decided on an extremely risky maneuver. Before the British knew what was happening, Caesar sent thousands of troops screaming across the Thames in water up to their necks. The British were so surprised that they broke ranks and ran as fast as they could away from the river.
Caesar was now north of the Thames (probably near modern Heathrow Airport) but Cassivellaunus still commanded a sizeable force to oppose him. However, with the Thames breached, the authority of Cassivellaunus was considerably weakened. It was now that the southern British kings, long resentful of Cassivellaunus, began to come forward and seek peace with Caesar. Especially important was a prince named Mandubracius of the Trinovantes of Essex, northeast of London. His father had been murdered by Cassivellaunus and the son had fled into exile to save his own life. Mandubracius offered Caesar his loyalty, hostages, and all the grain his troops could eat if he would help him restore his throne. Caesar was only too happy to oblige.
Caesar learned from these defectors that the headquarters of Cassivellaunus was nearby, though well-protected by swamps, thickets, and trenches. The Romans nevertheless snuck up on the fortress from two sides and rushed the stronghold, killing many of the British, though the king himself escaped. In a final attempt to rid himself of the Romans, Cassivellaunus ordered four subordinate kings in Kent still loyal to him to destroy Caesar’s fleet, though the assault failed miserably. No fool, Cassivellaunus now began to make peace overtures to Caesar through the agency of Caesar’s old ally Commius of the Gaulish Atrebates. In different circumstances, Caesar might have squeezed more concessions from Cassivellaunus than he did, but he was facing several pressing problems. He was not prepared to winter in Britain, the autumn seas would soon make the Channel impassible, and, in a telling remark, he reports that there was “suddenly trouble in Gaul.” Caesar settled for a quick peace treaty, the usual hostages, and a promise from Cassivellaunus that he would not interfere with Mandubracius and the Trinovantes. With these terms reached it was a fast march back across Kent to the waiting ships. With storm damage to his fleet and so many British hostages, as well as slaves, to convey back to Gaul, Caesar split the invasion force into two groups to ferry them across the Channel in turns. Undoubtedly Caesar’s last word to the British kings was to be on their best behavior as he and the legions could return at any time to punish troublemakers or even annex the whole island. However, as events unfolded, no Roman soldier would touch British soil again for almost a century.
The news awaiting Caesar on his return to Gaul could not have been more grim. A drought had severely reduced the grain harvest for the Gaulish tribes and therefore made supplying the Roman troops quartered among them even more taxing. Caesar was forced to spread his legions thinly throughout Gaul to reduce the strain on the local populations, making it all the more difficult for the commanders to aid each other in the event of trouble. The frustration soon broke into open revolt among the Carnutes tribes around modern Chartes when they murdered their king, Tasgetius, a solid ally of Caesar. It was only a matter of time, Caesar feared, until the whole country would explode. So great was his concern that he immediately abandoned his usual plans to return to northern Italy that winter and chose instead to remain in Gaul with his troops.
But the most crushing blow to Caesar that autumn of 54 B.C. was a personal matter he omitted from his official reports to the Senate. When he stepped off the ship in Gaul, a messenger handed him a sealed letter from his friends in Rome. He opened it and learned that his beloved daughter, Julia, his only child and the wife of Pompey, had died in childbirth just days before. The infant granddaughter of Caesar had survived only a few days after her mother’s death. A general such as Caesar could not afford to break down in front of his troops, but his mourning for his Julia was profound. Pompey too was crushed beyond all consolation. Caesar ordered public gladiatorial games and a banquet in her honor in Rome—an honor unprecedented for a woman. Over the objection of the optimates, she was buried on the sacred ground of the Field of Mars by the people of Rome. But Caesar’s supporters—and especially his enemies—realized that it had been Julia who held together the alliance of Caesar and Pompey. Without her, they feared—or hoped—the days of the triumvirate were numbered.