A Book of Discovery by M. B. Synge (classic novels TXT) 📖

night and day, Cæsar hastened to the town and took it before the arrival of the invaders.

Accounts of the German tribes even now approaching were brought in by native traders and Gaulish chiefs, until the Roman soldiers were seized with alarm. Yes, said the traders, these Germans were "men of huge stature, incredible valour, and practised skill in wars; many a time they had themselves come across them, and had not been able to look them in the face or meet the glare of their piercing eyes."

The Romans felt they were in an unknown land, about to fight against an unknown foe. Violent panic seized them, "completely paralysing every one's judgment and nerve." Some could not restrain their tears; others shut themselves up in their tents and bemoaned their fate. "All over the camp men were making their wills," until Cæsar spoke, and the panic ceased. Seven days' march brought them to the plain of Alsace, some fifty miles from the Rhine. A battle was fought with the German tribes, and "the enemy all turned tail and did not cease their flight until they reached the Rhine." Some swam across, some found boats, many were killed by the Romans in hot pursuit.

For the first time Romans beheld the German Rhine—that great river that was to form a barrier for so long between them and the tribes beyond. But Cæsar's exploration was not to end here. The following year found him advancing against the Belgæ—tribes living between the Rhine and the Seine. In one brilliant campaign he subdued the whole of north-eastern Gaul from the Seine to the Rhine. Leaving Roman soldiers in the newly conquered country, he returned to his province, and was some eight hundred miles away when he heard that a general rebellion was breaking out in that part we now know as Brittany. He at once ordered ships to be built on the Loire, "which flows into the ocean," oarsmen to be trained, seamen and pilots assembled.

The spring of 56 B.C. found Cæsar at the seat of war. His ships were ready on the Loire. But the navy of the Veneti was strong. They were a sea-going folk, who knew their own low rocky coast, intersected by shallow inlets of the sea; they knew their tides and their winds. Their flat-bottomed boats were suitable to shallows and ebbing tides. Bows and stern stood high out of the water to resist heavy seas and severe gales; the hulls were built of oak. Leather was used for sails to withstand the violent ocean storms. The long Roman galleys were no match for these, and things would have gone badly had not Cæsar devised a plan for cutting the enemy's rigging with hooks "sharpened at the end and fixed to long poles." With these, the Romans cut the rigging of the enemy's ships forming the fleet of Brittany; the sails fell and the ships were rendered useless. One after another they were easily captured, and at sunset the victory lay with the Romans.

The whole of Gaul, from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, seemed now subdued. Cæsar had conquered as he explored, and the skill of his well-disciplined army triumphed everywhere over the untrained courage of the barbarian tribes.

Still, the German tribes were giving trouble about the country of the Rhine, and in the words of the famous Commentaries, "Cæsar was determined to cross the Rhine, but he hardly thought it safe to cross in boats. Therefore, although the construction of a bridge presented great difficulties on account of the breadth, swiftness, and depth of the stream, he nevertheless thought it best to make the attempt or else not cross at all." Indeed, he wanted to impress the wild German people on the other side with a sense of the vast power of the Roman Empire. The barbarian tribes beyond must, indeed, have been impressed with the skill of the Roman soldier. For in ten days the bridge was completed: timber had been hewn from the forest, brought to the banks of the Rhine, worked into shape, piles driven into the bed of the river, beams laid across. And Cæsar led his army in triumph to the other side. They stood for the first time in the land of the Germans, near the modern town of Coblenz, and after eighteen days on the farther side, they returned to Gaul, destroying the bridge behind them.

Cæsar had now a fresh adventure in view. He was going to make his way to Britain. The summer of 55 B.C. was passing, and "in these parts, the whole of Gaul having a northerly trend, winter sets in early," wrote Cæsar afterwards. There would be no time to conquer, but he could visit the island, find out for himself what the people were like, learn about harbours and landing-places, "for of all this the Greeks knew practically nothing. No one, indeed, readily undertakes the voyage to Britain except traders, and even they know nothing of it except the coast."

Cæsar summoned all the traders he could collect and inquired the size of the island, what tribes dwelt there, their names, their customs, and the shortest sea passage. Then he sent for the ships which had vanquished the fleet of Brittany the previous year; he also assembled some eighty merchant ships on the northern coast of Gaul, probably not very far from Calais.

It was near the end of August, when soon after midnight the wind served and he set sail. A vision of the great Roman—determined, resolute—rises before us as, standing on the deck of the galley, he looks out on to the dark waters of the unknown sea bound for the coast of England. After a slow passage the little fleet arrived under the steep white cliffs of the southern coast about nine o'clock next morning. Armed forces of barbarians stood on the heights above Dover, and, finding it impossible to land, Cæsar gave orders to sail some seven miles farther along the coast, where they ran the ships aground not far from Deal.

But the visit of the Romans to Britain on this occasion lasted but three days, for a violent storm scattered the ships with the horses on board.

"The same night," says Cæsar, "it happened to be full moon, which generally causes very high tides in the ocean, a fact of which our men were not aware."

Indeed, we may well believe that a night of full moon and an unusually high tide would be a mystery to those children of the Mediterranean. Their ships had been beached and were lying high and dry when the rapidly rising tide overwhelmed them. Cables were broken, anchors lost, panic ensued.

But Cæsar's glory lay in overcoming obstacles, and it is well known how he got his troops and ships safely back across the Channel, and how preparations were hurried on in Gaul for a second invasion of Britain. This is not the place for the story of his campaign. He was the first to raise the curtain on the mysterious islands discovered by Pytheas.

"Far to the west, in the ocean wide,
 Beyond the realm of Gaul, a land there lies,
 Sea-girt it lies, where giants dwelt of old."

Cæsar's remarks on this new-found land are interesting for us to-day. He tells us of "a river called the Thames, about eight miles from the sea." "The interior of Britain," he says, "is inhabited by a people who, according to tradition, are aboriginal. The population is immense; homesteads closely resembling those of the Gauls are met with at every turn, and cattle are very numerous. Gold coins are in use, or iron bars of fixed weight. Hares, fowls, and geese they think it wrong to taste; but they keep them for pastime or amusement. The climate is more equable than in Gaul, the cold being less severe. The island is triangular in shape, one side being opposite Gaul. One corner of this side, by Kent—the landing-place for almost all ships from Gaul—has an easterly, and the lower one a westerly, aspect. The extent of this side is about five hundred miles. The second trends off towards Spain. Off the coast here is Ireland, which is considered only half as large as Britain. Halfway across is an island called 'Man,' and several smaller islands also are believed to be situated opposite this coast, in which there is continuous night for thirty days. The length of this side is eight hundred miles. Thus the whole island is two thousand miles in circumference. The people of the interior do not, for the most part, cultivate grain, but live on milk and flesh-meat, and clothe themselves with skins. All Britons, without exception, stain themselves with woad, which produces a bluish tint. They wear their hair long."

Cæsar crossed the Thames. "The river can only be forded at one spot," he tells us, "and there with difficulty." Farther he did not go. And so this is all that was known of Britain for many a long year to come.

CHAPTER VIII STRABO'S GEOGRAPHY

Strabo wrote his famous geography near the beginning of the Christian era, but he knew nothing of the north of England, Scotland, or Wales. He insisted on placing Ireland to the north, and scoffed at Pytheas' account of Thule.

And yet he boasted a wider range than any other writer on geography, "for that those who had penetrated farther towards the West had not gone so far to the East, and those on the contrary who had seen more of the East had seen less of the West."

Like Herodotus, Strabo had travelled himself from Armenia and western Italy, from the Black Sea to Egypt and up the Nile to Philæ. But his seventeen volumes—vastly important to his contemporaries—read like a romance to us to-day, and a glance at the map laid down according to his descriptions is like a vague and distorted caricature of the real thing. And yet, according to the men of his times, he "surpasses all the geographical writings of antiquity, both in grandeur of plan and in abundance and variety of its materials."

Strabo has summed up for us the knowledge of the ancient world as it was in the days of the Emperor Cæsar Augustus of the great Roman Empire, as it was when in far-off Syria the Christ was born and the greater part of the known earth was under the sway of Rome.

A wall-map had already been designed by order of Augustus to hang in a public place in Rome—the heart of the Empire—so that the young Romans might realise the size of their inheritance, while a list of the chief places on the roads, which, radiating from Rome, formed a network over the Empire, was inscribed on the Golden Milestone in the Forum.

A PORTION OF AN OLD ROMAN MAP OF THE WORLD A PORTION OF AN OLD ROMAN MAP OF THE WORLD, SHOWING THE ROADS THROUGH THE EMPIRE, RIVERS, MOUNTAINS, AND THE SURROUNDING SEAS.
This is a portion—a few inches—taken from the famous Peutinger Table, a long strip map on parchment, of the fourth century, derived from Augustan maps according to the measurements of Cæsar Augustus Agrippa. It will be noticed how the roads, beginning with the Twelve Ways, which start from Rome in the centre, go in straight lines over all obstacles to the towns of the Empire. Distances are marked in stadia (about 1/9 mile).

We may well imagine with what keen interest the schoolmen of Alexandria would watch the extension of the Roman Empire. Here Strabo had studied, here or at Rome he probably wrote his great work toward the close of a long life. He has read his Homer and inclines to take every word he says as true. Herodotus he will have none of.

"Herodotus and other writers trifle very much," he asserts, "when they introduce into their histories the marvellous like an interlude of some melody."

In like manner he disbelieves poor Pytheas and his