Note 2812 — PORTUS ITIUS

Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde, xviii, 1865, pp. 122-3. There is an obvious objection to this argument, to which Heller replies by anticipation. One of the three sides of Britain, says Caesar, looks southward towards Gaul; and one of the ‘angles’ (alter angulus) of this side is by Kent (B. G., v, 13, § 1). If Caesar landed, as Heller believes, between the South Foreland and the North Foreland, he had himself seen this angle, which is formed by the South Foreland; and if he believed that the coast, at the North Foreland, turned sharply towards the west, and had no knowledge of that part of the coast which trends northward beyond the mouth of the Thames, it is clear that he must have regarded the North Foreland and not the South Foreland, as marking the commencement of the northern side, in which case one might think that he would have described the coast between the South Foreland and the North Foreland as a separate side, and would have represented Britain not as triangular but as irregularly quadrilateral. But Heller argues that the word angulus, as used by Caesar, does not mean an ‘angle’ in the geometrical sense of the word, but only a strip of coast between two angles; and he compares a passage in Livy’s description of the siege of Saguntum (xxi, 7, § 5),—Angulus muri erat in planiorem patentioremque quam cetera circa vallem vergens.