Note 2687 — PORTUS ITIUS

Caignart de Saulcy (Les campagnes de Jules César dans les Gaules, 1862, p. 181) infers from this that the Portus Itius must have been so situated that vessels sailing thence for Dover would have had the north-west wind right in their teeth; and he remarks that, if Wissant was the Portus Itius, this condition was fulfilled. But it is hardly necessary to say that the condition is imaginary. The Portus Itius must have been so situated that while the north-west wind (or rather the wind called Corus, which may have blown from any quarter between N.W. and W. by N. ⅓ N.) was blowing, Caesar’s vessels could not have sailed thence to that part of the Kentish coast which he wished to reach; and it is certain that they could not sail closer than within about seven points of the wind. See The Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul, by James Smith, 4th ed., 1880, p. 215; and, on the winds as described by various ancient writers, Vitruvius, De Architectura, i, 6, §§ 5, 9-10, P. F. J. Gossellin, Recherches sur la géogr., iv, 1813, p. 410, and diagram facing p. 416, and J. Vars, L’art nautique dans l’ant., 1887, pp. 31-4.