Note 3578 — THE JULIAN CALENDAR AND THE CHRONOLOGY OF CAESAR’S INVASIONS OF BRITAIN

Att., iv, 18, § 5. The MS. reading is (a litoribus Britanniae) proximo, which is nonsense. Dr. Vogel, however, attempts to translate the untranslatable. ‘What other meaning,’ he asks (Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie, &c., cliii, 1896, p. 283), ‘can the somewhat extraordinary expression datas a litoribus Britanniae proximo have than that the letter was written in the neighbourhood of the coast of Britain, and therefore not quite at the sea?’ The words will not bear this or any other meaning; and it is obvious that Caesar would have gained nothing by writing when he was ‘not quite at the sea’; unless, indeed, in order to save a few hours’ delay in the transmission of an unimportant private letter, he had sent on a messenger to the coast with orders to embark on a special galley! For proximo Boot substituted proximis, a conjecture which is generally accepted. Whatever Cicero may have written, it is certain that the letters which he received from his brother and from Caesar were written in Britain; but T. Bergk, to whom the conclusions which commend themselves to plain men are generally distasteful, insists (Jahrbücher für classische Philologie, 13 Supplementband, 1884, p. 616) that litoribus Britanniae proximo means ‘the coasts nearest to Britain, that is to say, Boulogne’; and he defends this interpretation by the argument that Caesar had a rooted dislike of mentioning unknown names. But, as Bergk himself maintains, Boulogne was the Portus Itius; and, as Caesar twice mentioned the Portus Itius in his Commentaries (B. G., v, 2, § 3; 5, § 1), it is difficult to see why he should have shrunk from doing so in a letter.

Bergk’s theory leads him to the absurd conclusion that Caesar quitted Britain for Gaul on the day before he wrote this letter, that is to say, on the 29th (or 30th) of August of the Julian calendar. Absurd, because, as I show in the text (p. 713), Cicero would in that case have written, not (exercitum e Britannia) reportabant, but reportaverant; and because Caesar, who had not quitted Britain in the preceding year until, at the earliest, September 11, would not have felt obliged to sail four weeks before the equinox ‘because the equinox was at hand’, and would certainly have thought it perfectly safe to wait several days longer for the return of the ships which carried the first detachment of his army back to Gaul, and which he could ill spare.