Note 3243 — THE PLACE OF CAESAR’S LANDING IN BRITAIN (continued 2)

George Long, who was a very able man, was nevertheless capable, if hard pressed in controversy, of writing sheer nonsense. Having only the most superficial knowledge of the tides, he submissively accepted the assertion that, at the time when Caesar weighed anchor off the Kentish cliffs, the stream was running westward; yet he insisted that Caesar landed at Deal! Let him speak for himself. ‘When Caesar says that the tide (aestus) was favourable, he means that he had water sufficient to keep near the shore. There is only one meaning of aestus in Caesar.... Caesar says that he went with wind and tide favourable. If “tide” means stream, his statement is not true. If he means by “tide” what I have said—and there is not the least doubt of that—I should like some sufficient reason to be given why he could not go to Deal, though the stream was against him’ (The Reader, Sept. 5, 1863, pp. 254-5). This singular argument was demolished with somewhat needless vigour by Dr. Guest (Origines Celticae, ii, 1883, pp. 364-5). If in the often quoted passage, longius delatus aestu orta luce sub sinistra Britanniam relictam conspexit, the word aestus does not mean ‘the tidal stream’, it means nothing. That it does mean what I have said Long virtually admits when, in his edition of the Commentaries (p. 225), commenting on this very passage, he observes that Caesar ‘was carried out of his course by the flood tide’.