Note 420 — CANES VENATICI. Class III.

De bello Gallico L. iv.

Julius Cæsar says of Britain, “Maritima pars ab iis incolitur qui prædæ ac belli inferendi causâ ex Belgis transierant.” Ptolemy and Tacitus confirm the supposed connexion of the Britons and Gauls;Geogr. L. ii. “Proximi Gallis et similes sunt,” says the latter,Taciti Agricola. “seu durante originis vi; seu procurrentibus in diversa terris, positio cœli corporibus habitum dedit. In universum tamen æstimanti, Gallos vicinum solum occupâsse credibile est.” And Juvenal tells us, in Hadrian’s reign, that British lawyers learned Greek and Roman eloquence of their Gallic neighbours—

Sat. xv. vs. 111.

Indeed, from the coast of Kent to the extremity of Caithness and Ulster, the memory of a Celtic origin was for centuries distinctly preserved in the perpetual resemblance of language, religious rites, and domestic customs and manners. As an example of similarity of habits in the insular and continental Celtæ,De Venatione C. xxxiii. it may be noted that Arrian records the marked adoration paid by the latter to Diana Agrotera; and Holinshed, on the authority of earlier historians, observes,See Note 12. of the Translation, C. xxxiii. “Amongst other the Goddes also, whiche the Scottishmen had in most reverence, Diana was chiefe, whom they accompted as their peculiar patronesse, for that she was taken to be the Goddesse of hunting, wherein consisted their chiefest exercise, pastime and delite.” Not being able to fix with accuracy the date of their irruption into Britain in the dark ages of our early annals, this laborious chronicler is inclined to consider the Celtic ScotiDescription of Britaine, c. 3. “such as by obscure invasion have nestled in this islande;” but subsequently, in his “Historie of Irelande,” he suggests a date later than the birth of Christ for the inhabitancy of the Scoti on British soil (circiter A. D. 300.), though previously in occupation of Ireland and the Hebrides.