In like manner several other towns entered into treaties with the Romans, and supplied guides by whose aid Caesar penetrated to the capital city of Cassibelaun, covered on both sides by morasses and further protected by thick woods, while it was stored with abundant supplies. The city was taken after an obstinate defence[1].
Eventually, Caesar returning to Gaul, and being distracted by the cares of wars which beset him on every side, withdrew from Britain the legions which he had placed in winter quarters, in order that they might accompany him to Rome: a fact to which Lucan refers:—
- "The free-born Britons toss their yellow hair,
No longer curb'd by stationary camps."[2]
Returning with regret to Rome, he ordered the fifth month to be called July in honour of his own name. He was afterwards treacherously assassinated in the senate-house on the Ides of March. As we have to speak of Caesar and his successors who ruled Britain to the time of Martian, who was the forty-fourth in succession from Julius Caesar, we have no wish to diminish their renown. We should hesitate to compare them in point of morals to our own Christian princes, while it would be a shame that the latter should be inferior.
The panegyrick of Solinus on Julius Caesar is just: "As much as Sergius and Sisinnius, the bravest of soldiers,
- ↑ There seems to be little doubt that Verulam, or St. Albans, was the capital of Cassibelaun.
- ↑ Lucan's Pharsalia, Book i. l. 402. Henry of Huntingdon has substituted Britanni for Ruteni, without any authority, which I have been able to discover. Some have read Suëvi, considering the reading justified by the descriptive appellation, flavi; but the epithet "yellow-haired" was applied, not only to the Germans, but to all the northern nations. Lucan himself thus designates the Britons: "celsos ut Gallia currus/Nobilis, et flavis sequerentus mista Britannis." Phars. iii. 78. In the passage quoted by the Archdeacon, Ruteni is evidently the true reading, for the context names various Gaulish tribes; those of the Vosges, the Lingones, about Langes, and the Isarae, on the Isere. Then the Ruteni, a people of Narbonese Gaul, afterwards le Rovergue, are mentioned; followed by reference to the tribes on the Atar, now L'Aube, in Languedoc, and the Var in Provence.
