HKB
[Sidenote: Re-embarkment of the Army.]
VIII. Summer approached its end (they were in the last days of August). Cæsar, aware that there no longer remained sufficient time to be employed with advantage, prepared for his departure; he wished, moreover, to pass the winter on the continent, fearing sudden revolts on the part of the Gauls. He therefore caused hostages to be delivered to him, fixed the tribute to be paid annually by Britain to the Roman people, and expressly prohibited Cassivellaunus from all acts of hostility against Mandubratius and the Trinobantes.
After receiving the hostages, Cæsar hastened to return in person to the coast, and ordered his army to follow him afterwards; he found the ships repaired, and caused them to be put afloat. His great number of prisoners, and the loss of several of his ships, obliged him to pass the army across the channel in two convoys. It is remarkable that, of so many ships employed several times in the passage this year or the year before, not one of those which carried the troops was lost; but, on the contrary, the greater part of the ships which returned empty, after having landed the soldiers of the first transport, and those built by Labienus, to the number of sixty, did not reach their destination; they were nearly all thrown back upon the coast of the continent. Cæsar, who had resolved to leave Britain only with the last convoy, waited for them some time in vain. The approach of the equinox led him to fear that the period favourable for navigation would pass by, and he decided on overloading his ships with soldiers, sailed in a moment of calm at the beginning of the second watch (nine o’clock), and, after a favourable passage, landed at daybreak.[409]
This second expedition, though more successful than the first, did not bring as its result the complete submission of the isle of Britain. According to Cæsar, the Romans did not even obtain any booty; yet Strabo speaks of a considerable booty,[410] and another author confirms this fact by relating that Cæsar formed out of the spoils of the enemy a cuirass ornamented with pearls, which he consecrated to Venus.[411]
[Sidenote: Observations.]
IX. Several indications enable us again to fix precisely the period of the second expedition to Britain. We know, from a letter from Quintus to his brother Cicero, that Cæsar was at the end of May at Lodi (we admit the 22nd of May).[412] He might therefore have arrived towards the 2nd of June on the shores of the ocean, where he inspected his fleet. During the interval before it assembled at the Portus Itius, he proceeded to the country of the Treviri, where he did not remain long; for, towards the middle of the summer (ne æstatem in Treviris consumere cogeretur), he started for Boulogne, where he arrived at the end of June. The winds from the north-west retained him there twenty-five days, that is, till towards the end of July. On another hand, Cicero wrote to Atticus on the 26th of July: “I see, from my brother’s letters, that he must already be in Britain.”[413] In reply to another letter of Quintus, dated on the 4th of the Ides of August (the 8th of August), he rejoices at having received on the day of the Ides of September (9th of September), the news of his arrival in that island.[414] These data fix the departure of the expedition to the end of July, for the letters took from twenty to thirty days to pass from Britain to Rome.[415] When the army moved from the coasts, the news was naturally much longer on the way; and in the month of October, Cicero wrote to his brother, “Here are fifty days passed without the arrival of letter or sign of life from you, or Cæsar, or even from where you are.”[416] Having ascertained the month of July for that of his departure, we have next to find the day on which that departure took place.