Talk:Julius Caesar's invasions of Britain

Merge material from Talk:Roman conquest of Britain
Didn't Caesar land shortly in Britain after having conquered Gaul? If so, it probably should be mentioned as a precursor of the invasion, however distant. -- Seindal, Thursday, April 11, 2002

Some information here: -- Seindal, Thursday, April 11, 2002

It was 90 years earlier and he did not winter over. I regarded it as a reconnaisance in force rather than an invasion. Where would the 55 BC material best go? -- Vignaux

Ave, Caesar!
Can anybody ID the 2 legions Gaius J took into Britannia in 55? Churchill in History of the English Speaking Peoples, v1, records 1 of them as the 10h. Trekphiler 00:51, 3 January 2006 (UTC)


 * A source I have (Semitic Papyrology in Context) indicates that Legio X Fretensis operated primarily in the eastern portion of the Empire, in the years of 60 CE being stationed in Jerusalem and later Caesaraea(source Near Eastern Archaeology Vol. 64:4, pg 29-192). This doesn't necessarily indicate that the 10th didn't participate in the 55 BCE foray by Gaius into Britain.  According the historian Josephus the Legio X Fretensis as well as Legio III Gallica, Legio VI Ferrata, and Legio XII Fulminata were all stationed in the province of Syria during the first Jewish Revolt.  A webpage [Invasion of Britain 55BC] claims that the Legions accompanying the first invasion were Legio VII, and Legio X, as you found.  Another site I found indicates that Legio VII, was not the later Legio VII that became known as Gemina.


 * Wait a second though! I've found it!  The Legio X was one of the two legions involved in the first invasion of Britain, from Dando-Collins, Stephen. Caesar's Legion: The Epic Saga of Julius Caesar's Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome (page number pending), the other was the seventh.  Drawn from Dio's accounts, which were themselves from military feedback indicates that:


 * "7th [Legio VII] Claudia Pia Fidelis Legion: Founded by Pompey the Great in 65 b.c. Granted “Claudia Pia Fidelis” title, meaning “Claudius’s Loyal and Patriotic,” following the Scribonianus Revolt, by the emperor Claudius in a.d. 42. The “Pia Fidelis” soon fell into disuse." So at the time of the invasion it had no granted title.


 * "10th Legion: Founded by Julius Caesar in 61 b.c.*"


 * I hope that clears it up!L Hamm 00:09, 1 February 2006 (UTC)


 * In addition [Legio X Gemina] indicates that the tenth might have been called Equistris before being renamed Gemina.L Hamm 00:29, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Stub out
As someone else says, in the article itself,

This article is essentially a copy of the relevant passages of De Bello Gallico and needs rewriting

-- I came in here to do a copyedit, but there seems no point in that if the article will be deleted -- as it should be, I think, as this is just a translation of Caesar so even cleaning that up would lead to all sorts of Classicist Latin translation problems.

Caesar's book is too canonical to stand as simply a history: like translating the Bible for an article entitled "History of the Middle East". For an article entitled simply "Caesar's invasions of Britain" we need just that, a history -- a translation of Caesar would be a whole different thing.

--Kessler 22:59, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I put that up when I stubbed it off. I only meant it seemed to be paraphrasing Caesar, as it stood.  I'm currently editing out the Caesar and putting it into a more balanced account in my own words (eg the Walmer and Agricola bits).  Please don't delete it. Neddyseagoon 17:27, 19 May 2006 (UTC)neddyseagoon

Hi Neddyseagoon -- I've fallen into this dilemma myself before, here on Wikipedia: caught between rock & hard place, when trying to use the articlespace as a worksheet for composing & editing. In my case I was in an Internet cafe trying to use a terminal which offered only 1 screen at a time -- no multi-tasking, no convenient little Msoft "notepad" on which to scribble before posting -- so I copied in an article I'd seen online, from which I only wanted to extract quotes for inclusion in my own very-original text, but I pressed "Save page" when I ought to have pressed "Show preview", and *presto* the Wikipedia copyright police were upon me...

The answer is to compose offline before you post. More conveniently, perhaps, and if you ever get stuck in my unyielding-internet-cafe-terminal situation yourself, Wikipedia offers "personal page" capacity and "sandbox" functions, enabling you to experiment to your heart's content with someone else's text prior to posting your own. In those places you can put up the text of others and click / drag sections for quotation, check dates, translate small bits, etc., as much as you'd like: all of De bello Gallico, even, for slicing & mincing & dicing & quoting etc..

If you post such "text by others" in the articlespace, tho, the copyright police & their knowbots will grab you, as they have here: and once they have their hooks in it's best simply to withdraw without protest, let them do their "delete" thing however they want to do it -- I'm not the one who "tagged" it myself, and such procedures once launched become largely automatic. So I'd suggest you copy & paste your text to your Notepad on your own computer and re-compose your article offline -- properly, this time, without the copyright defects which folks are telling you about here -- and without simply "translating Caesar", as I myself said, to avoid the barbs of the Classicists -- and then submit to Wikipedia again but as a different article. This one in the meantime will have been deleted.

--Kessler 17:17, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

You say, today, I have turned what was a translation of Caesar into an ordinary article, only quoting him in small acknowledged chunks, so deletion tag therefore removed:

To me this new version looks very good -- I encourage Wikipedia to keep the article, as it is interesting and well-done and informative and will benefit further from expansion & illustration etc. -- but I can't speak for others, here, including whoever it was who in the first place thought it should be deleted.

If you could add some prefatory text to the Discoveries about Britain section, and a conclusion there, I think that might help. The famous quotes you have included are wonderful, and deserve the fulltext treatment which you have given them: fun reading that the folks who inhabit Kent are the most civilized, and so on... There is a general Wikipedia bias against such long quotes, tho, so cushioning these three with text this way may help avoid that objection.

--Kessler 17:05, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Richborough
Neddy, I have to take exception to your edits about Richborough. I've deleted some footnoted material that's duplicated in the text, and moved the bit about Claudius using Caesar's records to the paragraph about the landing, but I'd dispute its inclusion at all.

Strabo (Geography 4.5) shows that south-east Britain was visited extensively for trade purposes between Caesar's invasions and Claudius's and mentions four commonly-used crossings in addition to Portus Itius, at least one of which, that from the Rhine, probably landed at Richborough (If you consult a map of the area, the logical destination for ships leaving Portus Itius (Boulogne or Wissant) would be Dover; the Rhine to Richborough or the Thames Estuary;
 * Yes, but that's not hard and fast - Claudius went Boulogne to Richborough.User&#124;Neddyseagoon 23:01, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Not necessarily - the recent Solent landing hypothesis doesn't seem at all convincing to me, but all we really know for certain is that Claudius's party left from Boulogne, and that based on the archaeology Richborough played some part. We don't know where the initial invasion party under Plautius sailed from (one possibility I haven't seen discussed is a Rhine-Richborough crossing, explaining the westward direction in Dio), and we don't know where Claudius landed. --Nicknack009 02:00, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
 * True, true - I thought you might catch me up in the Solent debate, but all I meant to mean was that we needn't apply Strabo's combination of departure and arrival ports as the be all and end all.User&#124;Neddyseagoon 22:13, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

the Seine to the Solent; and the Loire and Garonne to Cornwall or the Scillies). By Claudius's time the coast of Kent would have been well known to the Romans, so there would be absolutely no need for him to him to consult Caesar's hypothetical notes in the hypothetical archive for landing places, even if there was any evidence that Caesar went anywhere near Richborough, which there isn't.
 * Well, there's no evidence that it was Deal for the landing, but it can be worked out to some degree of certainty from a close reading of the text informed by the area's geography, as can this one. User&#124;Neddyseagoon 23:01, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * We may not know for certain which beach he landed on, but we do know he didn't use a harbour on either expedition - his ships were left exposed to the open sea on both occasions. If he'd identified Richborough in 55 BC, he'd surely have used it the following year. His ships had been damaged by the tides the first time, and he planned on staying longer the second time. The only plausible reason for landing on a beach the second time is that he didn't know of any better options. --Nicknack009 02:07, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
 * That is a strong argument against, though it might also be explained as Caesar knew about it but either
 * a) had an attack of strategic hubris (which would be in character - ie with better designed boats, and no existing harbour facilities in Richborough haven, Caesar felt he could manage without a harbour and thus knew about but disregarded Richborough as he felt he could do without it, then did not mention it as the admission 'I knew but I didn't use it' would be egg on face after the disasters that had incurred)
 * b) Richborough existed as a haven, but not yet a good enough haven for a massed landing, and thus was observed, put on record, and news added of its development over the subsequent 100 years.
 * In short, it makes observation of Richborough less likely, but not impossible. One of the accounts in DBG (can't recall which - the 54 one I think) does say they were swept off course beyond their landing point then made their way back to it - if they were swept past Deal, observation of Sandwich / Richborough seems likely.User&#124;Neddyseagoon 22:13, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Thus Occam's Razor says there's no connection between Caesar and Richborough. --Nicknack009 22:38, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Woow there. I live in East Kent and have been to a large number of lectures that gave this as a plausible theory backed by the archaeology of the area .  It does seem impossible that Volusenus could have gone along the east kent coast between Dover and Sandwich and missed Richborough, if it then existed.


 * I wasn't saying that this was the only source for Claudius' invasion - there would have been independent intelligence from traders both before 55 and during 54-43 - only that it would have been one of the sources. Claudius would have taken a large variety of sources into account, and both traders' reports and Caesar's 'notes' (which he would have made to aid the writing of his Commentaries, and then bequeathed to Rome's public libraries). User&#124;Neddyseagoon 23:01, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't know of any evidence that anything other than the finished Commentaries were made available to the public.
 * Well, not necessarily the public, but in the archives handed from one Julio-Claudian to another (as for example, the records of Sejanus's treason trials were handed down from Tiberius to Caligula) User&#124;Neddyseagoon 22:13, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
 * If they were, surely some other historian would have made use of them or referred to them?
 * Well, they might but 90% of those historians have been lost. User&#124;Neddyseagoon 22:13, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Besides, as I understand it, commentarii generally referred to rough notes that had yet to be worked up into a finished work, and Cicero says that Caesar's Commentaries were a essentially a rough draft that was too good to rework.
 * Yes, they were notes, but not as first put to paper - they have had some work. A closer approximation would be that they are not a first edition, but not the author's first typescript either, more like a publisher's copy.  There would have been other notes going with them, stuff that wasn't included / wasn't included in the copy we have but held onto by Caesar for possible inclusion in a 'second edition' that he never got round to.User&#124;Neddyseagoon 22:13, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

But my point is that by Claudius's time south-east Britain was far from being the terra incognita it was in Caesar's time. A lot had changed politically, and the passage from Strabo shows that Britain had been visited regularly in Tiberius's time, so the lie of the land would have been well-enough known not to need to consult a 100-year-old book.
 * Point taken, and very true, though... - well-known yes, but all sources would have been consulted. Perhaps they would have been more consulted during Augustus's invasion planning, but I don't think their age would have been a deterrent to their use by Claudius - he was a historian after all. User&#124;Neddyseagoon 22:13, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think any of the information about Britain in DBG (except maybe that on chariot warfare) wouldn't have been superseded by more detailed contemporary knowledge by 43AD. --Nicknack009 02:00, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Where have you been? :-) See the 'Discoveries about Britain' section in the article. User&#124;Neddyseagoon 22:13, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
 * You've misread me. There's information about Britain in DBG, but it's pretty meagre, as befits the first direct Roman contact with the island. A century of trade, diplomacy and political change had passed since then. There hadn't been any warfare between Britain and Rome since, so the passages about British military tactics would have been relevant, but everything else would have been superseded by more in-depth and up-to-date knowledge gained from client rulers, traders etc. --Nicknack009 12:55, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see - yes, sorry, I missed the third part of that sentence. But my point still stands - there would have been more recent information, but that wouldn't mean the less recent stuff would have been neglected. User&#124;Neddyseagoon 13:57, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth
I've done quite a bit of personal enquiry into Geoffrey of Monmouth's version of the invasions, and my contributions on this may veer pretty close to original research, so I'll go into them in detail here rather than the article.

Bede's account is virtually identical to Orosius's, with only a few differences in spelling. He preserves the error of calling Caesar's tribune "Labienus" rather than "Laberius" (which Geoffrey follows), and Orosius's "Mandubragius" becomes "Androgius" (becoming "Androgeus" in Geoffrey). The phrase "Trinobantum firmissima ciuitas" ("Trinouantum" in Bede) clearly, by comparison with Caesar, means "the very strong tribe of the Trinobantes", with Trinobantum here being a genitive plural; but as there's no further context in the passage, it could easily be misread as "the very strong city Trinobantum", with Trinobantum taken to be a nominative singular - the Historia Britonum (9th century) (19-20) makes the same error. Orosius and Bede only mention two invasions, but the Historia Britonnum says that Caesar invaded three times, as does Geoffrey. I can find nothing in Geoffrey's account that appears in Caesar that does not also appear in Orosius, Bede or the Historia Britonum, so I'd have to conclude that none of the British texts used Caesar directly.

There's plenty in Geoffrey that can't be traced to any other surviving source. The majority of that should probably be put down to Geoffrey's fertile imagination, but some material - the presence of Tenvantius, for example - may be derived from native traditions. --Nicknack009 20:50, 12 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, any of that that you can convert back into 'unoriginal research', if you see what I mean, for the relevant section would be most useful. User&#124;Neddyseagoon 15:12, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:CaesarLadybird.jpg
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BetacommandBot (talk) 04:52, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Dubious

 * Caesar's force of 800 ships (possibly including merchants), 5 legions, and 2,000 cavalry, while leaving 3 legions and 2,000 more cavalry in Gaul under the control of Labienus, was the largest naval landing in the history of the world, and remained that way until D-Day, in 1944.

It has "a reference", but it basically repeats this claim without any evidence. Just out of top of my head, a few big invasions before D-Day: 4500 ships
 * 480 BCE Second_Persian_invasion_of_Greece - 200–250,000
 * 1281 Mongol invasions of Japan - 100,000 Mongol, Chinese soldiers & 40,000 Korean soldiers
 * 1943 Allied_invasion_of_Sicily - 160,000 personnel, 14,000 vehicles, 600 tanks, 1,800 guns

There might have been some others - in any case this statement is really dubious without some serious evidence to support it. Taw (talk) 06:29, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Caesar's invasion force of 5 legions - each being roughly over 4,000 men - and 2,000 additional cavalry was enormous by any standard, ancient or modern. That said, the articles you link to above, which seem to be well-sourced, are enough to completely undercut the validity of the claim that his was the largest naval landing before D-Day in WWII. Seeing as how no one has challenged this since July, I will be bold and eliminate that assertion from the article.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 09:13, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

not an invasion?
The article several times skies away from having to conclude Ceasar could fail at an invasion, by setting up the possibility that an invasion "may have been intended as a mere reconnaissance-in-force expedition". But there is no discussion of this theory. There is no attributation. How about I say what the reader is thinking: "OF COURSE it was an invasion, and OF COURSE it was a completely unintended failure". What does the article have to say about that. Nothing. I'm WP:BOLDLY going to remove this nonsense for now, and you can readd it properly sourced and discussed. Thank you CapnZapp (talk) 12:38, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Why would a Roman general, and especially one "accustomed to his own success" do something feeble like that? In person!
 * What other historical examples are there of Rome not intending to take something, but just look at it?
 * Who is making the claim that the invasion wasn't really an invasion, so the failure was really a success?
 * Who is making the claim that the invasion wasn't really an invasion, so the failure was really a success?


 * "Invasion" does not necessarily mean "conquest", or even "intended conquest". Before his first expedition to Britain, Caesar built a bridge over the Rhine, marched his army over it, made a show of force, returned and dismantled the bridge. That's an invasion. It was a military incursion into foreign territory. It wasn't a conquest, and it wasn't intended as one. Caesar just wanted the Germans to know not to mess with him. Caesar says he went to Britain because the Britons had been aiding some of the Gauls, and he may have just intended to deter them.


 * His first expedition to Britain was, by any standards, a failure. Caesar dresses it up as best he can, but he was trapped on his beachhead and had to cut and run back to Gaul before the weather made the crossing too difficult. If it wasn't a failure, he wouldn't have needed to return the following year, but he wasn't prepared to let the Britons think they'd seen him off. This time he got his message across. He advanced inland, inflicted some damage, and installed a friendly king. That was a success. A limited success, perhaps, he didn't conquer any territory, but he did secure the borders of his conquered territory (Gaul) and created a buffer state (the Trinovantes under Mandubracius). That's good tactics. The Romans did it more or less anywhere they had a border.


 * Britain probably wasn't conquerable in Caesar's time - it was too politically fragmented - there were four kings in Kent alone. The Romans never conquered Ireland for that reason. But by Claudius' time, Britain had seen some centralisation into larger kingdoms, which made conquest more feasible. --Nicknack009 (talk) 14:30, 16 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Should probably mention, I have no objection to your changes. --Nicknack009 (talk) 14:33, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

University of Leicester dig at Pegwell Bay
A lot of the suppositions in this article seem to have been erroneous. The University of Leicester have excavated a large fort dating from 55-2 BC at Ebbsfleet, Thanet, guarding Pegwell Bay.
 * and it refers to a BBC TV programme that is to be broadcast tonight.

A little rewriting seems to be in order!--ClemRutter (talk) 16:26, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

I have a very small silver coin which has been attributed to Eppilus 10bc-10ad. Son of Commius 55bc. However this coin has a head facing left and I have searched but cannot find any coins of Eppilus with a left facing head, the ones I’ve seen all face right. I’m told there are no coins found that can be attributed to Commius. Is it possible that this coin is in fact Commius and not Eppilus? The coin has a small piece missing but what is there I’d nice and clear. 2.102.205.138 (talk) 19:40, 20 February 2021 (UTC) Barry Knell Whitstable kent

Eppilus or Comis
I have a very small silver coin which has been attributed to Eppilus 10bc-10ad, Son of Commius 55bc. However this coin has a head facing left and I have searched but cannot find any coins of Eppilus with a left facing head, the ones I’ve seen all face right. I’m told there are no coins found that can be attributed to Commius. Is it possible that this coin is in fact Commius and not Eppilus? The coin has a small piece missing but what is there is nice and clear. 2.102.205.138 (talk) 19:42, 20 February 2021 (UTC) Barry Knell Whitstable kent

Sources that were listed that I removed since they weren't cited to
CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 02:56, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Peddie, John, 1987, Conquest: The Roman Conquest of Britain, chapter 1 (pages 1–22).
 * Salway, Peter, 11 Roman Britain (Oxford History of England), chapter 2 (pages 20–39).
 * R. C. Carrington, 1938, "Caesar's Invasions of Britain" by (reviewed in Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 29, Part 2 (1939), pp. 276–277)
 * Peter Berresford Ellis, Caesar's Invasion of Britain, 1978, ISBN 978-0-85613-018-2
 * T. Rice Holmes, 1907. Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar. Oxford. Clarendon Press.
 * W. Welch, C. G. Duffield (Editor), Caesar: Invasion of Britain, 1981, ISBN 978-0-86516-008-8