122 ROMAN WAREHAM AND THE CLAUDIAN INVASION. 



shows it to have been intended for a legion. Now, if we turn for 

 a moment from Hiibner to Mommsen, we find a very suggestive 

 remark in his summary of the career of Julius Caesar namely, 

 that he was the first man who conceived the idea of making great 

 rivers the limits of the Roman Empire. Bearing this in view, I 

 cannot help thinking that in the plan which unfolds itself before 

 us we have an indication of the great master of strategy himself. 

 Caesar had twice attempted the invasion, and had twice failed. To 

 succeed, certain entirely new strategy was needed ; and this we 

 now see steadily entered on, and kept to for more than a hundred 

 years. The dynasty changed : civil war shook the world from one 

 end to the other : and yet in the steadily advancing horizontal line 

 towards the North in Britain, from the time of Claudius to that of 

 Antonine, we see a policy in the Roman War-office as unchanging 

 as if the will of one man alone had ruled from beginning to end. 

 Broadly speaking, Csesar came in the year 56 B.C. from the north 

 coast of Gaul, where he had been fighting, to the coast of Kent, 

 with an army of 10,000 men. Knowing next to nothing of the 

 island he chose a spot for his landing where his ships could not be 

 sheltered ; and he failed in his purpose. In the following year he 

 doubled his army, but still chose an unsafe anchorage for his fleet. 

 A second time he failed and lost many of his ships. About 20 years 

 after Augustus prepared to carry out Caesar's idea, but other events 

 prevented his doing so : and Tiberius was too indolent to undertake 

 it. Caliguala made a feint at it : but it was reserved for Claudius 

 to go through with the plan. It is impossible to form any clear 

 or connected idea of the Claudian invasion unless we keep in view 

 the vast changes that had taken place in the interval since the death 

 of Julius Caesar, and which alone rendered feasible the plan that 

 we next see adopted. First, to conquer Britain, a thorough 

 knowledge of its southern seaports was needed ; and that this 

 was gained by the conciliatory policy of Augustus we have 

 evidence from Strabo, who tells us that the Britons were brought 

 into a state of intimate relationship with Rome. That this 

 intimate relationship gave the Romans a full topographical know- 



