Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T15:17:54.984Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Legend of Julius Caesar's British Conquest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Homer Nearing Jr.
Homer Nearing Jr.*
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania Military College, Chester, Pa
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

None of the deadly weapons of mediaeval legend, not even the darts of Yspadaden Penkawr, is more sinister than Crocea Mors, the sword of Julius Caesar. This Yellow Death, a terrible instrument which inflicted incurable and inevitably fatal wounds, was invented by Geoffrey of Monmouth, who says that Caesar lost it in his first battle with the British when it stuck in the cleft shield of the British prince Nennius and was carried off by him. The episode is symbolic of Caesar's entire association with the British as related by Geoffrey and his followers, for at their hands the great Roman's military reputation suffered even worse than his armory in his encounters with the descendants of Brut.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 64 , Issue 4 , September 1949 , pp. 889 - 929
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1949

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 H. Droysen, ed. Etitropi Breviarium … cum … Addttamenlis, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, ii, lxv and 282.

2 Camden, Britannia (trans., 1722 ed.), i, col. li. See Stow, Annales (1631 ed.), sig. B, and Speed, Historie of Great Britaine (1632 ed.), sig. E2. The reference to Suetonius derives from Orosius's statement (added to Eutropius by Landolfus) that he is condensing Suetonius.

3 Trans. Charles B. Gulick (Loeb Classical Library), iii, 227.

4 Wilmer C. Wright (trans.), TheWorksof the Emperor Julian (Loeb Classical Library), ii, 379.

5 Ernest Cary (trans.), Dio's Roman History (Loeb Classical Library), iii, 378.

6 Robert W. Chambers, “Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Brut”, History, N. S., iv (1920), 38.

7 Ibid., p. 36.

8 Except for Calendre's history Des empereors de Rome (see below). The Anglo-Saxon version of Bede made by King Alfred or at his direction states merely that Britain was unknown to the Romans until Julius Caesar overran it. Apparently, since details of Caesar's expeditions were incorporated in the Anglo-Saxon Orosius, they were dispensed with in the Bede.

9 Semen bellicosum cethilou (MS. Harl. 3859: semen bellicosum, id est cetilou) which Faral —La Légende Arlhurienne (Paris, 1929), i, 86—translates as chausses-trapes. Camden (Britannia) took semen bellicosum to refer to British warriors; Peter Roberts, the first translator of the Brut Tysilio, derived cetilou from coethawl=stake (cited by Madden, ed. Layamon's Brut, iii, 335).

10 See Faral, i, 88–90.

11 Or Durolevum, a place midway between them. See W. M. Flinders Petrie, “Neglected British History”, Proceedings of the British Academy 1917–1918, p. 254.

12 This hypothesis is supported by the statement that it was the “above-mentioned consul” who arranged the defenses of the shallows, for Orosius states that Cassivellaunus commanded the Britons in the battle at the Thames.

13 Zimmer, Nennius Vindicatus, p. 272, cited by Chambers, p. 37.

14 This whimsical use of Orosius apparently annoyed one of the later readers of the Historia Britonum. See Faral, i, 186, on the Chartres text interpolation.

15 Geoffrey of Monmouth attributes them to King Bladud the necromancer. See H. Nearing, “Local Caesar Traditions in Britain”, Speculum, xxiv (1949), 218.

16 Cassibellaunus's message bears a certain resemblance to the speech of Calgacus in Tacitus's Agricola; but it may be fortuitous, for there is no certain trace of Tacitus in mediaeval catalogues. See J. E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship (1903), i, 636.

17 See Robert H. Fletcher, The Arthurian Material in the Chronicles (Harvard Studies and Notes in Philol. and Lit., x, 1906), p. 68.

18 Faral (ii, 152), who cites the Life of St. Teliavus in the Book of Llandaf (ed. J. Rhys, p. 107) and the Annals of Tigernach (A.D. 550).

19 See H. Nearing, “Local Caesar Traditions in Britain”, Speculum, xxiv (1949), 220.

20 Edmund Gibson, ed. Britannia, 2d ed. (1722), i, col. 250.

21 Thomas D. Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue of Materials Relating to the History of Great Britain and Ireland (Rolls Ser), ii, 263.

22 J. Loth, ed. Les Mabinogion (Paris, 1913), ii, 306, thinks that “the substitution, in the Welsh translations of Geoffrey, of Avarwy for Androgens would indicate that the legend of Avarwy's treason was current in Wales and that Geoffrey only dressed it up.” It is conceivable, however, that some Welsh translator read Geoffrey's Androgeus as Anarwius.

23 Faral, ii, 155.

24 Faral cites Renaud de Montauban and Ogier the Dane.

25 Geoffrey implies that Scaeva accompanied his father when the latter marched off with Caesar. This implication was followed up in Joseph of Exeter's Antiocheis, a lost epic of the Third Crusade of which a fragment was discovered by Leland and recorded by Camden in his Remains (1870), p. 339. The extant fragment is a list of valiant Britons including King Arthur, Brennus, and the hero Scaeva who won fame in Caesar's war with Pompey. Thus one of Caesar's greatest warriors had really been a Briton.

26 Faral, ii, 155.

27 Chronique de Robert de Torigni, ed. Leopold Delisle (Rouen, 1872), i, 105–106 (also in Richard Howlett, ed. Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II., and Richard I. Rolls Ser., vol. iv).

28 The chronicle of Alfred of Beverley contains only a condensation of Geoffrey's account.

29 The line numbering used here is that of Le Roux de Lincy's edition (Rouen, 1836).

30 See Margaret Houck, Sources of the Roman de Brut of Wace (Univ. of California Publications in English, v, 1944), pp. 181–182.

31 Some MSS have Dover instead of Romney; see Madden's ed. of Layamon, iii, 336. Le Roux de Lincy (l. 4632) and the copy of Wace in MS. BN fr. 794 (fol. 303, col. 3) have Romenel.

32 Among the variants found in certain MSS of Wace is the statement in the description of the Tower of Ordre that Caesar “by this tower won the land Which now is known as Engle-land” (4295-96). Another variant consists of four lines in which the founding of Exeter is attributed to Caesar (4940–43).

Among other early French verse Bruts extant, the Münchener Brut ends before and the fragment in MS. Harleian 1605 begins after the reign of Cassibellaunus. But the Brut in MS. Regius 13. A. xxi. has the story of Caesar's invasions. The author of this version uses material from Bede and Geoffrey, and adds details from either unknown sources—perhaps the lost version of Geoffrey which began Gaimar's Estorie des Engles—or his own imagination, e.g., the peoples represented in Caesar's second expeditionary force: Moridiens and Pincenaos, Indians, Macedonians, and the barons of Africa, Arabia, Romania, and Hungary, as well as Burgundians (fol. 56).

Among Latin works of the latter part of the 12th century which refer to the Caesar legend is the abridgment of Geoffrey made for the St. Albans compilation, later used by Roger of Wendover, Matthew Paris, and “Matthew of Westminster”; in this abridgment Rutupi portu is identified as Sandwich. The line which Geoffrey had quoted from Lucan is also quoted by Fitzstephen (in the description of London prefixed to his life of Becket), Giraldus Cambrensis (Description of Cambria), and Ralph de Diceto (Opuscida, ed. Stubbs, Rolls Ser), who nevertheless follows Henry of Huntingdon's letter to Warinus Brito for the rest of his account of Caesar. Geoffrey's Caesar legend is also referred to in Alexander Neckham's poem De Laudibus Divinae Sapientiae (Distinctio Tertia, 11. 857–862).

33 Among Layamon's contemporaries, Gervase of Canterbury (Gesla Regum) and Gervase of Tilbury (Otia Imperialia) make use of Geoffrey's Caesar legend.

34 F. Settegast dates the work about 1213: “Calendre und seine Kaiserchronik”, Romanische Studien, iii (1878), 95. It is in BN MS. fr. 794, fol. 342v–360v (MLA Rotographs).

35 Settegast, p. 99.

36 Ed. Francisque-Michel (Bordeaux, 1862), p. viii.

Cesar, qui ceso nomen trahis istud ab hoste,
Ne quia cederis, sis Cesar: cede Brilannis.

This etymology is different from those usually given; see Arturo Graf, Roma nella Memoria e nelle Immaginazioni del Medio Evo (Turin, 1882), i, 301 n.

38 Other 13th century works borrowing from Geoffrey's Caesar legend are the Annales Stanleienses (Bodl. MS. Digby 11), which notes that Androgeus was taken to Rome by Caesar; the Memoriale attributed to Walter of Coventry (Rolls Ser.), in which Cassibel-launus is assigned the children of Cymbeline; and the Historia Anglicana of Bartholomew Cotton (MS. Regius 14. C. i.), who follows Geoffrey explicitly. R. H. Fletcher (Arthurian Material in the Chronicles, p. 168) mentions an Epitome Bisloriae Britannicae (Brut to Henry III) which “nowhere makes any changes in Geoffrey's story.”

The French prose Livere de reis de Brittanie e le livere de reis de Engletere (Rolls Ser.), sometimes associated with the name of Peter of Ickham, contains a summary of previous extracts drawn apparently from Wace. That the account of Caesar, at least, derives ultimately from Wace is shown by an early 14th century cognate of the Livere, the Petit Brut of Rauf de Bohun (MS. Harl. 902), in which Caesar's motive for fighting King Cassibelin is to take revenge for what the latter's “father”, King Beline, had done to Rome. In the Livere also Cassibellaunus is made the successor of King Belinus, and his tribute is set at 2,000. In the Regislrum Malmesburiense (Rolls Ser.), which contains a summary, in French, of the Livere, the amount is corrected to £3,000.

In the Caesar account of the metrical chronicle bearing the name of Robert of Gloucester, from the end of the 13th century, there are resemblances, perhaps specious, to the Welsh version of Geoffrey known as the Brut Tysilio.

39 J. S. Brewer, ed. Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera Quaedam Eactenus Inedita (Rolls Ser.), p. 534.

40 See Paul Meyer, “De Quelques Chroniques Anglo-Normandes qui ont porté le nom de Brut”, Bulletin de la Société des Anciens Textes Français (1878), pp. 115-130, and Friedrich W. D. Brie, Geschichte und Quellen der mittelenglischen Prosachronik The Brute of England oder The Chronicles of England (Marburg, 1905), pp. 51–52.

41 Represented by Cotton MSS. Domitian A. x. and Cleopatra D. iii. The English version was edited by Brie, EETS, 131.

42 Paul Meyer, “Les Premières Compilations Françaises d'Histoire Ancienne”, Romania, xiv (1885), 26.

43 Edd. L.-F. Flutre and K. Sneyders de Vogel (1938), i, 187. See also ii, 113.

44 None of these developments are retained in the 14th century Italian adaptation of Li Fel, I FM di Cesare, ed. Luciano Banchi (Bologna 1863). Nor is the conquest of Britain dealt with in the 13th century prose Hyslore de Julius Cesar of Jehan de Tuim, which Jacot de Forest versified as the Roman de Julius Cesar. See F. Settegast, “Jacos de Forest e la sua Fonte”, Giornale di Filologia Romanza ii (1879), 173.

46 John J. Parry, ed. Brut y Brenhinedd (Cambridge, Mass., 1937), pp. ix–xii.

46 Ed. by Acton Griscom (1929) and J. J. Parry (1937) respectively.

47 See W. M. Flinders Petrie, “Neglected British History”, Proceedings of the British Academy 1917–1918, pp. 251–275, refuted by Robert W. Chambers, “Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Brut”, History, N. S., iv (1920), 34–40. Acton Griscom, in his excellent edition of Geoffrey and the Brut Tysilio (pp. 205–210), replies to some of Chambers's arguments but fails to show that any detail of the Welsh account of Caesar came from a source other than Geoffrey. He argues that since Geoffrey omits Nennius in the list of chiefs at Dorobellum, while the Brut Tysilio substitutes Nennius for the Bellinus whom Geoffrey does mention there, it is clear that Geoffrey took liberties with an older tradition and was corrected by the Welsh translator. But Wace too mentions Nennius among the chiefs at Cassibellaunus's muster, though he does not substitute him for Bellinus. If any explanation of the omission of Bellinus in the terse Welsh abridgment is necessary, it is possible that the translator considered the reference to Bellinus confusing (because of the previous account of King Belinus and his brother Brennus) and deleted it. Beyond Wace's maneuvering of Nennius, examples of similar “corrections” of Geoffrey could be multiplied indefinitely; e.g., see Perrett, “The Story of King Lear”, Palaestra, xxxv (1904), 162–164. J. J. Parry, in his review of Griscom's ed.—JEGP, xxx (1931), 95–98—replies to other points in Griscom's argument for a Celtic source of Geoffrey's stories.

48 J. Loth (trans.), Les Mabinogion, ii, nos. 28 and 10. Loth's no. 119, from the Myvyrian Archaeology, reads like a combination of these two. The other traitors are Vortigern and Modred.

49 Loth, ii, 305 n.

50 Ibid., nos. 122 and 118. In another triad of the Myvyrian Archaeology (Loth, no. 111) the expulsion of Ganval the Goidel from Britain is attributed to Caswallawn, though he is apparently confused here with Cadwallawn. Ibid., p. 330 n.

51 Bulfinch's Mythology (Modern Library, 1934), p. 442.

52 Loth, n, nos. 57 and 4.

53 Ibid., p. 232 n.

54 Ibid., no. 9. A variant is printed in William F. Skene, ed. The Four Ancient Books of Wales (Edinburgh, 1868), ii, 463.

55 Loth, i, 147 n. Perhaps it is the Gallic prince Mwrchan whom Jean des Preis (d'Outre-meuse) refers to in a passage of his Mer (or Myreur) des Histoires describing how Caesar, after subduing Helvetia (Elnatie) “went to Bretangne [Brittany apparently] and fought Turlingue Lacobege and Murache, his son, on which occasion he and the Romans slew forty thousand men, and the rest fled.” Ed. Ad. Borgnet (Brussels, 1864), i, 212.

56 Loth, ii, no. 81 and p. 273 n; the cobbler-goldsmith triad as it appears in the Red Book is Loth, no. 65.

57 Ed. Rudolf Imelmann in Bonner Studien zur Englischen Philologie, iv (1912), lxxiii and 14.

58 Berners trans., ed. S. T. Lee, EETS, ES, 40, p. 96.

59 George L. Frost, “Caesar and Virgil's Magic in England”, MLN, li (1936), 433. For the development of these and other builder legends, see H. Nearing, “Local Caesar Traditions in Britain”, Speculum, xxiv (1949), 218–227.

60 This warping of Geoffrey's legend to fit a preconceived notion was offensive to one of Peter's scribes, who added verses to the chronicle saying that Wace had told the story of the British kings much better since he had not tried to sift edifying embellishments from the strict truth (The Chronicle of Pierre de Langtqft, ed. Thomas Wright, Rolls Ser., I, xvi–xvii). But Robert Manning of Brunne, who repeats the strictures of Peter's scribe and translates Wace for the first part of his chronicle (ed. Furnivall, Rolls Ser.), is careful to include both of Peter's allusions to primogeniture.

61 Gaston Paris, “Le Conte de la Rose dans le Roman de Perceforest”, Romania, xxrii (1898), 81–83. None of the borrowed material concerns Caesar. The 1528 ed. of the Perceforest is available in the MLA Rotographs.

62 Since no attempt is made to identify him with the Julices of the third book, it is possible that the author of this book was a continuator unfamiliar with the identity of Julices; but it is likely that both books are the work of one author attempting to give his story variety: there are also two Julius Caesars in the prose Merlin (English version, ed. Wheatley, EETS, 10, part 3, p. 420).

63 At this point Geoffrey's story of “Cassiberanus” and “Endroger” is interpolated, ap. parently by a later redactor who failed to notice that it made no sense in the context

64 The sprite Zephir had told Ourseau that Caesar, who bears a charmed life, would be vulnerable for a period of one day and one night heralded by a banging of all the doors and windows in his palace; and Orsus times the assassination accordingly. The notion that the assassins used styluses, which appears also in Li Fel des Romains, Calendre, and the Mer (or Myreur) des Histoires of Jean des Preis (d'Outremeuse), seems to have originated in Suetonius's statement (Julius 82) that Caesar wounded Cassius with his graphium before succumbing to the daggers of the other senators. In the prose Merlin Caesar is slain near London by Sir Gawein in a battle following King Arthur's defiance of the Roman (EETS, 10, part 3, p. 420). In the early 14th century Liber Imperiale the kings of England and Scotland, among others, march in Caesar's funeral procession (Graf, Roma, i, 283).

66 In his prologue Gray refers to “Walter archdeacon of Exeter who translated the Brut from Bretoun into Latin”, a reference paralleled by the colophon of the Welsh Brut Tysilio, though the latter names Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, from whom Geoffrey of Monmouth said he had received the ancient book on which he based his Historia. But whether Gray had seen a Welsh Brut or not, the greater part of his Caesar legend clearly derives from Wace. (The English prose Brut in the 14th century MS. Arundel XXII, College of Arms, also refers to Archdeacon Walter of Oxford and also clearly derives its Caesar legend from Wace.) The Scalacronica is preserved in MS. Corpus Christi, Cambridge, 133. Neither the extracts from it in Leland's Collectanea nor those edited by Joseph Stevenson for the Maitland Club include the account of Caesar, which appears in the section on Roman history rather than the subsequent account of the British kings.

66 Le Roux de Lincy, in his ed. of Wace, reads Croce-a-morl as the name of Caesar's sword (1. 4220); but the reading of MS. BN fr. 794 (fol. 301v, col. 2) and of Layamon, Manning of Brunne, and Waurin, who followed Wace, is Crocea Mors.

67 Among other 14th century writings containing the Caesar legend, the romance which Ritson printed in the second volume of his Ancient English Metrical Romances as the Chronicle of England and the French prose Petit Brut of Rauf de Bohun (MS. Harl. 902) are apparently cognate with the Livere de reis de Briltanie e le Livere de reis de Engletere (ed. Glover, Rolls Ser.), since in all of them Cassibelin follows Belinus and Brennus to the throne. The Petit Brut is chiefly interesting for its list of cities Cassibelin is supposed to have founded: Exeter, Colchester, Oxford, and Norwich. There is a brief account of Caesar in the Chronicle of Sacred and Profane History ascribed to Thomas Sprott (trans. William Bell, Liverpool, 1851). The account of Caesar in the English prose Brut in MS. Arundel XXII (College of Arms) derives from Wace. I have not seen the English verse chronicle of Thomas Castelford, the unique MS of which is in the library of the University of Göttingen; from all descriptions, its account follows Geoffrey's exactly; see Marshall L. Perrin, Ueber Thomas Castelford's Chronik von England (Boston, 1890), p. 36, and Frank Behre, ed. “Thomas Castelford's Chronicle” [Arthurian section], Coeteborgs Hogskolas Arsskrift, xlvi (1940), no. 2, p. vii. Geoffrey's Caesar legend also appears, wholly or in part, in Higden's Polychronicon, the Eulogium Historiarum sive Temporis attributed to “Thomas of Malmesbury”, and the Chronica attributed to Thomas Sprott (ed. T. Hearne, Oxford, 1719—not to be confused with the Chronicle of Sacred and Profane History ascribed to Sprott).

68 According to the 15th century expansion and continuation of Fordun attributed to Walter Bower, or Bowmaker—ed. Walter Goodall (Edinburgh, 1759), i, sig. 02v—this structure was called Arthur's Hove because King Arthur liked to visit it for recreation. It may really have been erected by the Romans; see H. Nearing, “Local Caesar Traditions in Britain”, Speculum, xxiv (1949), 226.

69 Trans. John Bellenden (edd. R. W. Chambers and E. C. Batho, Scottish Text Soc, Ser. 3, x, 1938), who except for omissions follows this section of the original rather closely. Camulodunum, which Boece calls the capital of the Picts, was the ancient site of Colchester; Boece, or his source, has simply transplanted it, as he did the tribe of the Brigantes, whose prince Cadallanus leads the Scots to aid the Britons in his account. According to Camden, the Brigantes had inhabited Yorkshire, Durham, Lancashire, Westmorland, and Cumberland. Holinshed, though he repeats Boece's legend, remarks: “Hector Boetius … coueting to haue all such valiant acts as were atchiued by the Britains to be ascribed to his countrie-men the Scots, draweth both the Silures and Brigantes, with other of the Britains so farre northward, that he maketh them inhabitants of the Scotish countries. And what particular names soeuer they had, yet were they all Scots with him” (England, repr. London, 1807–1808, i, 464). See also Humphrey Lhuyd's Commentarioli (1572, trans, by Thomas Twyne, printed with John Lewis's History of Great Britain, 1729, sig. Ev). Other writers who attack the legend of Caesar and the Scots are Polydore Vergil (early trans, ed. Sir Henry Ellis, Camden Soc, O.S. 36, 1846, p. 57). John Lewis (History of Great Britain, 1729, sig. U2v) and William Slatyer (History of Great Britanie, 1621, sig. L3, marg.).

Beyond Bellenden's translation and Holinshed, Boece's Caesar legend reappears in William Stewart's metrical translation of the Scotorum Historiae (1535, ed. William B. Turnbull, Rolls Ser.), John Leslie's History of Scotland (1578, trans. James Dalrymple, ed. E. G. Cody, Scottish Text Soc, v, 1888), and David Chalmers (or Chambers) Lord Ormond's Historie Abbregée (1579, Scots trans, printed by the Maitland Club, 1830, in the Chronicle of the Kings of Scotland). It was also drawn upon by William Warner (Albions England, 1602 ed., sgg. F7V-F8, and Continuance of Albions England, 1606, sig. D).

70 Ed. in Annalerfor Nordisk Oldkyndighed Og Historie (Copenhagen, 1848), pp. 192–195.

71 Ed. Henry N. MacCracken (London & New Haven, 1911), pp. 50–51.

72 For a different view, see MacCracken's ed., pp. 7 and 15.

73 See George L. Frost, “Caesar and Virgil's Magic in England, MLN, li (1936), 432. Lydgate refers to the moral of Caesar's conquest of Britain also in his verse Life of St. Albon and St. Amphabel (i, 106–140, quoted in MacCracken's ed. of the Serpent, pp. 16–17), citing Lucan as his source, apparently for the sake of the rime.

Other 15th century writings by Englishmen which refer to the Caesar legend are Cap-grave's Chronicle of England (Rolls Ser.); the Chronica Regum Angliae attributed to Thomas Otterbourne (ed. T. Hearne in Duo Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores Veteres, Oxford, 1732); the Anonymi Chronicon Godstovianum, ed. Hearne, with Roper's More (Oxford, 1716), which says that Caesar's sword was still kept in the Tower of London; Hardyng's metrical chronicle, which mentions two fights between Caesar and Nennius; the Cronycullys of Englonde (ed. James Gairdner, Camden Soc, N.S. 28, 1880); the Historia Regum Angliae of John Rous, or Rosse, ed. Hearne, 2d ed. (Oxford, 1745); and Robert Fabyan's Concordance of Histories (printed as the New Chronicles of England and France, 1516).

74 Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue (Rolls Ser.), i, 58. The printer Commeline, cited by Hardy, says that the author died in 1490. His work was printed in 1534, 1585, 1587, and 1844 (in J. A. Giles's Caxton Soc. ed. of Geoffrey).

75 Ed. William Hardy (Rolls Ser.), i, 136–137.

76 Ed. H. Le Meignen (Nantes, 1886), fol. 13v, col. 1. Bouchart is also the first writer to identify the ancient laws adduced by Androgeus in contradiction of Cassibellanus's mandate to bring Evelinus before the royal court; he cites the laws mentioned in Geoffrey, i, xviii, ii, xvii, and iii, xiii. His work, written apparently in the first part of the 16th century, was printed 1514, 1518, 1531, 1532, and 1541.

Somewhat earlier than Bouchart's chronicle is the Debat des Herauts d'Armes de France et d'Angleterre, in which the French herald points a shrewd parallel between Cassibellaunus and the Plantagenets by recalling that “Julius Caesar, the valiant prince, who is of the number of the worthies, was twice discomfited on entering Britain, which is at present called England, as the [French prose] Brut relates; and the third time he subjugated them and made them obedient to Rome.” In the next century an Englishman, John Coke, came upon a copy of this French debate in a printer's shop and, perceiving it “to be compyled of harty malyce, nothyng ensuyng the true cronycles of the one realme nor the other”, searched out many histories to write his Debate Betwene the Heraldes of Englande and Fraunce (1550), in which the English herald condenses Hardyng's version of Caesar's invasions as an example of British valor. Both debates were edited by Leopold Pannier and Paul Meyer (Société des Anciens Textes Français, 1877).

Other 15th century French works containing the Caesar legend are Jean Wauquelin's translation of Geoffrey (MS. Lansdowne 214) and Pierre le Baud's Cronicques & Ystoires des Bretons, ed. Charles de la Lande de Calan (Rennes, 1907). Le Baud, who was dissatisfied with his first compilation, made in 1480, prepared a second (printed 1638) between 1498, when he was given access to the royal archives, and his death in 1505. His account of Caesar, like Bouchart's, derives from Geoffrey and Li Fel des Romains.

77 Sig. Eii. Geoffrey's Caesar legend is also defended by John Lewis (History of Great-Britain, written c. 1610; printed 1729, sig. Lv) and by John Speed (History of Great Britain, 1611; 1632 ed., sig. E4v), who cites Sir Clement Edmondes's observations on the Gallic War, iv, xii (1600), to the effect that Geoffrey's derivation of the Britons from the Trojans is supported by the circumstance that the manner of British chariot fighting described by Caesar was peculiar to Eastern nations. Before Prise, Caesar's accuracy had been questioned by Humphrey Lhuyd (Commentarioli, 1572; Englished by Thomas Twyne as The Breviary of Britayne, 1573, which was printed with Lewis's History, 1729; see sig. M of the 1729 ed.).

78 England, ch. 13 and 17. Lambarde (Perambulation of Kent, 1576), Camden (Britannia, 1586), Stow (Survay of London, 1598), and John Clapham (History of England … under the Roman Empire, 1602) hold the Gallic War to be authoritative. In his Annales (1580) Stow takes his account of Caesar from “Eutropius” (i.e., Landolfus's Hisloria Miscella). His old competitor Grafton (Chronicle at Large, 1569) follows Fabyan's account of Caesar for the most part, but quotes from Lydgate the list of towns and castles ascribed to Caesar.

79 Sgg. C4v–Dv. John Pits (De Illustrious Britanniae Scriptoribus, 1619) repeats these biographies from Bale, but disagrees that Nennius was prompted to write his history by the example of Reutha. Rather, he thinks Nennius wrote it when his brother Lud changed the name of Trinovantum (New Troy) to Luddinum (London), so that the Trojan descent of the British would not be forgotten (sig. I2v).

80 Lily B. Campbell, ed. Parts Added to the Mirror (Cambridge, 1946), pp. 199 and 201.

81 The ghost of Irenglas had put the fatal quarrel with Elenine after the first British victory; Caesar's ghost puts it after the second, as in Geoffrey and his followers. Caesar's ghost says that the stakes by which his fleet was wrecked were placed, not in the Thames, but “in the strands and in the seas, where landing places be” (as also in Thomas Heywood's Life of Merlin, 1813 ed., pp. 14–15); and as in Fabyan and Grafton, this trick is practised in the first rather than the second invasion.

82 Warner, Albions England, iii, ch. 17. Spenser, Faerie Queene, ii, x, 49; see H. Nearing, “Caesar's Sword”, MLN, lxiii (1948), 403–405. Shakespeare, King John, v, vii, 112–114 (see H. Nearing, “A Note on King John” N&Q, cxcn [1947], 256-257), and Cymbeline, i, i, 28-30; II, iv, 20–23; iii, i, 22–23, 47–53. In Richard III (iii, i, 68–74) and Richard II (v, i, 2) Shakespeare alludes to the tradition that Caesar built the Tower of London. See H. Nearing, “Julius Caesar and the Tower of London”, MLN, LXIII (1948), 228–233. This note errs in citing Gray as the earliest known recorder of the tradition; Trivet's reference to the “chastel” of London is half a century earlier.

In Fletcher's Bonduca one of the British commanders is named Nenius. Geoffrey's legend is summarized in John Ross's poem, Britannica, sive De Regibus Veleris Britanniae (Frankfurt, 1607). In the De Literis Antiquae Britanniae (published with Phineas Fletcher's Sylva Poetica, 1633) of Giles Fletcher the elder, who wrote the poem apparently during his college days, Caesar appears as a water nymph attending the River Cam. A play attributed to Jasper Fisher, Fuimus Troes (printed 1633), dramatizes Geoffrey's legend. In Richard Johnson's Tom a Lincolne King Arthur visits Androgius Earl of London. At the end of the century Cassibelan appears as a character in the play Boadicea Queen of Britain. See Roberta F. Brinkley, Arthurian Legend in the Seventeenth Century (Baltimore, 1932), pp. 92, 97, 121.

83 Johann Albert Fabricius, Bibliotheca Latina, ed. Ernesti (1773), i, 273. Since he quotes Geoffrey, Fabricius apparently did not intend his remark to be sardonic.

84 See MacCracken's ed. of Lydgate's Serpent, p. 42; Bum, ed. S. T. Lee, EETS, ES, 40, pp. xxxi and xxxiv; “A Scotch Copy of a Poem on Heraldry”, ed. Furnivall in EETS, ES, 8, p. 95; Graf, Roma, i, 265 n; Trevisa's trans, of Higden (Polychronicon, ed. Lumby, Rolls Ser., iv, 213); the chronicle of John Brompton (ed. Roger Twysden in Bistoriae Anglicanae Scriplores X, 1652, sig. Nn3); Graf, Roma, i, 266, 272; Hans Matter, Englische Gründungssagen (Heidelberg, 1922), pp. 342, 365; Buon, EETS, ES, 41, pp. 410–411.

For further British legends (e.g., the story that Caesar's troops brought the Roman nettle to Britain and the modern notion that he built a tower on the Isle of Man) see H. Nearing, “Local Caesar Traditions in Britain”, Speculum, xxiv (1949), 218–227.

85 This article began with a suggestion of Professor Matthew W. Black, who, having looked in vain for references to English traditions in Wesemann's Caesarfabdn des Mittelalters, remarked that someone should write a Caesarfabeln des Englischen Mittelalters. I am indebted to Dr. Black also for making the resources of the Furness Library available to me; to Dr. A. C. Baugh, Dr. Black, and Dr. T. M. Parrott for reading the original manuscript of the article; to Dr. W. J. Roach for referring me to Calendre's Empereors and helping me decipher the MSS (in microfilm) of both that work and Gray's Scalacronica; and to Mr. E. H. Morse, the reference librarian of the University of Pennsylvania, and his assistants, for tracking down other sources.