The Classical Review http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR Additional services for The Classical Review: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here Holmes's Ancient Britain Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar. By T. Rice Holmes. With 44 Illustrations and 3 tinted Maps. Oxford Clarendon Press, 1907. 8vo. Pp. xvi + 764. 2 is. net. R. A. Smith and A. G. Peskett The Classical Review / Volume 22 / Issue 03 / May 1908, pp 91 - 95 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00001268, Published online: 27 October 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00001268 How to cite this article: R. A. Smith and A. G. Peskett (1908). Review of Michael Sullivan 'Modern Social Policy' The Classical Review, 22, pp 91-95 doi:10.1017/S0009840X00001268 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 130.133.8.114 on 03 May 2015 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW HOLMES'S ANCIENT BRITAIN. I. Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius able that our neolithic population was Caesar. By T. RICE HOLMES. With 44 descended from the river-drift men who Illustrations and 3 tinted Maps. Oxford : lived in south-east England before the straits Clarendon Press, 1907. 8vo. Pp. xvi+764. of Dover were cut; at least there is little to 2 is. net. shew that a new race arrived till the end of the neolithic period, when round-heads IT was to be expected that the exhaustive crossed the Channel. Their remains are work on the Gallic war published last year found in barrows erected before the intro- by Mr. Rice Holmes would be followed by duction of bronze, and Mr. Holmes insists a similar treatment of the passages dealing that they were not Celtic. To him, as to with Britain; but Caesar's text plays a very most of the classical writers, and Prof. subordinate part in the present well-filled Ridgeway (for example) at the present day, volume. The genesis of the work is evident the Celts appear as a tall, muscular and from the preface, where the author declares almost brutal race, with skulls of medium his aim to have been to tell the story of or decided length, and fair or red hair, in man's life in our island from the earliest striking contrast to the Grenelle or Alpine times to the Roman invasion of A.D. 43. race of Central Europe. They were a con- What was merely an introductory chapter in quering race that advanced westward, and, his earlier volume has here grown into a on reaching France, conquered and incor- treatise of over 400 pages, or 100 more porated the round-headed inhabitants settled than are devoted to the Julian invasions. there since early neolithic times. The result Mr. Holmes speaks with the highest authority was a mixed race that passed over by degrees on the Commentaries, and has given us a into this country and accounts for the varied masterly description of the stirring events of human remains in our round barrows. B.C. 55-4; but archaeology has also occupied Though Mr. Holmes has made out a good much of his well-earned leisure, and many case, it seems an extreme measure to identify, who have not read Caesar since their school- as he practically does, the Teuton and the days will heartily welcome a volume that is Celt, old established names standing for dis- the result of steady work throughout the tinct types. While laying too much stress vacations of nearly thirty years. on the Germanic element in the Celtic The hopes raised by the announcement population of Western Europe in the Bronze that Mr. Holmes was to deal with Britain Age, he seems to minimise that element in are more than realised by a careful reading, the Belgae, who, as Caesar says, were to a and it is a pleasant duty to record our large extent Germans. The exact date and sincere admiration of his work, both in extent of the Belgic invasion of Britain can- principle and detail. But the author will not be determined, but Mr. Holmes may be expect something more than eulogy in recommended to define the Belgic area by general terms; and at the risk of losing the distribution of pedestal urns and the proportion, an attempt will be made to associated rite of cremation, which was focus his views on some of the most impor- specially connected with the German races. tant problems, and to criticise in detail a few The Belgae had apparently spread westward passages in which the balance might have in Ptolemy's time, but in the early Iron Age been held a little more truly. they seem to have been confined to the south-east, where coins were particularly The hiatus-theory, which has been proved plentiful. Westward was the area where the untenable for the Pyrenees, is not so strongly earliest metal currency took the form of held as formerly in Britain, and the tendency iron bars, and Mr. Holmes accepts these as is to reduce the interval that separates us settling the text of a well-known passage in from the palaeolithic period. It is conceiv- THE CLASSICAL REVIEW Caesar. He may be interested to know of mixture with a more northern type, and there two other sites where they have been dis- seems to have been a similar intermixture in covered— Holne Chase, near Ashburton, Gaul. Mr. Holmes holds (pp. 431,438) that Devon, and Lyneham Barrow, near Chipping the great mass of the population called Norton, Oxon. With regard to Aylesford, Celtae by Caesar, was of neolithic origin, the reader should be warned against the view but that the name was bestowed (on them- expressed on pp. 268, 288, that the ' family- selves and the people they found in posses- circle' burials, the cist burials, the drinking sion) by invaders from the East who cup and cinerary urn were in any sense introduced the Celtic language first into contemporary: they only shew that the Germany and then into Gaul, not before the burial-ground had been in use for several seventh century B.C. centuries, and the older graves had been A little more generosity towards distin- disturbed. As Mommsen has declared many guished writers who have had the courage to problems connected with Caesar's invasion change their minds would have made this insoluble, the negative result of Mr. Holmes' volume more pleasant reading. It is no elaborate investigations was almost inevitable, doubt fair and instructive to cite Dr. A. but he has collected the material in a series Evans' three dates for the Belgic invasion of masterly essays. As to the naval camp of Britain, but a certain animus can be of B.C. 54, he may not be aware that a long traced in the author's references to ' the fore- intrenchment parallel to the sea and skirting most Celtic scholar of this country.' The the cemetery between Deal and Walmer, was voluminous appendices on the more debat- used for early Roman burials, evidently at a able points in British archaeology are time when it had ceased to be a defensive sufficient evidence of their extreme difficulty, work. and Sir John Rhys' services to that study On p. 457 the author sanctions a most should not be estimated by a parade of incon- unfortunate phrase, 'Teutonic Briton,' and sistent passages written perhaps at widely there is an Hibernian flavour in the following different times. Mr. Holmes' critical faculty professorial dictum cited (without approval) is very properly aroused, but he knows well in an appendix on the Celts: ' No Gael ever enough that many of his own conclusions set his foot on British soil save on a vessel may need revision in a few years, and that that had put out from Ireland'; but Mr. the pre-historian must depend mainly on Holmes is not always happy in his quota- successive discoveries in the soil. Again, tions. Thus on p. 430 he writes as if Sir the author fails to justify his attack on Prof. John Evans' chronology of the Bronze Age Ridgeway, as the following extract will shew (propounded in 1881) had been definitely (p. 501): adopted in the British Museum Guide to the Formerly the professor held that ' the only diffi- Bronze Age, whereas it is given there simply culty in identifying Ictis with the Isle of Wight is for comparison with other systems, as the the statement of Diodorus that the tin was conveyed context clearly shows. On the same page across to the island at low water'; for 'geologists maintain that Wight could not have been joined to some apparent contradictions about the Celts the mainland in historic times.' Geologists, how- in Britain are mentioned, but even with the ever, have changed their minds; and accordingly latest data at his disposal, Mr. Holmes would Prof. Ridgeway has changed his. probably not deny that of all the pre-historic The Professor, like others, was in the peoples of Britain 'the Bronze Age inhabi- hands of the geologists, and when Mr. tants of this country seem to have been the Clement Reid removed the last obstacle to most closely connected with the true Celts. his contention, he cannot fairly be said to He may indeed ask who the true Celts were, have changed his opinion. and has endeavoured to answer the question; Though a passage in the British Museum but admits that some invaders of the Grenelle Iron Age Guide might admittedly have been (or Alpine) type reached these shores in the more explicit, the nonsense complained of Bronze Age.