Hew Morrison Collection > Leabhar Nan Gleann

On a further consideration of the chapter,
this view seems the one required. Chapter
fourteen contains four propositions: — (1st)
Caesar speaks of the inhabitants of the coast
as whose representatives he names the in-
habitants of Kent; (2nd) he speaks of the
Britons of the interior; ''3rd) he reports some-
thing which all the Britons (omnes Britanni),
therefore the inhabitants of the interior (in-
teriores) and those of the coast have in com-
mon; then (4th) comes the sentence empha-
sized above. Now, that Caesar here does not
speak of "omnes Britanni" (all the Britons),
but, reprardingf the foregoing clause as paren-
thetical, reports something further regarding
the interiorea, one point seems to me to prove
this. In the first Caesar sums up his judg-
ment on the coast inhabitants, "neque multum
a Gallica diffemnt consuetudine" (i.e., nor do
they diifer much from the Gaulish custom).
But he could not have given out the remarka
laid stress on above as the report on the coast
inhabitants^ who in their customs scarcely
differed from the Gauls. The possibiUty of
being misunderstood Caesar probably did not
feel, because, simply from his knowledge of
the facts, he was precluded from conceiving-
that these reports had reference to the inhabi-
tants of the coasts. On Caesar's own estimate
(V., 12) interior Britain was inhabited by
such as regarded themselves as aboriginal in-
habitants in contrast to the Aryan-Celtic in-
habitants of the coasts. In the above empha-
sized words, therefore, I see the impression
which the entirely different social order of
the primitive non-Aryan inhabitants of
Britain made upon the Aryan Celts of
Britain.
and have every part of their body shaved except their
head and upper lip. Ten and twelve have wives common
to them, and particularly brothers among brothers and
parents among their children ; but if there be any issue
by these wives, they are reputed to be the children of
those by whom respectively each was espoused when a
virgin.— <CsBaar'3 Gallic War, V., 14— Bohu's tr.).