ritons to enjoy their
customs, religion, and laws. But the inhabitants, thus relieved from the
terror of his arms, neglected the performance of their stipulations, and
only two of their states sent over hostages according to the treaty.
Caesar, it is likely, was not much displeased at the omission, as it
furnished him with a pretext for visiting the island once more and
completing a conquest which he had only begun.

Accordingly the ensuing spring he set sail for Britain with eight
hundred ships,[69] and arriving at the place of his descent he landed
without opposition. The islanders being apprised of his invasion had
assembled an army and marched down to the sea-side to oppose him, but
seeing the number of his forces, and the whole sea, as it were, covered
with his shipping, they were struck with consternation and retired to
their places of security. The Romans, however, pursued them to their
retreats until at last common danger induced these poor barbarians to
forget their former dissensions and to unite their whole strength for
the mutual defence of their liberty and possessions.

[Footnote 69: With regard to these Roman _ships_, let not our readers be
misled by a familiar notion or a pompous name. They were but little more
than rowboats, as may be easily imagined from the fact that Cicero
instances for its uncommon magnitude a _ship_ of only fifty-six tons!
These ancient vessels were occasionally sheathed with leather or lead,
and had the prow decorated with paint and gilding, while the stern was
sometimes carved in the figure of a shield, elaborately adorned. Upon a
staff there erected hung ribbons distinctive of the ship and serving at
the same time to show the direction of the wind. There, too, stood the
_tutela_, or chosen patron of the ship, to whom prayers and sacrifices
were daily offered. The selection of this deity was guided by either
private or professional reasons, and as merchants committed themselves
to the protection of Mercury, or lovers to the care of Cupid, warriors,
it will at once be surmised, made Mars the object of their pious
supplication.

At a later period than the epoch to which our present note attaches,
when Constantius removed from Heliopolis to Rome an enormous obelisk,
weighing fifteen hundred tons, the vessel on board of which it was
shipped also carried _eleven hundred and thirty-eight tons_ of pulse;
but such vast and unmanageable masses were regarded as monsters, and
owed their