y exists there, nor
any other plunder except slaves--and none of them either literary or
artistic."[96] "I heard (on Oct. 24) from Caesar and from my brother
Quintus that all is over in Britain. No booty.... They wrote on
September 26, just embarking."

E. 6.--Both Caesar and Quintus seem to have been excellent
correspondents, and between them let Cicero hear from Britain almost
every week during their stay in the island, the letters taking on
an average about a month to reach him. He speaks of receiving on
September 27 one written by Caesar on September 1; and on September 13
one from Quintus ("your fourth")[97] written August 10. And apparently
they were very good letters, for which Cicero was duly grateful. "What
pleasant letters," he says to Quintus, "you do write.... I see you
have an extraordinary turn for writing [[Greek: hypothesin] _scribendi
egregiam_]. Tell me all about it, the places, the people, the customs,
the clans, the fighting. What are they all like? And what is your
general like?"[98] "Give me Britain, that I may paint it in your
colours with my own brush [_penicillo_]."[99] This last sentence
refers to a heroic poem on "The Glories of Caesar," which Cicero
seems to have meditated but never brought into being. Nor do we know
anything of the contents of his British correspondence, except that it
contains some speculations about our tide-ways; for, in his 'De Natura
Deorum,'[100] Cicero pooh-poohs the idea that such natural phenomena
argue the existence of a God: "Quid? Aestus maritimi ... Britannici
... sine Deo fieri nonne possunt?"

E. 7.--Neither can we say what he meant by the "stupendous ramparts"
against Caesar's access to our island. The Dover cliffs have been
suggested, and the Goodwin Sands; but it seems much more probable
that the Britons were believed to have artificially fortified the most
accessible landing-places. Perhaps they may have actually done so, but
if they did it was to no purpose; for this time Caesar disembarked
his army quite unopposed. On his return from Rome he had bidden his
newly-built fleet, along with what was left of the old one,
rendezvous at Boulogne; whence, after long delay through a continuous
north-westerly breeze [_Corus_], he was at length enabled to set sail
with no fewer than eight hundred vessels. Never throughout history has
so large a navy threatened our shores. The most numerous of the
Danish expeditions contained less than four hundred ships, William t