the route to which he has been conducted, the distance will not be more than seventy miles.* Cæsar certainly might have included the whole distance he had traversed, and not taken it in a direct line from the coast. Nor is it in the least degree improbable that Cæsar might have marched eighty miles, because it is a notorious fact that the old British trackways were not so straight as the subsequent reformed Roman roads.

Agreeably to his preliminary arrangements, Cæsar attacked in two places the town of Caswallon.† The Britons,

Secondly, the capital is situated amidst woods and marshes.

Thirdly, the remains of the aboriginal residences are as thick as possible; I counted thirty-nine, a few weeks since, in about an acre and three-quarters.

Fourthly, there are elevated earthworks; the one called Rue-hill was actually used, from its great elevation, as a point for observation during the present century (and the next telegraphic site was adjoining the Roman camp immediately above Caerberlarber's Hole). The other earthwork is now called Green-hill, and the four ter

races, by which it was encircled, can be still

traced on the south-western side. These are the two several quarters Cæsar says he "simultaneously attacked," after dividing his army into two divisions.

Fifthly, "the enemy after a short stand, were obliged to give way and retire by another part of the wood," that is, either to Cawden's or Stankey, both of which parts of the wood' are filled GENT. MAG. VOL. XXVI.

owing to superiority of discipline, were forced to retreat to another part of the city, "ex alia parte oppidi." This part of the city I conceive to have been Cawden's Wood, the most western part of the same town; or else it was Stankey, its most northern point. By either way the Britons had other towns to fall back upon. I am the more inclined to give the preference to the western, because there, supposing the Romans had still further advanced into the country, they would have had a most difficult march over the marshes and morasses of the Cray; and Caswallon's 4,000 chariots would again have been employed to harass the wearied centurions. In Cawden's Wood still remain an immense number of subterraneous residences, or storehouses, in triples.

After the successful storming of this town Cæsar felt himself compelled to retreat, on account of a confederacy of chiefs having been formed in his rear, which threatened the destruction of his naval camp and his vessels. Cæsar attempts to explain away this serious sion to it:-"While these things affair by the following incidental allupassed beyond the river Tam ys, Caswallon despatched messengers to Kent (the eastern division of course), which, as we have before observed, was situate along the sea-coast. Its governors were four Ceans,-Cingetorix, Caruilius, Taximagulus, and Segonax. Agreeably to the orders forwarded them, they directly drew their forces together and attacked the naval camp." In this affair the Britons lost their leader, Cingetorix. The Romans might have been victorious, but it is an inference we question, because Cæsar says "that he was now compelled to retrace his steps;" and, like the previous campaign, was in such haste to embark his men (nothing loth) that he crammed them all "necessario angustius milites collocavit" into what ships he had, and sailed away at ten o'clock at night, after inflicting a tribute upon the unconquered islanders.

It has been denied that the Britons were acquainted with the use of money.

with traces of residences.-A full description of this town of Caswallon will be found in John Dunkin's Hist. of Dartford.

4 G

Now it is hardly possible that Cæsar would have thought of demanding a tribute, which he says he did, together with hostages, had not the Britons possessed and known the use of money. The Rev. Beale Post says, the resemblance of the British and Gaulish coins to Grecian coins, particularly those of Macedon, cannot be much wondered at, it being considered that Marseilles was founded by a colony of Phoceans from Asia Minor, and that a great commercial intercourse was maintained between that city and the different parts of the Mediterranean. As Britain was, however, in a higher state of civilization than Gaul, it is more probable that the coins indiscriminately termed British or Gaulish were all

struck in Britain. In plate xvi. in C. R. Smith's Collectanea Antiqua are delineated some coins which he presumes are of British origin: figs. 9 and 10 were found in the field below the encampment at Wingfield Bank, mentioned above-the field abounds in foundations, Roman urns, &c. and from the immediate neighbourhood the whole of the coins now forming Mr. Silvester's collection at the Springhead Gardens, near Gravesend, have been picked up.

Thus ended Cæsar's Cantian campaigns, and how little they affected the inhabitants of Kent may easily be conceived. ALFRED JOHN DUNKIN.

THE influence which the Homeric poems have exercised upon the mind of Europe has been often and laboriously examined; but little attention, however, has been hitherto paid to the question, how far that influence has extended to the East? The gigantic epics that we find in the ancient language of India, the relics of a time that has passed away from the world's memory for ever; the equally gigantic epic that is the glory of Persia, and records a faint echo of the feats that once rang in a nation's heart, are essentially Homeric in their construction. The resemblance pervades not only the outward, but even their inner character, and appears no less in the thoughts and manners of the age that they reflect, than in the incidents and style. On opening the Mahabharata or Shahnameh, we seem to be reading an oriental edition of Homer. The simple majesty of the Greek wears, indeed, an oriental dress (like Themistocles at the court of Persia), but the general lineaments are too alike to be passed over unnoticed. There are especially many passages in the Shahnameh (as we shall shortly prove) which, to use a trite Latin word that once contained a beautiful thought,

cannot be other than an “adumbratio” of the Iliad, as its memory floated dim in the popular traditions.

A passage in the Various history of Elian seems to give a partial solution of the difficulty (Lib. xii. 48): “The Indians have translated Homer into their native language, and not only they still sing his poetry, but also the kings of Persia, if one may believe the historians."* If this be true, and Elian is generally accurate about such matters, what a gleam is hereby thrown over the ancient history of the world! Valmiki and Vyasa, the authors of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, may have been inspired by Homer, just as they in after days inspired Calidása. The Iliad and Odyssey have certainly no small resemblance respectively to these twin-giant epics of India (the latter contains an hundred thousand slokás!). The Ramayana, with its conquest of Lanká by Rama, has a subject as grand and united as the wrath of Achilles, while the more dis

Οτι Ινδοι τῃ παρα σφισιν ἐπιχωρίῳ φωνη τα Ομηρου μεταγράψαντες, άδουσιν ὀν μονοι, άλλα και οἱ Περσων βασιλεις, εί τι χρη πιστεύειν τοις ὑπερ τούτων ioropovσi.

cursive Mahabharata, with its mythic episodes, strikingly represents the Odyssey.

Well may Montaigne say that Homer's was the greatest mind that antiquity produced (Essais, ii. 36), if his thoughts have thus spread their influence over the world, and if the blind man of Chios has found an echo for his songs in the hearts of Brahmins, under the palmtrees of India, centuries before Christ, and of the kings and warriors of Iran, as well as of the chiefs of Greece, who thronged round the festive board, and heard the minstrel utter the words himself. In the following sketch we shall more particularly confine ourselves to Persia and its Shahnameh; perhaps, at some future time, we may examine the Hindu epics in the same

manner.

The Shahnameh is the Persian's national epic, and contains all his country's fabulous myths and authentic history, as far as he knows them, before the Mohammedan conquest, in the reign of Yezdjird, A.D. 641. It was compiled by Firdusi, by order of the Sultan Mahmoud, from an ancient chronicle called the Bastan-nameh (or Old book), which had been lost for ages, but was recovered during his reign from Ethiopia.

This Bastan-nameh appears to have been a record of all the popular legends (compiled by order of Yezdjird, or perhaps earlier *), and contained the shadowy mass of mingled truth and fable, in which, ut per nubem (to adopt the beautiful words of the captive in Plautus, as the haunts and familiar names of infancy dimly return to him), the national mind strove to have a faint memory of the events of its ancient childhood. Therein were depicted the feats of the olden champions of Persia, distorted and magnified through the mist of years; and the dangers and difficulties with which they had to contend, being solemnized and made supernatural by the introduction of what Carlyle calls the "Time-element," became demons and enchantments.

The legends and ballads that commemorated these achievements were preserved in a prose form in the Bastan-nameh, just as those of ancient

Some authorities place it a century before.

Rome were preserved in its early historians; and Firdusi's task was therefore much like that of Macaulay's in his "Lays," viz. to recover the "disjecti membra poeta" from the annals, and mould them again into a shape of beauty.

We know Themistocles resided at the Persian court, and learned their language thoroughly in a year, and he might there spread the fame of the Iliad if it were unknown before; and if once the national bards† learned to recite any of its episodes, we can easily conceive that they would mould the character of all their future songs after them. The ideas and descriptions of the Iliad would be applied to the national subjects: Rustem and Afrasiab would supply the places of Achilles and Hector, and Helen and Andromache would appear under the names of Tuhmeenah and Rudabeh. And thus, though the names of Homer and the Iliad might soon fade from men's minds, and perhaps they were never very generally known (as the bards would of course endeavour to suppress them, and claim the merit of the new style as their own), yet the effect which they produced on the national poetry would be permanent, and their spirit would survive and animate every succeeding legend.

We have said that the Shahnameh greatly resembles the Iliad in style. The resemblance is not confined to the mere dress, but pervades its form. The heroes, their adventures, their manners, and habits of thought, are essentially Homeric. In both poems we may trace the same semi-barbarian standard of a hero, with its strange mixture of good and evil, of honour and duplicity, of generous impulse and cruelty; and side by side with this, and often in striking contrast, we see in both the utmost feminine gentleness and grace in the heroines. The characters of Andromache and Helen glide like sunbeams through the darkness of human wrath, which is the atmosphere of the Iliad. No heroines in the romances of chivalry, or the succeeding romantic poems of Ariosto and Tasso, are more gentle and lady-like, or (to use the words of Rabelais in his de

+ These national bards are described in Strabo, xv. 3, 18.

scription of the abbey of Theleme, and few authors have had a nobler idea of what woman should be), "Tant propres, tant mignonnes, moins fascheuses, plus doctes, à la main, à l'agueille, à tout acte muliebre, honneste et libre," than these creations of Homer's brain 3,000 years ago, or the wives of Zal and Rustem in the ancient legends of Persia. We fear there were but few, if any, such models of excellence in those days; the times were too wild and barbarous to admit of them. It was the innate chivalry of Homer's mind, with his consequent instinct of feminine beauty of character, that gave a being to them at first, and afterwards caused them to be mirrored in Persian story.

From the way that Homer's poems were thus known in Persia, (i.e. by mere traditionary recollection of certain payadial or episodes, which of course grew fainter and more corrupt as years rolled on,) we need not be surprised if we find no particular passages directly copied or imitated in the Shahnameh. It would have been indeed wonderful if we did. The imitation is confined to the general features; for instance, the subject of an episode is borrowed, though the details may be generally original. The resemblance is more seen in the character, than in the mere words. And this we maintain is precisely the effect that would follow, if Homer's poems were introduced as we suppose. During the centuries that intervened, the exact words and ideas of the Greek poet would be more and more diluted and forgotten; national vanity and prejudice would appropriate more and more of the incidents and drop all that was foreign and alien. A Persian character would be gradually thrown over the whole; and with native heroes, scenes and events, it would become gradually a merely national legend. But the stamp of Homer's mind would be still there; the words, the ideas, the scene might be changed, with all the "dramatis persona" too, but the spirit of the original would continually break out; and this is precisely what we shall endeavour to exemplify by passages from the Shahnameh. Firdusi, in endeavouring to recover the old songs

their pristine form from the dull

detailed chronicle of the Bastannameh, while catching their spirit and recalling them to life, has (as might be expected) unconsciously been reviving at the same time the remnants of the Homeric original. We hope to establish this ere we close.

As we said above, the vestiges of Homer that we speak of, are not to be found in particular sentences or similes, but in the character of the poem generally, and of some episodes particularly. Some thirteen or fourteen centuries had passed, when Firdusi wrote (in the tenth century), since the Iliad and Odyssey were probably first introduced into Persia, and vast changes had occurred during that time to alter his country's condition. The Mohammedan conquest in the reign of Yezdjird had destroyed the national literature; the immense collections of legends and romances, in which the ancient history was partly preserved, were burned, if they existed in MSS., or forgotten if they were oral traditions; and, had it not been for the tardy recovery of the "Old Book" in the reign of Mahmoud, the mythic history of Persia, and the subjects of its old ballads (often the best, and always the most influential, part of a nation's literature) would have perished for ever.

The resemblance which the" Persian Iliad," as it is sometimes called, bears to the Greek, is three-fold.

I. In the subjects, manners, and habits of thought that are described. II. In the style and way of treating them.

III. In particular episodes.

We have already entered upon the first and second of these divisions; and we now proceed to the last, which, after all, is the most conclusive, and we trust we shall make it plain to our readers that there are some faint reminiscences still to be found of the Homeric payodiai.

Let us take any of the numerous stories of the Shahnameh, that of Sohrab for instance, as being better known than most of them--and in this we come at once upon an episode, which, if we compare its parallel in Tasso, we must pronounce an unconscious reminiscence of the old father of Greek poetry. Sohrab is on the point of engaging with the troops of