ê
lio CRANIA BRITANNICA. [CHAP. V.
The Britons do not appear to have profited much by theii- familiarity with the shipping of
the Gauls of the opposite coast, who, for a century or more before the time of Csesar, cai'ried on
with them an extensive maritime trade. The tribes of the west and north of Gaul seem generally
to have possessed no mean knowledge of ship-buUding, and the Pictones and Santoni furnished
their quota of ships to Csesar, for his armament against the Veneti*. This last tribe, however,
greatly excelled the rest of the Gauls in navigation, possessing numerous ships for the British
trade, and bringing a fleet of two hundred and twenty into the action against Csesar. These were
built entii'ely of oak, and so strong, that the rostra of the Roman ships were powerless against
them. The interstices between the planks were caulked with sea-weed. The thwarts, " transtra,"
a foot in width, were seciu-ed to the ribs by iron spikes the thickness of the thumb. As compared
even with those of the Romans, these " barbaric ships" were of large size, and had the prows,
and especially the poops, so elevated, that they were higher than the towers in the Roman ships,
so that in the discbarge of missiles the Gauls had the advantage. The keels were flat, to fit
them for the shallows and ebbing of the tide: the sails, as Caisar thought for greater strength,
were of skins or thin-dressed leather, and the anchors were secured by iron chains instead of
cables. It was only by cutting the ropes which secured the sails, witJi sharp sickles mounted on
poles, and thus disabling the ships, that the Romans succeeded in defeating the Veneti t-
The eai-liest traders -wdth Britain were themselves without a coinage, and the trade was
necessarily by barter. What was the method adopted by the Phoenicians, with barbai-ous tribes
little known to them, is evident from the account of their voyages to the west of Africa. They
anchored their ships at the Island of Ceme, and having pitched tents and unloaded their
merchandise, they conveyed it in smaller boats to the mainland, where they disposed of it
to the Ethiopians, in exchange for the ivory, gold, and other produce of the country i. The
SciUy Isles, in sight of the mainland of Britain, and afterwards St. Michael's Mount, seem to
have afforded to these cautious traders the same kind of station as Cerne did on the coast of
Senegambia. Hither they brought the earthenware, salt, and brazen goods, which they
exchanged for the tin, lead and peltry of Britain §. The trade must have been long in the
hands of the Veneti and other tribes of Armorican Gaul, and must have been shared by the
Romans, when Strabo next describes it. In addition to the metals of gold, sUver and iron, he now
names corn, cattle, skins, slaves and hunting-dogs as the exports; while the imports consisted
of such trifling commodities as bracelets of ivory, necklaces, and articles of amber and glass ||.
Prom Solinus we learn that the people of the Cassiterides, and perhaps those of the
opposite Damnonian coast, rejected the use of money and continued to trade by barter, far down
into Roman timesTf. In the south-east of the island, Csesar found a metaUic currency of iron
rings, which passed by weight in place of money. He states, however, as the best manuscripts
* B. G. lib. iii. c. 8, 11.
t B. G. lib. iii. c. 13-15. Strabo, lib. iv. c. 4. § 1.
i Scylax, Per. § cxi.; cited by Keurick, loc. cit. p. 226.
Herodotus, lib. iv. c. 196. Comp. Homer, Odyss. XT. 454.
§ Strabo, lib. iii. c. 5. § I I . The mention of salt among
the imports leads to the suspicion that the Britons were at this
time ignorant of the art of obtaining it by such rude methods
even as were practised by the Gauls and Germans (Pliny,
lib. xxxi. § 39, 40. Tacitus, Ann. lib. xiii. c. 57). This is the
more remarkable, when the rich salt-springs of Britain, so celebrated
by Nennius (c. 77) and Bede (lib. i. c. 1), are considered,
and which are doubtless those on the WecTer and the
Salwarp, in the latter of which, now Droitwich, may be recognized
Sahnffi, which Ptolemy places in the western limits
of the Catyeuchlani. The salt brought to Britain was probably
from the salince of Malaca and other places in Spain.
li Strabo, lib. iv. c. 5. § 2, 3. This was probably written
sixty years after Csesar's description of the Armorican trade.
B. G. lib. iii. c. 8. The commerce was now Gallo-Roman.
^ Solinus, c. 22. It is by no means clear whether this
passage refers to the people of the Scilly Isles—"insula
Silura "—or to those of Devon and Cornwall—" ora Britannia
quam Damnonii tenent" The circumstances named by
the historian may belong to both.
CHAP, V.] HISTORICAL ETHNOLOGY OE BRITAIN. Ill
read, that the Britons had also a coinage of both brass and gold*, by which doubtless this inconvenient
ring-money was gradually superseded. The art of coining must have been introduced by
GaUic settlers within a comparatively recent period, probably not exceeding fifty, or at the most
a hundred years, before Csesar's invasionf. Numismatists seem now generally agreed that many,
perhaps most of the uninscribed coins of the British series, are to be referred to the age of Julius,
and to that immediately preceding it. These coins are generally thick and dished, like Greek
coins, and are often without a device on the convex side. They are shown to have originated,
like many of the Gallic coins, in an imitation of the gold stater of Philip the Second of Macedón.
On some, the beautiful laureated head of Apollo on the obverse, and the figure of Victory in a
two-horse chariot on the reverse, are copied with some approach to accuracy. The majority,
however, seem to have been imitations of imitations, so that the types were ever varying and
degenerating, until aU traces of the prototype, unless in the rudest outline of the legs of a horse,
were gradually lost J. This imitated Greek coinage was probably derived by the Transalpine
Gauls from intercourse with the Greeks of Massilia; and from Gaul extended to Britain, with the
Belgic conquests and settlements. The coins of this period are generally of gold, but uninscribed
pieces of the same type, in brass and silver, are sometimes found. They are occasionally
of tin, of thinner fabric than coins of the same metal found in Gaul. Many of the rudest coins
of base metal—of tin or brass largely alloyed—were not struck, but cast in wooden moulds, as is
proved by the peculiar striated appearance on both sides §.
After the Roman conquest of Gaul and invasion of Britain by Julius, the character of the
British coinage was changed; and various new types having legends, with the names of princes
and cities in Roman, mixed sometimes with Greek characters, gradually appear. In proportion
as the intercourse with Rome extended, the character of the coins becomes more and more
Roman, especially those of silver and brass, which now become more abundant and exhibit a
greater variety of types than the gold. This Roman influence seems to have been nearly at its
height about the commencement of our era, when some of the British princes, seeking the assistance
of Augustus, dedicated offerings in the Capitol, and are said to have brought their country
into intimate union with Rome||. This was probably about the time when Cunobelin began
to reign over the Triaobantes and CatneUani. On his coins, which are principaUy found to the
north of the Thames, within the presumed limits of these two states, various Roman types
ai-e seen, and on many of them the legend, more or less abbreviated, of " CTJNOBELINTJS
TASCIOVAKI EIL."—in imitation of the formula on coins of Augustus, " Ca?sar Divi Eüiuslf." To
* B. G. Ub. V. c. 12. Mr. Hawkins (Numismatic Chronicle,
vol. i. p. 13) has shown that the principal MSS. agree in
reading, "utuntur aut sere aut nummo aureo, aut annulis
ferreis ad certum pondus examinatis, pro nummo," and that
Scaliger, in the seventeenth century, was the first to alter the
passage as it stands in the usual editions.
f De la Saussaye estimates the coinage of the Gauls as not
commencing earlier tlian 170 B.C.
Î This strange gradual degeneration of the Philippus type
is well seen on the gold coins found at Cambré in 1749, which,
though discovered in Cornwall, are not necessarily of Damnonian
mintage. See Borlase, Cornwall, plate 19, and 2nd ed.
plate 23. Camden, by Gough, vol. i. plate p. cxv. Kev.
Beale Poste, in the Journal of the British Archseological Association,
vol. v. p. 7. Also Mr. Evans's excellent paper and
plate, Numismatic Chronicle, 1849, vol. xii. p. 127.
§ Numismatic Chronicle, vol. xvi. p. 133. See the proof of
the wooden moulds by Mr. Evans, ib. vol. XTO. p. 18.
II Strabo, lib. iv. c. 5. § 3. Of these events the bilingual
inscription of Ancyra is probably a record—" Ad me suppUces
confuge(runt) * * * [reg]es Britann(orum) Domnobella[unus]
et T i m — T h e Marmor Ancyranum is a record of the administration
of Augustus, which he ordered to be affixed to the
walls of his mausoleum, and a copy of which, in Greek and
Latm, was placed in the temple dedicated to him at Ancyra.
^ As shown by Mr. Birch, Numismatic Chronicle, vol. vii.
p. 78. Archffiological Journal, vol. iv. p. 28. Csesar (B. G.
lib. V. c. 20, 22) records the struggles between the Catuellani
and Trinobantes under Cassivellaunus and Mandubratius. It
is clear, however, that the two states were subsequently united
under one prince—Cunobelin—with his capital at Camulodunum
; whilst the coins show that the seat of government of
Q 2