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 the Conqueror’s less than seven hundred;[101] the Spanish Armada not two hundred.

E. 8.—­Caesar was resolved this time to be in sufficient strength, and no longer despised his enemies.  He brought with him five out of his eight legions, some thirty thousand infantry, that is, and two thousand horse.  The rest remained under his most trusted lieutenant, Labienus, to police Gaul and keep open his communications with Rome.  According to Polyaenus[102] (A.D. 180), he even brought over with him a fighting elephant, to terrify the natives and their horses.  There is nothing impossible about the story; though it is not likely Caesar would have forgotten to mention so striking a feature of his campaign.  One particular animal we may be sure he had with him, his own famous charger with the cloven hoof, which had been bred in his own stud, and would suffer on its back none but himself.  On it, as the rumour went, it had been prophesied by the family seer that he should ever ride to victory.