“A TERRIBLE APPEARANCE”
JULIUS CAESAR WROTE MANY OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE GEOGRAPHY AND PEOPLES OF ANCIENT BRITAIN
In his famous work The Gallic War, Caesar made the first detailed description of Britain.
His own experience of Britain was confined to Kent and the Thames Valley but he gathered enough information to form some geographical sense of the island. He inaccurately described it as “triangular in form” but did show a relatively more accurate awareness of the area around the Irish Sea: “The west, on which part is Ireland, less, as is reckoned, than Britain, by one half: but the passage from it into Britain is of equal distance with that from Gaul. In the middle of this voyage, is an island, which is called Mona.”
Mona probably refers to the Isle of Man but Caesar’s most fascinating observations are of the Britons themselves. He considered the people of Kent to be the most “civilised” and that they did “not differ much from Gallic customs”. In more general terms he gave a vivid account of the Britons’ apparently earthy and fearsome appearances: “Most of the inland inhabitants do not sow corn, but live on milk and flesh and are clad with skins. All the Britons, indeed, dye themselves with wood, which occasions a bluish colour, and thereby have a more terrible appearance in fight. They wear their hair long, and have every part of their body shaved except their head and upper lip.”