Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar
T. Rice Holmes
History
Book language: English
1193 pages
A scholarly history of Britain before and during Julius Caesar's invasions, first published in 1907. T. Rice Holmes combines archaeological evidence with narrative to trace early life on the island and Roman contact. It offers a detailed, measured account for listeners interested in pre-Roman Britain and classical historiography.
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Cover of the original edition (Project Gutenberg, public domain).
Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
ANCIENT BRITAIN AND THE INVASIONS OF JULIUS CAESAR BY T. RICE HOLMES Hon. Litt.D. (Dublin) AUTHOR OF ‘A HISTORY OF THE INDIAN MUTINY’ ‘CAESAR’S CONQUEST OF GAUL,’ ETC. ‘There seems no human thought so primitive as to have lost its bearing on our own thought, nor so ancient as to have broken its connection with our own life’.—E. B. Tylor. OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1907 HENRY FROWDE, M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD LONDON, EDINBURGH NEW YORK AND TORONTO PREFACE This book is in one sense a companion of my Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul; and much that was written in the preface of that volume is equally applicable here. The last three chapters of Part I, and the later articles in Part II, are intended to do for Britain what I formerly tried to do for Gaul; but whereas the main object was then to illustrate the conquest, and the opening chapter was merely introductory, my aim in these pages has been to tell the story of man’s life in our island from the earliest times in detail. What has been called ‘prehistory’ cannot be written without knowledge of archaeology; but from the historical standpoint archaeological details must be handled, not for their own sake, but only in so far as they illustrate the development of culture. The two books are constructed on the same principle: in this, as in the other, the second part is devoted to questions which could not properly be discussed in narrative or quasi-narrative chapters, though I am encouraged by the judgement of expert critics, British, American, and Continental, of Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul, to hope that general readers who are interested in these matters may not find the articles which deal with them tedious. Those on Stonehenge, Ictis, and the ethnology of Britain, although they controvert certain opinions which are commonly accepted, will, I hope, tend to place facts in their true light. Two articles deal with well-worn themes,—the
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