230 THE ROMAN CONQUESTS. [CHAP.

occupied, is furnished by his account of the Veneti in Armorica,
who inhabited the s'ea-coast north of the mouth of the Loire.
Against these he first sent his lieutenant, P. Crassus, in 57 B.C.,
and in the following year he entered their territory himself, and
after assembling a fleet of sufficient size to enable him to cope with
their vessels, finally reduced them to submission.
Description In his narrative of the campaign he delineates the
of the Country peculiarities of the coast of the Morbihan, as this

oftheVeneti. r

district of France is now called— the creeks and
inlets of the sea, which interfered with communication by land,
and the position of the towns on the extremities of jutting
tongues of land, which caused them to be hard of access to
an invader, because at high tide the approach from the land-
side was cut off, and at low water it was a difficult matter for
ships to approach them in consequence of the shoals. He
then proceeds to describe the vessels used by these hardy
navigators, who were accustomed to make voyages to Britain —
their oaken timbers, their almost flat keels, which allowed of
their grounding without difficulty, their height in the bows, and
their leathern sails. Against these the Romans had the one
advantage of using oars, which their opponents were without j
and thus, when they had disabled their rigging by means of
hooks attached to long poles, they were able to board their
vessels, after which the superior courage of the Roman soldiers
prevailed. When victory declared itself on the side of the
invaders, the people at large submitted, but Caesar thought fit
, that they should be put to death or sold into slavery1. In
this way a race was exterminated who were distinguished for
commercial enterprise, as we have already remarked when
speaking of the tin trade with Britain8.

Caesar's two expeditions into Britain were important as mark-

'lli% *e ^rs* occas*on on which the Romans set

lions into foot in that island, but they do not seem to have
made any considerable addition to what was already
known through Posidonius concerning it8. Both those writers
1 B. £., 3. 8, 9, 12— 16. 3 v. supra, p. 36.
* Posidonius* account is ftTnhnrfipd in ^trabo's description of Britain, 4. 5.