E. 1.--Caesar too had, on his side, gained what he wanted, though at a
risk quite disproportionate to the advantage. So much prestige had
he lost that on his disembarkation his force was set upon by the very
Gauls whom he had so signally beaten two years before. Their attack
was crushed with little difficulty and great slaughter; but that
it should have been made at all shows that he was supposed to be
returning as a beaten man. However, he now knew enough about Britain
and the Britons to estimate what force would be needful for a real
invasion, and energetically set to work to prepare it. To make such
an invasion, and to succeed in it, had now become absolutely necessary
for his whole future. At any cost the events of the year 55 must be
"wiped off the slate;" the more so as, out of all the British clans,
two only sent in their promised hostages. Caesar's dispatches home, we
may be sure, were admirably written, and so represented matters as to
gain him a _supplicatio_, or solemn thanksgiving, of twenty days from
the Senate. But the unpleasant truth was sure to leak out unless it
was overlaid by something better. It did indeed so far leak out
that Lucan[89] was able to write: _Territa quaesitis ostendit terga
Britannis_.

["He sought the Britons; then, in panic dread,
Turned his brave back, and from his victory fled."]

E. 2.--Before setting off, therefore, for his usual winter visit to
Rome, he set all his legionaries to work in their winter quarters, at
building ships ready to carry out his plans next spring. He himself
furnished the drawings, after a design of his own, like our own
Alfred a thousand years later.[90] They were to be of somewhat lower
free-board than was customary, and of broader beam, for Caesar had
noted that the choppy waves of the Channel had not the long run of
Mediterranean or Atlantic rollers. All, moreover, were to be provided
with sweeps; for he did not intend again to be at the mercy of the
wind. And with such zeal and skill did the soldiers carry out his
instructions, by aid of the material which he ordered from the
dockyards of Spain, that before the winter was over they had
constructed no fewer than six hundred of these new vessels, besides
eighty fresh war-galleys.

E. 3.--Caesar meanwhile was also at his winter's work amid the turmoil
of Roman politics. His "westward ho!" movement was causing all the
stir he hoped for. We can see in Cicero's correspondence with Atticus,
with T