A Revision of Two Letters from George Morley, Bishop of Winchester, to Jan van Vliet

SECTION IV.

On military chariots and British Esseda war-chariots.

Book 4 of the Gallic War describes

Morley, on page 8 and the four following, speaks of the ancient custom of the Britons of fighting from chariots, a manner which Caesar marvels at because of the skill of the charioteers and the agility of the soldiers, for they were accustomed, even on a steep and precipitous slope, to steady their galloping horses and to control and turn them in a short space, and to run along the pole, and to stand on the yoke, and from there to retreat most quickly into the chariots. They were accustomed, however, first to ride through all parts and throw missiles, and by the terror of the horses and the din of the wheels to disturb the ranks, and to insinuate themselves among the squadrons of the cavalry, then to leap down from the chariots and fight on foot: thus they exhibited the mobility of the cavalry and the stability of the infantry in battles. These things Caesar says about them in the cited passage. But you do not find from where you might summon that manner. Yet you seem to wish to call into doubt whether the use of chariots in battles has obtained anywhere outside of Britain. And first, you remove all historians (except for the sacred ones) older than the first Olympiad from giving testimony, by the authority of Varro, who calls those times mythika mythical, or Fabulous. You diminish the credibility of Homer and Virgil because they were poets, to whom (just as to painters) the power of daring anything has always been permitted. You argue that these chariots were a fiction; Homer, indeed, because it seemed grander and more worthy of heroic men to fight from a chariot sitting as if on a throne than if they sat on a solitary horse as if they were soldiers of Gregory. Virgil, however, [you argue] imitated him by giving a chariot to each of his heroes. You conclude that the Greeks never used chariots in war from the silence of Greek historians. You would say the same about the Britons, if the authority of Caesar did not stand in the way.

The discourse has slipped into a non-theological matter, for which reason I dispatch myself in a few words. That the use of chariots was great in battles long ago is testified not only by profane historians—Xenophon, Quintus Curtius, Plutarch, and others—but also by Sacred Scripture. Exodus 14: Pharaoh took six hundred chosen chariots, and whatever chariots there were, and the captains of the whole army, to pursue the Israelites leaving Egypt. Judges 1:19: Judah is said to have made the mountainous regions his own, but to have been unable to drive out the inhabitants of the Valley, because