who wore their crowns as tokens of their friendship with Rome. He was not execrated by the Atrebates. His sagacious and self-interested behaviour did not discredit him with a people devoid of Greek and Roman ideas of patriotism and citizenship. These savage, inglorious Gauls, ignorant of public life, esteemed cunning, yielded to force and marvelled at royal power, which seemed to them a magnificent innovation. The majority of these people, rough woodlanders or fishermen of the misty coast, had a still better reason for not blaming the conduct and the prosperity of their chieftain; not knowing that they were Atrebates, nor even that Atrebates existed, the King of the Atrebates concerned them but little. Wherefore Komm was not unpopular. And if the favour of Rome meant danger to him, that danger did not come from his own people. Now in the fourth year of the war, towards the end of summer, Cæsar armed a fleet for a descent upon Britain. Desiring to secure allies in the great Island, he resolved to send Komm as his ambassador to the Celts of the Thames, with the offer of an alliance with Rome. Sagacious, eloquent and by birth akin to the Britons--for certain tribes of the Atrebates had settled on both banks of the Thames--Komm was eminently fitted for this mission. Komm was proud of his friendship with Cæsar. But he was in no hurry to discharge this mission, of the dangers of which he was fully aware. To induce him to undertake it Cæsar was compelled to grant him many favours. From the tribute paid by other Gallic towns he exempted Nemetacum, which was already growing into a city and a metropolis, so rapidly did the Romans develop the countries which they conquered. He somewhat relaxed the rigorous rule of the conquerors by restoring to it its rights and its own laws. Further, he gave Komm to rule over the Morini, who were the neighbours of the Atrebates on the sea-shore. Komm set sail with Caius Volusenus Quadratus, prefect of cavalry, appointed by Cæsar to conduct a reconnaissance in Britain. But when the ship approached the sandy beach at the foot of the bird-haunted white cliffs, the Roman refused to disembark, fearing unknown danger and certain death. Komm landed with his horses and his followers and spoke to the British chiefs who had come to meet him. He counselled them to prefer profitable friendship with the Romans to their pitiless wrath. But these chiefs, the descendants of Hu, the Powerful, and of his comrades in arms, were proud and violent. They listened impatiently to Komm's words. Anger clouded their woad-stained countenances, and they swore to defend their Island against the Romans. "Let them land here," they cried, "and they will disappear like the snow on the sand of the sea-shore when the south wind blows upon it." Holding Cæsar's counsel to be an insult, they were already drawing their daggers from their belts and preparing to put to death the herald of shame.