... . . . .
:
º
º:
* * * *s
ºr
º
º
.
§
Nº º
º
* *
sº
tº a ſº ºw
;

--sºa-
ſt- ----,
| & 2 P R O P E R T Y O F T H E
ł . -
.3
4.
//jºy
j/ i/9//
3 /ć i ; §
* :* • * # f º
- 3.” &; ºr -
* - ºlà § 3
[3
Zº
# g º
•
.**
$º.
*
* 2, sº
A R tes's di E N T A = |
.azºº.
t
|
r
- —-arºa-
g A- wº wº- a --> Y-º









ANCIENT CLASSICS FOR ENGLISH READERS.
EDITED BY
THE REv. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A.
The volumes published contain—
1. THE ILIAD, 2. THE ODYSSEY. 3. HERODOTUS.
A Volume will be published on the 1st of each alternate month.
price $1.00.
The aim of the present series will be to explain, sufficiently for
general readers, who these great writers were, and what they
wrote ; to give, wherever possible, some connected outline of the
story which they tell, or the facts which they record, checked by
the results of modern investigations; to present some of their
most striking passages in approved English translations, and to
illustrate them generally from modern writers ; to serve, in
short, as a popular retrospect of the chief literature of Greece
&nd Rome.
EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS OF THIS SERIES.
Saturday Review.
If the other volumes are as well executed as this, the monthly
issue will soon furnish excellent guidance to the whole field of clas-
sical literature, and when the way is thus rendered clear, good
translations will be read with far more pleasure and discrimination.
We anticipate that the judicious and novel design of such a series
will meet, as it deserves, with widespread and lasting favour; and
that, with its success, juster ideas will more generally prevail of the
characteristics of the great writers of old.
Civil Service Gazette.
No more happy idea has been conceived of late than that of which
this is the first instalment. . . . If the other volumes to follow
equal the ‘Iliad,’ the series will be a most charming and instructive
one, and the ‘Ancient Classics for English Readers’ will be a most
invaluable aid to modern Education.
2
Spectator.
Mr Collins deserves, or probably shares with his publishers, the
highest praise for a discovery which is not the less meritorious
because it now seems obvious. Labour without end has been spent
with but little success on the attempt to bring the great Greek and
Latin classics within the reach of unlearned readers. In truth, the
method commonly pursued, the method of translation, is cumbrous
and ineffective. Translation exercises an extraordinary fascination
on those who practise it, and it is not without a literary value, but
it is least appreciated by those for whom it is primarily intended.
Pope's brilliant paraphrases really please, and Lord Derby is read
because he was a great English noble ; but how few readers appre-
ciate the exquisite skill with which Mr Worsley performed the task
of translating the ‘Odyssey’ſ The advantage of the present series
is, that the writers are not fettered by the fidelity which often ham-
pers a translator; that they can omit, or shorten, or give in full as
they please; that they can avail themselves of the finest work of
translation when any scene has to be presented in detail; that they
can introduce appropriate illustrations into the body of the work
and not relegate them to the obscurity of notes, and that they can
do all this within the compass of such a volume as can easily be read
through at a sitting. As to the two books before us, the ‘Iliad”
and the ‘ Odyssey,' they remind us of Lamb’s ‘Tales from Shake-
speare.” Other matter, indeed, they contain; but this is the most
attractive part of them, and it is no slight praise to say that they
need not shrink from the comparison. We may say, indeed, though
we have one or two faults to find with details of execution, that
they are admirably well done. The main points of incident and
character are skilfully seized; the criticisms, both ethical and artis-
tic, are sound and judicious; the style is simple and spirited. Even
readers of but little application will find them easy to get through,
and no one can read them without really learning something about
Homer.
Vanity Fair.
To such persons, who often in after-years feel keenly the neglect
or want of opportunities for becoming acquainted with the world-
renowned old Greek and Latin authors, and who, from press of
occupation, are unable to recover their lost ground, these volumes
will present themselves as a real boon; and if the succeeding volumes
come up to the standard of the one now before us, it is difficult to
conceive how they could gain their knowledge in a pleasanter,
clearer, or more concise form. . . . This well-printed, handy
little volume, then, deserves our unqualified praise. There is many
a Paterfamilias who, having for years past been obliged to listen in
dignified but pusillanimous silence to the sly classical allusions of
his precocious offspring, will now be enabled, thanks to these little
books, to carry the war into the enemy’s country, and terrify and
startle his astonished family by learned disquisitions on the cha-
º of Agamemnon, and pedantic conjectures as to the birthplace
of Homer.
Ancient Classics for Æmg/ish Readers
ED ITED BY THE
REV. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A.
C AE S A. R.
The Volumes published of this Series contain
HOMER: THE ILIAD, by THE EDITOR.
HOMER : THE ODYSSEY, BY THE SAME.
HERODOTUS, BY GEORGE C. SWAYNE, M.A.
Late Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
The following Authors, by various Contributors, are
in preparation :-
VIRGIL.
HORACE.
AESCHYLUS.
SOPHOCLES.
ARISTOPHANES.
CICERO.
JUVENAL.
XENOPHON.
OTHERS will Follow.
A Volume will be ſublished on the 1st of every
alternate Month, Żrice $.1oo.
T H E C O M M E N T A R I, E S
OF
C AE S A. R.
By
ANT HONY TROLLOPE
PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPIN COTT & CO.
I 8 7 1.
CHAP.
II.
III.
IV.
VI,
VII.
C O N T E N T S
INTRODUCTION, gº e ſº * e e º
FIRST BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL.—CAESAR DRIVES
FIRST THE SWISS AND THEN THE GERMANS Olſº:
OF GAUL.—B.C. 58, . º • wº jº •
SECONID BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL. — CAESAR SUB-
DUES THE BELGIAN TRIBES.—B. c. 57, . tº
THIRD BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL. — CAESAR SUB-
DUES THE WESTERN TRIBES OF GAUL.—B. c. 56,
FOURTH BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL. — CAESAR
CROSSES THE RHINE, SLAUGHTERS THE GER-
MANS, AND GOES INTO BRITAIN.—B.C. 55, .
FIFTH BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL. — CAESAR’s
SECOND INVASION OF BRITAIN. — THE GAULS
RISE AGAINST HIM.–B.C. 54, . ſº e e
SIXTH BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL. —CAESAR PUR-
SUES AMIBIORIX. —THE MANNERS OF THE GAULS
AND OF THE GERMANS ARE CONTRASTED.—
B. C. 53, * e o sº g gº © tº
--- s
*** -: , , , ; ... ' . …
PAGE
54
63
74
88
Vi
CO W T E N T.S.
VIII.
IX.
ŠEVENTH BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL. —THE REVOLT
OF VERCINGETORIX. —B.C. 52, . § gº tº
FIRST BOOK OF THE CIVII, WAR. — CAESAR CROSSES
THE RURICON, -FOILOWS POMPEY TO BRUNDU-
SIUM. —AND CONQUERS AFRANIUS IN SPAIN.—
B.C. 49, gº tº tº º e & &
SECOND BOOK OF THE CIVIL WAR.—THE TARING OF
MARSEYLLES. —WARRO IN THE SOUTH OF SPAIN.
—THE FATE OF CURIO BEFORE UTICA.—B.C. 49,
THIRD BOOK OF THE CIVIL WAR. —CAESAR FOLLOWS
POMPEY INTO ILLYRIA. — THE LINES OF PETRA
AND THE BATTLE OF PHARSALIA.—B.C. 48, .
100
II6
131
IXI.
YWI.
CONCLUSION, o º & & º o ſº
146
174
C AE S A. R.
C. H. A. P. T. E. R. I.
INTRODUCTION.
IT may perhaps be fairly said that the Commentaries
of Caesar are the beginning of modern history. He
wrote, indeed, nearly two thousand years ago; but he
wrote, not of times then long past, but of things which
were done under his own eyes, and of his own deeds.
And he wrote of countries with which we are familiar,
—of our Britain, for instance, which he twice invaded,
of peoples not so far remote but that we can identify
them with our neighbours and ourselves; and he so
wrote as to make us feel that we are reading actual
history, and not romance. The simplicity of the nar-
ratives which he has left is their chief characteristic,
if not their greatest charm. We feel sure that the cir-
cumstances which he tells us did occur, and that they
occurred very nearly as he tells them. He deals with
those great movements in Europe from which have
A. C. vol. iv. A
2 CAE SA R.
sprung, and to which we can trace, the present politi-
cal condition of the nations. Interested as the scholar,
or the reader of general literature, may be in the great
deeds of the heroes of Greece, and in the burning words
of Greek orators, it is almost impossible for him to
connect by any intimate and thoroughly-trusted link
the fortunes of Athens, or Sparta, or Macedonia, with
our own times and our own position. It is almost
equally difficult to do so in regard to the events of
Rome and the Roman power before the time of Caesar.
We cannot realise and bring home to ourselves, the
Punic Wars or the Social War, the Scipios and the
Gracchi, or even the contest for power between Marius
and Sulla, as we do the Gallic Wars and the invasion
of Britain, by which the civilisation of Rome was first
carried westwards, or the great civil wars, the “Bel-
lum Civile,”—by which was commenced a line of em-
perors continued almost down to our own days, and to
which in some degree may be traced the origin and
formation of almost every existing European nation.
It is no doubt true that if we did but know the facts
correctly, we could refer back every political and social
condition of the present day to the remotest period of
man's existence; but the interest fails us when the
facts become doubtful, and when the mind begins to fear
that history is mixed with romance. Herodotus is so
mythic that what delight we have in his writings comes
in a very slight degree from any desire on our part to
form a continuous chain from the days of which he
wrote down to our own. Hetween the marvels of He-
rodotus and the facts of Caesar there is a great interval,
************-----...--- . . .
, INTRODUCTION. 3
----- - - - -- ~ &
from which have come down to us the works of various
noble historians; but with Caesar it seems that that
certainty commences which we would wish to regard as
the distinguishing characteristic of modern history.
It must be remembered from the beginning that

_Caesar-wrete-enly of what he did or of what he caused
*la..., -e- ºr's gº.----a ºrº---si-ii s㺠ºr ºrg. = "tº:/*******, ºr
+r-knº-ºº::glº-
to be done himself. At Teast he only so wrote in the
two works of his which remain to us. We are told
that he produced much besides his Commentaries,-
among other works, a poem,--but the two Commen-
taries are all of his that we have. The former, in seven
books, relates the facts of his seven first campaigns in
Gaul for seven consecutive years; those campaigns in
which he reduced the nations living between the Rhine,
the Rhone, the Mediterranean, the Pyrenees, and the
sea which we now call the British Channel.” The
latter Commentary relates the circumstances of the
civil war in which he contended for power against Pom-
pey, his former colleague, with Crassus, in the first
triumvirate, and established that empire to which
Augustus succeeded after a second short-lived trium-
virate between himself and Lepidus and Antony.
It is the object of this little volume to describe
Caesar's Commentaries for the aid of those who do
not read Latin, and not to write Roman history;
but it may be well to say something, in a few intro-
ductory lines, of the life and character of our author.
We are all more or less familiar with the name of
Julius Caesar. In our early days we learned that he
* There is an eighth book, referring to an eighth and ninth
campaign, but it is not the work of Caesar.
4 CAE SA. R.
was the first of those twelve Roman emperors with
whose names it was thought right to burden our
young memories; and we were taught to understand
that when he began to reign there ceased to exist that
form of republican government in which two consuls
elected annually did in truth preside over the fortunes
of the empire. There had first been seven kings,
whose names have also been made familiar to us, then
the consuls, and after them the twelve Caesars, of
whom the great Julius was the first. So much we
all know of him ; and we know, too, that he was killed
in the Capitol by conspirators just as he was going to
become emperor, although this latter scrap of know-
ledge seems to be paradoxically at variance with the
former. In addition to this we know that he was a
great commander and conqueror and writer, who did
things and wrote of them in the “veni, vidi, vici.”
style—saying of himself, “I came, I saw, I con-
quered.” We know that a great Roman army was
intrusted to him, and that he used this army for the
purpose of establishing his own power in Rome by
taking a portion of it over the Rubicon, which little
river separated the province which he had been ap-
pointed to govern from the actual Roman territory
within which, as a military servant of the magistrates
of the republic, he had no business to appear as a
general at the head of his army. So much we know ;
and in the following very short memoir of the great
commander and historian, no effort shall be made,-as
has been so frequently and so painfully done for us in
late years, to upset the teachings of our youth, and to
I N T R O D U C T I O W. 5
prove that the old lessons were wrong. They were
all fairly accurate, and shall now only be supplemented
by a few further circumstances which were doubtless
once learned by all school-boys and school-girls, but
which some may perhaps have forgotten since those
happy days.
Dean Merivale, in one of the early chapters of his
admirable history of the Romans under the Empire,
declares that Caius Julius Caesar is the greatest name
in history. He makes the claim without reserve, and
attaches to it no restriction, or suggestion that such is
simply his own opinion. Claims of this nature, made
by writers on behalf of their pet-heroes, we are, all of
us, generally inclined to dispute; but this claim, great
as it is, can hardly be disputed. T)r Merivale does not
say that Caesar was the greatest man that ever lived.
In measuring such supremacy, men take for themselves
various standards. To satisfy the judgment of one, it
is necessary that a poet should be selected; for another,
a teacher of religion; for a third, some intellectual hero
who has assisted in discovering the secrets of nature
by the operations of his own brain; for a fourth, a
ruler,-and so on. But the names of some of these
cannot be said to be great in history. Homer, Luther,
Galileo, and Charles V., are great names, as are also
Shakespeare, Knox, Queen Elizabeth, and Newton.
Among these, the two rulers would probably be the
least in general admiration. But no one can assert that
the names of the poets, divines, and philosophers, are
greater than theirs in history. The Dean means that
of all men who have lived, and whose deeds are known
6 CAE SA R.
to us, Julius Caesar did most to move the world; and
we think that the Dean is right. Those whom we
might, perhaps, compare with Caesar, are Alexander,
Charlemagne, Cromwell, Napoleon, and Washington.
In regard to the first two, we feel, when claims are
made for them, that they are grounded on the perform-
ance of deeds only partially known to us. In the days
of Alexander, history was still dark, and it had be-
come dark again in those of Charlemagne. What Crom-
well did was confined to our own islands, and, though
he was great for us, he does not loom as large before
the eyes of mankind in general as does one who moved
all Europe, present and future. If there be any fair
antagonist to Caesar in this claim, it is Napoleon. As
a soldier he was equally great, and the area of his
operations was as extended. Dut there is an old say-
ing which tells us that no one can be sure of his
fortune till the end shall have come ; and Caesar's
death on the steps of the Capitol was more in accord-
ance with our ideas of greatness than that of Napo-
leon at St Helena. We cannot, moreover, but feel
that there were fewer drawbacks from greatness in the
personal demeanour of the Roman “Imperator” and
Dictator than in that of the French Emperor. For
Julius Caesar was never really emperor, in that sense in
which we use the word, and in accordance with which
his successor Augustus really became an emperor. As
to Washington, we may perhaps allow that in moral
attributes he was the greatest of all. To aid his
country he dared all,—even a rebel's disgraceful death,
had he not succeeded where success was most improba-
IN TRO D UCT I O W. 7
ble; and in all that he attempted he succeeded. His
is the name that culminates among those of the men
who made the United States a nation, and does so by
the eager consent of all its people. And his work
came altogether from patriotism, with no alloy of
personal ambition. But it cannot be said that the
things he did were great as those which were done
by Caesar, or that he himself was as potent in the
doing of them. He ventured everything with as grand
a purpose as ever warmed the heart of man, and he
was successful; but the things which he did were in
themselves Small in comparison with those effected by
his less noble rival for fame. Mommsen, the German
historian, describes Caesar as a man too great for the
scope of his intelligence and power of delineation.
“The historian,” he says, speaking of Caesar, “when
once in a thousand years he encounters the perfect,
can only be silent regarding it.” Napoleon also, in his
life of Caesar, paints his hero as perfect; but Napoleon
when doing so is, in fact, claiming godlike perfection
for that second Caesar, his uncle. And the perfection
which he claims is not that of which Mommsen
speaks. The German intends to convey to us his
conviction that Caesar was perfect in human capacity
and intelligence. Napoleon claims for him moral per-
fection. “We may be convinced,” says the Emperor,
“by the above facts, that during his first consulate,
one only motive animated Caesar, -namely, the public
interest.” We cannot, however, quite take the facts
as the Emperor of the French gives them to us, nor
can we share his conviction ; but the common consent
8 - CAE SA R.
of reading men will probably acknowledge that there is
in history no name so great as that of Julius Caesar,
of whose written works some account is intended to be
given in the following chapters.
He was born just one hundred years before Christ,
and came of an old noble Roman family, of which Ju-
lius and not Caesar was the distinctive name. Whence
came the name of Caesar has been a matter of doubt
and of legend. Some say that it arose from the thick
hair of one of the Julian tribe ; others that a certain
scion of the family, like Macduff, “was from his mo-
ther's womb untimely ripped,” for which derivations
Latin words are found to be opportune. Again we are
told that one of the family once kept an elephant, and
we are referred to some eastern language in which the
word for elephant has a sound like Caesar. Another
legend also rose from Caesar's name, which, in the Gal-
lic language of those days, very luckily for Caesar,
sounded as though one should say, “Send him back.”
Caesar's horse once ran away with him, and carried him
'over to the enemy. An insolent Gaul, who knew him,
called out, “Caesar, Caesar !” and so the other Gauls,
obeying the order supposed to be given, allowed the
illustrious one to escape. It must be acknowledged,
however, that the learned German who tells us this
story expresses a contemptuous conviction that it can-
not be true. Whatever may have produced the word,
its significance, derived from the doings and writings
of Caius Julius, has been very great. It has come to
mean in various languages the holder of despotic power;
and though it is said that, as a fact, the Russian title
I W T R O DUC, TI O W. 9
Czar has no connection with the Roman word, so great
is the prestige of the name, that in the minds of men
the popular appellation of the Russian Emperor will
always be connected with that of the line of the Roman
IEmperor.
Caesar was the nephew by marriage of that Marius
who, with alternations of bloody successes and seem-
ingly irreparable ruin, had carried on a contest with
Sulla for supreme power in the republic. Sulla in
these struggles had represented the aristocrats and pat-
ricians,—what we perhaps may call the Conservative
interest ; while Marius, whose origin was low, who had
been a common soldier, and, rising from the ranks, had
become the darling of the army and of the people, may
perhaps be regarded as one who would have called him-
self a Liberal, had any such term been known in those
days. His liberality, as has been the case with other
political leaders since his time, led him to personal
power. He was seven times Consul, having secured his
seventh election by atrocious barbarities and butcher-
ings of his enemies in the city; and during this last con-
sulship he died. The young Caesar, though a patrician
by birth, succeeded his uncle in the popular party, and
seems from a very early age, from his very boyhood,
to have looked forward to the power which he might
win by playing his cards with discretion.
And very discreet he was, self-confident to a won-
derful degree, and patient also. It is to be presumed
that most of our readers know how the Roman Repub-
lic fell, and the Roman Empire became established as
the result of the civil wars which began with Marius
10 CAE SA. R.
and ended with that “young Octavius” whom we better
recognise as Augustus Caesar. Julius Caesar was the
nephew by marriage of Marius, and Augustus was the
great-nephew and heir of Julius. By means of con-
scriptions and murders, worse in their nature, though
less probably in number, than those which disgraced
the French Revolution, the power which Marius
achieved almost without foresight, for which the great
Caesar strove from his youth upwards with constant
foresight, was confirmed in the hands of Augustus, and
bequeathed by him to the emperors. In looking back
at the annals of the world, we shall generally find that
despotic power has first grown out of popular move-
ment against authority. It was so with our own
Cromwell, has twice been so in the history of modern
Erance, and certainly was so in the formation of the
Roman Empire. In the great work of establishing
that empire, it was the mind and hand and courage of
Caesar that brought about the result, whether it was for
good or evil. And in looking at the lives of the three
men—Marius, Caesar, and Augustus, who followed each
other, and all worked to the same end, the destruction
of that oligarchy which was calledalſtepublic in Rome—
we find that the one was a man, while the others were
beasts of prey. The cruelties of Marius as an old man,
and of Augustus as a young one, were so astounding as,
even at this distance, to horrify the reader, though he
remembers that Christianity had not yet softened men's
hearts. Marius, the old man, almost swam in the
blood of his enemies, as also did his rival Sulla ; but
the young Octavius, he whom the gods favoured so
I W T R O DUCTION. 11
long as the almost divine * Augustus, cemented his
throne with the blood of his friends. To complete the
satisfaction of Lepidus and Antony, his comrades in
the second triumvirate, he did not scruple to add to
the list of those who were to die, the names of the
nearest and dearest to him. Between these monsters
of cruelty—between Marius and Sulla, who went before
him, and Octavius and Antony who followed him—
Caesar has become famous for clemency. And yet the
hair of the reader almost stands on end with horror as
Caesar recounts in page after page the stories of cities
burned to the ground, and whole communities slaugh-
tered in cold blood. Of the destruction of the women
and children of an entire tribe, Caesar will leave the
unimpassioned record in one line. But this at least
may be said of Caesar, that he took no delight in
slaughter. When it became in his sight expedient that
a people should suffer, so that others might learn to
yield and to obey, he could give the order apparently
without an effort. And we hear of no regrets, or of any
remorse which followed the execution of it. But blood-
shed in itself was not sweet to him. He was a discreet,
far-seeing man, and could do without a scruple what dis-
cretion and caution demanded of him.
And it may be said of Caesar that he was in some
sort guided in his life by sense of duty and love of
country; as it may also be said of his great contem-
poraries, Pompey and Cicero. With those who went
* Coelo tonantem credidimus Jovem
Regnare ; praesens Divus habebitur
Augustus.
12 CAE SA R.
before him, Marius and Sulla, as also with those who
followed him, Antony and Augustus, it does not seem
that any such motives actuated them. Love of power
and greed, hatred of their enemies and personal ambi-
tion, a feeling that they were urged on by their fates
to seek for high place, and a resolve that it was better
to kill than be killed, impelled them to their courses.
These feelings were strong, too, with Caesar, as they are
strong to this day with statesmen and with generals;
but mingled with them in Caesar's breast there was a
noble idea, that he would be true to the greatness of
Rome, and that he would grasp at power in order that
the Roman Empire might be well governed. Augustus,
doubtless, ruled well; and to Julius Caesar very little
scope for ruling was allowed after his battling was
done ; but to Augustus no higher praise can be
assigned than that he had the intelligence to see that
the temporary wellbeing of the citizens of Rome was
the best guarantee for his own security.
Early in life Caesar lifted himself to high position,
though he did so in the midst of dangers. It was the
wonder of those around him that Sulla did not mur-
der him when he was young, crush him while he
was yet, as it were, in his shell; but Sulla spared
him, and he rose apace. We are told that he became
priest of Jupiter at seventeen, and he was then already
a married man. He early trained himself as a public
orator, and amidst every danger espoused the popular
cause in Rome. He served his country in the East,-in
Bithynia, probably,–escaping, by doing so, the perils of
a residence in the city. He became Quaestor and then
A N T R O D UC TI O W. 13
AEdile, assisted by all the Marian party, as that party
would assist the rising man whom they regarded as
their future leader. He attacked and was attacked,
and was “indefatigable in harassing the aristo-
cracy,” ” who strove, but strove in vain, to crush
him. Though young, and addicted to all the
pleasures of youth, a trifler, as Sulla once called
him, he omitted to learn nothing that was neces-
sary for him to know as a chief of a great party
and a leader of great armies. When he was thirty-
seven he was made Pontifex Maximus, the official
chief of the priesthood of Rome, the office greatest
in honour of any in the city, although opposed by
the whole weight of the aristocracy, and although
Catulus was a candidate, who, of all that party, was
the highest not only in renown but in virtue. He
became Praetor the next year, though again he was
opposed by all the influence of those who feared him.
And, after his twelve months of office, he assumed
the government of Spain,_the province allotted to
him as Propraetor, in accordance with the usage of the
Republic, in the teeth of a decree of the Senate order-
ing him to remain in Rome. Here he gained his first
great military success, first made himself known to
his soldiery, and came back to Rome entitled to the
honour of a triumph.
But there was still another step on the ladder of the
State before he could assume the position which no
doubt he already saw before him. He must be Consul
before he could be the master of many legions, and in
* The words are taken from Dean Merivale's history.
14 C. Af, S.A. R.
order that he might sue in proper form for the consul-
ship, it was necessary that he should abandon his
Triumph. He could only triumph as holding the office
of General of the Republic's forces, and as General or
Imperator he could not enter the city. He abandoned
the Triumph, sued for his office in the common fashion,
and enabled the citizens to say that he preferred their
service to his personal honours. At the age of forty-one
he became Consul. It was during the struggle for the
consulship that the triumvirate was formed, of which
subsequent ages have heard so much, and of which
Bomans at the time heard probably so little. Pompey,
who had been the political child of Sulla, and had
been the hope of the patricians to whom he belonged,
had returned to Rome after various victories which he
had achieved as Proconsul in the East, had triumphed,
—and had ventured to recline on his honours, dis-
banding his army and taking to himself the credit of
subsiding into privacy. The times were too rough for
such honest duty, and Pompey found himself for a
while slighted by his party. Though he had thought
himself able to abandon power, he could not bear the
loss of it. It may be that he had conceived himself
able to rule the city by his influence without the aid
of his legions. Caesar tempted him, and they two with
Crassus, who was wanted for his wealth, formed the
first triumvirate. By such pact among themselves
they were to rule all Rome and all Rome's provinces;
but doubtless, by resolves within himself of which no
one knew, Caesar intended even then to grasp the do-
minion of the whole in his own hands. During the
I W T R O DUCTIO W. 15
years that followed,—the years in which Caesar was en.
ged in his Gallic wars, Pompey remained at Rome,
not indeed as Caesar's friend—for that hollow friend-
ship was brought to an end by the death of Julia,
Caesar's daughter, whom Pompey, though five years
Caesar's elder, had married—but in undecided rivalship
to the active man who in foreign wars was preparing
legions by which to win the Empire. Afterwards,
when Caesar, as we shall hear, had crossed the Rubicon,
their enmity was declared. It was natural that they
should be enemies. In middle life, Pompey, as we
have seen, had married Caesar's daughter, and Caesar's
second wife had been a Pompeia.” But when they
were young, and each was anxious to attach himself to
the politics of his own party, Pompey had married the
daughter-in-law of Sulla, and Caesar had married the
daughter of Cinna, who had almost been joined with
* She was that wife who was false with Clodius, and whom
Caesar divorced, declaring that Caesar's wife must not even be
suspected. He would not keep the false wife; neither would
he at that moment take part in the accusation against Clodius,
who was of his party, and against whom such accusation backed
by Caesar would have been fatal. The intrusion of the dema-
gogue into Caesar's house in the pursuit of Caesar's wife dur-
ing the mysteries of the Bona Dea became the subject of a trial
in Rome. The offence was terrible and was notorious. Clodius,
who was hated and feared by the patricians, was a favourite
with the popular party. The offender was at last brought to
trial, and was acquitted by venal judges. A word spoken by
the injured husband would have insured his condemnation,
but that word Caesar would not speak. His wife he could
divorce, but he would not jeopardise his power with his own
party by demanding the punishment of him who had debauched
her.
16 O AE SA R.
Marius in leading the popular party. Such having
been the connection they had made in their early lives, it
was natural that Pompey and Caesar should be enemies,
and that the union of those two with any other third
in a triumvirate should be but a hollow compromise,
planned and carried out only that time might be gained.
Caesar was now Consul, and from his consular chair
laughed to scorn the Senate and the aristocratic col-
league with whom he was joined,—Bibulus, of whom
we shall again hear in the Commentary on the civil
war. During his year of office he seems to have
ruled almost supreme and almost alone. The Senate
was forced to do his bidding, and Pompey, at any rate
for this year, was his ally. We already know that to
praetors and to consuls, after their year of office in the
city, were confided the government of the great pro-
vinces of the Republic, and that these officers while so
governing were called propraetors and proconsuls.
After his praetorship Caesar had gone for a year to
southern Spain, the province which had been assigned
to him, whence he came back triumphant, but not to
enjoy his Triumph. At the expiration of his consul-
ship the joint provinces of Cisalpine Gaul and Illy-
ricum were assigned to him, not for one year, but for
five years; and to these was added Transalpine Gaul,
by which grant dominion was given to him over all
that country which we now know as Northern Italy,
over Illyria to the east, and to the west aeross the
Alps, over the Roman province already established in
the south of France. This province, bounded on the
north by Lake Leman and the Swiss mountains, ran
I N T R O DUCTION. iſ
south to the Mediterranean, and to the west half
across the great neck of land which joins Spain to
the continent of Europe. This province of Trans-
alpine Gaul was already Roman, and to Caesar was
intrusted the task of defending this, and of defending
Rome itself, from the terrible valour of the Gauls.
That he might do this it was necessary that he should
collect his legions in that other Gaul which we now
know as the north of Italy.
It does not seem that there was any preconceived
idea that Caesar should reduce all Gallia beneath the
Boman yoke. Hitherto Rome had feared the Gauls,
and had been subject to their inroads. The Gauls in
former years had even made their way as invaders into
the very city, and had been bought out with a ransom.
They had spread themselves over Northern Italy, and
hence, when Northern Italy was conquered by Roman
arms, it became a province under the name of Cisalpine
Gaul. Then, during the hundred years which preceded
Caesar's wars, a province was gradually founded and
extended in the south of France, of which Marseilles
was the kernel. Massilia had been a colony of Greek
merchants, and was supported by the alliance of Rome.
Whither such alliance leads is known to all readers
of history. The Greek colony became a Roman town,
and the Roman province stretched itself around the
town. It was Caesar's duty, as governor of Transalpine
Gaul, to see that the poor province was not hurt by
those ravaging Gauls. How he performed that duty
he tells us in his first Commentary.
During the fourth year of his office, while Pompey
A. C. vol. iv. B
18 CAE SA. R.
and Crassus, his colleagues in the then existing trium-
virate, were consuls, his term of dominion over the
three provinces was prolonged by the addition of five
other years. But he did not see the end of the ten
years in that scene of action. Julia, his daughter,
had died, and his great rival was estranged from him.
The Senate had clamoured for his recall, and Pompey,
with doubtful words, had assented. A portion of his
army was demanded from him, was sent by him into Italy
in obedience to the Senate, and shortly afterwards was
placed under the command of Pompey. Then Caesar
found that the Italian side of the Alps was the more
convenient for his purposes, that the Hither or Cis-
alpine Gaul demanded his services, and that it would
be well for him to be near the Rubicon. The second
Commentary, in three books, ‘De Bello Civili,” giving
us his record of the civil war, tells us of his deeds and
fortunes for the next two years, the years B.C. 49 and
48. The continuation of his career as a general is
related in three other Commentaries, not by his own
hand, to which, as being beyond the scope of this
volume, only short allusion will be made. Then came
one year of power, full of glory, and, upon the whole,
well used; and after that there came the end, of which
the tale has been so often told, when he fell, stabbed
by friend and foe, at the foot of Pompey's pillar in
the Capitol.
It is only further necessary that a few words should
be added as to the character of Caesar's writings, -for
it is of his writings rather than of his career that it is
intended here to give some idea to those who have not
I W T R O DUCTIO AV. ' 19
an opportunity of reading them. Caesar's story can
hardly be told in this little volume, for it is the his-
tory of the world as the world then was. The word
which our author has chosen as a name for his work,-
and which now has become so well known as connected
with Caesar, that he who uses it seems to speak of Caesar,
—means, in Caesar's sense, a Memoir. Were it not for
Caesar, a “Commentary’ would be taken to signify that
which the critic had added, rather than the work which
the author had first produced. Caesar’s “Commentaries”
are memoirs written by himself, descriptive of his differ-
ent campaigns, in which he treats of himself in the third
person, and tells his story as it might have been told
`--—-----------~ ****T*** ********~...~...s., .... --...------ºr w=s+***** ****
by some accompanying scribeof secretary. This being
so, we are of course driven to inquiré"whether some
acgompanying scribe or secretary may not in truth have
done the work. And there is doubtless one great argu-
ment which must be powerful with us all towards the
adoption of such a surmise. The amount of work which
Caesar had on hand, not only in regard to his campaigns,
but in the conduct of his political career, was so great
as to have overtasked any brain without the addition of
literary labour. Surely no man was ever so worked;
for the doctrine of the division of labour did not pre-
vail then in great affairs as it does now. Caesar was not
only a general; he was also an engineer, an astrono-
mer, an orator, a poet, a high priest—to whom, as such,
though himself, as we are told, a disbeliever in the gods
of Olympus, the intricate and complicated system of
Roman worship was a necessary knowledge. And he
was a politician, of whom it may be said that, though
*** *
20 CAE SA. R.
he was intimately acquainted with the ferocity of op-
position, he knew nothing of its comparative leisure.
We have had busy statesmen writing books, two prime
ministers translating Homer, another writing novels, a
fourth known as a historian, a dramatist, and a bio-
grapher. But they did not lead armies as well as the
Houses of Parliament, and they were occasionally blessed
by the opportunities of comparative political retirement
which opposition affords. From the beginning of the
Gallic war, Caesar was fighting in person every year but
one till he died. It was only by personal fighting that
he could obtain success. The reader of the following
pages will find that, with the solitary exception of the
siege of Marseilles, nothing great was done for him in
his absence. And he had to make his army as well as
to lead it. Legion by legion, he had to collect it as he
needed it, and to collect it by the force of his own char-
acter and of his own name. The abnormal plunder
with which it was necessary that his soldiers should be
allured to abnormal valour and toil had to be given as
though from his own hand. For every detail of the sol-
diers' work he was responsible ; and at the same time
it was incumbent on him so to manipulate his Roman
enemies at Rome, and, harder still than that, his Ro-
man friends,--that confusion and destruction should not
fall upon him as a politician. Thus weighted, could
he write his own Commentaries? There is reason to
believe that there was collected by him, no doubt with
the aid of his secretaries, a large body of notes which
were known as the Ephemerides of Caesar, jottings
down, as we may say, taken from day to day. Were
I W T R O DUCTION. 21
not the Commentaries which bear Caesar's name com-
posed from these notes by some learned and cunning
secretary 7
These notes have been the cause of much scholastic
wrath to some of the editors and critics. One learned
German, hotly arguing that Caesar wrote no Ephem-
erides, does allow that somebody must have written
down the measurements of the journeys, of the moun-
tains, and of the rivers, the numbers also of the cap-
tives and of the slaves.” “Not even I,” says he,
“not even do I believe that Caesar was able to keep
all these things simply in his memory.” Then he goes
on to assert that to the keeping of such notes any
scribe was equal; and that it was improbable that
Caesar could have found time for the keeping of notes
when absolutely in his tent. The indignation and
enthusiasm are comic, but the reasoning seems to
be good. The notes were probably collected under
Caesar's immediate eyes by his secretaries; but there
is ample evidence that the Commentaries themselves |
are Caesar's own work. They seem to have become
known at once to the learned Romans of the day; and
Cicero, who was probably the most learned, and cer-
tainly the best critic of the time, speaks of them with-
out any doubt as to their authorship. It was at once
known that the first seven books of the Gallic War
were written by Caesar, and that the eighth was not.
This seems to be conclusive. But in addition to this,
there is internal evidence. Caesar writes in the third
person, and is very careful to maintain that mode of
* Nipperdeius.
22 CAE S A. R.
expression. Dut he is not so careful but that on three
or four occasions he forgets himself, and speaks in the
first person. No other writer, writing for Caesar, would
have done so. And there are certain trifles in the
mode of telling the story, which must have been per-
sonal to the man. He writes of “ young” Crassus, and
“young” Brutus, as no scribe would have written ;
and he shows, first his own pride in obtaining a legion
from Pompey's friendship, and then his unmeasured
disgust when the Senate demand and obtain from him
that legion and another one, and when Pompey uses
them against himself, in a fashion which would go far
to prove the authenticity of each Commentary, were
any proof needed. But the assent of Caesar's contem-
poraries suffices for this without other evidence.
And it seems that they were written as the wars
were carried on, and that each was published at once.
Had it not been so, we could not understand that
Caesar should have begun the second Commentary
before he had finished the first. It seems that he
was hindered by the urgency of the Civil War from
writing what with him would have been the two
last böoks of the Gallic War, and therefore put the
completion of that work into the hands of his friend
Hirtius, who wrote the memoir of the two years in
one book. And Caesar's mode of speaking of men who
were at one time his friends and then his enemies,
shows that his first Commentary was completed and
out of hand before the other was written. Labienus,
who in the Gallic War was Caesar's most trusted lieu-
tenant, went over to the other side and served under
Pompey in the Civil War. He could not have failed
I W T R O D U C T TO AW. 23
to allude in some way to the desertion of Labienus,
in the first Commentary, had Labienus left him and
joined Pompey while the first Commentary was still
in his hands. -
His style was at once recognised by the great literary
critic of the day as being excellent for its intended
purpose. Caesar is manifestly not ambitious of liter-
x-r-
g e *~. ...~...~~~~<º:::::::::"12"::::::::::::::::: ~.1.”
ary distinction, but is āfixious to convey-to-his

readers a narrative of his own doings, which shall be
graphic, sugging, intelligible, and sufficiently well ex-
pressed to insure the attention of readers. Cicero, the
great critic, thus speaks of the Commentaries ; “Valde
quidam, inquam, probandos; nudi enim Sunt, recti, et
venusti, Omni ornatu orationis, tanquam veste, de-
tracto.” The passage is easily understood, but not
perhaps very easily translated into English. “I pro-
nounce them, indeed, to be very commendable, for
they are simple, straightforward, agreeable, with all
rhetorical ornament stripped from them, as a garment
is stripped.” This was written by Cicero while Caesar
was yet living, as the context shows. And Cicero
does not mean to imply that Caesar's writings are bald
or uncouth : the word “venusti” is evidence of
this. And again, speaking of Caesar's language,
Cicero says that Caesar spoke with more finished
choice of words than almost any other orator of the
day. And if he so spoke, he certainly so wrote, for
the great speeches of the Romans were all written
compositions. Montaigne says of Caesar: “I read this
author with somewhat more reverence and respect than
is usually allowed to human writings, one while con-
sidering him in his person, by his actions and miracu-
24 CAE S A. R.
lous greatness, and another in the purity and inimitable
polish of his language and style, wherein he not only
excels all other historians, as Cicero confesses, but per-
adventure even Cicero himself.” Cicero, however,
confesses nothing of the kind, and Montaigne is so far
wrong. Caesar was a great favourite with Montaigne,
who always speaks of his hero with glowing enthu-
siasm.
To us who love to make our language clear by the
number of words used, and who in writing rarely give
ourselves time for condensation, the closely-packed
style of Caesar is at first somewhat difficult of compre-
hension. It cannot be read otherwise than slowly
till the reader's mind is trained by practice to Caesarean
expressions, and then not with rapidity. Three or
four adjectives, or more probably participles, joined to
substantives in a sentence, are continually intended
to convey an amount of information for which, with
us, three or four other distinct sentences would be
used. It is almost impossible to give the meaning of
Caesar in English without using thrice as many words
as he uses. The same may be said of many Latin
writers, perhaps of all; so great was the Roman
tendency to condensation, and so great is ours to
dilution. But with Caesar, though every word means
much, there are often many words in the same sen-
tence, and the reader is soon compelled to acknowledge
that skipping is out of the question, and that quick
Teading is undesirable.
That which will most strike the ordinary English
reader in the narrative of Caesar is the cruelty of the
Romans,—cruelty of which Caesar himself is guilty to
J N T R O D U C TI O N. 25
a frightful extent, and of which he never expresses
horror. And yet among his contemporaries he achieved
a character for clemency which he has retained to the
present day. In describing the character of Caesar,
without reference to that of his contemporaries, it is
impossible not to declare him to have been terribly
cruel. From bloodthirstiness he slaughtered none ;
but neither from tenderness did he spare any. All
was done from policy; and when policy seemed to him
to demand blood, he could, without a scruple, as far
as we can judge, without a pang, order the destruction
of human beings, having no regard to number, sex, age,
innocence, or helplessness. Our only excuse for him
is that he was a Roman, and that Romans were indif.
ferent to blood. Suicide was with them the common
mode of avoiding otherwise inevitable misfortune, and
it was natural that men who made light of their own
lives should also make light of the lives of others.
Of all those with whose names the reader will become
acquainted in the following pages, hardly one or two
died in their beds. Caesar and Pompey, the two
great ones, were murdered. Dumnorix, the AEduan,
was killed by Caesar's orders. Wercingetorix, the gal-
lantest of the Gauls, was kept alive for years that his
death might grace Caesar's Triumph. Ariovistus, the
German, escaped from Caesar, but we hear soon after
of his death, and that the Germans resented it. He
doubtless was killed by a Roman weapon. What
became of the hunted Ambiorix we do not know,
but his brother king Cativolcus poisoned himself with
the juice of yew-tree. Crassus, the partner of Caesar
and Pompey in the first triumvirate, was killed by
26 CAE S A. R.
the Parthians. Young Crassus, the son, Caesar's
officer in Gaul, had himself killed by his own men
that he might not fall into the hands of the Par-
thians, and his head was cut off and sent to his
father. Labienus fell at Munda, in the last civil
war in Spain. Quintus Cicero, Caesar's lieuten-
ant, and his greater brother, the orator, and his son,
perished in the proscriptions of the second trium-
virate. Titurius and Cotta were slaughtered with all
their army by Ambiorix. Afranius was killed by
Caesar's soldiers after the last battle in Africa. Petreius
was hacked to pieces in annicable contest by King
Juba. Varro indeed lived to be an old man, and to
write many books. Domitius, who defended Mar-
seilles for Pompey, was killed in the flight after Phar-
salia. Trebonius, who attacked Marseilles by land,
was killed by a son-in-law of Cicero at Smyrna. Of
Decimus Brutus, who attacked Marseilles by sea, one
Camillus cut off the head and sent it as a present to
Antony. Curio, who attempted to master the pro-
vince of Africa on behalf of Caesar, rushed amidst his
- enemy's swords and was slaughtered. King Juba,
who conquered him, failing to kill himself, had him-
self killed by a slave. Attius Varus, who had held
the province for Pompey, fell afterwards at Munda.
Marc Antony, Caesar's great lieutenant in the Pharsa-
lian wars, stabbed himself. Cassius Longinus, another
lieutenant under Caesar, was drowned. Scipio, Pom-
pey's partner in greatness at Pharsalia, destroyed him-
self in Africa. Bibulus, his chief admiral, pined to
death. Young Ptolemy, to whom Pompey fled, was
drowned in the Nile. The fate of his sister Cleopatra
I W T R O D U C TI O W. 27
is known to all the world. Pharnaces, Caesar's enemy
in Asia, fell in battle. Cato destroyed himself at Utica.
Pompey’s eldest son, Cnaeus, was caught wounded in
Spain and slaughtered. Sextus the younger was
killed some years afterwards by one of Antony's sol-
diers. Brutus and Cassius, the two great conspirators,
both committed suicide. But of these two we hear
little or nothing in the Commentaries; nor of Augustus
Caesar, who did contrive to live in spite of all the
bloodshed through which he had waded to the throne.
Among the whole number there are not above three, if
so many, who died fairly fighting in battle.
The above is a list of the names of men of mark,+
of warriors chiefly, of men who, with their eyes open,
knowing what was before them, went out to encounter
danger for certain purposes. The bloody catalogue is
so complete, so nearly comprises all whose names are
mentioned, that it strikes the reader with almost a
comic horror. But when we come to the slaughter of
whole towns, the devastation of country effected pur-
posely that men and women might starve, to the
abandonment of the old, the young, and the tender,
that they might perish on the hillsides, to the mutila-
tion of crowds of men, to the burning of cities told us
in a passing word, to the drowning of many thousands,
—mentioned as we should mention the destruction of
a brood of rats, the comedy is all over, and the heart
becomes sick. Then it is that we remember that the
coming of Christ has changed all things, and that men
now, though terrible things have been done since
Christ came to us, are not as men were in the days
of Caesar.
CHAPTER II.
FIRST BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL. —CAESAR DEIVES FIRST THE
SWISS AND THEN THE GERMANS OUT OF GAUL.—B.C. 58.
IT has been remarked in the preceding chapter
that Caesar does not appear to have received any
commission for the subjugation of Gaul when he took
military charge of his three provinces. The Gauls
were still feared in Rome, and it was his duty to see
that they did not make their way over the Alps into
the Roman territory. It was also his duty to protect
from invasion, and also from rebellion, that portion of
Gaul which had already been constituted a Roman
province, but in which the sympathies of the people
were still rather with their old brethren than with
their new masters. The experience, however, which
we have of great and encroaching empires tells us how
probable it is that the protection of that which the
strong already holds should lead to the grasping of
more, till at last all has been grasped. It is thus that
our own empire in India has grown. It was thus that
the Spanish empire grew in America. It is thus that
the empire of the United States is now growing. It
was thus that Prussia, driven, as we all remember, by
CAESAR’S PROBA BLE INTENTIONS. 29
the necessity of self-preservation, took Nassau the other
day, and Hanover and Holstein and Hesse. It was
thus that the wolf claimed all the river, not being able
to endure the encroaching lamb. The humane reader
of history execrates, as he reads, the cruel, all-absorb-
ing, ravenous wolf. But the philosophical reader per-
ceives that in this way, and in no other, is civilisation
carried into distant lands. The wolf, though he be
a ravenous wolf, brings with him energy and know-
ledge.
What may have been Caesar's own aspirations in
regard to Gaul, when the government of the provinces
was confided to him, we have no means of knowing.
We may surmise, indeed we feel that we know, that
he had a project in hand much greater to him, in his
view of its result, than could be the adding of any
new province to the Republic, let the territory added
loe as wide as all Gaul. He had seen enough of
Roman politics to know that real power in Rome could
only belong to a master of legions. Both Marius and
Sulla had prevailed in the city by means of the armies
which they had levied as the 'trusted generals of the
IRepublic. Pompey had had his army trained to
conquest in the East, and it had been expected that
he also would use it to the same end. He had been
magnanimous, or half-hearted, or imprudent, as critics
of his conduct might choose to judge him then and
may choose to judge him now, and on reaching Italy
from the East had disbanded his legions. As a con-
sequence, he was at that moment, when Caesar was
looking out into the future and preparing his own
30 THE WAR IN GA UIL. - FIRST BOOK.
career, fain to seek some influence in the city by join-
ing himself in a secret coupact with Caesar, his natural
enemy, and with Crassus. Caesar, seeing all this,
knowing how Marius and Sulla had succeeded and had
failed, seeing what had come of the magnanimity of
Pompey—resolved no doubt that, whatever might be
the wars in which they should be trained, he would
have trained legions at his command. When, there-
fore, he first found a cause for war, he was ready for
war. He had not been long proconsul before there
came a wicked lamb and drank at his stream.
In describing to us the way in which he conquered
lamb after lamb throughout the whole country which
he calls Gallia, he tells us almost nothing of himself.
Of his own political ideas, of his own ambition, even
of his doings in Italy through those winter months
which he generally passed on the Roman side of the
Alps, having left his army in winter quarters under
his lieutenants, he says but a very few words. His
record is simply the record of the campaigns; and
although he now and then speaks of the dignity of
the Republic, he hardly ever so far digresses from the
narrative as to give to the reader any idea of the
motives by which he is actuated. Once in these seven
memoirs of seven years’ battling in Gaul, and once
only, does he refer to a motive absolutely personal to
himself. When he succeeded in slaughtering a fourth
of the emigrating Swiss, which was his first military
success in Gaul, he tells us that he had then revenged
an injury to himself as well as an injury to the Re-
public, because the grandfather of his father-in-law
THE MANNER OF CAESAR'S NARRATIVE, 31
had in former wars been killed by the very tribe which
he had just destroyed
It is to be observed, also, that he does not intention-
ally speak in the first person, and that when he does so
it is in some passage of no moment, in which the person-
ality is accidental and altogether trivial. He does not
speak of “I” and “me,” but of Caesar, as though he,
Caesar, who wrote the Commentary, were not the
Caesar of whom he is writing. Not unfrequently he
speaks strongly in praise of himself; but as there is
no humility in his tone, so also is there no pride, even
when he praises himself. He never seems to boast,
though he tells us of his own exploits as he does of those
of his generals and centurions. Without any diffi-
dence he informs us now and again how, at the end
of this or that campaign, a “supplication,” or public
festival and thanksgiving for his victories, was decreed
in Rome, on the hearing of the news, to last for fifteen
or twenty days, as the case might be.
Of his difficulties at home, the political difficulties
with which he had to contend,--he says never a word.
And yet at times they must have been very harassing.
We hear from other sources that during these wars in
Gaul his conduct was violently reprobated in Rome,
in that he had, with the utmost cruelty, attacked and
crushed states supposed to be in amity with Rome, and
that it was once even proposed to give him up to the
enemy as a punishment for grievous treachery to the
enemy. Had it been so resolved by the Roman Senate,
—had such a law been enacted,—the power to carry
out the law would have been wanted. It was easier
32 THE WAR IN GA UIL. — r"XRST BOOK.
… ."
to grant a “supplication” for twenty days than to stop
his career after his legions had come to know him.
Nor is there very much said by Caesar of his strategic
difficulties; though now and then, especially when
his ships are being knocked about on the British
coast, and again when the iron of his heel has so
bruised the Gauls that they all turn against him in
one body under Vercingetorix, the reader is allowed to
see that he is pressed hard enough. But it is his rule
to tell the thing he means to do, the way he does it,
and the completeness of the result, in the fewest pos-
sible words. If any student of the literature of battles
would read first Caesar's seven books of the Gallic War,
and then Mr Kinglake's first four volumes of the
“Invasion of the Crimea,’ he would be able to com.
pare two most wonderful examples of the dexterous
use of words, in the former of which the narrative is
told with the utmost possible brevity, and in the latter
with almost the utmost possible prolixity. And yet
each narrative is equally clear, and each equally dis-
tinguished by so excellent an arrangement of words,
that the reader is forced to acknowledge that the story
is told to him by a great master.
In praising others, his lieutenants, his soldiers, and
occasionally his enemies, Caesar is often enthusiastic,
though the praise is conferred by a word or two, -is
given, perhaps, simply in an epithet added on for that
purpose to a sentence planned with a wholly different
purpose. Of blame he is very sparing; so much so,
that it almost seems that he looked upon certain
imperfections, in regard even to faith as well as valour
TIIE MA N.VER OF CAESAR'S NARRA TIVE, 33
or prudence, as necessary to humanity, and pardonable
because of their necessity. He can tell of the absolute
destruction of a legion through the folly and perhaps
cowardice of one of his lieutenants, without heaping a
word of reproach on the name of the unfortunate. He
can relate how a much-favoured tribe fell off from their
faith again and again without expressing anger at their
faithlessness, and can explain how they were, hardly
forgiven, but received again as friends,--because it
suited him so to treat them. But again he can tell us,
without apparently a quiver of the pen, how he could
devote to destruction a city with all its women and all
its children, so that other cities might know what
would come to them if they did not yield and obey,
and become vassals to the godlike hero in whose
hands Providence had placed their lives and their
possessions.
It appears that Caesar never failed to believe in
himself. He is far too simple in his language, and too
conscious of his own personal dignity, to assert that
he has never been worsted. But his very simplicity
seems to convey the assurance that such cannot ulti-
mately be the result of any campaign in which he is
engaged. He seems to imply that victory attends him
so certainly that it would be futile in any case to dis-
cuss its probability. He feared no one, and was there-
fore the cause of awe to others. He could face his
own legions when they would not obey his call to
arms, and reduce them to obedience by a word.
Lican, understanding his character well, says of him
that “he deserved to be feared, for he feared nothing;” \
A. C. vol. iv. C
34 THE WAR IN GA UL.—FIRST BOOK.
“meruitgue timeri Nil metuens.” He writes of himself
as we might imagine some god would write who knew
that his divine purpose must of course prevail, and
who would therefore never be in the way of entertain-
ing a doubt. With Caesar there is always this godlike
simplicity, which makes his “Veni, vidi, vici,” the
natural expression of his mind as to his own mode of
action. The same thing is felt in the very numerous
but very brief records of the punishments which he in-
flicted. Cities are left desolate, as it were with a wave
of his hand, but he hardly deigns to say that his own
hand has even been waved. He tells us of one Acco
who had opposed him, that, “Graviore sententiá pro-
nunciatā,”—as though there had been some jury to
pronounce this severe sentence, which was in fact pro-
nounced only by himself, Caesar, he inflicted punish-
Inent on him “more majorum.” We learn from other
sources that this punishment consisted in being strip-
ped naked, confined by the neck in a cleft stick, and
then being flogged to death. In the next words, hav-
ing told us in half a sentence that he had made the
country too hot to hold the fugitive accomplices of the
tortured chief, he passes on into Italy with the majes-
tic step of one much too great to dwell long on these
small but disagreeable details. And we feel that he is
too great.
It has been already said that the great proconsular
wolf was not long in hearing that a lamb had come
down to drink of his stream. The Helvetii, or Swiss,
as we call them,--those tribes which lived on the Lake
Leman, and among the hills and valleys to the north
THE EMIGRATION OF THE HEL VETII. -35
of the lake, had made up their minds that they were
inhabiting but a poor sort of country, and that they
might considerably better themselves by leaving their
mountains and going out into some part of Gaul, in
which they might find themselves stronger than the
existing tribes, and might take possession of the fat of
the land. In doing so, their easiest way out of their
own country would lie by the Rhone, where it now
runs through Geneva into France. But in taking this
route the Swiss would be obliged to pass over a corner
of the Roman province. Here was a case of the lamb
troubling the waters with a vengeance. When this
was told to Caesar, that these Swiss intended, “facere
iter per Provinciam nostram ”—“to do their travelling
through our Province,”—he hurried over the Alps into
Gaul, and came to Geneva as fast as he could travel.
He begins his first book by a geographical definition
of Gaul, which no doubt was hardly accurate, but
which gives us a singularly clear idea of that which
Caesar desired to convey. In speaking of Gallia he
intends to signify the whole country from the outflow
of the Rhine into the ocean down to the Pyrenees,
and then eastward to the Rhone, to the Swiss moun-
tains, and the borders of the Roman Province. This
he divides into three parts, telling us that the Belgians
inhabited the part north of the Seine and Marne, the
people of Aquitania the part south of the Garonne, and
the Gauls or Celts the intermediate territory. Having
SQ far described the scene of his action, he rushes off
at once to the dreadful sin of the Swiss emigrants in
desiring to pass through “our Province.”
36 THE WAR IN GA UJ.—FIRST BOOK.
He has but one legion in Further Gaul,--that is,
in the Roman province on the further side of the
Alps from Rome ; and therefore, when ambassadors
come to him from the Swiss, asking permission to
go through the corner of land, and promising that
they will do no harm in their passage, he tem-
porises with them. He can’t give them an answer
just then, but must think of it. They must come
back to him by a certain day,+when he will have
more soldiers ready. Of course he refuses. The
Swiss make some slight attempt, but soon give that
matter up in despair. There is another way by which
they can get out of their mountains,—through the
territory of a people called Sequani; and for doing this
they obtain leave. But Caesar knows how injurious
the Swiss lambs will be to him and his wolves, should
they succeed in getting round to the back of his Pro-
vince,—that Roman Province which left the name of
Provence in modern France till France refused to be
divided any longer into provinces. And he is, more-
over, invited by certain friends of the Roman Republic,
called the AEdui, to come and stop these rough Swiss
travellers. He is always willing to help the AEdui,
although these AEdui are a fickle, inconstant people,
and he is, above all things, willing to get to war. So
he comes upon the rear of the Swiss when three
portions of the people have passed the river Arar
(Saone), and one portion is still behind. This hinder-
most tribe, for the wretches were all of one tribe or
mountain canton, he sets upon and utterly destroys;
and on this occasion congratulates himself on having
THE EMIGRA TION OF THE HEI, VETII. 37
avenged himself upon the slayers of the grandfather
of his father-in-law.
There can be nothing more remarkable in history
than this story of the attempted emigration of the
Helvetii, which Caesar tells us without the expression
of any wonder. The whole people made up their
minds that, as their borders were narrow, their num-
bers increasing, and their courage good, they would go
forth, men, women, and children, -and seek other
homes. We read constantly of the emigrations of
people,_of the Northmen from the north covering the
Southern plains, of Danes and Jutes entering Britain,
of men from Scandinavia coming down across the
Rhine, and the like. We know that after this fashion
the world has become peopled. But we picture to
ourselves generally a concourse of warriors going forth
and leaving behind them homes and friends, to whom
they may or may not return. With these Swiss
Wanderers there was to be no return. All that they
could not take with them they destroyed, burning
their houses, and burning even their corn, so that
there should be no means of turning their steps back-
ward. They do make considerable progress, getting
as far into France as Autun, three-fourths of them
at least getting so far; but near this they are brought
to an engagement by Caesar, who outgenerals them
on a hill. The prestige of the Romans had not as yet
established itself in these parts, and the Swiss nearly
have the best of it. Caesar owns, as he does not own
again above once or twice, that the battle between
them was very long, and for long very doubtful. But
38 THE WAR IN GA UIL. — FIRST BOOK.
at last the poor Helvetii are driven in slaughter.
Caesar, however, is not content that they should
simply fly. He forces them back upon their old
territory, upon their burnt houses and devastated
fields,-lest certain Germans should come and live
there, and make themselves disagreeable. And they
go back;—so many, at least, go back as are not slain in
the adventure. With great attempt at accuracy, Caesar
tells us that 368,000 human beings went out on the
expedition, and that 110,000, or less than a third,
found their way back. Of those that perished, many
hecatombs had been offered up to the shade of his
father-in-law's grandfather.
Hereupon the Gauls begin to see how great a man
is Caesar. He tells us that no sooner was that war
with the Swiss finished than nearly all the tribes of
Gallia send to congratulate him. And one special
tribe, those AEdui, of whom we hear a great deal,
and whom we never like because they are thoroughly
anti-Gallican in all their doings till they think that
Caesar is really in trouble, and then they turn upon
him, have to beg of him a great favour. Two tribes,
—the AEdui, whose name seems to have left no trace
in France, and the Arverni, whom we still know in
Auvergne,—have been long contending for the upper
hand; whereupon the Arverni and their friends the
Sequani have called in the assistance of certain Ger-
mans from across the Rhine. It went badly then
with the AEdui. And now one of their kings, named
Divitiacus, implores the help of Caesar. Would Caesar
be kind enough to expel these horrid Germans, and
ARIO VISTUS A N D H IS GERMANS. 39
get back the hostages, and free them from a burden-
some dominion, and put things a little to rights?
And, indeed, not only were the AEdui suffering from
these Germans, and their king, Ariovistus; it is going
still worse with the Sequani, who had called them in.
In fact, Ariovistus was an intolerable nuisance to that
eastern portion of Gaul. Would Caesar be kind
enough to drive him out ! Caesar consents, and then
we are made to think of another little fable, of the
prayer which the horse made to the man for assistance
in his contest with the stag, and of the manner in
which the man got upon the horse, and never got
down again. Caesar was not slow to mount, and when
once in the saddle, certainly did not mean to leave it.
Caesar tells us his reasons for undertaking this com-
mission. The AEdui had often been called “brothers”
and “cousins” by the Roman Senate ; and it was not
fitting that men who had been so honoured should be
domineered over by Germans. And then, unless these
marauding Germans could be stopped, they would fall
into the habit of coming across the Rhine, and at
last might get into the Province, and by that route
into Italy itself. And Ariovistus himself was per-
sonally so arrogant a man that the thing must be made
to cease. So Caesar sends ambassadors to Ariovistus,
and invites the barbarian to a meeting. The barbarian
will not come to the meeting. If he wanted to see
the Roman, he would go to the Roman : if the Roman
wants to see him, the Roman may come to him. Such
is the reply of Ariovistus. Ambassadors pass between
them, and there is a good deal of argument, in which
40 THE WAR IV GA UIL. –FIRST BOOK.
the barbarian has the best of it. Caesar, with his god-
like simplicity, scorns not to give the barbarian the
benefit of his logic. Ariovistus reminds Caesar that
the Romans have been in the habit of governing the
tribes conquered by them after their fashion, without
interference from him, Ariovistus; and that the Ger-
mans claim and mean to exercise the same right. He
goes on to say that he is willing enough to live in
amity with the Romans; but will Caesar be kind
enough to remember that the Germans are a people
unconquered in war, trained to the use of arms,
and how hardy he might judge when he was told
that for fourteen years they had not slept under a roof?
In the mean time other Gauls were complaining, and
begging for assistance. The Treviri, people of the
country where Treves now stands, are being harassed
by the terrible yellow-haired Suevi, who at this time
seem to have possessed nearly the whole of Prussia as
it now exists on the further side of the Rhine, and
who had the same desire to come westward that the
IPrussians have evinced since. And a people called
the Harudes, from the Danube, are also harassing
the poor AEdui. Caesar, looking at these things, sees
that unless he is quick, the northern and southern
Germans may join their forces. He gets together his
commissariat, and flies at Ariovistus very quickly.
Throughout all his campaigns, Caesar, as did Napo-
leon afterwards, effected everything by celerity. He
preaches to us no sermon on the subject, favours us
with no disquisition as to the value of despatch in war,
but constantly tells us that he moved all his army
A RIO VISTUS AND HIS GERMAN.S. 41
“magnis itineribus”—by very rapid marches; that he
went on with his work night and day, and took pre-
cautions “magno opere,”—with much labour and all
his care, to be beforehand with the enemy. In this
instance Ariovistus tries to reach a certain town of the
poor Sequani, then called Vesontio, now known to us
as Besançon, the same name, but very much altered.
It consisted of a hill, or natural fortress, almost sur-
rounded by a river, or natural fosse. There is nothing,
says Caesar, so useful in a war as the possession of a
place thus naturally strong. Therefore he hurries on
and gets before Ariovistus, and occupies the town.
The reader already begins to feel that Caesar is des-
tined to divine success. The reader indeed knows
that beforehand, and expects nothing worse for Caesar
than hairbreadth escapes. But the Romans them
selves had not as yet the same confidence in him.
Tidings are brought to him at Vesontio that his men
are terribly afraid of the Germans. And so, no doubt,
they were. These Romans, though by the art of war
they had been made fine soldiers, though they had
been trained in the Eastern conquests and the Punic
wars, and invasions of all nations around them,-were
nevertheless, up to this day, greatly afraid even of the
Gauls. The coming of the Gauls into Italy had been
a source of terror to them ever since the days of
Brennus. And the Germans were worse than the
Gauls. The boast made by Ariovistus that his men
never slept beneath a roof was not vain or useless.
They were a horrid, hirsute, yellow-haired people, the
flashing aspect of whose eyes could hardly be endured
42 THE WAR IN GA UIL. — FIRST BOOK.
by an Italian. The fear is so great that the soldiers
“sometimes could not refrain even from tears; ”—
“neque interdum lacrimas tenere poterant.” When
we remember what these men became after they had
been a while with Caesar, their blubbering awe of the
Germans strikes us as almost comic. And we are re-
minded that the Italians of those days were, as they are
now, more prone to show the outward signs of emotion
than is thought to be decorous with men in more northern
climes. We can hardly realise the idea of soldiers cry-
ing from fear. Caesar is told by his centurions that so
great is this feeling, that the men will probably refuse
to take up their arms when called upon to go out and
fight ; whereupon he makes a speech to all his cap-
tains and lieutenants, full of boasting, full of scorn, full,
no doubt, of falsehood, but using a bit of truth when-
ever the truth could aid him. We know that among
other great gifts Caesar had the gift of persuasion.
Erom his tongue, also, as from Nestor's, could flow
“words sweeter than honey,”—or sharper than steel. At
any rate, if others will not follow him, his tenth legion,
he knows, will be true to him. He will go forth with
that one legion,--if necessary, with that legion of true
soldiers, and with no others. Though he had been at
his work but a short time, he already had his picked
men, his guards, his favourite regiments, his tenth
legion ; and he knew well how to use their superiority
and valour for the creation of those virtues in others.
Then Ariovistus sends ambassadors, and declares
that he now is willing to meet Caesar. Let them meet
on a certain plain, each bringing only his cavalry
A RIO VISTUS AAWD HIS GERMA N.S. 43
guard. Ariovistus suggests that foot-soldiers might
be dangerous, knowing that Caesar's foot-soldiers would
be Romans, and that his cavalry are Gauls. Caesar
agrees, but takes men out of his own tenth legion,
mounted on the horses of the less-trusted allies. The
accounts of these meetings, and the arguments which
we are told are used on this and that side, are very
interesting. We are bound to remember that Caesar
is telling the story for both sides, but we feel that he
tries to tell it fairly. Ariovistus had very little to say
to Caesar's demands, but a great deal to say about his
own exploits. The meeting, however, was broken up
by an attack made by the Germans on Caesar's mounted
guard, and Caesar retires,-not, however, before he
has explained to Ariovistus his grand idea of the pro-
tection due by Rome to her allies. Then Ariovistus
proposes another meeting, which Caesar declines to
attend, sending, however, certain ambassadors. Ario-
vistus at once throws the ambassadors into chains, and
then there is nothing for it but a fight.
The details of all these battles cannot be given
within our short limits, and there is nothing special
in this battle to tempt us to dwell upon it. Caesar
describes to us the way in which the German cavalry
and infantry fought together, the footmen advancing
from amidst the horsemen, and then returning for
protection. His own men fight well, and the Ger-
mans, in spite of their flashing eyes, are driven head-
long in a rout back to the Rhine. Ariovistus succeeds
in getting over the river and saving himself, but he
has to leave his two daughters behind, and his two
44 THE WAR IN GA UIL. — FIRST BOOK.
wives. The two wives and one of the daughters are
killed; the other daughter is taken prisoner. Caesar had
sent as one of his ambassadors to the German a certain
dear friend of his, who, as we heard before, was, with
his comrade, at once subjected to chains. In the flight
this ambassador is recovered. “Which thing, indeed,
gave Caesar not less satisfaction than the victory itself,
—in that he saw one of the honestest men of the Pro-
vince of Gaul, his own familiar friend and guest,
rescued from the hands of his enemies and restored to
him. Nor did Fortune diminish this gratification by
any calamity inflicted on the man. Thrice, as he him-
self told the tale, had it been decided by lot in his
own presence whether he should then be burned alive
or reserved for another time.” So Caesar tells the story,
and we like him for his enthusiasm, and are glad to hear
that the comrade ambassador also is brought back.
The yellow-haired Suevi, when they hear of all
this, desist from their invasion on the lower Rhine,
and hurry back into their own country, not without
misfortunes on the road. So great already is Caesar's
name, that tribes, acting as it were on his side, dare to
attack even the Suevi. Then, in his “Veni, vidi,
vici.” style, he tells us that, having in one summer
finished off two wars, he is able to put his army into
winter quarters even before the necessary time, so that
he himself may go into his other Gaul across the Alps,
—“ad conventus agendos,”— to hold some kind of
session or assizes for the government of his province,
and especially to collect more soldiers.
CHAPTER III.
SECOND BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL.—CAESAR SUBDUES
THE BELGIAN TRIBES.—B.C. 57.
THE man had got on the horse's back, but the horse had
various disagreeable enemies in attacking whom the
man might be very useful, and the horse was therefore
not as yet anxious to unseat his rider. Would Caesar
be so good as to go and conquer the Belgian tribes'
Caesar is not slow in finding reasons for so doing.
The Belgians are conspiring together against him.
They think that as all Gaul has been reduced, or
“pacified,” as Caesar calls it, the Roman conqueror will
certainly bring his valour to bear upon them, and that
they had better be ready. Caesar suggests that it
would no doubt be felt by them as a great grievance
that a Roman army should remain all the winter so
near to them. In this way, and governed by these
considerations, the Belgian lambs disturb the stream
very sadly, and the wolf has to look to it. He collects
two more legions, and, as soon as the earth brings
forth the food necessary for his increased number of
men and horses, he hurries off against these Belgian
tribes of Northern Gallia. Of these, one tribe, the
46 THE WAR IN GA UIL.—SECOWID BOOK.
Remi, immediately send word to him that they are
not wicked lambs like the others; they have not
touched the waters. All the other Belgians, say the
Bemi, and with them a parcel of Germans, are in a con-
spiracy together. Even their very next-door neighbours,
their brothers and cousins, the Suessiones, are wicked ;
but they, the Remi, have steadily refused even to sniff
at the stream, which they acknowledge to be the
exclusive property of the good wolf. Would the wolf
be kind enough to come and take possession of them
and all their belongings, and allow them to be the
humblest of his friends? We come to hate these Remi,
as we do the AEdui; but they are wise in their genera-
tion, and escape much of the starvation and massa-
cring and utter ruin to which the other tribes are sub-
jected. Among almost all these so-called Belgian tribes
we find the modern names which are familiar to us.
Theims is in the old country of the Remi, Soissons in
that of the Suessiones. Beauvais represents the Bel-
lovaci, Amiens the Ambiani, Arras the Atrebates,
Treves the Treviri, as has been pointed out before.
Silva Arduenna is, of course, the Forest of Ardennes.
The campaign is commenced by an attack made by the
other Belgians on those unnatural Remi who have gone
over to the Romans. There is a town of theirs, Bibrax,
now known, or rather not known, as Bievre, and here
the Remi are besieged by their brethren. When
Bibrax is on the point of falling, and we can imagine
what would then have been the condition of the towns-
men, they send to Caesar, who is only eight miles
distant. Unless Caesar will help, they cannot endure
CAESA R REDUCES THE BELGIAN TRIBES. 47
any longer such onslaught as is made on them. Caesar,
having bided his time, of course sends help, and the
poor besieging Belgians fall into inextricable confusion.
They agree to go home, each to his own country, and
from thence to proceed to the defence of any tribe
which Caesar might attack. “So,” says Caesar, as he
ends the story of this little affair, “without any danger
on our part, our men killed as great a number of theirs
as the space of the day would admit.” When the sun
set, and not till then, came an end to the killing,
such having been the order of Caesar.
That these Belgians had really formed any intention
of attacking the Roman province, or even any Roman
ally, there is no other proof than that Caesar tells us
that they had all conspired. But whatever might be
their sin, or what the lack of sin on their part, he is
determined to go on with the war till he has subju-
gated them altogether. On the very next day he
attacks the Suessiones, and gets as far as Noviodunum,
—Noyons. The people there, when they see how ter-
rible are his engines of war, give up all idea of defend-
ing themselves, and ask for terms. The Bellovaci do
the same. At the instigation of his friends the Remi,
he spares the one city, and, to please the AEdui, the
other. But he takes away all their arms, and exacts
hostages. From the Bellowaci, because they have a
name as a powerful people, he takes 600 hostages.
Throughout all these wars it becomes a matter of
wonder to us what Caesar did with all these hostages,
and how he maintained them. It was, however, no
doubt clearly understood that they would be killed if
48 THE WAR IN GA UL.—SECOND BOOK.
the town, or state, or tribe by which they were given
should misbehave, or in any way thwart the great
conqueror.
The Ambiani come next, and the ancestors of our
intimate friends at Amiens soon give themselves up.
The next to them are the Nervii, a people far away to
the north, where Lille now is and a considerable por-
tion of Flanders. Of these Caesar had heard wonder-
ful travellers’ tales. They were a people who admitted
no dealers among them, being in this respect very un-
like their descendants, the Belgians of to-day ; they
drank no wine, and indulged in no luxuries, lest their
martial valour should be diminished. They send no
ambassadors to Caesar, and resolve to hold their own
if they can. They trust solely to infantry in battle,
and know nothing of horses. Against the cavalry of
other nations, however, they are wont to protect them-
selves by artificial hedges, which they make almost
as strong as walls. -
Cesar in attacking the Nervii had eight legions, and
he tells us how he advanced against them “consuetu-
dine suá,”—after his usual fashion. For some false in-
formation had been given to the Nervii on this subject,
which brought them into considerable trouble. He
sent on first his cavalry, then six legions, the legions
consisting solely of foot-soldiers; after these all the
baggage, commissariat, and burden of the army, com-
prising the materials necessary for sieges; and lastly,
the two other legions, which had been latest enrolled.
It may be as well to explain here that the legion in the
time of Caesar consisted on paper of six thousand heavy-
CAESAR REDUCES THE BELGIAN TRIBES. 49
armed foot-soldiers. There were ten cohorts in a legion,
and six centuries, or six hundred men, in each cohort.
It may possibly be that, as with our regiments, the
numbers were frequently not full. Eight full legions
would thus have formed an army consisting of 48,000
infantry. The exact number of men under his orders
Caesar does not mention here or elsewhere.
According to his own showing, Caesar is hurried into
a battle before he knows where he is. Caesar, he says,
had everything to do himself, all at the same time,
to unfurl the standard of battle, to give the signal with
the trumpet, to get back the soldiers from their work,
to call back some who had gone to a distance for stuff
to make a rampart, to draw up the army, to address the
men, and then to give the word. In that matter of
oratory, he only tells them to remember their old
valour. The enemy was so close upon them, and so
ready for fighting, that they could scarcely put on their
helmets and take their shields out of their cases. So
great was the confusion that the soldiers could not get
to their own ranks, but had to fight as they stood,
under any flag that was nearest to them. There were
so many things against them, and especially those thick
artificial hedges, which prevented them even from see-
ing, that it was impossible for them to fight according
to any method, and in consequence there were vicissi-
tudes of fortune. One is driven to feel that on this
occasion Caesar was caught napping. The Nervii did
at times and places seem to be getting the best of it.
The ninth and tenth legions pursue one tribe into a river,
and then they have to fight them again, and drive them
A. C. vol. iv. D
50 THE WAR IN GAUL.—SECOND BOOK.
out of the river. The eleventh and eighth, having put to
flight another tribe, are attacked on the very river-banks.
The twelfth and the seventh have their hands equally
full, when Boduognatus, the Nervian chief, makes his
way into the very middle of the Roman camp. So
great is the confusion that the Treviri, who had joined
Caesar on this occasion as allies, although reputed the
bravest of the cavalry of Gaul, run away home, and
declare that the Romans are conquered. Caesar, how-
ever, comes to the rescue, and saves his army on this
occasion by personal prowess. When he saw how it
was going,-“rem esse in angusto,”—how the thing
had got itself into the very narrowest neck of a diffi-
culty, he seizes a shield from a common soldier, having
come there himself with no shield,—and rushes into the
fight. When the soldiers saw him, and saw, too, that
what they did was done in his sight, they fought anew,
and the onslaught of the enemy was checked.
Perhaps readers will wish that they could know how
much of all this is exactly true. It reads as though it
were true. We cannot in these days understand how
one brave man at such a moment should be so much
more effective than another, how he should be known
personally to the soldiers of an army so large, how Caesar
should have known the names of the centurions,—for he
tells us that he addresses them by name ;-and yet it
reads like truth ; and the reader feels that as Caesar
would hardly condescend to boast, so neither would he
be constrained by any modern feeling of humility from
telling any truth of himself. It is as though Minerva
were to tell us of some descent which she made
CAESAR REDUCES THE BELGIAN TRIBES. 51
among the Trojans. The Nervii fight on, but of course
they are driven in flight. The nation is all but de-
stroyed, so that the very name can but hardly remain ;
—so at least we are told here, though we hear of them
again as a tribe by no means destroyed or powerless.
When out of six hundred senators there are but three
senators left, when from sixty thousand fighting men
the army has been reduced to scarcely five hundred,
Caesar throws the mantle of his mercy over the sur-
vivors. He allows them even to go and live in their
own homes, and forbids their neighbours to harass
them. There can be no doubt that Caesar nearly got
the worst of it in this struggle, and we may surmise
that he learned a lesson which was of service to him
in subsequent campaigns.
But there are still certain Aduatici to be disposed
of before the summer is over, people who had helped
the Nervii, who have a city of their own, and who
live somewhere in the present Namur district.” At
first they fight a little round the walls of their town ;
but when they see what terrible instruments Caesar
* These people were the descendants of those Cimbri who, half
a century before, had caused such woe to Rome ! The Cimbri, we
are told, had gone forth from their lands, and had been six times
victorious over Roman armies, taking possession of “our Pro-
vince,” and threatening Italy and Rome. The whole empire of
the Republic had been in danger, but was at last saved by the
courage, skill, and rapidity of Marius. In going forth from
their country they had left a remnant behind with such of their
possessions as they could not carry with them ; and these
Aduatici were the children and grandchildren of that remnant.
Caesar doubtless remembered it all.
52 THE WAR IN GA UL.—SECOND BOOK.
has, by means of which to get at them over their very
walls, how he can build up a great turret at a distance,
which, at that distance, is ludicrous to them, but which
he brings near to them, so that it overhangs them, from
which to harass them with arrows and stones, and
against which, so high is it, they have no defence—
then they send out and beg for mercy. Surely, they
say, Caesar and the Romans must have more than
human power. They will give up everything, if only
Caesar out of his mercy will leave to them their arms.
They are always at war with all their neighbours; and
where would they be without arms?
Caesar replies. Merits of their own they have none.
How could a tribe have merits against which Caesar
was at war'. Nevertheless, such being his custom, he
will admit them to some terms of grace if they sur-
render before his battering - ram has touched their
walls. But as for their arms, surely they must be
joking with him. Of course their arms must be sur-
rendered. What he had done for the Nervii he would
do for them. He would tell their neighbours not to
hurt them. They agree, and throw their arms into the
outside ditch of the town, but not quite all their arms.
A part, a third, are cunningly kept back; and when
Caesar enters the town, they who have kept their arms,
and others unarmed, try to escape from the town. They
fight, and some thousands are slain. Others are driven
back, and these are sold for slaves. Who, we wonder,
could have been the purchasers, and at what price on
that day was a man to be bought in the city of the
Aduatici?
CAESAR REDUCES THE BELGIAN TRIBES, 53
Then Caesar learns through his lieutenant, young
Crassus, the son of his colleague in the triumvirate, that
all the Belgian states, from the Scheldt to the Bay of
Biscay, have been reduced beneath the yoke of the
Roman people. The Germans, too, send ambassadors
to him, so convinced are they that to fight against him
is of no avail, so wonderful an idea of this last war
has pervaded all the tribes of barbarians. But Caesar
is in a hurry, and can hear no ambassadors now. He
wants to get into Italy, and they must come again to
him next summer.
For all which glorious doings a public thanksgiving
of fifteen days is decreed, as soon as the news is heard
in Rome.
CHAPTER IV.
THIRD BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL.— CAESAR SUBDUES
THE WESTERN TRIBES OF GAUL. —B.C. 56.
IN the first few lines of the third book we learn that
Caesar had an eye not only for conquest, but for the
advantages of conquest also. When he went into
Italy at the end of the last campaign, he sent one
Galba, whose descendant became emperor after Nero,
with the twelfth legion, to take up his winter quarters
in the upper valley of the Rhone, in order that an
easier traffic might be opened to traders passing over
the Alps in and out of Northern Italy. It seems that
the passage used was that of the Great St Bernard, and
Galba placed himself with his legion at that junction
of the valley which we all know so well as Martigny.
Here, however, he was attacked furiously in his camp
by the inhabitants of the valley, who probably objected
to being dictated to as to the amount of toll to be
charged upon the travelling traders, and was very nearly
destroyed. The Romans, however, at last, when they
had neither weapons nor food left for maintaining their
camp, resolved to cut their way through their enemies.
This they did so effectually that they slaughtered more
CAESAR MAKES LITTLE OF DIFFICULTIES. 55
than ten thousand men, and the other twenty thou-
sand of Swiss warriors all took to flight ! Nevertheless
Galba thought it as well to leave that inhospitable
region, in which it was almost impossible to find food
for the winter, and took himself down the valley and
along the lake to the Roman Province. He made his
winter-quarters among the Allobrogës, who belonged to
the Province,—a people living just south of the present
Lyons. How the Allobroges liked it we are not told,
but we know that they were then very faithful, al-
though in former days they had given great trouble.
Their position made faith to Rome almost a necessity.
Whether, in such a position, Caesar's lieutenants paid
their way, and bought their corn at market price, we
do not know. It was Caesar's rule, no doubt, to make
the country on which his army stood support his army.
When the number of men whom Caesar took with
him into countries hitherto unknown to him or his
army is considered, and the apparently reckless au-
dacity with which he did so, it must be acknowledged
that he himself says very little about his difficulties.
He must constantly have had armies for which to
provide twice as large as our Crimean army, probably
as large as the united force of the English and French
in the Crimea; and he certainly could not bring with
him what he wanted in ships. The road from Bala-
clava up to the heights over Sebastopol, we know, was
very bad ; but it was short. The road from the foot of
the Alps in the Roman province to the countries with
which we were dealing in the last chapter could not,
we should say, have been very good two thousand
56 THE JP A R IA GA UIL. — THIRD BOOK.
years ago, and it certainly was very long ;-nearly a
hundred miles for Caesar to every single one of those
that were so terrible to us in the Crimea. Caesar,
however, carried but little with him beyond his arms
and implements of war, and of those the heaviest he
no doubt made as he went. The men had an allow-
ance of corn per day, besides so much pay. We are
told that the pay before Caesar's time was 100 asses
a-month for the legionaries, the as being less than a
penny, and that this was doubled by Caesar. We
can conceive that the money troubled him compara-
tively slightly, but that the finding of the daily corn and
forage for so large a host of men and horses must have
been very difficult. He speaks of the difficulty often,
but never with that despair which was felt as to the
roasting of our coffee in the Crimea. We hear of his
waiting till forage should have grown, and sometimes
there are necessary considerations “de re frumentariá,”
—about that great general question of provisions; but
of crushing difficulties very little is said, and of bad
roads not a word. One great advantage Caesar certainly
had over Lord Raglan;–he was his own special cor-
respondent. Coffee his men certainly did not get; but
if their corn were not properly roasted for them, and if,
as would be natural, the men grumbled, he had with
him no licensed collector of grumbles to make public
the sufferings of his men. -
And now, when this affair of Galba's had been
finished,—when Caesar, as he tells us, really did think
that all Gaul was “pacatam,” tranquillised, or at least
subdued,—the Belgians gonquered, the Germans driven
CAESAR SUBDUES THE WESTERN TRIBES, 57
off, those Swiss fellows cut to pieces in the valley of
the Rhone ; when he thought that he might make a
short visit into that other province of his, Illyricum,
so that he might see what that was like, he is told
that another war has sprung up in Gaull Young
Crassus, with that necessity which of course was on him
of providing winter food for the seventh legion which
he had been ordered to take into Aquitania, has been
obliged to send out for corn into the neighbouring
countries. Of course a well-instructed young general,
such as was Crassus, had taken hostages before he sent
his men out among strange and wild barbarians. But
in spite of that, the Veneti, a maritime people of an-
cient Brittany, just in that country of the Morbihan
whither we now go to visit the works of the Druids at
Carnac and Locmariaker, absolutely detained his two
ambassadors;–so called afterwards, though in his first
mention of them Caesar names them as praefects and
tribunes of the soldiers. Vannes, the capital of the
department of the Morbihan, gives us a trace of the
name of this tribe. The Veneti, who were powerful
in ships, did not see why they should give their corn
to Crassus. Caesar, when he hears that ambassadors,
—sacred ambassadors;—have been, stopped, is filled
with shame and indignation, and hurries off himself to
look after the affair, having, as we may imagine, been
able to see very little of Illyricum.
This horror of Caesar in regard to his ambassadors,
in speaking of which he alludes to what the Gauls
themselves felt when they came to understand what a
thing they had done in making ambassadors prisoners,
58 THE WAR IN GA UIL.--THIRD BOOK.
—“legatos,”—a name that has always been held sacred
and inviolate among all nations,— is very great, and
makes him feel that he must really be in earnest. We
are reminded of the injunctions, printed in Spanish,
which the Spaniards distributed among the Indians of
the continent, in the countries now called Venezuela
and New Granada, explaining to the people, who knew
nothing of Spanish or of printing, how they were
bound to obey the orders of a distant king, who had
the authority of a more distant Pope, who again,_so
they claimed,—was delegated by a more distant God.
The pain of history consists in the injustice of the
Wolf towards the lamb, joined to the conviction that
thus, and no otherwise, could the lamb be brought to
better than a sheepish mode of existence But Caesar
was in earnest.” The following is a translation of the
tenth section of this book; “There were these diffi-
culties in carrying on the war which we have above
shown.”—He alludes to the maritime capacities of the
people whom he desires to conquer—“Many things,
nevertheless, urged Caesar on to this war;--the wrongs
of those Roman knights who had been detained, rebel-
lion set on foot after an agreed surrender,”—that any
* And Caesar was no doubt indignant as well as earnest,
though, perhaps, irrational in his indignation. We know how
Sacred was held to be the person of the Roman citizen, and
remember Cicero's patriotic declaration, “Facinus est vinciri
civem Romanum, -scelus verberari; ” and again, the words
which Horace puts into the mouth of Regulus when he asserts
that the Roman soldier must be lost for ever in his shame, and
useless, “Qui lora restrictis lacertis Sensit iners timuitgue
Inortem.”
CAESAR SUBDUES THE WESTERN TRIBES, 59
such surrender had been made we do not hear, though
we do hear, incidentally, that Crassus had taken hos-
tages;–“a falling off from alliance after hostages had
been given ; conspiracy among so many tribes; and
then this first consideration, that if this side of the
country were disregarded, the other tribes might learn
to think that they might take the same liberty. Then,
when he bethought himself that, as the Gauls were
prone to rebellion, and were quickly and easily excited
to war, and that all men, moreover, are fond of liberty
and hate a condition of subjection, he resolved that it
would be well, rather than that other states should
conspire,”—and to avoid the outbreak on behalf of free-
dom which might thus probably be made,-‘‘ that his
army should be divided, and scattered about more
widely.” Treating all Gaul as a chess-board, he sends
round to provide that the Treviri should be kept quiet.
Readers will remember how far Treves is distant from
the extremities of Brittany. The Belgians are to be
looked to, lest they should rise and come and help.
The Germans are to be prevented from crossing the
Rhine. Labienus, who, during the Gallic wars, was
Caesar's general highest in trust, is to see to all this.
Crassus is to go back into Aquitania and keep the south
Quiet. Titurius Sabinus, destined afterwards to a sad
end, is sent with three legions,—eighteen thousand men,
—among the neighbouring tribes of Northern Brittany
and Normandy. “Young’’ Decimus Brutus, Caesar
speaks of him with that kind affection which the epithet
conveys, and we remember, as we read, that this Brutus
appears afterwards in history as one of Caesar’s slayers,
60 THE WAR IN GA UL.—THIRD BOOK.
in conjunction with his greater namesake, young De-
cimus Brutus, the future conspirator in Roule, has con-
fided to him the fleet which is to destroy these much
less guilty distant conspirators, and Caesar himself takes
the command of his own legions on the spot. All this
is told in fewer words than are here used in describing
the telling, and the reader feels that he has to do with a
mighty man, whose eyes are everywhere, and of whom
an ordinary enemy would certainly say, Surely this is
no man, but a god.
He tells us how great was the effect of his own
presence on the shore, though the battle was carried
on under young Brutus at sea. “What remained of
the conflict,” he says, after describing their manoeuvres,
“depended on valour, in which our men were far away
the superior ; and this was more especially true be-
cause the affair was carried on so plainly in the sight
of Caesar and the whole army that no brave deed could
pass unobserved. For all the hills and upper lands,
from whence the view down upon the sea was close,
were covered by the army.”
Of course he conquers the Veneti and other sea-going
tribes, even on their own element. Whereupon they
give themselves and all their belongings up to Caesar.
Caesar, desirous that the rights of ambassadors shall
hereafter be better respected among barbarians, deter-
mines that he must use a little severity. “Gravius
vindicandum statuit; ”—“he resolved that the offence
should be expiated with more than ordinary punish-
ment.” Consequently, he kills all the senate, and sells
all the other men as slaves | The pithy brevity, the
CAESAR SUBDUES THE WESTERN TRIBES, 61
unapologetic dignity of the sentence, as he pronounced
it and tells it to us, is heartrending, but, at this dis-
tance of time, delightful also. “Itaque, omni senatu
necato, reliquos sub coroná vendidit; ”—“therefore,
all the senate having been slaughtered, he sold the
other citizens with chaplets on their heads; ”—it being
the Roman custom so to mark captives in war intended
for sale. We can see him as he waves his hand and
passes on. Surely he must be a god |
His generals in this campaign are equally successful.
One Viridovix, a Gaul up in the Normandy country,
somewhere about Avranches or St T.O., we may imagine,
—is entrapped into a fight, and destroyed with his
army. Aquitania surrenders herself to Crassus, after
much fighting, and gives up her arms.
Then Caesar reflects that the Morini and the Menapii
had as yet never bowed their heads to him. Boulogne
and Calais stand in the now well-known territory of
the Morini, but the Menapii lie a long way off, up
among the mouths of the Scheldt and the Rhine,—the
Low Countries of modern history, an uncomfortable
people then, who would rush into their woods and
marshes after a spell of fighting, and who seemed to
have no particular homes or cities that could be at-
tacked or destroyed. It was nearly the end of summer
just now, and the distance between, let us say, Vannes
in Brittany, and Breda, or even Antwerp, seems to us
to be considerable, when we remember the condition of
the country, and the size of Caesar's army. But he had
a few weeks to fill up, and then he might feel that all
Gaul had been “pacified.” At present there was this
62 THE WAR IN GA UIL. — THIR D BOOK.
haughty little northern corner. “Omni Galliá pacatá,
Morini Menapiique supererant ; ”—“all Gaul having
been pacified, the Morini and Menapii remained.” He
was, moreover, no doubt beginning to reflect that from
the Morini could be made the shortest journey into that
wild Ultima Thule of an island in which lived the
JBritanni. Caesar takes advantage of the few weeks, and
attacks these uncomfortable people. When they retreat
into the woods, he cuts the woods down. He does cut
down an immense quantity of wood, but the enemy only
recede into thicker and bigger woods. Bad weather
comes on, and the soldiers can no longer endure life in
their skin tents. Let us fancy these Italians encounter-
ing winter in undrained Flanders, with no walls or roofs
to protect them, and ordered to cut down interminable
woods ! Had a “Times’ been then written and filed, in-
stead of a “Commentary” from the hands of the General-
in-chief, we should probably have heard of a good deal
of suffering. As it is, we are only told that Caesar had
to give up his enterprise for that year. He therefore
burned all their villages, laid waste all their fields, and
then took his army down into a more comfortable re-
gion south of the Seine, and there put them into winter
quarters, not much to the comfort of the people there
residing.
CHAPTER W.
FOURTH BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL, -CAESAR CROSSES THE
RHINE, SLAUGHTERS THE GERMANS, AND GOES INTO
BRITAIN.—B.C. 55.
IN the next year certain Germans, Usipetes and others,
crossed the Rhine into Gaul, not far from the sea, as
Caesar tells us. He tells us again, that when he drove
the Germans back over the river, it was near the
confluence of the Meuse and the Rhine. When we
remember how diffiéult it was for Caesar to obtain
information, we must acknowledge that his geography
as to the passage of the Rhine out to the sea, and of
the junction of the Rhine and the Meuse by the Waal,
is wonderfully correct. The spot indicated as that at
which the Germans were driven into the river would
seem to be near Bommel in Holland, where the Waal
and the Meuse join their waters, at the head of the
island of Bommel, where Fort St André stands, or stood.”
* Caesar speaks of the confluence of the Rhine and the
“Mosa” as the spot at which he drove the Germans into the
river, and in various passages, speaking of the Mosa, clearly
means the Meuse. It appears, however, to be the opinion of
English scholars who have studied the topography of Caesar's
64 THE WAR IN GA UIL. — FOURTH BOOK.
Those wonderful Suevi, among whom the men
alternately fight and plough, year and year about,
caring more, however, for cattle than they do for corn,
who are socialists in regard to land, having no private
property in their fields,--who, all of them, from their
youth upwards, do just what they please,_large, bony
men, who wear, even in these cold regions, each simply
some scantymorselof skin covering, who bathein rivers
all the year through, who deal with traders only to sell
the spoils of war, who care but little for their horses,
and ride, when they do ride, without saddles, think-
ing nothing of men to whom such delicate appendages
are necessary, who drink no wine, and will have no
neighbours near them,-these ferocious Suevi have
driven other German tribes over the Rhine into Gaul.
Caesar, hearing this, is filled with apprehension. He
knows the weakness of his poor friends the Gauls,
how prone they are to gossiping, of what a restless tem-
per. It is in the country of the Menapii, the tribe with
which he did not quite finish his little affair in the last
chapter, that these Germans are settling ; and there is
no knowing what trouble the intruders may give him
if he allows them to make themselves at home on that
campaigns with much labour, that the confluence of the Moselle
and Rhine, from which Coblentz derives its name, is the spot
intended. Napoleon, who has hardly made himself an autho-
rity on the affairs of Caesar generally, but who is thought to be
an authority in regard to topography, holds to the opinion that
the site in Holland is intended to be described. Readers
who are anxious on the subject can choose between the two ;
but readers who are not anxious will probably be more numer-
OUIS.
CAESAR DRIVES THE GERMANS OUT OF GA U L. 65
side of the river. So he hurries off to give help to
the poor Menapii.
Of course there is a sending of ambassadors. The
Germans acknowledge that they have been turned out
of their own lands by their brethren, the Suevi, who
are better men than they are. But they profess that,
in fighting, the Suevi, and the Suevi only, are their
masters. Not even the immortal gods can stand
against the Suevi. But they also are Germans, and
are not at all afraid of the Romans. But in the pro-
position which they make they show some little awe.
Will Caesar allow them to remain where they are, or allot
to them some other region on that side of the Rhine?
Caesar tells them that they may go and live, if they
please, with the Ubii, another tribe of Germans who
occupy the Rhine country, probably where Cologne now
stands, or perhapsalittle north of it, and who seem already
to have been forced over the Rhine,—they, or some of
them,-and to have made good their footing somewhere
in the region in which Charlemagne built his church,
now called Aix-la-Chapelle. There they are, Germans
still, and probably are so because these Ubii made
good their footing. The Ubii also are in trouble with
the Suevi; and if these intruders will go and join the
Ubii, Caesar will make it all straight for them. The
intruders hesitate, but do not go, and at last attack
Caesar's cavalry, not without some success. During
this fight there is double treachery, first on the part
of the Germans, and then on Caesar's part, which is
chiefly memorable for the attack made on Caesar in
Rome. It was in consequence of the deceit here
A. C. vol. iv, E.
66 THE WAR IN GAUL.—FOURTH BOOK.
practised that it was proposed by his enemies in the
city that he should be given up by the Republic to
the foe. Had any such decree been passed, it would
not have been easy to give up Caesar.
The Germans are, of course, beaten, and they are
driven into the river on those low and then undrained
regions in which the Rhine and the Meuse and the
Waal confuse themselves and confuse travellers ;-
either here, or much higher up the river at Coblentz;
but the reader will already have settled that question
for himself at the beginning of the chapter. Caesar
speaks of these Germans as though they were all
drowned, - men, women, and children. They had
brought their entire families with them, and, when
the fighting went against them, with their entire
families they fled into the river. Caesar was pursuing
them after the battle, and they precipitated themselves
over the banks. There, overcome by fear, fatigue, and
the waters, they perished. There was computed to
be a hundred and eighty thousand of them who were
destroyed ; but the Roman army was safe to a man.*
Then Caesar made up his mind to cross the river.
It seems that he had no intention of extending the
empire of the Republic into what he called Germany,
but that he thought it necessary to frighten the Ger-
mans. The cavalry of those intruding Usipetes had,
luckily for them, been absent, foraging over the river ;
and he now sent to the Sigambri, among whom they
* “Hostium numerus capitum CDXXX millium fuisset,”
from which words we are led to suppose that there were 180,000
fighting men, besides the women and children.
CAESAR DRIVES THE GERMANS OUT OF GAUL. 67
had taken refuge, desiring that these horsemen should
be given up to him. But the Sigambri will not obey.
The Germans seem to have understood that Caesar had
Gaul in his hands, to do as he liked with it ; but they
grudged his interference beyond the Rhine. Caesar,
however, always managed to have a set of friends
among his enemies, to help him in adjusting his
enmities. We have heard of the AEdui in central
Gaul, and of the Remi in the north. The Ubii were
his German friends, who were probably at this time
occupying both banks of the river; and the Ubii ask
him just to come over and frighten their neighbours.
Caesar resolves upon gratifying them. And as it is not
consistent either with his safety or with his dignity to
cross the river in boats, he determines to build a bridge.
Is there a schoolboy in England, or one who has
been a schoolboy, at any Caesar-reading school, who
does not remember those memorable words, “Tigna
bina sesquipedalia,” with which Caesar begins his
graphic account of the building of the bridge When
the breadth of the river is considered, its rapidity, and
the difficulty which there must have been in finding
tools and materials for such a construction, in a country
so wild and so remote from Roman civilisation, the
creation of this bridge fills us with admiration for
Caesar's spirit and capacity. He drove down piles
into the bed of the river, two and two, prone against
the stream. We could do that now, though hardly as
quickly as Caesar did it; but we should want coffer-dams
and steam-pumps, patent rammers, and a clerk of the
works. He explains to us that he so built the foun-
68 THE WAR IN GA UL.—FOURTH BOOK.
dations that the very strength of the stream added to
their strength and consistency. In ten days the whole
thing was done, and the army carried over. Caesar
does not tell us at what suffering, or with the loss of
how many men. It is the simplicity of everything
which is so wonderful in these Commentaries. We
have read of works constructed by modern armies, and
of works which modern armies could not construct.
We remember the road up from Balaclava, and the
railway which was sent out from England. We know,
too, what are the aids and appliances with which science
has furnished us. But yet in no modern warfare do
the difficulties seem to have been so light, so little
worthy of mention, as they were to Caesar. He made
his bridge and took over his army, cavalry and all, in
ten days. There must have been difficulty and hard-
ship, and the drowning, we should fear, of many men;
but Caesar says nothing of all this.
Ambassadors immediately are sent. From the mo-
ment in which the bridge was begun, the Sigambri ran
away and hid themselves in the woods. Caesar burns
all their villages, cuts down all their corn, and travels
down into the country of the Ubii. He comforts them;
and tidings of his approach then reach those terrible
Suevi. They make ready for war on a grand scale ;
but Caesar, reflecting that he had not brought his army
over the river for the sake of fighting the Suevi, and
telling us that he had already done enough for honour
and for the good of the cause, took his army back
after eighteen days spent in the journey, and destroyed
his bridge.
CAESA R IN VA DES BRITA IAW. 69
Then comes a passage which makes a Briton vacil-
late between shame at his own ancient insignificance,
and anger at Caesar's misapprehension of his ancient
character. There were left of the fighting season after
Caesar came back across the Rhine just a few weeks;
and what can he do better with them than go over and
conquer Britannia! This first record of an invasion
upon us comes in at the fag-end of a chapter, and the
invasion was made simply to fill up the summer l No-
body, Caesar tells us, seemed to know anything about
the island; and yet it was the fact that in all his wars
with the Gauls, the Gauls were helped by men out of
Britain. Before he will face the danger with his army
he sends over a trusty messenger, to look about and
find out something as to the coasts and harbours. The
trusty messenger does not dare to disembark, but comes
back and tells Caesar what he has seen from his ship.
Caesar, in the mean time, has got together a great fleet
somewhere in the Boulogne and Calais country; and,
—so he says, messengers have come to him from
Britain, whither rumours of his purpose have already
flown, saying that they will submit themselves to the
Roman Republic. We may believe just as much of
that as we please. But he clearly thinks less of the
Boulogne and Calais people than he does even of the
IBritons, which is a comfort to us. When these peo-
ple, then called Morini, came to him, asking pardon
for having dared to oppose him once before, and offer-
ing any number of hostages, and saying that they had
been led on by bad advice, Caesar admitted them into
some degree of grace; not wishing, as he tells us, to be
70 THE WAR IN GA UL.–FOURTH BOOK.
kept out of Britain by the consideration of such very
small affairs. “Neque has tantularum rerum occupa-
tiones sibi Britanniae anteponendas judicabat.” We
hope that the Boulogne and Calais people understand
and appreciate the phrase. Having taken plenty of
hostages, he determines to trust the Boulogne and
Calais people, and prepares his ships for passing the
Channel. He starts nearly at the third watch,-about
midnight, we may presume. A portion of his army, L
the cavalry, encounter some little delay, such as has
often occurred on the same spot since, even to travel-
lers without horses. He himself got over to the
I}ritish coast at about the fourth hour. This, at mid-
summer, would have been about a quarter past eight.
As it was now late in the summer, it may have been
nine o’clock in the morning when Caesar found him-
self under the cliffs of Kent, and saw our armed ances-
tors standing along all the hills ready to meet him.
He stayed at anchor, waiting for his ships, till about
two P.M. His cavalry did not get across till four days
afterwards. Having given his orders, and found a
fitting moment and a fitting spot, Caesar runs his ships
up upon the beach.
Caesar confesses to a good deal of difficulty in getting
ashore. When we know how very hard it is to ac-
complish the same feat, on the same coast, in these
days, with all the appliances of modern science to aid
us, and, as we must presume, with no real intention
on the part of the Cantii, or men of Kent, to oppose
our landing, we can quite sympathise with Caesar.
The ships were so big that they could not be brought
CAESAR IN VA DES BRITAIN. 71
into very shallow water. The Roman soldiers were
compelled to jump into the sea, heavily armed, and
there to fight with the waves and with the enemy.
But the Britons, having the use of all their limbs,
knowing the ground, standing either on the shore or
just running into the shallows, made the landing un-
easy enough. “Nostri,”—our men, says Caesar, with
all these things against them, were not all of them so
alert at fighting as was usual with them on dry ground;
—at which no one can be surprised.
Caesar had two kinds of ships—“naves longae,”
long ships for carrying soldiers; and “naves oner-
ariae,” ships for carrying burdens. The long ships
do not seem to have been such ships of war as the
Romans generally used in their sea-fights, but were
handier, and more easily worked, than the trans-
ports. These he laid broadside to the shore, and
harassed the poor natives with stones and arrows.
Then the eagle-bearer of the tenth legion jumped
into the sea, proclaiming that he, at any rate,
would do his duty. Unless they wished to see their
eagle fall into the hands of the enemy, they must
follow him. “Jump down, he said, my fellow-sol-
diers, unless you wish to betray your eagle to the
enemy. I at least will do my duty to the Republic
and to our General. When he had said this with a
loud voice, he threw himself out of the ship and
advanced the eagle against the enemy.” Seeing and
hearing this, the men Reaped forth freely, from that
ship and from others. As usual, there was some sharp
fighting. “Pugnatum est ab utrisque acriter.” It is
72 THE WAR IN GA UL.—-FOURTH BOOK.
nearly always the same thing. Caesar throws away
none of his glory by underrating his enemy. But
at length the Britons fly. “This thing only was
wanting to Caesar's usual good fortune,”—that he was
deficient in cavalry where with to ride on in pursuit,
and “take the island l’ Considering how very short
a time he remains in the island, we feel that his com-
plaint against fortune is hardly well founded. But
there is a general surrender, and a claiming of hos-
tages, and after a few days a sparkle of new hope in
the breasts of the Britons. A storm arises, and Caesar's
ships are so knocked about that he does not know how
he will get back to Gaul. He is troubled by a very
high tide, not understanding the nature of these tides.
As he had only intended this for a little tentative
trip, a mere taste of a future war with Britain, he had
brought no large supply of corn with him. He must
get back, by hook or by crook. The Britons, seeing
how it is with him, think that they can destroy him,
and make an attempt to do so. The seventh legion is
in great peril, having been sent out to find corn, but
is rescued. Certain of his ships, those which had been
most grievously handled by the storm, he breaks up,
in order that he may mend the others with their mate-
rials. When we think how long it takes us to mend
ships, having dockyards, and patent slips, and all
things ready, this is most marvellous to us. But he
does mend his ships, and while so doing he has a
second fight with the Britons, and again repulses them.
There is a burning and destroying of everything far
and wide, a gathering of ambassadors to Caesar asking
CAESAR IN VA DES BRITAIN. 73
for terms, a demand for hostages, a double number of
hostages now, whom Caesar desired to have sent over
to him to Gaul, because at this time of the year he did
not choose to trust them to ships that were unsea-
worthy; and he himself, with all his army, gets back
into the Boulogne and Calais country. Two trans-
ports only are missing, which are carried somewhat
lower down the coast. There are but three hundred
men in these transports, and these the Morini of those
parts threaten to kill unless they will give up their
arms. But Caesar sends help, and even these three
hundred are saved from disgrace. There is, of course,
more burning of houses and laying waste of fields be-
cause of this little attempt, and then Caesar puts his
army into winter quarters.
What would have been the difference to the world
if the Britons, as they surely might have done, had
destroyed Caesar and every Roman, and not left even a
ship to get back to Gaul? In lieu of this Caesar could
send news to Rome of these various victories, and have
a public thanksgiving decreed,—on this occasion for
twenty days.
CHAPTER WI.
FIFTH BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL.—CAESAR's SECOND INvAsſoN
OF BRITAIN.—THE GAULS RISE AGAINST HIM. —B.C. 54.
ON his return out of Britain, Caesar, as usual, went over
the Alps to look after his other provinces, and to
attend to his business in Italy; but he was determined
to make another raid upon the island. He could not
yet assume that he had “taken it,” and therefore he
left minute instructions with his generals as to the
building of more ships, and the repair of those which
had been so nearly destroyed. He sends to Spain, he
tells us, for the things necessary to equip his ships.
We never hear of any difficulty about money. We
know that he did obtain large grants from Rome for
the support of his legions; but no scruple was made
in making war maintain war, as far as such mainten-
ance could be obtained. Caesar personally was in an
extremity of debt when he commenced his campaigns.
He had borrowed an enormous sum, eight hundred
and thirty talents, or something over £200,000, from
Crassus, who was specially the rich Roman of those
days, before he could take charge of his Spanish pro-
vince. When his wars were over, he returned to Rome
CAESAR'S SECOND IN VASION OF BRITAIN. 75
with a great treasure; and indeed during these wars
in Gaul he expended large sums in bribing Romans.
We may suppose that he found hoards among the
barbarians, as Lord Clive did in the East Indies.
Clive contented himself with taking some : Caesar
probably took all.
Having given the order about his ships, he settled
a little matter in Illyricum, taking care to raise some
tribute there also. He allows but a dozen lines for
recording this winter work, and then tells us that he
hurried back to his army and his ships. His command
had been so well obeyed in regard to vessels, that he
finds ready, of that special sort which he had ordered
with one bank of oars only on each side, as many as
six hundred, and twenty-eight of the larger sort. He
gives his soldiers very great credit for their exertions,
and sends his fleet to the Portus Itius. The exact
spot which Caesar called by this name the geographers
have not identified, but it is supposed to be between
Boulogne and Calais. It may probably have been
at Wissant. Having seen that things were thus
ready for a second trip into Britain, he turns round
and hurries off with four legions and eight hundred
cavalry, an army of 25,000 men, into the Treves
country. There is a quarrel going on there be-
tween two chieftains which it is well that he should
settle, somewhat as the monkey settled the contest
about the oyster. This, however, is a mere nothing of
an affair, and he is back again among his ships at the
Portus Itius in a page and a half.
He resolves upon taking five legions of his own
76 THE WAR IN GA UL.—FIFTH BOOK.
soldiers into Britain, and two thousand mounted Gauls.
He had brought together four thousand of these horse-
men, collected from all Gaul, their chiefs and nobles,
not only as fighting allies, but as hostages that the
tribes should not rise in rebellion while his back was
turned. These he divides, taking half with him, and
leaving half with three legions of his own men, under
Labienus, in the Boulogne country, as a base to his
army, to look after the provisions, and to see that he
be not harassed on his return. There is a little
affair, however, with one of the Gaulish chieftains,
Dumnorix the AEduan, who ought to have been
his fastest friend. Dumnorix runs away with all the
AEduan horsemen. Caesar, however, sends after him
and has him killed, and then all things are ready.
He starts with altogether more than 800 ships at sun-
set, and comes over with a gentle south-west wind. He
arrives off the coast of Britain at about noon, but can
see none of the inhabitants on the cliff. He imagines
that they have all fled, frightened by the number of
his ships. Caesar establishes his camp, and proceeds
that same night about twelve miles into the country,
—eleven miles, we may say, as our mile is longer than
the Roman,—and there he finds the Britons. There is
some fighting, after which Caesar returns and fortifies
his camp. Then there comes a storm and knocks his
ships about terribly,–although he had found, as he
thought, a nice soft place for them. But the tempest
is very violent, and they are torn away from their
anchors, and thrust upon the shore, and dashed against
each other till there is infinite trouble. He is obliged
CAESA R'S SECOWD IN VASION OF BRITAIN. 77
to send over to Labienus, telling him to build more
ships; and those which are left he drags up over the
shore to his camp, in spite of the enormous labour re-
quired in doing it. He is ten days at this work, night
and day, and we may imagine that his soldiers had not
an easy time of it. When this has been done, he
advances again into the country after the enemy, and
finds that Cassivellaunus is in command of the united
forces of the different tribes. Cassivellaunus comes
from the other side of the Thames, over in Middlesex or
Hertfordshire. The Britons had not hitherto lived very
peaceably together, but now they agree that against the
Romans they will act in union under Cassivellaunus.
Caesar's description of the island is very interesting.
The interior is inhabited by natives, – or rather by
“aborigines.” Caesar states this at least as the tra-
dition of the country. But the maritime parts are
held by Belgian immigrants, who, for the most part,
have brought with them from the Continent the names
of their tribes. The population is great, and the houses,
built very like the houses in Gaul, are numerous and
very thick together. The Britons have a great deal of
cattle. They use money, having either copper coin or
iron rings of a great weight. Tin is found in the
middle of the island, and, about the coast, iron.
But the quantity of iron found is small. Brass they
import. They have the same timber as in Gaul, only
they have neither beech nor fir. Hares and chickens
and geese they think it wrong to eat; but they keep
these animals as pets. The climate, on the whole, is
milder than in Gaul. The island is triangular. One
78 THE WAR IAW GA UL.—FIFTH BOOK.
corner, that of Kent, has an eastern and a southern
aspect. This southern side of the island he makes
500 miles, exceeding the truth by about 150 miles.
Then Caesar becomes a little hazy in his geography, -
telling us that the other side, meaning the western
line of the triangle, where Ireland lies, verges towards
Spain. Ireland, he says, is half the size of Britain, and
about the same distance from it that Britain is from
Gaul. In the middle of the channel dividing Ireland
from Britain there is an island called Mona, the Isle
of Man. There are also some other islands which at
midwinter have thirty continuous days of night. Here
Caesar becomes not only hazy but mythic. But he
explains that he has seen nothing of this himself,
although he has ascertained, by scientific measurement,
that the nights in Britain are shorter than on the Con-
tinent. Of course the nights are shorter with us in
summer than they are in Italy, and longer in winter.
The western coast he makes out to be 700 miles long;
in saying which he is nearly 100 miles over the mark.
The third side he describes as looking towards the
north. He means the eastern coast. This he calls
800 miles long, and exaggerates our territories by more
than 200 miles. The marvel, however, is that he should
be so near the truth. The men of Kent are the most
civilised: indeed they are almost as good as Gauls in
this respect ' What changes does not time make in
the comparative merits of countries | The men in the
interior live on flesh and milk, and do not care for corn.
They wear skin clothing. They make themselves hor-
rible with woad, and go about with very long hair.
CAESAR'S SECOND IN VASION OF BRITAIW. 79
They shave close, except the head and upper lip.
Then comes the worst habit of all;-ten or a dozen
men have their wives in common between them.
We have a very vivid and by no means unflattering
account of the singular agility of our ancestors in their
mode of fighting from their chariots. “This,” says
Caesar, “is the nature of their chariot-fighting. They
first drive rapidly about the battle-field,—“per omnes
partes,”—and throw their darts, and frequently dis-
order the ranks by the very terror occasioned by the
horses and by the noise of the wheels; and when they
have made their way through the bodies of the cavalry,
they jump down and fight on foot. Then the charioteers
go a little out of the battle, and so place their chariots
that they may have a ready mode of returning should
their friends be pressed by the number of their enemies.
Thus they unite the rapidity of cavalry and the stabil-
ity of infantry; and so effective do they become by daily
use and practice, that they are accustomed to keep their
horses, excited as they are, on their legs on steep and
precipitous ground, and to manage and turn them very
quickly, and to run along the pole and stand upon the
yoke,”—by which the horses were held together at the
collars, “and again with the greatest rapidity to re-
turn to the chariot.” “ All which is very wonderful.
Of course there is a great deal of fighting, and the
* All well-instructed modern Britons have learned from the
old authorities that the Briton war-chariots were furnished with
Scythes attached to the axles, from Pomponius Mela, the Roman
geographer, and from Mrs Markham, among others. And Eugene
Sue, in his novel translated into English under the name of the
‘ Rival Races,’ explains how the Bretons on the other side of
80 THE WAR IN GA UL.–FIFTH BOOK.
Britons soon learn by experience to avoid general
engagements and maintain guerilla actions. Caesar by
degrees makes his way to the Thames, and with great
difficulty gets his army over it. He can only do this
at one place, and that badly. The site of this ford he
does not describe to us. It is supposed to have been
near the place which we now know as Sunbury. He
does tell us that his men were so deep in the water
that their heads only were above the stream. But
even thus they were so impetuous in their onslaught,
that the Britons would not wait for them on the
opposite bank, but ran away. Soon there come
unconditional surrender, and hostages, and promises
of tribute. Cassivellaunus, who is himself but a
usurper, and therefore has many enemies at home,
endeavours to make himself secure in a strong place or
town, which is supposed to have been on or near the site
of our St Albans. Caesar, however, explains that the
poor Britons give the name of a town, “oppidum,”
—to a spot in which they have merely surrounded
some thick woods with a ditch and rampart. Caesar,
of course, drives them out of their woodland fortress,
and then there quickly follows another surrender, more
hostages, and the demand for tribute. Caesar leaves
his orders behind him, as though to speak were to be
obeyed. One Mandubratius, and not Cassivellaunus,
the water, in the Morbihan, used these scythes; and how, before
a battle with Caesar's legions, the wives of the warriors arranged
the straps so that the scythes might be worked from the chariot
like oars from a boat. But Caesar says nothing of such scythes,
and Surely he would have done so had he seen them. The reader
must choose between Caesar's silence and the authority of Pom-
ponius Mela, Mrs Markham, and Eugene Sue.
CAESAR'S SECO.VD IN VASION OF BRITA IV. 81
is to be the future king in Middlesex and Hertford-
shire, that is, over the Trinobantes who live there.
He fixes the amount of tribute to be sent annually by
the Britons to Rome; and he especially leaves orders
that Cassivellaunus shall do no mischief to the young
Mandubratius. Then he crosses back into Gaul at two
trips, his ships taking half the army first and coming
back for the other half; and he piously observes that
though he had lost many ships when they were com-
paratively empty, hardly one had been destroyed while
his soldiers were in them.
So was ended Caesar's second and last invasion of
Britain. That he had reduced Britain as he had re-
duced Gaul he certainly could not boast 5–though
Quintus Cicero had written to his brother to say that
Dritannia was, - “confecta,”—finished. Though he
had twice landed his army under the white cliffs, and
twice taken it away with comparative security, he had
on both occasions been made to feel how terribly strong
an ally to the Britons was that channel which divided
them from the Continent. The reader is made to feel
that on both occasions the existence of his army and of
himself is in the greatest peril. Caesar's idea in attack-
ing Britain was probably rather that of making the
Gauls believe that his power could reach even beyond
them,-could extend itself-all-round—the —even into
distant islands, than of absolutely establishing the
Toman döminion beyond that distant sea. The Bri-
<sumed to give such help. Whether the orders which
A. C. vol. iv. F





82 THE WAR IN GAUL–FIFTH BOOK.
he left behind him were obeyed we do not know ;
but we may imagine that the tribute exacted was not
sent to Rome with great punctuality. In fact, Caesar
invaded the island twice, but did not reduce it.
On his return to Gaul, nearly at the close of the
summer, he found himself obliged to distribute his
army about the country because of a great scarcity of
provisions. There had been a drought, and the crops
had failed. Hitherto he had kept his army together
during the winter; now he was obliged to divide his
legions, placing one with one tribe, and another with
another. A legion and a half he stations under two of
his generals, L. Titurius Sabinus, and L. Aurunculeius
Cotta, among the Eburones, who live on the banks of the
Meuse in the Liege and Namur country, a very stout
people, who are still much averse to the dominion of
Tome. In this way he thought he might best get over
that difficulty as to the scarcity of provisions; but yet
he so well understood the danger of separating his
army, that he is careful to tell us that, with the excep-
tion of one legion which he had stationed in a very
quiet country, among the Essui, where Alençon now
stands,--they were all within a hundred miles of each
other. Nevertheless, in spite of this precaution, there
now fell upon Caesar the greatest calamity which he
had ever yet suffered in war.
During all these campaigns, the desire of the Gauls
to free themselves from the power and the tyranny of
Rome never ceased; nor did their intention to do so
ever fade away. Caesar must have been to them as a
venomous blight, or some evil divinity sent to afflict
them for causes which they could not understand.
IIA TRED OF THE GAULS TOWARDS CAESAR. 83
There were tribes who truckled to him, but he had no
real friends among them. If any Gauls could have
loved him, the AEdui should have done so ; but that
Dumnorix, the AEduan, who ran away with the horse-
men of his tribe when he was wanted to help in the
invasion of Britain, had, before he was killed, tried to
defend himself, asserting vociferously that he was a
free man and belonging to a free state. He had failed
to understand that, in being admitted to the alliance
of Caesar, he was bound to obey Caesar. Caesar speaks
of it all with his godlike simplicity, as though he saw
nothing ungodlike in the work he was doing. There
was no touch of remorse in him, as he ordered men to
be slaughtered and villages to be burned. He was
able to look at those things as trifles, as parts of a great
whole. He felt no more than does the gentleman who
sends the sheep out of his park to be slaughtered at
the appointed time. When he seems to be most cruel,
it is for the sake of example, that some politic result
may follow, that Gauls may know, and Italians know
also, that they must bow the knee to Caesar. But the
heart of the reader is made to bleed as he sees the
unavailing struggles of the tribes. One does not spe-
cially love the AEdui; but Dumnorix protesting that
he will not return, that he is a free man, of a free
state, and then being killed, is a man to be loved.
Among the Carnutes, where Chartres now stands,
Caesar has set up a pet king, one Tasgetius; but when
Caesar is away in Britain, the Carnutes kill Tasgetius.
They will have no pet of Caesar's. And now the stout
Eburones, who have two kings of their own over them,
Anibiotix and Cativolcus, understanding that Caesar's dif-
º
:
:
;
º
;
84. TII.E WAR IN GA UL.--FIFTH BOOK.
ficulty is their opportunity, attack the Roman camp, with
its legion and a half of men under Titurius and Cotta.
Ambiorix, the chieftain, is very crafty. He persuades
the Roman generals to send ambassadors to him, and
to these he tells his story. He himself, Ambiorix, loves
Caesar beyond all things. Has not Caesar done him great
kindnesses' He would not willingly lift a hand
against Caesar, but he cannot control his state. The
facts, however, are thus; an enormous body of Ger-
mans has crossed the Rhine, and is hurrying on to
destroy that Roman camp; and it certainly will be de-
stroyed, so great is the number of the Germans. Thus
says Ambiorix; and then suggests whether it would
not be well that Titurius and Cotta with their nine or
ten thousand men, a mere handful of men against all
these Germans who are already over the Rhine;—would
it not be well that the Romans should go and join
some of their brethren, either the legion that is among
the Nervii to the east, under Quintus Cicero, the
brother of the great orator—or that other legion which
Labienus has, a little to the south, on the borders of
the Remi and Treviriº And in regard to a good turn
on his own part, so great is the love and veneration
which he, Ambiorix, feels for Caesar, that he is quite
ready to see the Romans safe through the territories of
the Eburones. He begs Titurius and Cotta to think
of this, and to allow him to aid them in their escape
while escape is possible. The two Roman generals do
think of it. Titurius thinks that it will be well to take
the advice of Ambiorix. Cotta, and with him many
of the tribunes and centurions of the soldiers, think
that they should not stir without Caesar's orders;–
tº tº * * y
THE SUCCESS OF AMBIORIx. 85
think also that there is nothing baser or more foolish
in warfare than to act on advice given by an enemy.
Titurius, however, is clear for going, and Cotta, after
much argument and some invective, gives way. Early
On the next morning they all leave their camp, taking
with them their baggage, and marching forth as though
through a friendly country, apparently with belief in
the proffered friendship of Ambiorix. The Eburones
had of course prepared an ambush, and the Roman
army is attacked both behind and before, and is thrown
into utter confusion,
The legion, or legion and a half, with its two com-
manders, is altogether destroyed. Titurius goes out
from his ranks to meet Ambiorix, and pray for peace.
He is told to throw away his arms, and submitting to
the disgrace, casts them down. Then, while Ambiorix
is making a long speech, the Roman general is sur-
rounded and slaughtered. Cotta is killed fighting ;
as also are more than half the soldiers. The rest get
back into the camp at night, and then, despairing of
any safety, overwhelmed with disgrace, conscious that
there is no place for hope, they destroy theimselves.
Only a few have escaped during the fighting to tell the
tale in the camp of Labienus.
As a rule the reader's sympathies are with the Gauls ;
but we cannot help feeling a certain regret that a
Roman legion should have thas been wiled on to de-
struction through the weakness of its general. If
Titurius could have been made to suffer alone we should
bear it better. When we are told how the gallant
eagle-bearer, Petrosidius, throws his eagle into the ram-
part, and then dies fighting before the camp, we wish
86 THE WAR IN GA UL.—FIFTH BOOK.
that Ambiorix had been less successful. Of this, how-
ever, we feel quite certain, that there will come a day,
and that soon, in which Caesar will exact punishment.
Having done so much, Ambiorix and the Eburones :
do not desist. Now, if ever, after so great a disgrace,
and with legions still scattered, may Caesar be worsted.
Q. Cicero is with his legion among the Nervii, and
thither Ambiorix goes. The Nervii are quite ready,
and Cicero is attacked in his camp. And here, too,
for a long while it goes very badly with the Romans;–
so badly that Cicero is hardly able to hold his ramparts
against the attacks made upon them by the barbarians.
Red-hot balls of clay and hot arrows are thrown into
the camp, and there is a fire. The messengers sent to
Caesar for help are slain on the road, and the Romans
begin to think that there is hardly a chance for them
of escape. Unless Caesar be with them they are not safe.
All their power, their prestige, their certainty of con-
quest, lies in Caesar. Cicero behaves like a prudent
and a valiant man ; but unless he had at last succeeded
in getting a Gaulish slave to take a letter concealed in
a dart to Caesar, the enemy would have destroyed him.
There is a little episode of two Roman centurions,
Pulfius and Warenus, who were always quarrelling as to
which was the better man of the two. Pulfius with
much bravado rushes out among the enemy, and
Warenus follows him. Pulfius gets into trouble, and
Warenus rescues him. Then Warenus is in a difficulty,
and Pulfius comes to his assistance. According to all
chances of war, both should have been killed ; but
both get back safe into the camp —and nobody knows
from that day to this which was the better man,
THE DAVGER OF QUINTUS CICERO. 87
Caesar, of course, hastens to the assistance of his lieu-
tenant, having sent word of his coming by a letter
fastened to another dart, which, however, hardly
reaches Cicero in time to comfort him before he sees
the fires by which the coming legions wasted the
country along their line of march. Then there is
more fighting. Caesar conquers, and Q. Cicero is rescued
from his very disagreeable position. Labienus has
also been in difficulty, stationed, as we remember, on
the borders of the Treviri. The Treviri were quite
as eager to attack him as the Eburones and Nervii to
destroy the legions left in their territories. But before
the attack is made, the news of Caesar's victory, travel-
ling with wonderful speed, is heard of in those parts,
and the Treviri think it best to leave Labienus alone.
But Caesar has perceived that, although he has so
often boasted that all Gaul was at last at peace, all Gaul
is prepared to carry on the war against him. It is
during this winter that he seems to realize a conviction
that his presence in the country is not popular with the
Gauls in general, and that he has still much to do
before he can make them understand that they are not
free men, belonging to free states. The opposition to
him has become so general that he himself determines
to remain in Gaul all the winter; and even after tell-
ing us of the destruction of Indutionarus, the chief of
the Treviri, by Labienus, he can only boast that—“Caesar
had, after that was done, Gaul a little quieter,”—a
little more like a subject country bound hand and foot,
—than it was before. During this year Caesar's pro-
consular power over his provinces was extended for a
Second period of five years.
CHAPTER VII.
SIXTH BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL. —CAESAR PURSUES AMIBIORIX.
—THE MANNERS OF THE GAULS AND OF THE GERMANS ARE
CONTRASTED.—B.C. 53.
CAESAR begins the next campaign before the winter
is over, having, as we have seen, been forced to con-
tinue the last long after the winter had commenced.
The Gauls were learning to unite themselves, and
things were becoming very serious with him. One
Roman army, with probably ten thousand men, had
been absolutely destroyed, with its generals Titurius
Sabinus and Aurunculeius Cotta. Another under
Quintus Cicero would have suffered the same fate,
but for Caesar's happy intervention. A third under
Labienus had been attacked. All Gaul had been
under arms, or thinking of arms, in the autumn ; and
though Caesar had been able to report at the end of the
campaign that Gaul,—his Gaul, as he intended that it
should be, was a little quieter, nevertheless he under-
stood well that he still had his work to do before he
could enter upon possession. He had already been the
master of eight legions in Gaul, containing 48,000 foot-
Soldiers, levied on the Italian side of the Alps. He
CAESA R RECR UIT'S HIS ARMY. 89
had added to this a large body of Gaulish cavalry and
light infantry, over and above his eight legions. He
had now lost an entire legion and a half, besides
the gaps which must have been made in Britain,
and by the loss of those who had fallen when attacked
under Cicero by the Nervii. But he would show the
Gauls that when so treated he could begin again, not
only with renewed but with increased force. He would
astound them by his display of Roman power, “think-
ing that, for the future, it would greatly affect the opin-
ion of Gaul that the power of Italy should be seen to be
so great that, if any reverse in war were suffered, not
only could the injury be cured in a short time, but
that the loss could be repaired even by increased
forces.” He not only levies fresh troops, but borrows
a legion which Pompey commands outside the walls
of Rome. He tells us that Pompey yields his legion
to the “Republic and to Friendship.” The Triumvi-
rate was still existing, and Caesar's great colleague
probably felt that he had no alternative. In this way
Caesar not only re-established the legion which had
been annihilated, but completes the others, and takes
the field with two new legions added to his army. He
probably now had as many as eighty thousand men
under his command.
He first makes a raid against our old friends the
Nervii, who had nearly conquered Cicero before
Christmas, and who were already conspiring again
with certain German and neighbouring Belgian tribes.
The reader will perhaps remember that in the second
book this tribe was said to have been so utterly de-
90 THE WAR IN GA UL.—SIXTH BOOK.
stroyed that hardly their name remained. That, no
doubt, was Caesar's belief after the great slaughter.
There had been, however, enough of them left nearly
to destroy Q. Cicero and his legion. Then Caesar goes
to Paris, Lutetia Parisionum, of which we now hear
for the first time, and, with the help of his friends
the AEdui and the Remi, makes a peace with the
centre tribes of Gaul, the Senones and Carnutes.
Then he resolves upon attacking Ambiorix with all
his heart and soul. Ambiorix had destroyed his
legion and killed his two generals, and against
Ambiorix he must put forth all his force. It is
said that when Caesar first heard of that misfortune
he swore that he would not cut his hair or shave
himself till he was avenged. But he feels that he
must first dispose of those who would naturally be
the allies of this much-to-be-persecuted enemy. The
Menapii, with whom we may remember that he had
never quite settled matters in his former war, and
who live on the southern banks of the Meuse not far
from the sea, have not even yet sent to him messen-
gers to ask for peace. He burns their villages, takes
their cattle, makes slaves of the men, and then binds
them by hostages to have no friendship with Am-
biorix. In the mean time Labienus utterly defeats the
great north-eastern tribe, the Treviri, whom he cun-
ningly allures into fighting just before they are joined
by certain Germans who are coming to aid them.
“Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat.” These
unfortunate Gauls and Germans fall into every trap
that is laid for them, The speech which Caesar quotes
C.ESAR BUILDS A SECON D BRIDGE. 9]
as having been made by Labienus to his troops on
this occasion is memorable. “Now,” says Labienus,
“you have your opportunity. You have got your
enemy thoroughly at advantage. That valour which
you have so often displayed before the ‘Imperator,'
Caesar, display now under my command. Think that
Caesar is present, and that he beholds you.” To have
written thus of himself Caesar must have thought of
himself as of a god. He tells the story as though
it were quite natural that Labienus and the soldiers
should so regard him.
After this battle, in which the Treviri are of course
slaughtered, Caesar makes a second bridge over the
Rhine, somewhat above the spot at which he had
crossed before. He does this, he says, for two reasons,
—first, because the Germans had sent assistance to
the Nervii; and secondly, lest his great enemy Am-
biorix should find shelter among the Suevi. Then he
suggests that the opportunity is a good one for saying
something to his readers of the different manners of
Gaul and of Germany. Among the Gauls, in their
tribes, their villages, and even in their families, there
are ever two factions, so that one should always
balance the other, and neither become superior. Caesar
so tells us at this particular point of his narrative,
because he is anxious to go back and explain how it
was that he had taken the part of the AEdui, and had
first come into conflict with the Germans, driving
Ariovistus back across the Rhine for their sake. In
eastern Gaul two tribes had long balanced each other,
each, of course, striving for mastery, the AEdui and
92 THE WAR IN GA UL.—SIXTH BOOK.
the Sequani. The Sequani had called in the aid of
the Germans, and the AEdui had been very hardly
treated. In their sufferings they had appealed to
Rome, having had former relations of close amity with
the Republic. Divitiacus, their chief magistrate, the
brother of Dumnorix who was afterwards killed by
Caesar's order for running away with the AEduan
cavalry before the second invasion of Britain,_had
lived for a while in Rome, and had enjoyed Roman
friendships, that of Cicero among others. There was
a good deal of doubt in Rome as to what should be
done with these AEdui; but at last, as we know, Caesar
decided on taking their part ; and we know also how he
drove Ariovistus back into Germany, with the loss of
his wives and daughters. Thus it came to pass, Caesar
tells us, that the AEdui were accounted first of all the
Gauls in regard to friendship with Rome; while the
Remi, who came to his assistance so readily when the
Delgians were in arms against him, were allowed the
second place.
Among the Gauls there are, he says, two classes of
men held in honour, the Druids and the knights ; by
which we understand that two professions or modes of
life, and two only, were open to the nobility,+the priest-
hood and the army. All the common people, Caesar
says, are serfs, or little better. They do not hesitate,
when oppressed by debt or taxation, or the fear of
some powerful enemy, to give themselves into slavery,
loving the protection so obtained. The Druids have
the chief political authority, and can maintain it by
the dreadful power of excommunication. The excom-
MANAVERS OF THE GA ULS. - 93
municated wretch is an outlaw, beyond the pale of
civil rights. Over the Druids is one great Druid, at
whose death the place is filled by election among all
the Druids, unless there be one so conspicuously first
that no ceremony of election is needed. Their most
Sacred spot for worship is among the Carnutes, in the
middle of the country. Their discipline and mys-
teries came to them from Britain, and when any very
knotty point arises they go to Britain to make inquiry.
The Druids don't fight, and pay no taxes. The ambi-
tion to be a Druid is very great ; but then so is the
difficulty. Twenty years of tuition is not uncommonly
needed ; for everything has to be learned by heart. Of
their religious secrets nothing may be written. Their
great doctrine is the transmigration of souls; so that
men should believe that the soul never dies, and that
death, therefore, or that partial death which we see,
need not be feared. They are great also in astronomy,
geography, natural history, and general theology, of
COUll'S0.
The knights, or nobles, have no resource but to
fight. Caesar suggests that before the blessing of his
advent they were driven to the disagreeable necessity
of fighting yearly with each other. Of all people the
Gauls, he says, are the most given to superstition ; in
So much so, that in all dangers and difficulties they
have recourse to human sacrifices, in which the Druids
are their ministers. They burn their victims to
appease their deities, and, by preference, will burn
thieves and murderers, – the gods loving best such
polluted victims, but, in default of such, will have 4.
94. THE WAR IN GA UL.–SIXTH BOOK.
recourse to an immolation of innocents. Then Caesar
tells us that among the gods they chiefly worship
Mercury, whom they seem to have regarded as the
cleverest of the gods; but they also worship Apollo,
Mars, Jove, and Minerva, ascribing to them the attri-
butes which are allowed them by other nations. How
the worship of the Greek and Roman gods became
mingled with the religion of the Druids we are not
told, nor does Caesar express surprise that it should
have been so. Caesar gives the Roman names of
these gods, but he does not intend us to understand
that they were so called by the Gauls, who had their
own names for their deities. The trophies of war
they devote to Mars, and in many states keep large
stores of such consecrated spoils. Tt is not often
that a Gaul will commit the sacrilege of appropri-
ating to his own use anything thus made sacred ;
but the punishment of such offence, when it is com-
mitted, is death by torture. There is the greatest
veneration from sons to their fathers. Until the
son can bear arms he does not approach his father,
or even stand in public in his presence. The hus-
band's fortune is made to equal the wife's dowry, and
them the property is common between them. This
seems well enough, and the law would suit the views
of British wives of the present day. But the next
Gaulish custom is not so well worthy of example.
Husbands have the power of life and death over their
wives and children; and when any man of mark dies, if
there be cause for suspicion, his wives are examined
under torture, and if any evil practice be confessed, they
MAA WERS OF THE GERMA AWS. 95
are then tortured to death. We learn from this passage
that polygamy was allowed among the Gauls. The
Gauls have grand funerals. Things which have been
dear to the departed are burned at these ceremonies.
Animals were thus burned in Caesar's time, but in
former days slaves also, and dependants who had been
specially loved. The best-governed states are very
particular in not allowing rumours as to state affairs to
be made matter of public discussion. Anything heard
is to be told to the magistrate; but there is to be no
discussion on public affairs except in the public coun-
cil. So much we hear of the customs of the Gauls.
The Germans differ from the Gauls in many things.
They know nothing of Druids, nor do they care for
sacrifices. They worship only what they see and
enjoy, the sun, and fire, and the moon. They spend
their time in hunting and war, and care little for
agriculture. They live on milk, cheese, and flesh.
They are communists as to the soil, and stay no
longer than a year on the same land. These customs
they follow lest they should learn to prefer agriculture
to war; lest they should grow fond of broad posses-
sions, so that the rich should oppress the poor; lest
they should by too much comfort become afraid of
cold and heat ; lest the love of money should grow
among them, and one man should seek to be higher
than another. From all which it seems that the
Germans were not without advanced ideas in political
economy.
It is a great point with the Germans to have no
near neighbours. For the sake of safety and inde-
96 THE WAR IN GA UL.—SIXTH BOOK.
pendence, each tribe loves to have a wide margin. In
war the chieftains have power of life and death. In
time of peace there are no appointed magistrates, but
the chiefs in the cantons declare justice and quell
litigation as well as they can. Thieving in a neigh-
bouring state, not in his own, is honourable to a
German. Expeditions for thieving are formed, which
men may join or not as they please ; but woe betide
him who, having promised, fails. They are good to
travelling strangers. There was a time when the
Gauls were better men than the Germans, and could
come into Germany and take German land. Even
now, says Caesar, there are Gaulish tribes living in
Germany after German fashion. But the nearness of
the Province to Gaul has taught the Gauls luxury, and
so it has come to pass that the Gauls are not as good
in battle as they used to be. It is interesting to
gather from all these notices the progress of civilisa-
tion through the peoples of Europe, and some hint
as to what has been thought to be good and bad
for humanity by various races before the time of
Christ.
Caesar then tells us of a great Hercynian forest,
beginning from the north of Switzerland and stretch-
ing away to the Danube. A man in nine days would
traverse its breadth; but even in sixty days a man
could not get to the end of it lengthwise. We may
presume that the Black Forest was a portion of it. It
contains many singular beasts, bisons with one horn;
elks, which are like great stags, but which have no
joints in their legs, and cannot lie down, nor, if
CAESAR PURSUES AM BIORIX. 97
knocked down, can they get up,-which sleep leaning
against trees; but the trees sometimes break, and
then the elk falls and has a bad time of it. Then
there is the urus, almost as big as an elephant, which
spares neither man nor beast. It is a great thing to
kill a urus, but no one can tame them, even when
young. The Germans are fond of mounting the horns
of this animal with silver, and using them for drinking-
Cups.
Caesar does very little over among the Germans.
He comes back, partly destroys his bridge, and starts
again in search of Ambiorix. His lieutenant Basilus
nearly takes the poor hunted chieftain, but Ambiorix
escapes, and Caesar moralises about fortune. Ambi-
orix, the reader will remember, was joint-king over
the Eburones with one Cativolcus. Cativolcus, who is
old, finding how his people are harassed, curses his
brother king who has brought these sorrows on the
nation, and poisons himself with the juice of yew-
tree.
All the tribes in the Belgic country, Gauls as well
as Germans, were now very much harassed. They all
had helped, or might have helped, or, if left to them-
selves, might at some future time give help to Ambi-
orix and the Eburones. Caesar divides his army, but
still goes himself in quest of his victim into the damp,
uncomfortable countries near the mouths of the Scheldt
and Meuse. Here he is much distracted between his
burning desire to extirpate that race of wicked men
over whom Ambiorix had been king, and his anxiety
lest he should lose more of his own men in the work
A. C. vol. iv. G
98 TIIE WAR IN GA UL.-SIXTH BOOK.
than the wicked race is worth. He invites the neigh-
bouring Gauls to help him in the work, so that Gauls
should perish in those inhospitable regions rather than .
his own legionaries. This, however, is fixed in his
mind, that a tribe which has been guilty of so terrible
an offence,—which has destroyed in war an army of
his, just as he would have delighted to destroy a
Gaulish army, must be extirpated, so that its very
name may cease to exist “Pro tali facinore, stirps ac
nomen civitatis tollatur.”
Caesar, in dividing his army, had stationed Q.
Cicero with one legion and the heavy baggage and
spoils of the army, in a fortress exactly at that spot
from which Titurius Sabinus had been lured by the
craft of Ambiorix. Certain Germans, the Sigambri,
having learned that all the property of the Eburones
had been given up by Caesar as a prey to any who
would take it, had crossed the Rhine that they might
thus fill their hands. But it is suggested to them
that they may fill their hands much fuller by attack-
ing Q. Cicero in his camp; and they do attack him,
when the best part of his army is away looking for
provisions. That special spot in the territory of the
Eburones is again nearly fatal to a Roman legion.
But the Germans, not knowing how to press the
advantage they gain, return with their spoil across the
Rhine, and Caesar again comes up like a god. But he
has not as yet destroyed Ambiorix,−who indeed is
not taken at last,-and expresses his great disgust and
amazement that the coming of these Germans, which
was planned with the view of injuring Ambiorix,
A MEI() R.I.Y ESCAPES. 99
should have done instead so great a service to that
monstrously wicked chieftain.
He does his very best to catch Ambiorix in person,
offering great rewards and inducing his men to undergo
all manner of hardships in the pursuit. Ambiorix,
however, with three or four chosen followers, escapes
him. But Caesar is not without revenge. He burns
all the villages of the Eburones, and all their houses.
He so lays waste the country that even when his army
is gone not a soul should be able to live there. After
that he probably allowed himself to be shaved. Am-
biorix is seen here and is seen there, but with hair-
breadth chances eludes his pursuer. Caesar, having
thus failed, returns south, as winter approaches, to
Rheims, Durocortorum ; and just telling us in four
words how he had one Acco tortured to death because
Acco had headed a conspiracy in the middle of Gaul
among the Carnutes and Senones, and how he out-
lawed and banished others whom he could not catch,
he puts his legions into winter quarters, and again
goes back to Italy to hold assizes and look after his
interests amid the great affairs of the Republic.
:
:
i
**
t
º
;
CFIAPTER VIII.
SEVENTH BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL.—THE REVOLT
OF VERCINGETORIX.—B, C, 52.
IN opening his account of his seventh campaign Caesar
makes almost the only reference to the affairs of Rome
which we find in these memoirs. Clodius has been
murdered. We know, too, that Crassus had been killed
at the head of his army in the east, and that, at the death
of Clodius, Pompey had been created Dictator in the
city with the name of sole Consul. Caesar, however,
only mentions the murder of Clodius, and then goes on
to say that the Gauls, knowing how important to him
must be the affairs of Rome at this moment, think that
he cannot now attend to them, and that, in his absence,
they may shake off the Roman yoke. The affairs of
Rome must indeed have been important to Caesar, if,
as no doubt is true, he had already before his eyes a
settled course of action by which to make himself su-
preme in the Republic. Clodius, the demagogue, was
dead, whom he never could have loved, but whom it
had not suited him to treat as an enemy. Crassus, too,
was dead, whom, on account of his wealth, Caesar had
admitted as a colleague. Pompey, the third triumvir,
*
*
g
i
:
*
yº
THE REVOLT OF VERCINGETORIx. 101
remained at Rome, and was now sole Consul; Pom-
pey who, only twelve months since, had so fondly
given up his legion for the sake of the Republic,+and
for friendship. Caesar, no doubt, foresaw by this time
that the struggle must be at last between himself and
Pompey. The very forms of the old republican rule
were being turned adrift, and Caesar must have known,
as Pompey also knew, and Clodius had known, and
even Crassus, that a new power would become para-
mount in the city. But the hands to wrest such power
must be very strong. And the day had not yet quite
come. Having spent six summers in subduing Gaul,
Caesar would not lose the prestige, the power, the sup-
port, which such a territory, really subdued, would give
him. Things, doubtless, were important at Rome, but
it was still his most politic course to return over the
Alps and complete his work. Before the winter was
over he heard that the tribes were conspiring, because
it was thought that at such an emergency Caesar could
not leave Italy.
This last book of the Commentary, as written by
Caesar, tells the story of the gallant Vercingetorix, one
of the Arverni, the modern Auvergne,—whose father,
Celtillus, is said to have sought the chieftainship of all
Gaul, and to have been killed on that account by his
own state. Vercingetorix is certainly the hero of these
wars on the Gaulish side, though we hear nothing of
him till this seventh campaign. The conspiracy against
Rome is afloat, the Carnutes, whose chief town is Gena-
bum,--Orleans,—having commenced it. Vercingetorix
excites his own countrymen to join, but is expelled from
102 THE WAR IN GAUL.—SEVENTH BOOK.
their town, Gergovia, for the attempt. The Arverni, or
at least their chief men, fear to oppose the Romans;
but Vercingetorix obtains a crowd of followers out in
the country, and perseveres. Men of other tribes come
to him, from as far north as Paris, and west from the
Ocean. He assumes supreme power, and enacts and
carries out most severe laws for his guidance during the
war. For any greater offence he burns the offender
alive and subjects him to all kinds of torments. For
any small fault he cuts off a man's ears, pokes out one
of his eyes, and sends him home, that he may be an
example visible to all men. By threats of such pun-
ishment to those who do not join him, and by inflict-
ing such on those who do and are then untrue to him
or lukewarm, he gets together a great army. Caesar,
who is still in Italy, hears of all this, and having made
things comfortable with Pompey, hurries into the pro-
vince. He tells us of his great difficulty in joining
his army, of the necessity which is incumbent on him
of securing even the Roman Province from invasion,
and of the manner in which he breaks through snow-
clad mountains, the Cevennes, at a time of the year in
which such mountains were supposed to be impassable.
He is forced into fighting before the winter is over, be-
cause, unless he does so, the few friends he has in Gaul,
—the AEdui, for instance,—will have been gained over
by the enemy. This made it very difficult, Caesar tells
us, for him to know what to do ; but he decides that
he must begin his campaign, though it be winter still.
Caesar, moving his army about with wonderful quick-
less, takes three towns in the centre of Gaul, of which
THE FATE OF A WA RICUM. 103
Genabum, Orleans, is the first, and thus provides him-
self with food. Vercingetorix, when he hears of these
losses, greatly troubled in his mind that Caesar should
thus be enabled to exist on the provisions gathered by
the Gauls, determines to burn all the Gaulish towns in
those parts. He tells his people that there is nothing
else for them in their present emergency, and that they
must remember when they see their hearths smoking
and their property destroyed, that it would be, or ought
to be, much more grievous for them to know that their
wives and children would become slaves, as undoubt-
edly would be their fate, if Caesar were allowed to pre-
vail. The order is given. Twenty cities belonging to
one tribe are burned to the ground. The same thing
is done in other states. But there is one very beauti-
ful city, the glory of the country round, which can, they
say, be so easily defended that it will be a comfort
rather than a peril to them. Avaricum, the present
Pourges, must that also be burned 7 May not Ava-
ricum be spared Vercingetorix is all for burning
Avaricum as he has burned the others; but he allows
himself to be persuaded, and the city is spared—for the
time.
Caesar, of course, determines to take Avaricum ; but
he encounters great difficulties. The cattle have been
driven away. There is no corn. Those wretched
AEdui do almost nothing for him ; and the Boii, who
are their neighbours, and who, at the best, are but a
poor scanty people, are equally unserviceable. Some
days his army is absolutely without food ; but yet no
word of complaint is heard “unworthy of the majesty
104 THE WAR IN GA UL.—SEVENTH BOOK.
and former victories of the Roman people.” The sol-
diers even beg him to continue the siege when he offers
to raise it because of the hardships they are enduring.
Let them endure anything, they say, but failure
“Moreover Caesar, when he would accost his legions
one by one at their work, and would tell them that he
would raise the siege if they could but ill bear their
privations, was implored by all of them not to do that.
They said that for many years under his command they
had so well done their duty that they had undergone no
disgrace, had never quitted their ground leaving aught
unfinished,”—except the subjugation of Britain they
might perhaps have said, “that they would be now
disgraced if they should raise a siege which had been
commenced; that they would rather bear all hardships
than not avenge the Roman citizens who had perished
at Genabum by the perfidy of the Gauls.” Caesar puts
these words into the mouths of his legionaries, and
as we read them we believe that such was the existing
spirit of the men. Caesar's soldiers now had learned
better than to cry because they were afraid of their
enemies.
Then we hear that Wercingetorix is in trouble with
the Gauls. The Gauls, when they see the Romans so
near them, think that they are to be betrayed into
Caesar's hands, and they accuse their leader. But
Vercingetorix makes them a speech, and brings up cer-
tain Roman prisoners to give evidence as to the evil
condition of the Roman army. Vercingetorix swears
that these prisoners are soldiers from the Roman
legions, and so settles that little trouble ; but Caesar,
THE FATE OF A VARICUM. 105
defending his legionaries, asserts that the men so
used were simply slaves.
Vercingetorix is in his camp at some little distance
from Avaricum, while Caesar is determined to take the
city. We have the description of the siege, concise,
graphic, and clear. We are told of the nature of the
walls; how the Gauls were good at mining and
countermining; how they flung hot pitch and boiling
grease on the invaders; how this was kept up, one
Gaul after another stepping on to the body of his
dying comrade ; how at last they resolved to quit the
town and make their way by night to the camp of
Vercingetorix, but were stopped by the prayers of their
own women, who feared Caesar's mercies;–and how at
last the city was taken. We cannot but execrate
Caesar when he tells us coolly of the result. They
were all killed. The old, the women, and the chil-
dren, perished altogether, slaughtered by the Romans.
Out of forty thousand inhabitants, Caesar says that
about eight hundred got safely to Wercingetorix. Of
course we doubt the accuracy of Caesar's figures when
he tells us of the numbers of the Gauls; but we do not
doubt that but a few escaped, and that all but a few
were slaughtered. When, during the last campaign,
the Gauls at Genabum (Orleans) had determined on
revolt against Caesar, certain Roman traders—usurers
for the most part, who had there established them-
selves—were killed. Caesar gives this as the cause, and
sufficient cause, for the wholesale slaughter of women
and children | . One reflects that not otherwise, per-
haps, could he have conquered Gaul, and that Gaul
106 THE WAR IN GA UL.—SEVENTH BOOK.
had to be conquered ; but we cannot for the moment
but abhor the man capable of such work. Vercinget-
orix bears his loss bravely. He reminds the Gauls
that had they taken his advice the city would have
been destroyed by themselves and not defended; he
tells them that all the states of Gaul are now ready
to join him ; and he prepares to fortify a camp after
the Roman fashion. Hitherto the Gauls have fought
either from behind the walls of towns, or out in the
open country without other protection than that of
the woods and hills.
Then there is another episode with those unsatisfac-
tory AEdui. There is a quarrel among them who shall
be their chief magistrate,_a certain old man or a cer-
tain young man,—and they send to Caesar to settle the
question. Caesar's hands are very full ; but, as he
explains, it is essential to him that his allies shall be
kept in due subordinate order. He therefore absolutely
goes in person to one of their cities, and decides that
the young man shall be the chief magistrate. But,
as he seldom does anything for nothing, he begs that
ten thousand AEduan infantry and all the AEduan cav-
alry may be sent to help him against Vercingetorix.
The AEdui have no alternative but to comply. Their
compliance, however, is not altogether of a friendly
nature. The old man who has been put out of the
magistracy gets hold of the ZEduan general of the
forces; and the AEduan army takes the field,—to help,
not Caesar, but Vercingetorix There is a large amount
of lying and treachery among the AEdui, and of course
tidings of what is going on are carried to Caesar. Over
THE SIEGE OF GERGO VIA. 107
and over again these people deceive him, betray him,
and endeavour to injure his cause ; but he always for-
gives them, or pretends to forgive them. It is his
policy to show to the Gauls how great can be the
friendship and clemency of Caesar. If he would have
burned the AEdui and spared Bourges we should have
liked him better; but then, had he done so, he would
not have been Caesar. -
While Caesar is thus troubled with his allies, he has
trouble enough also with his enemies. Vercingetorix,
with his followers, after that terrible reverse at Avari-
cum,_Bourges, goes into his own country which we
know as Auvergne, and there encamps his army on a
high hill with a flat top, called Gergovia. All of us
who have visited Clermont have probably seen the
hill. Vercingetorix makes three camps for his army
on the hill, and the Arverni have a town there. The
Gaul has so placed himself that there shall be a river
not capable of being forded between himself and Caesar.
But the Roman general makes a bridge and sets him-
self down with his legions before Gergovia. The limits
of this little work do not admit of any detailed descrip-
tion of Caesar's battles; but perhaps there is none more
interesting than this siege. The three Gaulish camps
are taken. The women of Gergovia, thinking that
their town is taken also, leaning over the walls, implore
mercy from the Romans, and beg that they may not
be treated as have the women of Avaricum. Certain
leading Roman soldiers absolutely climb up into the
town. The reader also thinks that Caesar is to prevail,
as he always does prevail. But he is beaten back, and
108 THE WAR IN GA UL.—SEVENTH BOOK.
has to give it up. On this occasion the gallant
Wercingetorix is the master of the day, and Caesar
excuses himself by explaining how it was that his
legions were defeated through the rash courage of his
own men, and not by bad generalship of his own.
And it probably was so. The reader always feels in-
clined to believe the Commentary, even when he may
most dislike Caesar. Caesar again makes his bridge
over the river, the Allier, and retires into the territory
of his doubtful friends the AEdui. He tells us himself
that in that affair he lost 700 men and 46 officers.
It seems that at this time Caesar with his whole army
must have been in great danger of being destroyed by
the Gauls. Why Wercingetorix did not follow up his
victory and prevent Caesar from escaping over the Allier
is not explained. No doubt the requirements of war-
fare were not known to the Gaul as they were to the
Roman. As it was, Caesar had enough to do to save
his army. The AEdui, of course, turned against him
again. All his stores and treasure and baggage were
at Noviodunum,_Nevers, a town belonging to the
AEdui. These are seized by his allies, who destroy all
that they cannot carry away, and Caesar's army is in
danger of being starved. Everything has been eaten
up where he is, and the Loire, without bridges or fords,
was between him and a country where food was to be
found. He does cross the river, the AEdui having sup-
posed that it would be impossible. He finds a spot in
which his men can wade across with their shoulders
just above the waters. Bad as the spot is for fording,
in his great difficulty he makes the attempt and accom-
plishes it.
THE RE VOLT OF THE AEDUI. 109
Then there is an account of a battle which Labienus
is obliged to fight up near Paris. He has four legions
away with him there, and having heard of Caesar's mis-
fortune at Gergovia, knows how imperative it is that
he should join his chief. He fights his battle and
wins it, and Caesar tells the story quite as enthusias-
tically as though he himself had been the conqueror.
When this difficulty is overcome, Labienus comes
south and joins his Imperator.
The Gauls are still determined to drive Caesar out
of their country, and with this object call together a
great council at Bibracte, which was the chief town
of the AEdui. It was afterwards called Augustodu-
num, which has passed into the modern name Autun.
At this meeting, the AEdui, who, having been for some
years past bolstered up by Rome, think themselves
the first of all the Gauls, demand that the chief
authority in the revolt against Rome, now that they
have revolted, – shall be intrusted to them. An
AEduan chief, they think, should be the commander-
in-chief in this war against Rome. Who has done so
much for the revolt as the AEdui, who have thrown
over their friends the Romans,—now for about the
tenth time ! But Wercingetorix is unanimously elected,
and the AEduan chiefs are disgusted. Then there is an-
other battle. Vercingetorix thinks that he is strong
enough to attack the enemy as Caesar is going down
south towards the Province. Caesar, so says Wercinget-
Orix, is in fact retreating. And, indeed, it seems that
Caesar was retreating. But the Gauls are beaten and
fly, losing some three thousand of their men who are
slaughtered in the fight. Vercingetorix shuts him-
I 10 THE WAR IN GA UL.—SEVENTH BOOK.
self up in a town called Alesia, and Caesar prepares for
another siege.
The taking of Alesia is the last event told in Caesar's
Commentary on the Gallic War, and of all the stories
told, it is perhaps the most heartrending. Civilisation
was never forwarded in a fashion more terrible than that
which prevailed at this siege. Vercingetorix with his
whole army is forced into the town, and Caesar sur-
rounds it with ditches, works, lines, and ramparts, so
that no one shall be able to escape from it. Before this
is completed, and while there is yet a way open of leav-
ing the town, the Gaulish chief sends out horsemen,
who are to go to all the tribes of Gaul, and convene the
fighting men to that place, so that by their numbers
they may raise the siege and expel the Romans. We
find that these horsemen do as they are bidden, and
that a great Gaulish conference is held, at which it is
decided how many men shall be sent by each tribe.
Vercingetorix has been very touching in his demand
that all this shall be done quickly. He has food for
the town for thirty days. Probably it may be stretched
to last a little longer. Then, if the tribes are not true
to him, he and the eighty thousand souls he has with
him must perish. The horsemen make good their
escape from the town, and Vercingetorix, with his eighty
thousand hungry souls around him, prepares to wait.
It seems to us, when we think what must have been
the Gallia of those days, and when we remember how
far thirty days would now be for sufficing for such
a purpose, that the difficulties to be overcome were
insuperable. But Caesar says that the tribes did send
their men, each tribe sending the number demanded,
THE SIEGE OF A LESIA. 111
except the Bellovaciº-the men of Beauvais, -who
declared that they chose to wage war on their own
account ; but even they, out of kindness, lent two
thousand men. Caesar explains that even his own
'best friends among the Gauls, among whom was
one Commius, who had been very useful to him in
Britain, and whom he had made king over his own
tribe, the Atrebates, at this conjuncture of affairs
felt themselves bound to join the national move-
ment. This Commius had even begged for the two
thousand men of Beauvais. So great, says Caesar,
was the united desire of Gaul to recover Gallic liberty,
that they were deterred from coming by no memory of
benefits or of friendship. Eight thousand horsemen
and two hundred and forty thousand footmen assembled
themselves in the territories of the AEdui. Alesia was
north of the AEdui, amidst the Lingones. This enor-
mous army chose its generals, and marched off to
Alesia to relieve Wercingetorix.
But the thirty days were past, and more than past,
and the men and women in Alesia were starving. No
tidings ever had reached Alesia of the progress which
was being made in the gathering of their friends. It
had come to be very bad with them there. Some were
talking of unconditional surrender. Others proposed
to cut their way through the Roman lines. Then one
Critognatus had a suggestion to make, and Caesar
gives us the words of his speech. It has been com-
mon with the Greek and Latin historians to put
Speeches into the mouths of certain orators, adding
the words when the matter has come within either
their knowledge or belief. Caesar does not often
112 THE WAR IN GA UL.—SEVENTH BOOK.
thus risk his credibility; but on this occasion he does
so. We have the speech of Critognatus, word for
word. Of those who speak of surrender he thinks so
meanly that he will not notice them. As to that cut-
ting a way through the Roman lines, which means
death, he is of opinion that to endure misfortune is
greater than to die. Many a man can die who cannot
bravely live and suffer. Let them endure a little
longer. Why doubt the truth and constancy of the
tribes | Then he makes his suggestion. Let those
who can fight, and are thus useful,-eat those who are
useless and cannot fight; and thus live till the levies
of all Gaul shall have come to their succour! Those
who have authority in Alesia cannot quite bring them-
selves to this, but they do that which is horrible in
the next degree. They will turn out of the town all
the old, all the weak, and all the women. After that,
—if that will not suffice,—then they will begin to eat
each other. The town belongs, or did belong, to a
people called the Mandubii, not to Wercingetorix or
his tribe ; and the Mandubii, with their children and
women, are compelled to go out.
But whither shall they go Caesar has told us that
there was a margin of ground between his lines and
the city wall,—an enclosed space from which there
was no egress except into Caesar's camp or into the
besieged town. Here stand these weak ones, aged
men, women, and children, and implore Caesar to
receive them into his camp, so that they may pass out
into the open country. There they stood as suppli-
cants, on that narrow margin of ground between two
armies. Their own friends, having no food for them,
THE SIEGE OF A LESIA. 113
had expelled them from their own homes. Would
Caesar have mercy'ſ Caesar, with a wave of his hand,
declines to have mercy. He tells us what he himself
decides to do in eight words. “At Caesar, depositis
in vallo custodiis, recipi prohibebat.” “But Caesar,
having placed guards along the rampart, forbade that
they should be received.” We hear no more of them,
but we know that they perished
The collected forces of Gaul do at last come up
to attempt the rescue of Wercingetorix,−and indeed
they come in time ; were they able by coming to do
anything? They attack Caesar in his camp, and a great
battle is fought beneath the eyes of the men in Alesia.
|But Caesar is very careful that those who now are
hemmed up in the town shall not join themselves to
the Gauls who had spread over the country all around
him. We hear how during the battle Caesar comes up
himself, and is known by the colour of his cloak. We
again feel, as we read his account of the fighting, that
the Gauls nearly win, and that they ought to win.
But at last they are driven headlong in flight, all the
levies of all the tribes. The Romans kill very many :
were not the labour of killing too much for them, they
might kill all. A huge crowd, however, escapes, and
the men scatter themselves back into their tribes.
On the next day Wercingetorix yields himself and
the city to Caesar. During the late battle he and his
men shut up within the walls have been simply spec-
tators of the fighting. Caesar is sitting in his lines
before his camp ; and there the chieftains, with Ver-
cingetorix at their head, are brought up to him. Plu-
A. C. vol. iv. H
114 THE WAR IN GA UL.—SE VENTH BOOK.
tarch tells us a story of the chieftain riding up before
Caesar, to deliver himself, with gilt armour, on a grand
horse, caracolling and prancing. We cannot fancy that
any horse out of Alesia, could, after the siege, have
been fit for such holiday occasion. The horses out of
Vercingetorix's stables had probably been eaten many
days since. Then Caesar again forgives the AEdui; but
Vercingetorix is taken as a prisoner to Rome, is kept a
prisoner for six years, is then led in Caesar's Triumph,
and, after these six years, is destroyed, as a victim
needed for Caesar's glory, - that so honour may be
done to Caesar ! Caesar puts his army into winter quar-
ters, and determines to remain himself in Gaul during
the winter. When his account of these things reaches
Rome, a “supplication” of twenty days is decreed in
his honour.
This is the end of Caesar's Commentary.” De Bello
Gallico.” The war was carried on for two years more;
and a memoir of Caesar's doings during those two years,
—B.C. 51 and 50,—was written, after Caesar's manner,
by one Aulus Hirtius. There is no pretence on the
writer's part that this was the work of Caesar's hands,
as in a short preface he makes an author's apology for
venturing to continue what Caesar had begun. The
most memorable circumstance of Caesar's warfares told
in this record of two campaigns is the taking of Uxel-
lodunum, a town in the south-west of France, the site
of which is not now known. Caesar took the town by
cutting off the water, and then horribly mutilated the
inhabitants who had dared to defend their own hearths.
THE COMMENTARY CONTIVUED. 1.15
“Caesar,” says this historian, “knowing well that his
clemency was acknowledged by all men, and that he need
not fear that any punishment inflicted by him would
be attributed to the cruelty of his nature, perceiving
also that he could never know what might be the end
of his policy if such rebellions should continue to break
out, thought that other Gauls should be deterred by
the fear of punishment.” So he cut of the hands of all
those who had borne arms at Uxellodunum, and turned
the maimed wretches adrift upon the world ! And
his apologist adds, that he gave them life so that the
punishment of these wicked ones, who had fought
for their liberty,+might be the more manifest to the
world at largel This was perhaps the crowning act of
Caesar's cruelty, defended, as we see, by the character
he had achieved for clemency!
Soon after this Gaul was really subdued, and then
we hear the first preparatory notes of the coming
civil war. An attempt was made at Rome to ruin
Caesar in his absence. One of the consuls of the year,<
B.C. 51,–endeavoured to deprive him of the remainder
of the term of his proconsulship, and to debar him
from seeking the suffrages of the people for the consul-
ship in his absence. Two of his legions are also de-
manded from him, and are surrendered by him. The
order, indeed, is for one legion from him and one from
Pompeius; but he has had with him, as the reader will
remember, a legion borrowed from Pompeius;–and
thus in fact Caesar is called upon to give up two legions.
And he gives them up, not being as yet quite ready
to pass the Rubicon.
CHAPTFR IX.
FIRST BOOK OF THE CIVIL WAR.—CAESAR CROSSES THE RUBI-
CON.— FOLLOWS POMPEY TO BRUNDUSIUM. —AND CONQUERS
AFRANIUS IN SPAIN.—B.C. 49.
CESAR now gives us his history of that civil war in
which he and Pompey contended for the mastery over
Rome and the Republic. In his first Commentary he had
recorded his campaigns in Gaul, campaigns in which
he reduced tribes which were, if not hostile, at any rate
foreign, and by his success in which he carried on and
maintained the potency, traditions, and purport of the
Homan Republic. It was the ambition of the Roman
to be master of the known world. In his ideas no
more of the world was really known than had become
Roman, and any extension to the limits of this world
could only be made by the addition of so-called barbar-
ous tribes to the number of Roman subjects. In reduc-
ing Gaul, therefore, and in fighting with the Germans,
and in going over to Britain, Caesar was doing that which
all good Romans wished to see done, and was rivalling
in the West the great deeds which Pompey had accom-
plished for the Republic in the East. In his second
Commentary he is forced to deal with a subject which
must have been less gratifying to Roman readers. He
CORRUPTION IN ROME. 117
relates to us the victories which he won with Roman
legions over other legions equally Roman, and by which
he succeeded in destroying the liberty of the Republic.
It must be acknowledged on Caesar's behalf that
in truth liberty had fallen in Rome before Caesar's
time. Power had produced wealth, and wealth had
produced corruption. The tribes of Rome were
bought and sold at the various elections, and a few
great oligarchs, either of this faction or of that, divided
among themselves the places of trust and honour and
power, and did so with hands ever open for the grasp-
ing of public wealth. An honest man with clean
hands and a conscience, with scruples and a love of
country, became unfitted for public employment. Cato
in these days was simply ridiculous; and even
Cicero, though he was a trimmer, was too honest for
the times. Laws were wrested from their purposes, and
the very Tribunes” of the people had become the worst
of tyrants. It was necessary, perhaps, that there
should be a master;-so at least Caesar thought. He
had, no doubt, seen this necessity during all these
years of fighting in Gaul, and had resolved that he
would not be less than First in the new order of things.
So he crossed the Rubicon.
The reader of this second Commentary will find it
less alluring than the first. There is less in it of ad-
venture, less of new strange life, and less of that sound,
* The Tribunes of the people were officers elected annually to
act on behalf of the people as checks on the magistracy of the
Republic, and were endowed with vast powers, which they were
presumed to use for the protection of liberty. Bºt the office of
Tribune had become degr:ded to party purposes, as had every
other office of the state. - - -
118 THE CIVIL WAR.—FIRST BOOK.
healthy, joyous feeling which sprang from a thorough
conviction on Caesar's part that in crushing the Gauls
he was doing a thoroughly good thing. To us, and
our way of thinking, his doings in Gaul were stained
with terrible cruelty. To him and to his Romans they
were foul with no such stain. How other Roman con-
querors acted to other conquered peoples we may learn
from the fact, that Caesar obtained a character for great
mercy by his forbearance in Gaul. He always writes
as though he were free from any sting of conscience,
as he tells us of the. punishments which policy called
upon him to inflict. But as he writes of these civil
wars, there is an absence of this feeling of perfect self-
satisfaction, and at the same time he is much-less cruel.
Hecatombs of Gauls, whether men or women or chil-
dren, he could see burned or drowned or starved, mu-
tilated or tortured, without a shudder. He could give
the command for such operations with less remorse
than we feel when we order the destruction of a litter
of undesirable puppies. But he could not bring him-
self to slay Roman legionaries, even in fair fighting,
with anything like self-satisfaction. In this he was
either soft-hearted or had a more thorough feeling of
country than generals or soldiers who have fought in
civil contests since his time have shown. In the Wars
of the Roses and in those of Cromwell we recognise no
such feeling. The American generals were not so
restrained. But Caesar seems to have valued a Roman
legionary more than a tribe of Gauls.
Nevertheless he crossed the Rubicon. We have
all heard of this crossing of the Rubicon, but Caesar
says nothing about it. The Rubicon was a little
CAESAR CROSSES THE RUBICON. 119
river, now almost if not altogether unknown, running
into the Adriatic between Ravenna and Ariminum,_
Rimini, and dividing the provinces of so-called Cis-
alpine Gaul from the territory under the immediate
rule of the magistracy of Rome. Caesar was, so to
say, at home north of the Rubicon. He was in his
own province, and had all things under his command.
But he was forbidden by the laws even to enter the
territory of Rome proper while in the command of a
Roman province ; and therefore, in crossing the Rubi-
con, he disobeyed the laws, and put himself in opposition
to the constituted authorities of the city. It does not
appear, however, that very much was thought of this,
or that the passage of the river was in truth taken as
the special sign of Caesar's purpose, or as a deed that
was irrevocable in its consequences. There are vari-
ous pretty stories of Caesar's hesitation as he stood on
the brink of the river, doubting whether he would
plunge the world into civil war. We are told how a
spirit appeared to him and led him across the water
with martial music, and how Caesar, declaring that the
die was cast, went on and crossed the fatal stream.
But all this was fable, invented on Caesar's behalf by
Romans who came after Caesar. Caesar's purpose was,
no doubt, well understood when he brought one of
his legions down into that corner of his province, but
offers to treat with him on friendly terms were made
by Pompey and his party after he had established
himself on the Roman side of the river.
When the civil war began, Caesar had still, accord-
ing to the assignment made to him, two years and a
half left of his allotted period of government in the
120 THIE ("I WIL WA R.—FIRST BOOK.
three provinces; but his victories and his power had
been watched with anxious eyes from Rome, and the
Senate had attempted to decree that he should be
recalled. Pompey was no longer Caesar's friend, nor
did Caesar expect his friendship. Pompey, who had
lately played his cards but badly, and must have felt
that he had played them badly, had been freed from
his bondage to Caesar by the death of Crassus, the
third triumvir, by the death of Julia, Caesar's daugh-
ter, and by the course of things in Rome. It had
been an unnatural alliance arranged by Caesar with
the view of clipping his rival's wings. The fortunes
of Pompey had hitherto been so bright, that he also
had seemed to be divine. While still a boy, he had
commanded and conquered, women had adored him,
the soldiers had worshipped him. Sulla had called
him the Great ; and, as we are told, had raised his
hat to him in token of honour. He had been allowed
the glory of a Triumph while yet a youth, and had tri-
umphed a second time before he had reached middle
life. He had triumphed again a third time, and the
three Triumphs had been won in the three quarters of
the giobe. In all things he had been successful, and in
all things happy. He had driven the swarming pirates
from every harbour in the Mediterranean, and had
filled Rome with corn. He had returned a conqueror
with his legions from the East, and had dared to dis-
band them, that he might live again as a private citi-
zen. And after that, when it was thought necessary that
the city should be saved, in her need, from the factions
of her own citizens, he had been made sole consul.
It is easier now to understand the character of Pom-
Polyper's CHARACTEP 121
pey than the position which, by his unvaried suc-
•cesses, he had made for himself in the minds both of
the nobles and of the people. Even up to this time,
even after Caesar's wars in Gaul, there was something
of divinity hanging about Pompey, in which the
Romans of the city trusted. He had been imperious,
but calm in manner and self-possessed,—allowing no
one to be his equal, but not impatient in making
good his claims; grand, handsome, lavish when policy
required it, rapacious when much was needed, never
self-indulgent, heartless, false, cruel, politic, ambitious,
very brave, and a Roman to the backbone. But he
had this failing, this weakness;–when the time for
the last struggle came, he did not quite know what
it was that he desired to do; he did not clearly see
his future. The things to be done were so great, that
he had not ceased to doubt concerning them when the
moment came in which doubt was fatal. Caesar saw
it all, and never doubted. That little tale of Caesar
standing on the bridge over the Rubicon pondering as
to his future course, divided between obedience and
rebellion,--is very pretty. But there was no such
pondering, and no such division. Caesar knew very
well what he meant and what he wanted.
Caesar is full of his wrongs as he begins his second
narrative. He tells us how his own friends are
silenced in the Senate and in the city; how his ene-
mies, Scipio, Cato, and Lentulus the consul, prevail;
how no one is allowed to say a word for him. “Pom-
pey himself,” he says, “urged on by the enemies of
Caesar, and because he was unwilling that any one
should equal himself in honour, had turned himself
122 THE CIVIL WAR.—FIRST BOOK.
altogether from Caesar's friendship, and had gone back
to the fellowship of their common enemies, enemies.
whom he himself had created for Caesar during the
time of their alliance. At the same time, conscious of
the scandal of those two legions which he had stopped
on their destined road to Asia and Syria and taken into
his own hand, he was anxious that the question should
be referred to arms.” Those two legions are very griev-
ous to Caesar. One was the legion which, as we re-
member, Pompey had given up to friendship, and the
Republic. When, in the beginning of these contests
between the two rivals, the Senate had decided on
weakening each by demanding from each a legion,
Pompey had asked Caesar for the restitution of that
which he had so kindly lent. Caesar, too proud to
refuse payment of the debt, had sent that to his
former friend, and had also sent another legion, as de-
manded, to the Senate. They were required nominally
for service in the East, and now were in the hands
of him who had been Caesar's friend but had become
his enemy. It is no wonder that Caesar talks of the
infamy or scandal of the two legions ! He repeats
his complaint as to the two legions again and again.
In the month of January Caesar was at Ravenna,
just north of the Rubicon, and in his own province.
Messages pass between him and the Senate, and he
proposes his terms. The Senate also proposes its terms.
He must lay down his arms, or he will be esteemed an
enemy by the Republic. All Rome is disturbed. The
account is Caesar's account, but we imagine that Rome
was disturbed. “Soldiers are recruited over all Italy;
arms are demanded, taxes are levied on the municipal-
THE RUBICON IS PASSED. 123
ities, and money is taken from the sacred shrines; all
laws divine and human are disregarded.” Then Caesar
explains to his soldiers his wrongs, and the crimes of
Pompey. He tells them how they, under his guid-
ance, have been victorious, how under him they have
“pacified” all Gaul and Germany, and he calls upon
them to defend him who has enabled them to do such
great things. He has but one legion with him, but
that legion declares that it will obey him, him and
the tribunes of the people, some of whom, acting on
Caesar's side, have come over from Rome to Ravenna.
We can appreciate the spirit of this allusion to the
tribunes, so that there may seem to be still some link
between Caesar and the civic authorities. When the
soldiers have expressed their goodwill, he goes to
Ariminum, and so the Rubicon is passed.
There are still more messages. Caesar expresses
himself as greatly grieved that he should be subjected
to so much suspense, nevertheless he is willing to suffer
anything for the Republic;-“omnia pati reipublicae
causá.” Only let Pompey go to his province, let the
legions in and about Rome be disbanded, let all the
old forms of free government be restored, and panic
be abolished, and then, when that is done,—all diffi-
culties may be settled in a few minutes' talking. The
consuls and Pompey send back word that if Caesar
will go back into Gaul and dismiss his army, Pompey
shall go at once to Spain. But Pompey and the
consuls with their troops will not stir till Caesar shall
have given security for his departure. Each demands
that the other shall first abandon his position. Of
course all these messages mean nothing.
124 THE CIVIL WA R.— FIRST BOOK.
Caesar, complaining bitterly of injustice, sends a por.
tion of his small army still farther into the Roman
territory. Marc Antony goes to Arezzo with five
cohorts, and Caesar occupies three other cities with a
cohort each. The marvel is that he was not attacked
and driven back by Pompey. We may probably con-
clude that the soldiers, though under the command
of Pompey, were not trustworthy as against Caesar.
As Caesar regrets his two legions, so no doubt do the
two legions regret their commander. At any rate, the
consular forces with Pompey and the consuls and a
host of senators retreat Southwards to Brundusium,_
Brindisi, intending to leave Italy by the port which
we shall all use before long when we go eastwards.
During this retreat, the first blood in the civil war is
spilt at Corfinium, a town which, if it now stood at all,
would stand in the Abruzzi. Caesar there is victor
in a small engagement, and obtains possession of the
town. The Pompeian officers whom he finds there he
sends away, and allows them even to carry with them
money which he believes to have been taken from the
public treasury. Throughout his route southward the
soldiers of Pompey, who had heretofore been his
soldiers, return to him. Pompey and the consuls
still retreat, and still Caesar follows them, though
Pompey had boasted, when first warned to beware of
Caesar, that he had only to stamp upon Italian soil and
legions would arise from the earth ready to obey him.
He knows, however, that away from Rome, in her
provinces, in Macedonia and Achaia, in Asia and Cilicia,
in Sicily, Sardinia, and Africa, in Mauritania and the
two Spains, there are Roman legions which as yet
*.
POMPEY RETREATS. 125
know no Caesar. It may be better for Pompey that
he should stamp his foot somewhere out of Italy. At
any rate he sends the obedient consuls and his attend-
ant senators over to Dyrrachium in Illyria with a part
of his army, and follows with the remainder as soon as
Caesar is at his heels. Caesar makes an effort to inter-
cept him and his fleet, but in that he fails. Thus
Pompey deserts Rome and Italy,–and never again
sees the imperial city or the fair land.
Caesar explains to us why he does not follow his
enemy and endeavour at once to put an end to the
struggle. Pompey is provided with shipping and he
is not; and he is aware that the force of Rome lies in
her provinces. Moreover, Rome may be starved by
Pompey, unless he, Caesar, can take care that the corn-
growing countries, which are the granaries of Rome,
are left free for the use of the city. He must make
sure of the two Gauls, and of Sardinia, and of Sicily,
of Africa too, if it may be possible. He must win to
his cause the two Spains, of which at least the north-
ern province was at present devoted to Pompey. He
sends one lieutenant to Sardinia with a legion, another
to Sicily with three legions,—and from Sicily over
into Africa. These provinces had been allotted to
partisans of Pompey; but Caesar is successful with
them all. To Cato, the virtuous man, had been as-
signed the government of Sicily; but Cato finds no
Pompeian army ready for his use, and, complaining
bitterly that he has been deceived and betrayed by the
head of his faction, runs away, and leaves his province
to Caesar's officers. Caesar determines that he himself
will carry the war into Spain. * *
126 THE CIVIL WAR.—FIRST BOOK.
But he found it necessary first to go to Rome, and
Caesar, in his account of what he did there, hardly tells
us the whole truth. We quite go along with him
when he explains to us that, having collected what
sort of a Senate he could,—for Pompey had taken away
with him such senators as he could induce to follow
him, and having proposed to this meagre Senate that
ambassadors should be sent to Pompey, the Senate
accepted his suggestion ; but that nobody could be in-
duced to go on such an errand. Pompey had already
declared that all who remained at Rome were his ene-
mies. And it may probably be true that Caesar, as he
says, found a certain tribune of the people at Rome
who opposed him in all that he was doing, though we
should imagine that the opposition was not violent.
But his real object in going to Rome was to lay hand
on the treasure of the Republic,+the sanctius aerari-
um,--which was kept in the temple of Saturn for special
emergencies of State. That he should have taken this
we do not wonder ;-but we do wonder that he should
have taken the trouble to say that he did not do so.
He professes that he was so hindered by that vexatious
tribune, that he could not accomplish the purposes for
which he had come. But he certainly did take the
money, and we cannot doubt but that he went to Rome
especially to get it.
Caesar, on his way to Spain, goes to Marseilles,
which, under the name of Massilia, was at this time,
as it is now, the most thriving mercantile port on the
Mediterranean. It belonged to the province of Further
Gaul, but it was in fact a colony of Greek traders. Its
possession was now necessary to Caesar. The magis-
CAESAR TOUCHIES A T MARSEILLES. 127
trates of the town, when called upon for their adhesion,
gave a most sensible answer. They protest that they
are very fond of Caesar, and very fond of Pompey. They
don’t understand all these affairs of Rome, and regret
that two such excellent men should quarrel. In the mean
time they prefer to hold their own town. Caesar speaks
of this decision as an injury to himself, and is instigated
by such wrongs against him to besiege the city, which
he does both by land and sea, leaving officers there for
the purpose, and going on himself to Spain.
At this time all Spain was held by three officers, de-
voted to the cause of Pompey, though, from what has
gone before, it is clear that Caesar fears nothing from
the south. Afranius commanded in the north and east,
holding the southern spurs of the Pyrenees. Petreius,
who was stationed in Lusitania, in the south-west,
according to agreement, hurries up to the assistance of
Afranius as soon as Caesar approaches. The Pompeian
and Caesarian armies are brought into close quarters in
the neighbourhood of Ilerda (Lerida), on the little river
Sicoris, or Segre, which runs into the Ebro. They are
near the mountains here, and the nature of the fight-
ing is controlled by the rapidity and size of the rivers,
and the inequality of the ground. Caesar describes
the campaign with great minuteness, imparting to it
a wonderful interest by the clearness of his narrative.
Afranius and Petreius hold the town of Ilerda, which
is full of provisions. Caesar is very much pressed by
want, as the corn and grass have not yet grown, and
the country supplies of the former year are almost ex:
hausted. So great are his difficulties, that tidings reach
Rome that Afranius has conquered him. Hearing
128 THE CIVIL WAR.—FIRST BOOK.
this, many who were still clinging to the city, doubtful
as to the side they would take, go away to Pompey.
But Caesar at last manages to make Ilerda too hot for
the Pompeian generals. He takes his army over one
river in coracles, such as he had seen in Britain ; he
turns the course of another; fords a third, breaking the
course of the stream by the bulk of his horses ; and
bridges a fourth. Afranius and Petreius find that
they must leave Ilerda, and escape over the Ebro
among the half-barbarous tribe further south, and make
their way, if possible, among the Celtibri, getting
out of Aragon into Castile, as the division was made
in after-ages. Caesar gives us as one reason for this
intended march on the part of his enemies, that Pompey
was well known by those tribes, but that the name
of Caesar was a name as yet obscure to the barbarians.
It was not, however, easy for Afranius to pass over the
Ebro without Caesar's leave, and Caesar will by no means
give him leave. He intercepts the Pompeians, and now
turns upon them that terrible engine of want from which
he had suffered so much. He continues so to drive them
about, still north of the Ebro, that they can get at no
water; and at last they are compelled to surrender.
I)uring the latter days of this contest the Afranians,
as they are called—Roman legionaries, as are the soldiers
of Caesar—fraternise with their brethren in Caesar's
camp, and there is something of free intercourse be-
tween the two Roman armies. The upshot is that the
soldiers of Afranius resolve to give themselves up to
Caesar, bargaining, however, that their own generals
shall be secure. Afranius is willing enough; but his
CAESAR IN THE WORTH OF SPA IV. 129
brother-general, Petreius, with more of the Roman at
heart, will not hear of it. We shall hear hereafter the
strange fate of this Petreius. He stops the conspiracy
with energy, and forces from his own men, and even from
Afranius, an oath against surrender. He orders that all
Caesar's soldiers found in their camp shall be killed, and,
as Caesar tells us, brings back the affair to the old form
of war. But it is all of no avail. The Afranians are so
driven by the want of water, that the two generals are at
last compelled to capitulate and lay down their arms.
Five words which are used by Caesar in the descrip-
tion of this affair give us a strong instance of his con-
ciseness in the use of words, and of the capability for
conciseness which the Latin language affords. “Pre-
mebantur Afraniani pabulatione, aquabantur aegre.”
“The soldiers of Afranius were much distressed in the
matter of forage, and could obtain water only with great
difficulty.” These twenty words translate those five
which Caesar uses, perhaps with fair accuracy; but many
more than twenty would probably have been used by
any English historian in dealing with the same facts.
Caesar treats his compatriots with the utmost gene-
rosity. So many conquered Gauls he would have sold
as slaves, slaughtering their leaders, or he would have
cut off their hands, or have driven them down upon
the river and have allowed them to perish in the
waters. But his conquered foes are Roman soldiers,
and he simply demands that the army of Afranius
shall be disbanded, and that the leaders of it shall go,
—whither they please. He makes them a speech in
which he explains how badly they have treated him.
A. C. vol. iv. i
130 THE CIVIL WAR.—FIRST BOOK.
Nevertheless he will hurt no one. He has borne it
all, and will bear it, patiently. Let the generals only
leave the Province, and let the army which they have
led be disbanded. He will not keep a soldier who
does not wish to stay with him, and will even pay
those whom Afranius has been unable to pay out of
his own funds. Those who have houses and land in
Spain may remain there. Those who have none he
will first feed and afterwards take back, if not to Italy,
at any rate to the borders of Italy. The property
which his own soldiers have taken from them in the
chances of war shall be restored, and he out of his own
pocket will compensate his own men. He performs
his promise, and takes all those who do not choose to
remain, to the banks of the War, which divides the Pro-
vince from Italy, and there sets them down, full, no
doubt, of gratitude to their conqueror. Never was
there such clemency, or, we may say, better policy
Caesar's whole campaign in Spain had occupied him
only forty days.
In the mean time Decimus Brutus, to whom we
remember that Caesar had given the command of the
ships which he prepared against the Veneti in the west
of Gaul, and who was hereafter to be one of those who
slew him in the Capitol, obtains a naval victory over
the much more numerous fleet of the Massilians.
They had prepared seventeen big ships, “naves
longae’’ they are called by Caesar, and of these
Brutus either destroys or takes mine. In his next
book Caesar proceeds to tell us how things went on at
Marseilles bºth by sea and land after this affair.
CHAPTER X.
SECOND BOOK OF THE CIVIL WAR.—THE TAKING OF MAR-
SEILLES. —WARRO IN THE SOUTH OF SPAIN. —THE FATE
OF CURIO BEFORE UTICA.—B.C. 49.
IN his chronicle of the Gallic war, Caesar in each book
completed the narrative of a year's campaign. In
treating of the civil war he devotes the first and
second books to the doings of one year. There are
three distinct episodes of the year's campaign narrated
in the second ;-the taking of Marseilles, the subju-
gation of the southern province of Spain,_if that can
be said to be subjugated which gave itself up very
readily,–and the destruction of a Roman army in
Africa under the hands of a barbarian king. But of
all Caesar's writings it is perhaps the least interesting,
as it tells us but little of what Caesar did himself-
and in fact contains chiefly Caesar's records of the
doings of his lieutenants by sea and land.
He begins by telling us of the enormous exertions
made both by the besiegers and by the besieged at Mas-
silia, which town was now held by Domitius on the
part of Pompey, to supplement whom at sea a cer-
tain Nasidius was sent with a large fleet. Young
132 THE CIVIL WA R.—SECOND BOOK.
Brutus, as will be remembered, was attacking the har-
bour on behalf of Caesar, and had already obtained a
victory over the Massilians before Nasidius came up ;
and Trebonius, also on the part of Caesar, was besieg-
ing the town from the land. This Decimus Brutus
was one of those conspirators who afterwards conspired
against Caesar and slew him, - and Trebonius was
another of the number. The wise Greeks of the
city,+more wise than fortunate, however, had ex-
plained to Caesar when he first expressed his wish to
have the town on his side, that really to them there
was no difference between Pompey and Caesar, both of
whom they loved with all their hearts, but they had
been compelled to become partisans of Pompey, the
Pompeian general Domitius being the first to enter
their town ; and now they find themselves obliged to
fight as Pompeians in defence of their wealth and their
homes. Thus driven by necessity, they fight well and do
their very best to favour the side which we must hence-
forward call that of the Republic as against an autocrat ;
—for, during this siege of Marseilles, Caesar had been
appointed Dictator, and a law to that effect had been
passed at Rome, where the passing of such a law was no
doubt easy enough in the absence of Pompey, of the con-
suls, and of all the senators who were Pompey's friends.
The Massilians had now chosen their side, and they
do their very best. We are told that the Caesarean
troops, from the high ground on which Trebonius had
placed his camp, could look down into the town, and
could see “how all the youth who had been left in the
city, and all the elders with their children and wives,
THE SIEGE OF MARSEILLES. 133
and the sentinels of the city, either stretched their
hands to heaven from the walls, or, entering the
temples of the immortal gods, and throwing themselves
before their sacred images, prayed that the heavenly
powers would give them victory. Nor was there one
among them who did not believe that on the result
of that day depended all that they had,”—namely,
liberty, property, and life; for the Massilians, doubt-
less, had heard of Avaricum, of Alesia, and of Uxello-
dunum. “When the battle was begun,” says Caesar,
“the Massilians failed not at all in valour; but,
mindful of the lessons they had just received from their
townsmen, fought with the belief that the present was
their only opportunity of doing aught for their own pre-
servation ; and that to those who should fall in battle,
loss of life would only come a little sooner than to the
others, who would have to undergo the same fate,
should the city be taken.” Caesar, as he wrote this,
doubtless thought of what he had done in Gaul when
policy demanded from him an extremity of cruelty; and,
so writing, he enhanced the clemency with which, as he
is about to tell us, he afterwards treated the Massilians.
When the time came it did not suit him to depopulate
a rich town, the trade of whose merchants was benefi-
cial both to Rome and to the Province. He is about
to tell us of his mercy, and therefore explains to us
beforehand how little was mercy expected from him.
We feel that every line he writes is weighed, though
the time for such weighing must have been very short
with one whose hands were so full as were always the
hands of Caesar.
134 THE CIVIL WAR.—SECOND BOOK.
~.
Nasidius, whom we may call Pompey's admiral,
was of no use at all. The Massilians, tempted by his
coming, attack bravely the ship which bears the flag
of young Brutus; but young Brutus is too quick for
them, and the unhappy Massilians run two of their
biggest vessels against each other in their endeavour
to pin that of the Caesarean admiral between them.
The Massilian fleet is utterly dispersed. Five are
sunk, four are taken : one gets off with Nasidius, who
runs away, making no effort to fight ; who has been
sent there, so Caesar hints, by Pompey, not to give
assistance, but only to pretend to give assistance.
One ship gets back into the harbour with the sad
tidings ; and the Massilians—despairing only for a
moment at the first blush of the bad news—determine
that their walls may still be defended.
The town was very well supplied with such things
as were needed for defence, the people being a provi-
dent people, well instructed and civilised, with means
at their command. We are told of great poles twelve
feet long, with sharp iron heads to them, which the
besiegers could throw with such force from the engines
on their walls as to drive them through four tiers of
the wicker crates or stationary shields which the Caesa-
reans built up for their protection,--believing that no
force could drive a weapon through them. As we
read of this we cannot but think of Armstrong and
Whitfield guns, and iron plates, and granite batteries,
and earthworks. These terrible darts, thrown from
“balistae,” are very sore upon the Caesareans; they
therefore contrive, an immense tower, so high that it
THE SI EGE OF MARSEILLES. 135
cannot be reached by any weapon, so built that no
wood or material subject to fire shall be on the out-
side,--which they erect story by story, of very great
strength. And as they raise this step by step, each
story is secured against fire and against the enemy.
The reader, probably not an engineer himself-is
disposed to think as he struggles through this minute
description of the erection which Caesar gives, and
endeavours to realise the way in which it is done, that
Caesar must himself have served specially as an engineer.
But in truth he was not at this siege himself, and had
nothing to do with the planning of the tower, and
must in this instance at least have got a written de-
scription from his officer, as he probably did before
when he built the memorable bridge over the Rhine.
And when the tower is finished, they make a long
covered way or shed,—musculum or muscle Caesar calls
it ; and with this they form for themselves a passage
from the big tower to a special point in the walls of
the town. This muscle is so strong with its sloping
roof that nothing thrown upon it will break or burn it.
The Massilians try tubs of flaming pitch, and great frag-
ments of rock; but these simply slip to the ground, and
are pulled away with long poles and forks. And the
Caesareans, from the height of their great tower, have
so terrible an advantage 1 The Massilians cannot de-
fend their wall, and a breach is made, or almost made.
The Massilians can do no more. The very gods are
against them. So they put on the habit of supplicants,
and go forth to the conquerors. They will give their
city to Caesar. Caesar is expected. Will Trebonius
136 THE CIWII, WA R.—SECOND BOOK.
be so good as to wait till Caesar comes? If Trebonius
should proceed with his work so that the soldiers
should absolutely get into the town, then ;-Trebonius
knows very well what would happen then. A little
delay cannot hurt. Nothing shall be done till Caesar
comes. As it happens, Caesar has already especially
ordered that the city shall be spared; and a kind of
truce is made, to endure till Caesar shall come and
take possession. Trebonius has a difficulty in keeping
his soldiers from the plunder ; but he does restrain
them, and besiegers and besieged are at rest, and wait
for Caesar.
But these Massilians are a crafty people. The
Caesarean soldiers, having agreed to wait, take it
easily, and simply amuse themselves in these days of
waiting. When they are quite off their guard, and a
high wind favours the scheme, the Massilians rush out
and succeed in burning the tower, and the muscle, and
the rampart, and the sheds, and all the implements.
Even though the tower was built with brick, it burns
freely,–so great is the wind. Then Trebonius goes to
work, and does it all again. Because there is no more
wood left round about the camp, he makes a rampart
of a new kind,-hitherto unheard of.-with bricks.
Doubtless the Caesarean soldiers had first to make the
bricks, and we can imagine what were their feelings in
reference to the Massilians. But however that may
be, they work so well and so hard that the Massilians
soon see that their late success is of no avail. Nothing
is left to them. Neither perfidy nor valour can avail
them, and now again they give themselves up. They
THE SIEGE OF MARSEILLES. 137
are starved and suffering from pestilence, their fortifi-
cations are destroyed, they have no hope of aid from
without, -and now they give themselves up, intend-
ing no fraud. “Sese dedere sine fraude constituunt.”
I}omitius, the Pompeian general, manages to escape in
a ship. He starts with three ships, but the one in
which he himself sails alone escapes the hands of
“young’’ Brutus. Surely now will Marseilles be
treated with worse treatment than that which fell on
the Gaulish cities. But such is by no means Caesar's
will. Caesar takes their public treasure and their
ships, and reminding them that he spares them rather
for their name and old character than for any merits
of theirs shown towards him, leaves two legions among
them, and goes to Rome. At Avaricum, when the
Gauls had fought to defend their own liberties, he had
destroyed everybody ;-at Alesia he had decreed the
death of every inhabitant when they had simply asked
him leave to pass through his camp;-at Uxellodunum
he had cut off the hands and poked out the eyes of
Gauls who had dared to fight for their country. Dut
the Gauls were barbarians whom it was necessary that
Caesar should pacify. The Massilians were Greeks,
and a civilised people, and might be useful.
Before coming on to Marseilles there had been a
little more for Caesar to do in Spain, where, as was
told in the last chapter, he had just compelled Afranius
and Petreius to lay down their arms and disband their
legions. Joined with them had been a third Pompeian
general, one Varro,-a distinguished man, though not,
perhaps, a great general,—of whom Caesar tells us that
138 THE CIVIL WAR.—SECOND BOOK.
with his Roman policy he veered between Pompeian
and Caesarean tactics till, unfortunately for himself,
he declared for Pompey and the wrong side, when
he heard that Afranius was having his own way in
the neighbourhood of Lerida. But Varro is in the
south of Spain, in Andalusia, or Baetica, as it was
then called,—and in this southern province of Spain
it seems that Caesar's cause was more popular than
that of Pompey. Cesar, at any rate, has but little
difficulty with Varro. The Pompeian officer is deserted
by his legions, and gives himself up very quickly.
Caesar does not care to tell us what he did with Varro,
but we know that he treated his brother Roman with
the utmost courtesy. Varro was a very learned man,
and a friend of Cicero's, and one who wrote books, and
was a credit to Rome as a man of letters if not as a
general. We are told that he wrote 490 volumes, and
that he lived to be eighty-eight, a fate very uncom-
mon with Romans who meddled with public affairs in
these days. Caesar made everything smooth in the
south of Spain, restoring the money and treasures
which Varro had taken from the towns, and giving
thanks to everybody. Then he went on over the
Pyrenees to Marseilles, and made things smooth there.
But in the mean time things were not at all smooth
in Africa. The name of Africa was at this time given
to a small province belonging to the Republic, lying to
the east of Numidia, in which Carthage had stood
when Carthage was a city, containing that promontory
which juts out towards Sicily, and having Utica as
its Roman capital. It has been already said that
CAESAR IN THE SOUTH OF SPAIN. I 39
when Caesar determined to gain possession of certain
provinces of the Republic before he followed Pompey
across the Adriatic, he sent a lieutenant with three
legions into Sicily, desiring him to go on to Africa as
soon as things should have been arranged in the island
after the Caesarean fashion. The Sicilian matter is
not very troublesome, as Cato, the virtuous man, in
whose hands the government of the island had been
intrusted on behalf of the Republic, leaves it on the
arrival of the Cesarean legions, complaining bitterly of
Pompey's conduct. Then Caesar's lieutenant goes over
to Africa with two legions, as commanded, proposing
to his army the expulsion of one Attius Varus, who
had, according to Caesar's story, taken irregular pos-
session of the province, keeping it on behalf of Pom-
pey, but not allowing the governor appointed by the
Republic so much as to put his foot on the shore.
This lieutenant was a great favourite of Caesar, by
name Curio, who had been elected tribune of the
people just when the Senate was making its attempt to
recall Caesar from his command in Gaul. In that
emergency, Curio as tribune had been of service to
Caesar, and Caesar loved the young man. He was one
of those who, though noble by birth, had flung them-
selves among the people, as Catiline had done and
Clodius, unsteady, turbulent, unscrupulous, vicious,
needy, fond of pleasure, rapacious, but well educated,
brave, and clever. Caesar himself had been such a
man in his youth, and could easily forgive such faults
in the character of one who, in addition to such virtues
as have been named, possessed that farther and greater
140 THE CIVIL WAR.—SECOND BOOK.
virtue of loving Caesar. Caesar expected great things
from Curio, and trusted him thoroughly. Curio, with
many ships and his two legions, lands in Africa, and
prepares to win the province for his great friend. He
does obtain some little advantage, so that he is called
“Imperator” by his soldiers, a name not given to a
general till he has been victorious in the field; but it
seems clear, from Caesar's telling of the story, that
Curio's own officers and own soldiers distrusted him,
and were doubtful whether they would follow him, or
would take possession of the ships and return to Sicily;
—or would go over to Attius Varus, who had been their
commander in Italy before they had deserted from
Pompey to Caesar. A council of war is held, and there
is much doubt. It is not only or chiefly of Attius
Varus, their Roman enemy, that they are afraid ; but
there is Juba in their neighbourhood, the king of
Numidia, who will certainly fight for Varus and
against Curio. He is Pompey’s declared friend, and
equally declared as Caesar's foe. He has, too, special
grounds of quarrel against Curio himself; and if he
comes in person with his army, bringing such an
army as he can bring if he pleases, it will certainly
go badly with Curio, should Curio be distant from his
camp. Then Curio, not content with his council of
war, and anxious that his soldiers should support him
in his desire to fight, makes a speech to the legion-
aries. We must remember, of course, that Caesar gives
us the words of this speech, and that Caesar must
himself have put the words together.
It is begun in the third person. He, that is Curio,
THE STORY OF OURIO. 141
— tells the men how useful they were to Caesar at
Corfinium, the town at which they went over from
Pompey to Caesar. But in the second sentence he
breaks into the first person and puts the very words
into Curio's mouth. “For you and your services,” he
says, “were copied by all the towns; nor is it without
cause that Caesar thinks kindly of you, and the Pom-
peians unkindly. For Pompey, having lost no battle,
but driven by the result of your deed, fled from Italy.
Me, whom Caesar holds most dear, and Sicily and
Africa without which he cannot hold Rome and Italy,
Caesar has intrusted to your honour. There are some
who advise you to desert me, for what can be more
desirable to such men than that they at the same
time should circumvent me, and fasten upon you a
foul crime ! . . . . But you, have you not heard
of the things done by Caesar in Spain, two armies
beaten, two generals conquered, two provinces gained,
and all this done in forty days from that on which
Caesar first saw his enemy Can those who, uninjured,
were unable to stand against him, resist him now that
they are .conquered ? And you, who followed Caesar
when victory on his side was uncertain, now that
fortune has declared herself, will you go over to the
conquered side when you are about to realise the re-
ward of your zeal? . . . . But perhaps, though
you love Caesar, you distrust me. I will not say much
of my own deserts towards you, -which are indeed
less as yet than I had wished or you had expected.”
Then, having thus declared that he will not speak of
himself, he does venture to say a few words on the sub-
142 THE CIVIL WAR.—SECOND BOOK.
ject. “But why should I pass over my own work,
and the result that has been as yet achieved, and my
own fortune in war? Is it displeasing to you that I
brought over the whole army, safe, without losing a
ship ! That, as I came, at my first onslaught, I should
have dispersed the fleet of the enemy? That, in
two days, I should have been twice victorious with
my cavalry ; that I should have cut out two hundred
transports from the enemy's harbour ; that I should
have so harassed the enemy that neither by land nor
sea could they get food to supply their wants? Will
it please you to repudiate such fortune and such guid-
ance, and to connect yourself with the disgrace at Cor-
finium, the flight from Italy,”—namely, Pompey's flight
to Dyrrachium,_“the surrender of Spain, and the evils
of this African war? I indeed have wished to be
called Caesar's soldier, and you have called me your
Imperator. If it repents you of having done so, I give
you back the compliment. Give me back my own
name, lest it seem that in scorn you have called me
by that title of honour.” *
This is very spirited ; and the merely rhetorical
assertion by Caesar that Curio thus spoke to his sol-
diers is in itself interesting, as showing us the way
in which the legionaries were treated by their com-
manders, and in which the greatest general, of that or
of any age, thought it natural that a leader should
address his troops. It is of value, also, as showing the
difficulty of keeping any legion true to either side in
a civil War, in which, on either side, the men must
fight for a commander they had learned to respect,
THE STORY or cuRIO. - 143
and against a commander they respected,—the com-
mander in each case being a Roman Imperator.
Curio, too, as we know, was a man who on such an
occasion could use words. But that he used the words
bere put into his mouth, or any words like them, is
very improbable. Caesar was anxious to make the best
apology he could for the gallant young friend who
had perished in his cause, and has shown his love
by making the man he loved memorable to all pos-
terity.
Dut before the dark hour comes upon him the young
man has a gleam of success, which, had he really
spoken the words put into his mouth by Caesar, would
have seemed to justify them. He attacks the army of
his fellow-ROman, Varus, and beats it, driving it back
into Utica. He then resolves to besiege the town,
and Caesar implies that he would have been successful
through the Caesarean sympathies of the townsmen,
had it not been for the approach of the terrible Juba.
Then comes a rumour which reaches Curio, - and
which reaches Varus too inside the town, that the
Numidian king is hurrying to the scene with all his
forces. He has finished another affair that he had on
hand, and can now look to his Roman friends,-and
to his Roman enemies. Juba craftily sends forward
his praefect, or lieutenant, Sabura, with a small force
of cavalry, and Curio is led to imagine that Juba has
not come, and that Sabura has been sent with scanty
aid to the relief of Varus. Surely he can give a good
account of Sabura and that small body of Numidian
horsemen. We see from the very first that Curio is
144 THE CI VII, WA R.— SECOWI) BOOK.
doomed. Caesar, in a few touching words, makes his
apology. “The young man's youth had much to do
with it, and his high spirit; his former success, too,
and his own faith in his own good fortune.” There is
no word of reproach. Curio makes another speech to
his soldiers. “Hasten to your prey,” he says, “hasten
to your glory !” They do hasten, after such a fashion
that when the foremost of them reach Sabura's troops,
the hindermost of them are scattered far back on the
road. They are cut to pieces by Juba. Curio is in-
vited by one of his officers to escape back to his tent.
Bnt Caesar tells us that Curio in that last moment
replied that having lost the army with which Caesar
had trusted him, he would never again look Caesar in
the face. That he did say some such words as these,
and that they were repeated by that officer to Caesar,
is probable enough. “So, fighting, he is slain ; ”—
and there is an end of the man whom Caesar loved.
What then happened was very sad for a Roman army.
Many hurry down to the ships at the sea; but there is
so much terror, so much confusion, and things are so
badly done, that but very few get over to Sicily. The
remainder endeavour to give themselves up to Varus;
ufter doing which, could they have done it, their posi-
tion would not have been very bad. A Roman surren-
dering to a Roman would, at the worst, but find that
he was compelled to change his party. But Juba comes
up and claims them as his prey, and Varus does not
dare to oppose the barbarian king. Juba kills the most
sf them, but sends a few, whom he thinks may serve
*is purpose and add to his glory, back to his own king-
RING J U B.A. 145
dom. In doing which Juba behaved no worse than
Caesar habitually behaved in Gaul; but Caesar always
writes as though not only a Roman must regard a Ro-
man as more than a man, but as though also all others
must so regard Romans. And by making such assertions
in their own behalf, Romans were so regarded. We
are then told that the barbarian king of Numidia rode
into Utica triumphant, with Roman senators in his
train; and the names of two special Roman senators
Caesar sends down to posterity as having been among
that base number. As far as we can spare them, they
shall be spared. -
Of Juba the king, and of his fate, we shall hear
again.
A. C. vol. iv. K
CHAPTER XI.
THIRD BOOK OF THE CIVIL WAR. —CAESAR FOLLOWS POMPEY
INTO ILLYRIA. —THE LINES OF PETRA AND THE BATTLE OF
PHARSALIA. —B.C. 48.
CAESAR begins the last book of his last Commentary by
telling us that this was the year in which he, Caesar,
was by the law permitted to name a consul. Iſe names
Publius Servilius to act in conjunction with himself.
The meaning of this is, that, as Caesar had been created
Dictator, Pompey having taken with him into Illyria
the consuls of the previous year, Caesar was now the
only magistrate under whose authority a consul could
be elected. No doubt he did choose the man, but the
election was supposed to have been made in accordance
with the forms of the Republic. He remained at Rome
as Dictator for eleven days, during which he made vari-
ous laws, of which the chief object was to lessen the
insecurity caused by the disruption of the ordinary
course of things; and then he went down to Brindisi on
the track of Pompey. He had twelve legions with him,
but he was badly off for ships in which to transport
them ; and he owns that the health of the men is bad,
an autumn in the South of Italy having been very severe
POMPEX”.S ARMY. 147
on men accustomed to the healthy climate of Gaul and
the north of Spain. Pompey, he tells us, had had a
whole year to prepare his army, a whole year, without
warfare, and had collected men and ships and money,
and all that support which assent gives, from Asia and
the Cyclades, from Corcyra, Athens, Bithynia, Cilicia,
Phoenicia, Egypt, and the free states of Achaia. He
had with him nine Roman legions, and is expecting two
more with his father-in-law Scipio out of Syria. He has
three thousand archers from Crete, from Sparta, and
from Pontus; he has twelve hundred slingers, and he
has seven thousand cavalry from Galatia, Cappadocia,
and Thrace. A valorous prince from Macedonia had
brought him two hundred men, all mounted. Five hun-
dred of Galatian and German cavalry, who had been left
to overawe Ptolemy in Egypt, are brought to Pompey
by the filial care of young Cnaeus. He too had armed
eight hundred of their own family retainers, and had
brought them armed. Antiochus of Commagena sends
him two hundred mounted archers, mercenaries, how-
ever, not sent without promise of high payment. Dar-
dani, men from the land of old Troy, Bessi, from the
banks of the Hebrus, Thessalians and Macedonians,
have all been crowded together under Pompey's stan-
dard. We feel that Caesar's mouth waters as he re-
counts them. But we feel also that he is preparing for
the triumphant record in which he is about to tell us
that all these swarms did he scatter to the winds
of heaven with the handful of Roman legionaries
which he at last succeeded in landing on the shores
Gf Illyria. -
148 THE CIVIL WAR.—THIRD BOOK.
Pompey has also collected from all parts “frumenti
vim maximam”—“a great power of corn indeed,” as
an Irishman would say, translating the words literally.
And he has covered the seas with his ships, so as to
hinder Caesar from coming out of Italy. He has eight
vice-admirals to command his various fleets, all of
whom Caesar names ; and over them all, as admiral-in-
chief, is Bibulus, who was joint-consul with Caesar be-
fore Caesar went to Gaul, and who was so harassed
during his consulship by the Caesareans that he shut
himself up in his house, and allowed Caesar to rule as
sole consul. Now he is about to take his revenge ;
but the vengeance of such a one as Bibulus cannot
reach Caesar.
Caesar having led his legions to Brindisi, makes them
a speech which almost beats in impudence anything
that he ever said or did. He tells them that as they
have now nearly finished all his work for him;-they
have only got to lay low the Republic with Pompey
the Great, and all the forces of the Republic—to which,
however, have to be added King Ptolemy in Egypt,
King Pharnaces in Asia, and King Juba in Numidia ;-
they had better leave behind them at Brindisi all their
little property, the spoils of former wars, so that they
may pack the tighter in the boats in which he means
to send them across to Illyria, if only they can escape
the mercies of ex-Consul Admiral Bibulus. There is
no suggestion that at any future time they will recover
their property. For their future hopes they are to trust
entirely to Caesar's generosity. With one shout they
declare their readiness to obey him. He takes over
CAESAR CROSSES OUT OF ITALY INTO EPIRU.S. 149
tº
seven legions, escaping the dangers of those “rocks of
evil fame,” the Acroceraunia of which Horace tells us,
—and escaping Bibulus also, who seems to have shut
himself up in his ship as he did before in his house dur-
ing the consulship. Caesar seems to have made the pas-
sage with the conviction that had he fallen into the
hands of Bibulus everything would have been lost. And
with ordinary precaution and diligence on the part of
Bibulus such would have been the result. Yet he makes
the attempt, trusting to the Fortune of Caesar, and
he succeeds. He lands at a place which he calls Pal-
aeste on the coast of Epirus, considerably to the south
of Dyrrachium, in Illyria. At Dyrrachium Pompey had
landed the year before, and there is now stored that
wealth of provision of which Caesar has spoken. But
Bibulus at last determines to be active, and he does
manage to fall upon the empty vessels which Caesar
sends back to fetch the remainder of his army. “Hav-
ing come upon thirty of them, he falls upon them with
all the wrath occasioned by his own want of circum-
spection and grief, and burns them. And in the same
fire he kills the sailors and the masters of the vessels,
—hoping to deter others,” Caesar tells us, “by the Se-
verity of the punishment.” After that we are not sorry
to hear that he potters about on the seas very busy,
but still incapable, and that he dies, as it seems, of a
broken heart. He does indeed catch one ship after-
wards,-not laden with soldiers, but coming on a pri-
vate venture, with children, servants, and suchlike, de-
pendants and followers of Caesar's camp. All these,
including the children, Bibulus slaughters, down to
150 THE CIVIL WAR.—THIRD BOOK.
the smallest child. We have, however, to remember
that the story is told by Caesar, and that Caesar did not
love Bibulus.
Marc Antony has been left at Brindisi in command
of the legions which Caesar could not bring across at his
first trip for want of sufficient ship-room, and is pressed
very much by Caesar to make the passage. There are
attempts at treaties made, but as we read the account
we feel that Caesar is only obtaining the delay which
is necessary to him till he shall have been joined by
Antony. We are told how by this time the camps of
Caesar and Pompey have been brought so near toge-
ther that they are separated only by the river Apsus,
for Caesar had moved northwards towards Pompey's
stronghold. And the soldiers talked together across the
stream ; “nor, the while, was any weapon thrown, by
compact between those who talked.” Then Caesar
sends Watinius, as his ambassador, down to the river to
talk of peace ; and Vatinius demands with a loud voice
“whether it should not be allowed to citizens to send
legates to citizens, to treat of peace ;-a thing that has
been allowed even to deserters from the wilds of the Py-
renees and to robbers, especially with so excellent an
object as that of hindering citizens from fighting with
citizens.” This seems so reasonable, that a day is
named, and Labienus, who has deserted from Caesar
and become Pompeian,—comes to treat on one side of
the river, and Vatinius on the other. But, so Caesar
tells the story himself-the Caesarean soldiers throw
their weapons at their old general. They probably
cannot endure the voice or sight of one whom they re-
CAESAR'S ARMY IN ILLY RIA. 151
gard as a renegade. Labienus escapes under the pro-
tection of those who are with him, but he is full of
wrath against Caesar. “After this,” says he, “let us
cease to speak of treaties, for there can be no peace for
us till Caesar's head has been brought to us.” But the
colloquies over the little stream no doubt answered
Caesar's purpose. f
Caesar is very anxious to get his legions over from
Italy, and even scolds Antony for not bringing them.
There is a story, which he does not tell himself-
that he put himself into a small boat, intending to
cross over to Brindisi in a storm, to hurry matters, and
that he encouraged the awe-struck master of the boat
by reminding him that he would carry “Caesar and his
fortunes.” The story goes on to say that the sailors
attempted the trip, but were driven back by the tem-
pest.
At last there springs up a south-west wind, and An-
tony ventures with his flotilla, although the war-ships
of Pompey still hold the sea, and guard the Illyrian
coast. But Caesar's general is successful, and the second
half of the Caesarean army is carried northward by fa-
vouring breezes towards the shore in the very sight of
Pompey and his soldiers at Dyrrachium. Two ships,
however, lag behind and fall into the hands of one
Otacilius, an officer belonging to Pompey. The two
ships, one full of recruits and the other of veterans,
agree to surrender, Otacilius having sworn that he will
not hurt the men. “Here you may see,” says Caesar,
“how much safety to men there is in presence of mind.”
The recruits do as they have undertaken, and give them-
152 'THE CIVIL WAR.— THIRD BOOK.
selves up ;-whereupon Otacilius, altogether disregard-
ing his oath, like a true Roman, kills every man of
them. But the veterans, disregarding their word also,
and knowing no doubt to a fraction the worth of the
word of Otacilius, run their ship ashore in the night,
and, with much fighting, get safe to Antony. Caesarim-
plies that the recruits even would have known better had
they not been sea-sick; but that even bilge-water and
bad weather combined had failed to touch the ancient
courage of the veteran legionaries. They were/ still
good men—“ item conflictati et tempestatis et sentinae
vitiis.”
We are then told how Metellus Scipio, coming out of
Syria with his legions into Macedonia, almost succeeds
in robbing the temple of Diana of Ephesus on his
way. He gets together a body of senators, who are to
give evidence that he counts the money fairly as he
takes it out of the temple. But letters come from
Pompey just as he is in the act, and he does not dare to
delay his journey even to complete so pleasant a trans-
action. He comes to meet Pompey and to share his
command at the great battle that must soon be fought.
We hear, too, how Caesar sends his lieutenants into
Thessaly and AEtolia and Macedonia, to try what
friends he has there, to take cities, and to get food.
He is now in a land which has seemed specially to be-
long to Pompey; but even here they have heard of
Caesar, and the Greeks are simply anxious to be friends
with the strongest Roman of the day. They have to
judge which will win, and to adhere to him. For the
poor Greeks there is much difficulty in forming a judg-
CAESAR IN ILLYRIA. 153
*
ment. Presently we shall see the way in which Caesar
gives a lesson on that subject to the citizens of Gomphi.
In the mean time he joins his own forces to those lately
brought by Antony out of Italy, and resolves that he
will force Pompey to a fight.
We may divide the remainder of this last book of
the second Commentary into two episodes, the first
being the story of what occurred within the lines at
Petra, and the second the account of the crowning
battle of Pharsalia. In the first Pompey was the
victor, but the victory, great as it was, has won from
the world very little notice. In the second, as all the
world knows, Caesar was triumphant and henceforward
dominant. And yet the affair at Petra should have
made a Pharsalia unnecessary, and indeed impossible.
Two reasons have conspired to make Pompey's com-
plete success at Petra unimportant in the world's esteem.
This Commentary was written not by Pompey but by
Caesar; and then, unfortunateſy for Pompey, Pharsalia
was allowed to follow Petra.
It is not very easy to unravel Caesar's story of the
doings of the two armies at Petra. Nor, were this
ever so easy, would our limits or the purport of this
little volume allow us to attempt to give that narrative
in full to our readers. Caesar had managed to join the
legions which he had himself brought from Italy with
those which had crossed afterwards with Antony, and
was now anxious for a battle. His men, though fewer in
number than they who followed Pompey, were fit for
fighting, and knew all the work of soldiering. Pom-
pey's men were for the most part beginners ;-but
154 | THE CIVIL WAR.—THIRD Book.
they were learning, and every week added to their ex-
perience was a week in Pompey's favour. With hope of
forcing a battle, Caesar managed to get his army between
Dyrrachium, in which were kept all Pompey's stores
and wealth of war, and the army of his opponent, so
that Pompey, as regarded any approach by land, was shut
off from Dyrrachium. But the sea was open to him.
His fleet was everywhere on the coast, while Caesar
had not a ship that could dare to show its bow upon
the waters.
There was a steep rocky promontory some few miles
north of Dyrrachium, from whence there was easy access
to the sea, called Petra, or the rock. At this point
Pompey could touch the sea, but between Petra and
Dyrrachium Caesar held the country. Here, on this
rock, taking in for the use of his army a certain some-
what wide amount of pasturage at the foot of the rock,
Pompey placed his army, and made intrenchments all
round from sea to sea, fortifying himself, as all Roman
generals knew how to do, with a bank and ditch and
twenty-four turrets and earthworks that would make
the place absolutely impregnable. The length of his
lines was fifteen Roman miles, more than thirteen
English miles, so that within his works he might
have as much space as possible to give him grass for
his horses. So placed, he had all the world at his
back to feed him. Not only could he get at that
wealth of stores which he had amassed at Dyrrachium,
and which were safe from Caesar, but the coasts of
Greece, and Asia, and Egypt were open to his ships.
Two things only were wanting to him,-sufficient grass
THE LINES OF PETRA, 155
for his horses, and water. But all things were want-
ing to Caesar, except grass and water. The Illyrian
country at his back was one so unproductive, being
rough and mountainous, that the inhabitants them-
selves were in ordinary times fed upon imported corn.
And Pompey, foreseeing something of what might hap-
pen, had taken care to empty the storehouses and to
leave the towns behind him destitute and impoverished.
Nevertheless Caesar, having got the body of lis
enemy, as it were, imprisoned at Petra, was determined
to keep his prisoner fast. So round and in front of
Pompey's lines he also made other lines, from sea to
sea. He began by erecting turrets and placing small
detachments on the little hills outside Pompey's lines,
So as to prevent his enemy from getting the grass.
Then he joined these towers by lines, and in this way
surrounded the other lines, thinking that so Pom-
pey would not be able to send out his horsemen for
forage ; and again, that the horses inside at Petra
might gradually be starved; and again “that the repu-
tation,”—“auctoritatem,”—“which in the estimation of
foreign nations belonged chiefly to Pompey in this war,
would be lessened when the story should have been
told over the world that Pompey had been besieged by
Caesar, and did not dare to fight.”
We are, perhaps, too much disposed to think,-read-
ing our history somewhat cursorily,–that Caesar at this
time was everybody, and that Pompey was hardly
worthy to be his foe. Such passages in the Commen-
tary as that above translated,—they are not many, but
a few suffice,—show that this idea is erroneous. Up
156 THE CIVIL WAR.—THIRD BOOK.
to this period in their joint courses Pompey had been
the greater man; Caesar had done very much, but
Pompey had done more—and now he had on his side
almost all that was wealthy and respectable in Rome.
He led the Conservative party, and was still confident
that he had only to bide his time, and that Caesar
must fall before him. Caesar and the Caesareans were
to him as the spirits of the Revolution were in France
to Louis XVI., to Charles X., and to Louis-Philippe,
before they had made their powers credible and for-
midable ; as the Reform Bill and Catholic Emancipa-
tion were to such men as George IV. and Lord Eldon,
while yet they could be opposed and postponed. It
was impossible to Pompey that the sweepings of Rome,
even with Caesar and Caesar's army to help them,
should at last prevail over himself and over the
Roman Senate. “He was said at that time,” we are
again translating Caesar's words, “to have declared with
boasts among his own people, that he would not him-
self deny that as a general he should be considered to
be worthless if Caesar's legions should now extricate
themselves from the position in which they had rashly
entangled themselves without very great loss”—
“maximo detrimento" — loss that should amount
wellnigh to destruction. And he was all but right in
what he said.
There was a great deal of fighting for the plots of
grass and different bits of vantage-ground,-fighting
which must have taken place almost entirely between
the two lines. But Caesar suffered under this disad-
vantage, that his works, being much the longest,
THE LINES OF PETRA. 157
required the greatest number of men to erect them
and prolong them and keep them in order; whereas
Pompey, who in this respect had the least to do, having
the inner line, was provided with much the greater
number of men to do it. Caesar's men, being veter-
ans, had always the advantage in the actual fighting;
but in the mean time Pompey’s untried soldiers were
obtaining that experience which was so much needed
by them. Nevertheless Pompey suffered very much.
They could not get water on the rock, and when he
attempted to sink wells, Caesar so perverted the water-
courses that the wells gave no water. Caesar tells us
that he even dammed up the streams, making little
lakes to hold it, so that it should not trickle down in
its underground courses to the comfort of his enemies;
but we should have thought that any reservoirs so
made must soon have overflown themselves, and have
been useless for the intended purpose. In the mean
time Caesar's men had no bread but what was made of
a certain wild cabbage,_“chara,”—which grew there,
which they kneaded up with milk, and lived upon it
cheerfully, though it was not very palatable. To show
the Pompeians the sort of fare with which real veter-
ans could be content to break their fasts, they threw
loaves of this composition across the lines; for they
were close together, and could talk to each other, and
the Pompeians did not hesitate to twit their enemies
with their want of provisions. But the Caesareans had
plenty of water, and plenty of meat; and they assure
Caesar that they would rather eat the bark off the trees
than allow the Pompeians to escape them.
158 THE CIVIL WA R.— TIII RD BOOK.
But there was always this for Caesar to fear, that
Pompey should land a detachment behind his lines
and attack him at the back. To hinder this Caesar
made another intrenchment, with ditch and bank,
running at right angles from the shore, and was in-
tending to join this to his main work by a transverse
line of fortifications running along that short portion
of the coast which lay between his first lines and the
second, when there came upon him the disaster which
nearly destroyed him. While he was digging his
trenches and building his turrets the fighting was so
frequent that, as Caesar tells us, on one day there were
six battles. Pompey lost two thousand legionaries,
while Caesar lost no more than twenty; but every
Caesarean engaged in a certain turret was wounded, and
four officers lost their eyes. Caesar estimates that
thirty thousand arrows were thrown upon the men
defending this tower, and tells us of one Scaeva, an
officer, who had two hundred and thirty holes made by
these arrows in his own shield.* We can only sur-
* Dean Merivale in his account of this affair reduces the
nun.ber of holes in Scaeva's shield to one hundred and twenty,
—on the joint authority, no doubt, of Florus and Valerius
Maximus; but Florus lived 20) and Val. Max. 300 years after
Caesar. Suetonius allows the full number of holes, but implies
that 120 were received while the warrior was fighting in one
place, and 110 while fighting in another. Lucan sings the story
of Scaeva at great length, but does not give the number of
wounds in the shield. He seems to say that Scaeva was killed on
this occasion, but is not quite clear on the point. That Scaeva
had one eye knocked out is certain. Lucan does indeed tell
us, in the very last lines of his poem, that in Egypt Caesar once
again saw his beloved centurion ; – but at the moment described
THE LINES OF PETRA. 159
* ,
mise that it must have been a very big shield, and that
there must have been much trouble in counting the
holes. Caesar, however, was so much pleased that he
gave Scaeva a large sum of money, something over
£500, and, allowing him to skip over six intermediate
ranks, made him at once first centurion—or Primipilus
of the legion. We remember no other record of such
quick promotion—in prose. There is, indeed, the well-
known case of a common sailor who did a gallant ac-
tion and was made first-lieutenant on the spot ; but
that is told in verse, and the common sailor was a lady.
Two perfidious Gauls to whom Caesar had been very
kind, but whom he had been obliged to check on ac-
count of certain gross peculations of which they had
been guilty, though, as he tells us, he had not time to
punish them, went over to Pompey, and told Pompey
all the secrets of Caesar's ditches, and forts, and mounds,
—finished and unfinished. Before that, Caesar assures
us, not a single man of his had gone over to the ene-
my, though many of the enemy had come to him. But
those perfidious Gauls did a world of mischief. Pompey,
hearing how far Caesar was from having his works along
the sea-shore finished, got together a huge fleet of boats,
and succeeded at night in throwing a large body of his
men ashore between Caesar's two lines, thus dividing
Caesar's forces, and coming upon them in their weakest
even Caesar was dismayed, and the commentators doubt whether
it was not Scaeva's ghost that Caesar then saw. Valerius Maxi-
mus is sure that Scaeva was killed when he got the wounds;– but,
if so, how could he have been rewarded and promoted ? The
matter has been very much disputed; but here it has been
thought best to adhere to Caesar. º
160 THE CIVIL WA R.—THIRD BOOK.
point. Caesar admits that there was a panic in his
lines, and that the slaughter of his men was very great.
It seems that the very size of his own works produced
the ruin which befel them, for the different parts of
them were divided one from another, so that the men
in one position could not succour those in another. The
affair ended in the total rout of the Caesarean army.
Caesar actually fled, and had Pompey followed him we
must suppose that then there would have been an
end of Caesar. He acknowledges that in the two
battles fought on that day he lost 960 legionaries, 32
officers, and 32 standards.
And then Caesar tells us a story of Labienus, who had
been his most trusted lieutenant in the Gallic wars, but
who had now gone over to Pompey, not choosing to
fight against the Republic. Labienus demanded of
Pompey the Caesarean captives, and caused them all to
be slaughtered, asking them with scorn whether veter-
ans such as they were accustomed to run away. Caesar
is very angry with Labienus ; but Labienus might have
defended himself by saying that the slaughter of pri-
soners of war was a custom he had learned in Gaul.
As for those words of scorn, Caesar could hardly have
heard them with his own ears, and we can understand
that he should take delight in saying a hard thing of
Labienus. -
Pompey was at once proclaimed Imperator. And
Pompey used the name, though the victory had,
alas ! been gained over his fellow-countrymen. “So
great was the effect of all this on the spirits and confi-
dence of the Pompeians, that they thought no more of
the carrying on of the war, but only of the victory
THE LINES OF PETRA. 161
they had gained.” And then Caesar throws scorn
upon the Pompeians, making his own apology in the
same words. “They did not care to remember that
the small number of our soldiers was the cause of their
triumph, or that the unevenness of the ground and nar-
rowness of the defiles had aught to do with it ; or
the Occupation of our lines, and the panic of our men
between their double fortifications; or our army cut
into two parts, so that one part could not help the
other. Nor did they add to this the fact that our men,
pressed as they were, could not engage themselves in
a fair conflict, and that they indeed suffered more from
their own numbers, and from the narrowness of the
ravines, than from the enemy. Nor were the ordinary
chances of war brought to mind,-how small matters,
such as some unfounded suspicion, a sudden panic, a
remembered superstition, may create great misfortune ;
nor how often the fault of a general, or the mistake of
an officer, may bring injury upon an army. But they
spread abroad the report of the victory of that day
throughout all the world, sending forth letters and
tales as though they had conquered solely by their own
valour, nor was it possible that there should after this
be a reverse of their circumstances.” Such was the
affair of Petra, by which the relative position in the
world-history of Caesar and Pompey was very nearly
made the reverse of what it is.
Caesar now acknowledges that he is driven to change
the whole plan of his campaign. He addresses a
speech to his men, and explains to them that this
defeat, like that at Gergovia, may lead to their future
A. C. vol. iv. X.
162 THE CI WIL WA R.—THIRD BOOK.
success. The victory at Alesia had sprung from the
defeat of Gergovia, because the Gauls had been in-
duced to fight ; and from the reverses endured within
the lines of Petra might come the same fortune;—for
surely now the army of Pompey would not fear a
battle. Some few officers he punishes and degrades.
His own words respecting his army after their defeat
are very touching. “So great a grief had come from
this disaster upon the whole army, and so strong a
desire of repairing its disgrace, that no one now desired
the place of tribune or centurion in his legion ; and
all, by way of self-imposed punishment, subjected
themselves to increased toil; and every man burned
with a desire to fight. Some from the higher ranks
were so stirred by Caesar's speech, that they thought
that they should stand their ground where they were,
and fight where they stood.” . But Caesar was too
good a general for that. He moves on towards the
south-east, and in retreating gets the better of Pompey,
who follows him with only half a heart. After a
short while Pompey gives up the pursuit. His father-
in-law, Scipio, has brought a great army from the
east, and is in Thessaly. As we read this we cannot
fail to remember how short a time since it was that
Caesar himself was Pompey's father-in-law, and that
Pompey was Caesar's friend because, with too uxorious
a love, he clung to Julia, his young wife. Pompey
now goes eastward to unite his army to that of Scipio;
and Caesar, making his way also into Thessaly by a
more southern route, joins certain forces under his
lieutenant Calvinus, who had been watching Scipio,
P H A R SA LIA. 163
and who barely escaped falling into Pompey’s hands
before he could reach Caesar. But wherever Fortune
or Chance could interfere, the Gods were always kind
to Caesar.
Then Caesar tells us of his treatment of two towns
in Thessaly, Gomphi and Metropolis. Unluckily for
the poor Gomphians, Caesar reaches Gomphi first.
Now the fame of Pompey's victory at Petra had been
spread abroad; and the Gomphians, who, to give them
their due, would have been just as willing to favour
Caesar as Pompey, and who only wanted to be on the
winning side that they might hold their little own in
safety, believed that things were going badly with
Caesar. They therefore shut their gates against Caesar,
and sent off messengers to Pompey. They can hold
their town against Caesar for a little while, but Pompey
must come quickly to their aid. Pompey comes by
no means quick enough, and the Gomphians' capacity
to hold their own is very short-lived. At about three
o'clock in the afternoon Caesar begins to besiege the
town, and before Sunset he has taken it, and given it
to be sacked by his soldiers. The men of Metropolis
were also going to shut their gates, but luckily they
hear just in time what had happened at Gomphi,~and
open them instead. Whereupon Caesar showers pro-
tection upon Metropolis; and all the other towns of
Thessaly, hearing what had been done, learn what
Caesar's favour means.
Pompey, having joined his army to that of Scipio,
shares all his honours with his father-in-law. When
we hear this we know that Pompey's position was not
164 THE CIVIL WAR.—THIRD BOOK.
comfortable, and that he was under constraint. He
was a man who would share his honour with no one
unless driven to do so. And indeed his command
at present was not a pleasant one. It was much for
a Roman commander to have with him the Roman
Senate, but the senators so placed would be apt to be
less obedient than trained soldiers. They even accuse
him of keeping them in Thessaly because he likes to
lord it over such followers. But they were, neverthe-
less, all certain that Caesar was about to be destroyed;
and, even in Pompey's camp, they quarrel over the
rewards of victory which they think that they will
enjoy at Rome when their oligarchy shall have been
re-established by Pompey's arms.
Defore the great day arrives Labienus again ap-
pears on the scene ; and Caesar puts into his mouth a
speech which he of course intends us to compare with
the result of the coming battle. “Do not think, O
Pompey, that this is the army which conquered Gaul
and Germany,”—where Labienus himself was second
in command under Caesar. “I was present at all
those battles, and speak of a thing which I know. A
very Small part of that army remains. Many have
perished,—as a matter of course in so many battles.
The autumn pestilence killed many in Italy. Many
have gone home. Many have been left on the other
shore. Have you not heard from our own friends who
remained behind sick, that these cohorts of Caesar's
were made up at Brindisi ?”—made up but the other
day, Labienus implies. “This army, indeed, has been
renewed from levies in the two Gauls; but all that it
PH A R SA LIA. 165
had of strength perished in those two battles at Dyr-
rachium;”—in the contests, that is, within the lines of
Petra. Upon this Labienus swears that he will not
sleep under canvas again until he sleeps as victor over
Caesar ; and Pompey swears the same, and everybody
swears. Then they all go away full of the coming
victory. We daresay there was a great deal of false
confidence; but as for the words which Caesar puts
into the mouth of Labienus, we know well how much
cause Caesar had to dislike Labienus, and we doubt
whether they were ever spoken.
At length the battle-field is chosen, near the town
of Pharsalus, on the banks of the river Enipeus in
Thessaly. The battle has acquired world-wide fame as
that of Pharsalia, which we have been taught to regard as
the name of the plain on which it was fought. Neither
of these names occur in the Commentary, nor does
that of the river; and the actual spot on which the
great contest took place seems to be a matter of doubt
even now. The ground is Turkish soil,-near to the
mountains which separate modern Greece from Turkey,
and is not well adapted for the researches of historical
travellers. Caesar had been keeping his men on the
march close to Pompey, till Pompey found that he
could no longer abstain from fighting. Then came
Labienus with his vaunts, and his oath, and at length
the day and the field were chosen. Caesar at any rate
was ready. At this time Caesar was fifty-two years
old, and Pompey was five years his elder.
Caesar tells us that Pompey had 110 cohorts, or eleven
legions. Had the legions been full, Pompey's army
166 THE CIVIL WAR.—THIRD BOOK.
would have contained 66,000 legionaries ; but Caesar
states their number at 45,000, or something over two-
thirds of the full number. He does not forget to tell
us once again that among these eleven were the two
legions which he had given up in obedience to the de-
mand of the Senate. Pompey himself, with these two
very legions, placed himself on the left away from the
river ; and there also were all his auxiliaries, not
counted with the legionaries, slingers, archers, and
cavalry. Scipio commanded in the centre with the
legions he had brought out of Syria. So Caesar tells
us. We learn from other sources that Tentulus com-
manded Pompey's right wing, lying on the river—and
Domitius, whom we remember as trying to hold Mar-
seilles against young Brutus and Trebonius, the left.
Caesar had 80 cohorts, or eight legions, which should
have numbered 48,000 men had his legions been full ;
—but, as he tells us, he led but 22,000 legionaries, so
that his ranks were deficient by more than a half.
As was his custom, he had his tenth legion to the
right, away from the river. The ninth, terribly
thinned by what had befallen it within the lines at
Petra, joined to the eleventh, lay next the river, form-
ing part of Caesar's left wing. Antony commanded
the left wing, Domitius Calvinus, whom Caesar some-
times calls by one name and sometimes by the other,
the centre, and Sulla the right. Caesar placed himself
to the right, with his tenth legion, opposite to Pompey.
As far as we can learn, there was but little in the
nature of the ground to aid either of them;-and so
the fight began. *
There is not much complication, and perhaps no
PH A R S.A. L. I.A. 167
great interest, in the account of the actual battle as it
is given by Caesar. Caesar makes a speech to his army,
which was, as we have already learned, and as he tells
us now, the accustomed thing to do. No falser speech
was ever made by man, if he spoke the words which
he himself reports. He first of all reminds them how
they themselves are witnesses that he has done his
best to insure peace;—and then he calls to their memory
certain mock treaties as to peace, in which, when seek-
ing delay, he had pretended to engage himself and
his enemy. He had never wasted, he told them, the
blood of his soldiers, nor did he desire to deprive
the Republic of either army—“alterutro exercitu”—of
Pompey’s army or of his own. They were both
Roman, and far be it from him to destroy aught
belonging to the Republic. We must acknowledge
that Caesar was always chary of Roman life and Roman
|blood. He would spare it when it could be spared;
but he could spill it like water when the spilling of
it was necessary to his end. He was very politic; but
as for tenderness, neither he nor any Roman knew
what it was. -
Then there is a story of one Crastinus, who declares
that whether dead or alive he will please Caesar. He
throws the first weapon against the enemy and does
please Caesar. But he has to please by his death, for
he is killed in his effort.
Pompey orders that his first rank shall not leave its
order to advance, but shall receive the shock of Caesar's
attack. Caesar points out to us that he is wrong in
this, because the very excitement of a first attack gives
increased energy and strength to the men. Casar's
168 THE CIWII, WA. R.—THIRD BOOK.
legionaries are told to attack, and they rush over the
space intervening between the first ranks to do so.
But they are so well trained that they pause and
catch their breath before they throw their weapons.
Then they throw their piles and draw their swords,
and the ranks of the two armies are close pitted against
each other.
But Pompey had thought that he could win the
battle, almost without calling on his legionaries for
any exertion, by the simple strategic movement of his
numerous cavalry and auxiliaries. He outnumbered
Caesar altogether, but in these arms he could overwhelm
him with a cloud of horsemen and of archers. But
Caesar also had known of these clouds. He fought
now as always with a triple rank of legionaries, but
behind his third rank,+-or rather somewhat to their
right shoulder, he had drawn up a choice body of men
picked from his third line, – a fourth line as it were,
—whose business it was to stand against Pompey's
clouds when the attempt should be made by these
clouds upon their right flank. Caesar's Small body of
cavalry did give way before the Pompeian clouds, and
the horsemen and the archers and the slingers swept
round upon Caesar's flank. But they swept round
upon destruction. Caesar gave the word to that fourth
line of picked men. “Illi—they,” says Caesar, “ran
forward with the greatest rapidity, and with their
standards in advance attacked the cavalry of Pompey
with such violence that none of them could stand their
ground ;-so that all not only were forced from the
ground, but being at once driven in panic, they sought
the shelter of the highest mountains near them. And
PHA. R.S.A. L.I.A. 169
when they were thus removed, all the archers and the
slingers, desolate and unarmed, without any one to take
care of them, were killed in heaps.” Such is Caesar's
account of Pompey's great attack of cavalry which
was to win the battle without giving trouble to the
legions.
Caesar acknowledges that Pompey's legionaries drew
their swords bravely and began their share of the fight-
ing well. Then at once he tells us of the failure on
the part of the cavalry and of the slaughter of the
poor auxiliary slingers, and in the very next sentence
gives us to understand that the battle was won.
Though Pompey's legions were so much more numer-
ous than those of Caesar, we are told that Caesar's third
line attacked the Pompeian legionaries when they were
“defessi’—worn out. The few cohorts of picked
men who in such marvellous manner had dispersed
Pompey's clouds, following on their success, turned the
flank of Pompey's legions and carried the day. That
it was all as Caesar says there can be little doubt.
That he won the battle there can, we presume, be
no doubt. Pompey at once flew to his camp and
endeavoured to defend it. But such defence was
impossible, and Pompey was driven to seek Succour
in flight. He found a horse and a few companions,
and did not stop till he was on the sea-shore. Then
he got on board a provision-vessel, and was heard to
complain that he had been betrayed by those very men
from whose hands he had expected victory.
We are told with much picturesque effect how
Caesar's men, hungry, accustomed to endurance, patient
in all their want, found Pompey's camp prepared for
I70 THE CITVII, WA R.—THIRD BOOK.
victory, and decked in luxurious preparation for the
senatorial victors. Couches were strewn, and plate
was put out, and tables prepared, and the tents of these
happy ones were adorned with fresh ivy. The Sena-
torial happy ones have but a bad time of it, either
perishing in their flight, or escaping into the desert
solitudes of the mountains. Caesar follows up his con-
quest, and on the day after the battle compels the great
body of the fugitives to surrender at discretion. He
surrounds them on the top of a hill and shuts them
out from water, and they do surrender at discretion.
With stretched-out hands, prone upon the earth, these
late conquerors, the cream of the Roman power, who
had so lately sworn to conquer ere they slept, weeping
beg for mercy. Caesar, having said a few words to
them of his clemency, gave them their lives. He re-
commends them to the care of his own men, and desires
that they may neither be slaughtered nor robbed.
Caesar says he lost only 200 soldiers in that battle
—and among them 30 officers, all brave men. That
gallant Crastinus was among the 30. Of Pompey's
army 15,000 had been killed, and 24,000 had surren-
dered 180 standards and 9 eagles were taken and
brought to Caesar. The numbers seem to us to be
almost incredible, whether we look at those given to
us in regard to the conqueror or the conquered. Caesar's
account, however, of that day’s work has hitherto been
taken as authoritative, and it is too late now to ques-
tion it. After this fashion was the battle of Pharsalia
won, and the so-called Roman Republic brought to an
end.
But Caesar by no means thought that his work was
THE FLIGHT OF POMPEY. 171
done ;-nor indeed was it nearly done. It was now
clearly his first duty to pursue Pompey, whom,
should he escape, the outside provinces and distant
allies of the Republic would soon supply with another
army. “Caesar thought that Pompey was to be pur-
sued to the neglecting of all other things.” In the
mean time Pompey, who seems to have been panic-
struck by his misfortune, fled with a few friends down
the AEgean Sea, picked his young wife up at an island
as he went, and made his way to Egypt. The story of
his murder by those who had the young King of Egypt
in their keeping is well known and need not detain us.
Caesar tells it very shortly. Pompey sends to young
Ptolemy for succour and assistance, trusting to past
friendship between himself and the young king's father.
Ptolemy is in the hands of eunuchs, adventurers, and
cut-throat soldiers, and has no voice of his own in the
matter. But these ruffians think it well to have Pom-
pey out of the way, and therefore they murder him.
Achillas, a royal satrap, and Septimius, a Roman sol-
dier, go out to Pompey's vessel, as messengers from the
king, and induce him to come down into their boat.
Then, in the very sight of his wife, he is slaughtered,
and his head is carried away as proof of the deed.
Such was the end of Pompey, for whom no fortune
had seemed to be too great, till Caesar came upon the
scene. We are told by the Roman poet, Lucan, who
took the battle of Pharsalia as his difficult theme, that
Caesar could bear no superior, and Pompey no equal.
The poet probably wished to make the latter the more
magnanimous by the comparison. To us, as we ex-
amine the character of the two generals, Caesar seems
172 THE CIVIL WAR.— TIIIRD BOOK.
at least as jealous of power as his son-in-law, and cer.
tainly was the more successful of the two in extruding
all others from a share in the power which he coveted.
IPompey in the triumvirate admitted his junior to
more, as he must have felt it, than equal power :
Caesar in the triumvirate simply made a stepping-stone
of the great man who was his elder. Pompey at
Thessaly was forced to divide at least the name of his
power with Scipio, his last father-in-law : but Caesar
never gave a shred of his mantle to be worn by another
soldier.
In speaking, however, of the character of Pompey,
and in comparing it with that of his greater rival, it
may probably be said of him that in all his contests,
both military and political, he was governed by a love
of old Rome, and of the Republic as the greatest
national institution which the world had ever known,
and by a feeling which we call patriotism, and of
which Caesar was, perhaps, we may say, too great to be
capable. Pompey desired to lead, but to lead the be-
loved Republic. Caesar, caring nothing for the things of
old, with no reverence for the past, utterly destitute of
that tenderness for our former footsteps which makes
so many of us cling with passionate fondness to con-
victed errors, desired to create out of the dust of the
Republic, which fate and his genius allowed him to
recast as he would,—something which should be better
and truer than the Republic.
The last seven chapters of the third book of this
Commentary form a commencement of the record of
the Alexandrine war, − which, beyond those seven
chapters, Caesar himself did not write. That he
CAESA R FOLLOWS POMPEY TO EG YPT. 173
should have written any Commentary amidst the
necessary toils of war, and the perhaps more pressing
emergencies of his political condition, is one of the
greatest marvels of human power. He tells us now,
that having delayed but a few days in Asia, he followed
Tºompey first to Cyprus and then to Egypt, taking with
him as his entire army three thousand two hundred
men. “ The rest, worn out with wounds, and battles,
and toil, and the greatness of the journey, could not
follow him.” But he directed that legions should be
made up for him from the remnants of Pompey's broken
army, and, with a godlike trust in the obedience of ab-
sent vassals, he went on to Egypt. He tells us that
he was kept in Alexandria by Etesian winds. But we
know also that Cleopatra came to him at Alexandria,
requiring his services in her contest for the crown of
Egypt; and knowing at what price she bought them,
we doubt the persistent malignity of the Etesian winds.
Had Cleopatra been a Swarthy Nubian, as some have
portrayed her, Caesar, we think, would have left Alex-
andria though the Etesian winds had blown in his very
teeth. All winds filled Caesar's sails. Caesar gets pos-
session of Cleopatra's brother Ptolemy, who, in accord-
ance with their father's will, was to have reigned in
Conjunction with his sister, and the Alexandrians
rise against him in great force. He slays Photinus,
the servant of King Ptolemy, has his own ambassador
slain, and burns the royal fleet of Egypt, burning
With it, unfortunately, the greater part of the royal
library. “These things were the beginning of the
Alexandrine war.” These are the last words of Caesar's
last Commentary.
C II A P T E R X II.
CONCLUSION.
HAVING concluded his ten short chapters descriptive
of the ten books of the Commentaries written by Cae-
Sar himself, the author of this little volume has finished
his intended task, and as he is specially anxious not
to be thought to have made an attempt at writing his-
tory, he would not add any concluding words, were it
not that three other Commentaries of Caesar's three
other wars were added to Caesar's Commentaries by
other writers. There is the Commentary on the Alex-
andrine war, written probably by Hirtius, the author
of the last book of the Gallic war; and two Commen-
taries on the African war and the Spanish war, writ-
ten, as the critics seem to think, by one Oppius, a
friend whom Caesar loved and trusted. The Alexan-
drine war was a war of itself, in which Caesar was in-
volved by his matchless audacity in following Pompey
into Egypt, and perhaps by the sweetness of Cleopa-
tra's charms. And this led also to a war in Asia Minor,
the account of which is included with that of his Egyp-
tian campaign. The African war, and that afterwards
CO W C L U S I O W. 175
carried on in Spain with the object of crushing out the
sparks of Pompeian revolt against his power, are sim-
ply the latter portions of the civil war, and their re-
cords might have been written as chapters added to the
Commentary “De Bello Civili.”
Alexandria, when Caesar landed there in pursuit of
Bompey and had offered to him as a graceful tribute
on his first arrival the head of his murdered rival, was
a city almost as populous and quite as rich as Rome;
and in the city, and throughout the more fertile parts
of Egypt, there was a crowd of Roman soldiers left
there to support and to overawe the throne of the
Ptolemies. Caesar, with hardly more than half a full
legion to support him, enters Alexandria as though
obedience were due to him by all in Egypt as Roman
consul. He at once demands an enormous sum of
money, which he claims as due to himself personally
for services rendered to a former Ptolemy; he takes
possession of the person of Ptolemy the young king,
and is taken possession of by Cleopatra, the young king's
sister, who was joint-heir with her brother to the throne.
In all his career there was perhaps nothing more auda-
cious than his conduct in Egypt. The Alexandrians,
or rather perhaps the Roman army in Egypt under the
leading of the young king's satraps, rise against Caesar,
and he is compelled to fortify himself in the town. He
contrives, however, to burn all the Egyptian fleet, and
with it unfortunately the royal library, as we were told
by himself at the end of the last Commentary. He at
length allows Ptolemy to go, giving him back to the
Egyptians, and thinking that the young king's presence
176 CO WCI, U S I O W.
may serve to allay the enmity of the Alexandrians.
The young king wept at leaving Caesar, and declared
that even his own kingdom was not so dear to him as
the companionship of Caesar. But the crafty false-faced
boy turns against Caesar as soon as he is free to do so.
Caesar never was in greater danger; and as one reads
one feels one's self to be deprived of the right to say that
no more insane thing was ever done than Caesar did
when he swaggered into Alexandria without an army
at his back,-only by the remembrance that Caesar was
Caesar. First, because he wanted some ready money,
and secondly, because Cleopatra was pretty, Caesar nearly
lost the world in Egypt.
But there comes to his help a barbarian ally,–a
certain Mithridates of Pergamus, a putative son of the
great Mithridates of Pontus. Mithridates brings an
army to Caesar's rescue, and does rescue him. A great
battle is fought on the Nile,_a battle which would have
been impossible to Caesar had not Mithridates come to
his aid, -and the Egyptians are utterly dispersed. Young
Ptolemy is drowned; Cleopatra is settled on her throne;
and Egypt becomes subject to Caesar. Then Caesar
hurries into Asia, finding it necessary to quell the arro-
gance of a barbarian who had dared to defeat a Roman
general. The unfortunate conqueror is Pharnaces, the
undoubted son of Mithridates of Pontus. But Caesar
comes, and sees, and conquers. He engages Pharnaces
at Zela, and destroys his army; and then, we are told,
inscribed upon his banners those insolent words—
“Veni, vidj, vici.” He had already been made Dicta-
tor of the Roman Empire for an entire year, and had
CO W C L U S I O W. 177
revelled with Cleopatra at Alexandria, and was becom-
ing a monarch.
These were the campaigns of the year 47 B.C., and
the record of them is made in the Commentary “De
Bello Alexandrino.”
In the mean timethings have not been going altogether
smoothly for Caesar in Italy, although his friends at
Rome have made him Dictator. His soldiers have mu-
tinied against their officers, and against his authority;
and a great company of Pompeians is collected in that
province of Africa in which poor Curio was conquered
by Juba, when Juba had Roman senators walking
in his train, and Caesar's army was destroyed. The
province called by the name of Africa lay just opposite
to Sicily, and was blessed with that Roman civilisation
which belonged to the possessions of the Republic
which were nearest to Rome, the great centre of
all things. It is now the stronghold of the Republi-
can faction,--as being the one spot of Roman ground in
which Caesar had failed of success. Pompey, indeed, is
no more, but Pompey’s two sons are here, and Scipio,
Pompey's father-in-law, whom Pompey had joined with
himself in the command at Pharsalus. Tabienus is
here, who, since he turned from Caesar, has been more
Pompeian than Pompey himself; and Afranius, to
whom Caesar was so kind in Spain; and Petreius and
King Juba, of whom a joint story has yet to be told;
and Varus, who held the province against Curio;-and
last of all there is that tower of strength, the great Cato,
the most virtuous and impracticable of men, who,
in spite of his virtue, is always in the wrong, and of
A. C. vol. iv. M.
178 CO W C L U S I O W.
whom the world at large only remembers that he was
fend of wine, and that he destroyed himself at Utica.
They are all at Utica, and to them for the present
Utica is Rome. They establish a Senate; and Scipio,
who is unworthy of the great name he bears, and is in-
competent as a general, is made commander-in-chief,
because Cato decides that law and routine so require.
Scipio had been consul,-had been joint commander
with Pompey, and his rank is the highest. The same
argument had been used when he was joined in that
command,--that it was fitting that such power should
be given to him because he was of consular rank. The
command of the Republican fleet had been intrusted
to Bibulus on the same ground. We never hear of
Caesar so bestowing promotion. He indeed is now and
again led away by another fault, trusting men simply
because he loves them,--by what we may call favourit-
ism, as he did when he allowed Curio to lose his army
in Africa, and thus occasioned all this subsequent
trouble. As we read of Scipio's rank we remember that
we have heard of similar cause for ill-judged promo-
tion in later times. The Pompeians, however, collect
an enormous army. They have ten Roman legions,
and are supported, moreover, by the whole force of
King Juba. This army, we are told, is as numerous as
that which Pompey commanded at Pharsalus. There
is quarrelling among them for authority; quarrelling as
to strategy; jealousy as to the barbarian, with acknow-
ledged inability to act without him;-and the reader
feels that it is all in vain. Caesar comes, having quelled
the mutiny of his own old veterans in Italy by a few
CO AW C L U S I O W. 179
words. He has gone among them fearing nothing;
they demand their discharge—he grants it. They
require the rewards which they think to be their due,
and he tells them that they shall have their money,
when he has won it with other legions. Then he ad-
dresses them not as soldiers, but as “citizens”—“Qui-
rites;” and that they cannot stand; it implies that
they are no longer the invincible soldiers of Caesar.
They rally round him ; the legions are re-formed, and
he lands in Africa with a small army indeed,—at first
with little more than three thousand men,_and is again
nearly destroyed in the very first battle. But after a few
months campaigning the old story has to be told again.
A great battle is fought at Thapsus, a year and five
months after that of Pharsalia, and the Republic is
routed again and for ever. The commentator tells us
that on this occasion the ferocity of Caesar's veterans
was so great, that by no entreaties, by no commands,
could they be induced to cease from the spilling of blood.
Put of the destruction of the leaders separate stories
are told us. Of Cato is the first story, and that best
known to history. He finds himself obliged to sur-
render the town of Utica to Caesar; and then, “he him-
self having carefully settled his own affairs, and having
commended his children to Lucius Caesar, who was
then acting with him as his quaestor, with his usual
gait and countenance, so as to cause no suspicion, he
took his sword with him into his bedroom when it was
his time to retire to rest,-and so killed himself.”
Scipio also killed himself. Afranius was killed by
Caesar's soldiers. Labienus, and the two sons of Pom-
180 CO AV CA, U S I O W.
pey, and Varus, escaped into Spain. Then comes the
story of King Juba and Petreius. Juba had collected
his wives and children, and all his wealth of gold and
jewels and rich apparel, into a town of his called Zama;
and there he had built a vast funeral-pile, on which,
in the event of his being conquered by Caesar, he in-
tended to perish,_meaning that his wives and children
and dependants and rich treasures should all be burned
with him. So, when he was defeated, he returned to
Zama; but his wives and children and dependants,
being less magnificently minded than their king, and
knowing his royal purpose, and being unwilling to
become ornaments to his euthanasia, would not let
him enter the place. Then he went to his old Ro-
man friend Petreius, and they two sat down together
to supper. Petreius was he who would not allow
Afranius to surrender to Caesar at Lerida. When they
have supped, Juba proposes that they shall fight each
other, so that one at least may die gloriously. They
do fight, and Petreius is quickly killed. “Juba being
the stronger, easily destroyed the weaker Petreius with
his sword.” Then the barbarian tried to kill himself;
but, failing, got a slave to finish the work. The battle
of Thapsus was fought, B.C. 47. Numidia is made a
province by Caesar, and so Africa is won. We may
say that the Roman Republic died with Cato at Utica.
The Spanish war, which afforded matter for the last
Commentary, is a mere stamping out of the embers.
Caesar, after the affair in Africa, goes to Rome; and the
historian begins his chronicle by telling us that he is
detained there “muneribus dandis,”—by the distribu-
CO AV CA, U S I O W. 181
tion of rewards,-keeping his promise, no doubt, to those
veterans whom he won back to their military obedience
by calling them “Quirites,” or Roman citizens.” The
Sons of Pompey, Cnaeus and Sextus, have collected to-
gether a great number of men to support their worn-out
cause, and we are told that in the battle of Munda
more than 30,000 men perished. But that was the
end of it. Labienus and Varus are killed ; and the
historian tells us that a funeral was made for them.
One Scapula, of whom it is said that he was the pro-
moter of all this Spanish rebellion, eats his supper, has
himself anointed, and is killed on his funeral-pile.
Cnaeus, the elder son of Pompey, escapes wounded,
but at last is caught in a cave, and is killed. Sextus,
the younger, escapes, and becomes a leading rebel for
some years longer, till at last he also is killed by one
of Antony’s officers.
This Commentary is ended, or rather is brought to
an untimely close, in the middle of a speech which
Caesar makes to the inhabitants of Hipsala, Seville,_
in which he tells them in strong language how well he
behaves to them, and how very badly they have be-
* Not in the Commentary, but elsewhere, we learn that he
now triumphed four times, for four different victories, taking
care to claim none for any victory won over Roman soldiers.
On four different days he was carried through the city with his
legions and his spoils and his captives. His first triumph was
for the Gallic wars; and on that day Wercingetorix, the gallant
Gaul whom we remember, and who had now been six years in
prison, was strangled to do Caesar honour. I think we hate
Caesar the more for his cruelty to those who were not Romans,
because policy induced him to spare his countrymen.
182 CO WCA, U S I O W.
haved to him. But we reach an abrupt termination
in the middle of a sentence.
After the battle of Munda Caesar returned to Rome,
and enjoyed one year of magnificent splendour and
regal power in Rome. He is made Consul for ten years,
and Dictator for life. He is still high priest, and at
last is called King. He makes many laws, and perhaps
adds the crowning jewel to his imperishable diadem of
glory by reforming the calendar, and establishing a
proper rotation of months and days, so as to comprise
a properly-divided year. But as there is no Commen-
tary of this year of Caesar's life, our readers will not
expect that we should treat of it here. How he was
struck to death by Brutus, Cassius, and the other con-
spirators, and fell at the foot of Pompey's statue, gather-
ing his garments around him gracefully, with a policy
that was glorious and persistent to the last, is known
to all men and women.
“Then burst his mighty heart;
And in his mantle muffling up his face,
Even at the base of Pompey's statua,
Which all the while ran blood, Great Caesar fell.”
That he had done his work, and that he died in
time to save his name and fame from the evil deeds
of which unlimited power in the State would too
probably have caused the tyrant to be guilty, was
perhaps not the least fortunate circumstance in a career
which for good fortune has been unequalled in history.
THE END.
AUG 8 - 1918
|||||||
DD NOT REMOVE
[JR
MUTILATE CARD
—-a-mºme----— –

§
§§ # §:
sº
º
- ;
ºš
º º
sº
;
º § ãº
§: § tº:
§º -
ºś . §
-- § * §: § ºf: #:
ºš §§
sº º § *
r; R :- § ;
£º. fºr Aº-33
º § - §. §
º .#. §§ ** ; 3.
*** º. *:::
§
#3;
*ś
*:::