UNIVERSITY OF OREGON BULLETIN 
 
 NEW SERIES 
 
 DECEMBER, 1911 
 
 Vol. IX, No. 4 
 
 THE t mm 
 OF IHE 
 
 ttSIVEftSITIf UHLLMS 
 
 THE LAST OF THE SEQUANI 
 
 A STUDY IN RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 FREDERIC STANLEY DUNN 
 
 Published monthly by the University of Oregon, and entered at the post-office in 
 Eugene, Oregon, as second-class matter 
 
THE LAST OF THE SEQUANI 
 
 A STUDY IN RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 FREDERIC STANLEY DUNN 
 
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 FOREWORD 
 
 “The Last of the Sequani” is purely an experiment in the reconstruc- 
 tion of missing history, a looking-backward from a very slender vantage- 
 ground. A friend to whom the sketch was submitted for critisism, 
 candidly pronounced it “too much on the Ferrero order of history- 
 writing, too inferential and speculative.” But this very characteristic 
 was in the ulterior purpose of the writer — a wish to stimulate healthful 
 investigation on the part of students and teachers of Caesar, and to 
 cultivate in them the habit of comparing Caesar with himself. If the 
 High School teacher into whose study this pamphlet finds its way will 
 but exploit the suggested references, a useful practice always, some 
 new truths perhaps will have been invoked and others exercised. It 
 would be folly to hope for escape from antagonistic views. On the 
 contrary, if a polemic attitude is aroused among its readers, the essay 
 has proved the success of its experiment. 
 

 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https://archive.org/details/lastofsequanistuOOdunn 
 
THE LAST OF THE SEQUANI 
 
 A STUDY IN RECONSTRUCTION. 
 
 ‘In eo itinere (Orgetorix) persuadet Castico, Catamantaloedis filio, 
 Sequano , cuius pater regnum in Sequanis multos annos optinuerat et 
 a senatu populi Romani amicus appellatus erat, ut regnum in civitate 
 sua occuparet, quod pater ante habueratJ ’■ — Caesar B. G. I., 3, 4. 
 
 Two chieftains alone answer for the Sequani in all the eight books 
 of the Gallic War, and these two in a single sentence. When we meet 
 with but four Helvetians (see note below) in the history of the The 
 Conquest, we are not so very much surprised, for the Helvetians as a 
 tribe appear prominently only once again after their enforced return 
 (7, 75, 3). Their barriers of mountain and lake and river had the 
 effect of excluding them from the general activities of greater Gaul. 
 But the Sequanians lay within a busy zone and, even though ever so 
 passively inclined, were, by their very location, if for no other reason, 
 drawn into the train of events. Many times, and often quite at length, 
 Caesar has occasion to refer to this nation — yet two and only two 
 personages fastened themselves upon his attention, and even these 
 antedated the period of his relationship with Gaul. So far as there 
 is any evidence, Caesar mentions not one contemporary Sequanian or one 
 with whom he was personally acquainted. 
 
 Was then the personelle of the Sequanian baronage so mediocre and 
 so uninteresting? This would seem the more remarkable when we recall 
 that, at the time of Caesar’s arrival in Gaul, the Sequani had headed 
 one of the two great national parties (1, 31, 3-4; 6, 12). Political 
 supremacy, we well know, depends most generously upon the great 
 men who sustain it. A dearth of enterprising, masterful minds fre- 
 quently portends the downfall of a political fabric. Could this be what 
 was happening among the Sequani? Certain it is that their boasted 
 hegemony was passing from them, though to charge the decline to their 
 lack of leaders would be a hasty and unjust conclusion. The Sequanian 
 fall was the issue of many causes. 
 
 But, conversely, it is just as true that the inevitable crushing of 
 a nation will eventually deprive it of its lights. The Sequani, in spite 
 of their much advertised supremacy, were practically defunct as a 
 political organization when Caeser found them. There had been little 
 incentive to exercise spirit and leadership at such fearful cost as it 
 had of late entailed — for the thralldom of Ariovistus was upon them 
 (1, 31-33). The Romans, in acquiring the Sequanian domain, had 
 succeeded to the possession of a dead entity (6, 12, 6-9). 
 
 Note. — Those interested will find the writer’s sketch of “The Helvetian 
 Quartet” in the Classical Weekly, Vol. 11, pp. 178, 186, 194. 
 
 5 
 
CATAMANTALOEDES. 
 
 Of Catamantaloedes it would seem at first little more than gener- 
 alities can be predicated, for he is mentioned in passing as the father 
 of his son. Yet the few additional items that Caesar appends, together 
 with other references gathered here and there from the Commentaries 
 and from other sources, throw an interesting light upon this Sequanian’s 
 history. His must have been one of the few Gallic names with which 
 Caesar and all Romans had certainly been more or less familiar. 
 
 The information which Caesar accords us has the appearance of 
 being familiar history to his own contemporaries, facts which he recalls 
 to the mind of the reader as if by accident, and solely for the purpose 
 of introducing a less-known son in terms of a famous father, in the 
 same way in which, in the very same chapter, he introduces Dumnorix 
 as the brother of the well-known Druid Divitiacus — else what interest 
 would Roman readers have in a Gaul’s genealogy? We may be sure 
 that the father, especially if long dead, would scarcely have found a 
 place in the narrative,' unless Catamantaloedes had been in his own 
 day a great and prominent figure. And such he had been. As Caesar 
 says, he “had held the regal power for many years and had been called 
 friend by the Senate of the Roman people.” 
 
 The name should conjure up in our minds the picture of a vanished 
 grandeur. Cantamantaloedes had been king — so Caesar styles him — 
 one of the few graced with that title in the Commentaries. With such 
 worthies as Divitiacus of the Suessiones (2, 4, 7) or Ollovico, the father 
 of Teutomatus (7, 31, 5), he belongs to the era of the Gallic “father- 
 kings” that had passed away. He had been monarch in the “golden 
 age” of Sequanian supremacy, when in all Celtic Gaul only the Arverni 
 and the Aedui could claim names as noble. Those were the heroic 
 days before Roman encroachment, before the wave of democratic revolu- 
 tion, before the dread German cloud had begun to lower upon the Rhine 
 horizon and the spectral Ariovistus had become a “bogy-man” to young 
 and old alike. 
 
 The few hints that we can gather from Caesar and other authorities 
 as to the era immediately preceding Roman occupation are extremely 
 meager, a fragmentary picture at best. This much we may infer, that 
 “there were giants in the earth in those days.” There were tremendous 
 influences astir and all but giants went down before them. Did 
 Catamantaloedes himself, though surely a giant, finally succumb to the 
 fierce conflict raging around him? 
 
 In his prime, the Sequanian must have been a stalwart among his 
 peers. Fate had placed him where there was need of both a shrewd 
 intellect and a mighty arm, for he was king of a tribe that had a high 
 reputation to subserve and a worthy cause to defend. Divitiacus describes 
 the ager Sequanus to Caesar as optimus totius Galliae (1, 31, 10). 
 Nowhere else in Gaul was there such fertility. This in itself must have 
 made of the Sequanians a prosperous people under natural conditions, 
 a center of commercial importance. The head of such a tribe, if him- 
 self of a vigorous and aggressive personality, could scarcely have 
 escaped national renown. Far-reaching treaties for barter and trade 
 would necessarily fall under his jurisdiction, and the responsibility for 
 the prosperity of his people would depend largely upon his wisdom as 
 the executive. We gather an interesting suggestion from Strabo 
 (4, p. 192) as to the particular feature which made Sequani famous. 
 Divitiacus did not speak of it to Caesar on this occasion, for the latter 
 doubtless knew from personal experience where his sausages used to come 
 from — the pork which the epicures of Rome prized so highly. It came 
 from up the Arar, from the rich farm lands of the Sequani, where 
 Vesontio (1, 38) may have been the great pork-market of ancient Gaul, 
 
 6 
 
a Chicago or a Kansas City for the world that was. Varro in his 
 Res Rusticae (2, 4, 10-11) says that in his day — and that was Caesar’s 
 day also — the hams and bacon from Gaul, though he may be speaking 
 more narrowly of Cisalpine Gaul, were the richest and largest in the 
 markets of Rome. And, in testimony of the enormous size of Gallic 
 hogs, he quotes an amusing anecdote from Cato, that they were some- 
 times known to be too heavy to walk or even to stand on their feet, 
 and had to be lifted into carts, if it became necessary to move them 
 from place to place. 
 
 The heavy annual exportation of pork and grain from the Sequanian 
 territory, while the source of its prosperity, was at the same time the 
 cause of its woe. The Rhone with its northern tributaries was the 
 only channel of egress for Sequanian products into southern markets, 
 but unfortunately was not included within Sequanian boundaries. The 
 water-way was in great part on the boundary-line only, while on the 
 right bank were the Aedui. In the absence of amicable partnership 
 the deplorable result was the attempt on the part of both nations to 
 exact toll, each from the other (Strabo 4, p. 192). Considerable revenue 
 must have accrued to the nobility from the river-dues, so that the 
 jeopardy of these latter was at once hotly resented. War was inevitable, 
 and here probably was where King Catamantaloedes found the chief 
 theater for all his intellectual and physical powers. And herein it 
 may be that Rome first learned the name of the great Sequanian. 
 
 There were still other elements that probably contributed to the 
 fame of Catamantaloedes. The old-time supremacy wielded by the 
 Arverni had never been recovered after the disastrous blow dealt them 
 in 121 B. C. by Fabius Allobrogicus (1, 45, 2), and into the place 
 of the dispossessed nation had come the Sequani. From the position 
 of allies, these latter were now elevated to the leadership of their 
 wing of the Celts. This rise of Sequania we gather from Caesar’s 
 language in reporting the speech of Divitiacus in Book 1, 31, 3-4 as 
 compared with his own epitome of Gallic politics in Book 6, 12. 
 Divitiacus in the former passage mentions the Arverni and the Aedui 
 respectively as leaders of the two factions in Gaul, but in the very 
 next sentence tells how the Arverni and the Sequani summoned the 
 Germans to their aid against the Aedui, ascribing to the Sequani, at 
 least a partnership in the supremacy, perhaps denying them, as the 
 hereditary foe, their full quota of power. But the second passage, 
 Caesar’s own review of the political situation in Gaul at the time of his 
 becoming governor, ignores the Arverni altogether. “The Aedui were 
 the leaders of one faction, the Sequani of the other.” The entire nar- 
 rative of the Commentaries substantiates this assertion, for it was' 
 not until the seventh summer of Caesar’s pro-consulship that the 
 Arverni arose to assume the national burden under the splendid Vercin- 
 getorix. Meanwhile, Celtillus (7, 4, 1), if still living, would seem to 
 have deferred to Catamantaloedes. How much the Sequanian ascendancy 
 may have been due to the brilliant personality of their king, we can 
 not tell. Perhaps Catamantaloedes himself had been largely instru- 
 mental in gathering up the reins within the grasp of his nation — an 
 Epaminondas or a Hohenzollern for his tribesmen. 
 
 The Sequanian monarch must have been long a famous figure in 
 Gallic circles. Caesar’s expression is “he had held the regal power 
 for many years.” To have reigned for many years in those stirring 
 times means that the king must have ruled ably and with vigor. Cata- 
 mantaloedes could have been no mere figure-head. This Edward III 
 of the Celts (shall we call him, like the First Edward also, ‘The Hammer 
 of the Aedui’?) must have been noted, not merely for having grown old 
 and venerable while on the throne, but for having exerted a strong 
 and powerful influence upon his country, upon his allies, and, perhaps 
 above all, upon his foes. 
 
 7 
 
We have no means of divining how far back into the past his 
 long reign had extended. Only one reference to the Sequani, aside 
 from those given by Caesar, might possibly fall within the life-time 
 of Catamantaloedes, and for this we are indebted to Plutarch (Marius 
 24, in fin). After the Battle of Aquae Sextiae, Teutobodus, King of 
 the Teutones, and several of his chieftains, attempted to make their 
 escape from the Putridi Campi and to join the host of the Cimbri in 
 Italy. But they were intercepted among the passes of the Alps by 
 Sequanians, brought back from their flight, and remanded to the victo- 
 rious Marius. This was in the year 102, the year of Caesar’s birth. 
 
 As we know neither the beginning nor the end of his reign, why 
 may we not conjecture that this successful ambuscade was generaled by 
 Catamantaloedes himself, who may have been at the time a promising 
 young monarch? Granted even that he lived until within a few years of 
 Caesar’s coming, it is far from being an impossibility. The Helvetian 
 Divico (1, 13) was an imposing figure at the time of this same Teutonic 
 and Cimbric invasion and yet lived to meet in conference with Caesar 
 shortly before the Battle at Bibracte. Caesar’s phrase multos annos in 
 speaking of the Sequanian’s reign conveys the idea of great longevity 
 and the case of Divico affords an enticing parallel. The hypothesis 
 then that Catamantaloedes was an actor in this capture of the Teutonic 
 chieftains, leads to other interesting inferences — that the Sequani were 
 ostensibly the allies of Marius, and that their king gave material aid 
 to the Romans in destroying their common scourge. Who knows that the 
 complimentary title of amicus which he received from Rome may not 
 have been in recognition of his services during this same memorable 
 campaign? 
 
 It is tantalizing not to know how long the Sequanian king had been 
 dead when Caesar came — not to know whether he had lived to see the 
 aggression of Ariovistus, or whether he had died in the earlier stages 
 of the Aeduo-Sequanian War. It is difficult not to believe that Cata- 
 mantaloedes was a protagonist in the long and bitter feud with the 
 Aedui. Caesar in speaking of the duration of this war (1, 31, 4) uses 
 the very same expression ( multos annos ) as in referring to the reign 
 of Catamantaloedes, so that the long periods of both the man and the 
 war must surely have been coincident in some part, must at least have 
 overlapped. And it is but another step to believe that it was his general- 
 ship in the war with the Aedui that won for Catamantaloedes his chief 
 fame abroad. 
 
 This then is the picture we may imagine of Gaul in the generation 
 before Caesar’s coming. Far up among the Belgae, Divitiacus of the 
 Suessiones (2, 4, 7) had pushed his victorious arms into Britain’s 
 interior, the most prominent personage in Belgic Gaul, unless Catuvolcus, 
 “King of a half-part of the Eburones” (6, 31, 5) could have been in 
 his youth a rival for military fame in that corner of Gaul. Down among 
 the Aquitani, the grandfather of the Piso brothers (4, 12, 4) was king 
 and known as the “Friend of the Roman People.” But with the Celtic 
 Gauls, their Peloponnesian War was on. It was either “the Sequanian” 
 or “the Aedui”; “My sword for Catamantaloedes” or “Fealty to Epore- 
 dorix” (7, 67, 7). No one knows how long the feud had prevailed, but 
 feuds were a Gallic instinct (6, 11, 2-3), and this particular phase 
 of it may have been a recent shifting of the forces — perhaps a develop- 
 ment within the lifetime of Catamantaloedes. 
 
 Vesontio (1, 38) must have presented a martial spectacle in the old 
 days. The wisdom of the Sequani had made it a much respected strat- 
 egic center, which the genius of Caesar was not slow to recognize. Here 
 in his own day he found an arsenal, which owing to the feud, the Aedui 
 had no doubt been perfecting for many years. From his capital on 
 these castellated, river-girt heights, the King of the Sequani, during 
 
 8 
 
his long life-time, may have sent forth many a messenger on war intent. 
 The shout may have often echoed from one hill-top to another, “Send 
 up your thousands. Death to the ‘brothers of Rome’ ” (1, 33, 2; 36, 5; 
 44, 9: Cic. ad Att. 1, 19, 2: Tac. Ann. 11, 25, 2: Strabo 4, 3, 21). 
 Celtillus himself (7,4,1), afterwards martyr to ambition, but once 
 ranking man in all Gaul, father of the redoubtable hero of Alesia, may 
 have come from the land of the Arverni to join forces with his friend and 
 ally, and to attend war-councils within the circle of the Dubis. With him 
 may have come his brother Gobanitio (7, 4, 2), of whom we only know 
 that he afterwards opposed his puny will against the magnificent patriot- 
 ism of Vercingetorix, his nephew. Tribes that were under the imperium 
 of the Arverni must also have followed their allies to war; such were 
 the Eleuteti, Cadurci, Gabali, and Vellavii, who rallied around Vervinge- 
 torix at the last great stand (7, 75, 2). And since we find the Remi 
 afterwards succeeding to the hegemony of this same faction (6, 12, 7), 
 it is but natural to conclude that this tribe, with some who are men- 
 tioned as their allies, at some time or other owned the suzerainty of 
 Catamantaloedes. Thus, from the land of the Carnutes (6, 4, 5), the 
 father of Tasgetius (5, 25, 1) may have brought his hordes in answer 
 to the summons of the Sequanian General-in-Chief. A king himself, 
 Catamantaloedes owned kings among his vassals; for this was the gen- 
 eration when kings prevailed, the kings who so bitterly resented the 
 waning of their power under the Roman imperium (2, 1, 4) . 
 
 But over on the west bank of the Arar was General Eporedorix 
 (7, 67, 7) with the allied armies of the Aedui, and these too owned 
 the chieftainship of kings. The Aedui, under the presumable pro- 
 tection of Roman friendship, had tenaciously maintained the leadership 
 of their faction, as against the succession of three several tribes to the 
 hegemony of the opposite party. The personelle of the one faction was 
 therefore the more constant and generally recognized; whereas the 
 vassalage of the other had been so shifting that Caesar probably did not 
 care to weary his readers with their recital. Chance elements have 
 also of necessity entered into the narrative and have brought the Aedui 
 into greater prominence. These several causes have tended to restrict 
 our knowledge of the Sequanian forces on the one hand, while augment- 
 ing that of the Aedui on the other. 
 
 Thus, the Bellovaci (2, 14, 2) who, to quote the words of Divitiacus, 
 “had always been under the protection of the Aeduan state,” very 
 likely responded when Eporedorix issued a general call, coming from 
 far off Bratuspantiun in Belgic Gaul (2, 13, 2) with their tale of from 
 sixty to one hundred thousand armed men (2, 4, 5). Moritasgus in 
 person (5, 54, 2), or his father, may have come from the land of the 
 Senones (6, 4, 2) to join Eporedorix against the Sequani. And it is 
 fair to surmise that Camulogenus (7, 57, 3) who, when venerable in 
 years, commanded these same Senones and the Parisii against Labienus 
 in the great insurrection of Caesar’s seventh year, may have contributed 
 the vigor of his youth against the aggression of Catamantaloedes. The 
 Bituriges, just across the Loir, were also in fide Aeduorum, as is shown 
 by their appeal against Vercingetorix in 7, 5, 2. Their allegiance to the 
 Aedui must surely have been manifested earlier, when the war with 
 the Sequani was on. And it is not unlikely that the states which were 
 under the actual imperium of the Aedui as late as the war with 
 Vercingetorix were contingents earlier in the War of the River-tolls. 
 These were the Segusiavi, Ambluareti, Aulerci Brannovices, and the 
 Blannovii (7, 75, 2). With what faction Ollovico, the father of Teuto- 
 matus of the Nitiobriges (7, 31, 5) cast his lot, it is difficult to say. 
 The fact that he was styled amicus of the Roman people might rank 
 him as the ally of the Aedui. Yet Catamantaloedes himself was also 
 
 9 
 
an amicus , and we have presumed to imagine him as the Commander- 
 in-Chief of the anti-Roman party. 
 
 The full formula of this complimentary title, as we find by com- 
 parison with the passage in Book 1, 35 2, was rex atque amicus. It 
 was Rome’s way of making formal recognition of foreign princes. Its 
 intent in the case of Catamantaloedes is obscured by our want of more 
 complete information in analogous instances. Sometimes, as in the 
 example of Masinissa of Numidia (Livy 30, 15, 11), the title is definitely 
 known to have been awarded for splendid service. Again, as with 
 Ariobarzanes of Cappadocia (Eutr. 5, 5, 2), its very evident purpose 
 was to bolster up the wavering frontier line of the East. The other 
 Gallic kings upon whom the distinction was conferred are too sum- 
 marily mentioned to afford us any adequate solution of this particular 
 phase of Rome’s policy in Gaul. There is nothing to indicate that Piso’s 
 grandfather (4, 12, 4) or Ollovico (7, 31, 5) received the title either 
 as a reward or as a bribe. But in the celebrated case of Ariovistus 
 (1, 35, 2; 40, 2), the evidence seems quite convincing that Rome sought 
 to disarm a dangerous and powerful enemy, or at least to allay his 
 aggressions. Caesar, in his parley with the German monarch (1, 43, 4), 
 called it to the latter’s attention that such honors were allotted to but 
 few and only in return for great services. But Ariovistus (1, 44, 9) 
 was shrewd enough to see how much of this was specious argument. 
 
 The temptation is therefore strong to deduce a similar situation for 
 Catamantaloedes. The strenuous regime of the Sequanian king may 
 have been such as to elicit the admiration and perhaps even the dismay 
 of the Romans. Catamantaloedes was at least powerful enough to make 
 himself felt as the foeman of the “friends of the Roman people” and 
 was at the same time an antagonist of merit, whom it was no dis- 
 grace to treat with courtesy and deference. Thus it may be that even 
 Rome chose to respect the throne of the Sequani, condescending to 
 bestow her favdrs upon its occupant, courting him with politic honors. 
 Certain it is that a senatus consultum was passed in his name, and there- 
 after Catamantaloedes enjoyed the distinction of being styled amicus , 
 the friend and ally of the Roman people. 
 
 Of course, all this fabric may be built upon utterly false premises. 
 The case of Catamantaloedes may have been similar to that of Masi- 
 nissa’s — a sincere reward for some particular and meritorious conduct. 
 The Sequanian may have been at peace with Rome, and his reign per- 
 haps farther back in time than we have surmised, may not have included 
 in its limits any serious outbreak with the Aedui. 
 
 Caesar’s language certainly implies that the kingship, in the time 
 of Catamantaloedes’ son, no longer existed. Neither do the subsequent 
 references to the Sequani give any hint whatever that kings ruled 
 there in the time of Caesar’s administration. The statement that “Cast- 
 icus should seize the royal power” has every semblance of meaning 
 that a democratic form of government now pervailed and that Casticus 
 was plotting to restore the monarchy. The presumption is therefore 
 plausible that Catamantaloedes was the last king of the Sequani. 
 
 And what could have been the nature of the revolution which made 
 a republic of the Sequani? And how did it involve Catamantaloedes 
 himself? Was the old king suffered to die in peace before the time of 
 his people’s cataclysm? May we think of him as having ruled unto 
 the last, with true royal dignity and power until the scepter dropped 
 from his death-stricken fingers? Or did Catamantaloedes fall in the 
 course of the war, in the defense of his people, a martyr to the national 
 cause? 
 
 Could it be that discontent had been gathering for years, though 
 held in check by a certain reverence and perhaps wholesome dread of 
 the old lion, until his collapse gave the signal for the onslaught? Was 
 
 10 
 
it then that a sudden outburst of popular demonstration, resultant upon 
 the king’s death, forbade a crowned potentate to lord it again over the 
 masses? Or could the aged monarch have at last met with mob-violence 
 at the hands of an enraged people? Had Catamantaloedes been guilty 
 of tyranny or infamy in his latter days? Could it have been Cata- 
 mantaloedes that made that huge error in statecraft, inviting the aid 
 of the Germans and invoking upon his head the wrath of his outraged 
 people? Was this then the type of revolution which, centuries later, 
 wrought the doom of Charles I in England and Louis XVI in France? 
 
 Of this much we may be sure — fate had willed it that no degenerate 
 should follow him, to cast reproach upon the fame of Sequania’s last 
 monarch. 
 
 CASTICUS. 
 
 History has certainly repeated itself in the efforts of a son or heir 
 to reinstate a dethroned dynasty in the personage of himself. French 
 history, especially of the last century, is replete with such elements. 
 French society of but a decade or so ago was far from tranquil by 
 reason of the rival claims of Orleans, Bourbon, and Bonaparte. And 
 here in the chronicles of Caesar, removed from these latter disturbances 
 by the space of over twenty centuries, we find a Prince-Pretender to a 
 French throne. 
 
 Of the several rather unique considerations that cluster about Cata- 
 mantaloedes and Casticus, the lonely twain from the Sequani, as cata- 
 logued in Ceasar’s Commentaries, the fact that they were father and son 
 at once renders them attractive. Royalty too carries with it a glamour 
 of interest that is irresistable, and these were king and prince. But, 
 above all, the romantic element is strongly appealed to, when we 
 realize that the son had been disinherited from the throne and was now 
 endeavoring to recover his ancestral rights. Whether his cause was 
 righteous or otherwise, whether the claimant himself was worthy or 
 not, a dramatic atmosphere is thrown around Casticus the Sequanian, 
 as around the name of Tarquin in Roman history or of the Stuarts in 
 England. 
 
 The brief mention Caesar makes of him leaves us a broad realm 
 for conjecture. Perhaps the Pro-Consul himself knew but little of him. 
 The episode in which Casticus figured occurred at least two years before 
 Caesar took up the clew and nothing more than the meager statement 
 that the Sequanian was implicated in the conspiracy of Orgetorix may 
 have been brought to the attention of the Roman. To be sure, the 
 conspiracy itself was profoundly startling, but the person of Casticus 
 may have been but obscurely understood. We are indebted to Caesar 
 for even this chance reference. 
 
 Casticus lived in a troubled era. Reformation, revolution, all sorts 
 of national problems were stirring. The tribal ascendancy, sustained 
 though probably at great cost through the long reign of his father 
 Catamantaloedes, was waning. The Aedui, their ancestral foes, were 
 vaulting to the front. An inter-tribal struggle alone would tax a people’s 
 strength, but a more formidable enemy was the while encroaching upon 
 the national boundaries. The Sequanian territory lay on the extreme 
 eastern frontier, where it was constantly menaced with invasion by 
 the Germans from across the Rhine. The ever impending conquest 
 at the hands of Ariovistus was like the fabled terrors of Theseus in 
 Hades, the atra silex iam iam lapsura (Verg. Aen. 6, 602). 
 
 Their foreign relations were thus grave enough, but, as if even • 
 these were not sufficient, internal revolution had* added its disturbances, 
 resulting in the overthrow of the traditional form of government. It 
 may have been a bloodless stroke of state, but even peaceful revolutions 
 are apt to be attended with more or less political confusion. We may 
 
 11 
 
be sure that Casticus himself would not have harbored hopes of rein- 
 statement, as he did, unless there were some measure of popular 
 faction to depend upon. And for all we know, the great wave of 
 democratic agitation that seems to have been sweeping away the original 
 monarchies in Gaul may have met with marked resistance among the 
 Sequanians before its final consummation. 
 
 All these variant elements were rapidly working toward the dis- 
 solution of Sequanian independence. The war with the Aedui was 
 succeeding but illy. Annexation by the Germans was becoming more 
 and more imminent. Between the yoke and the altar, the Sequani were 
 driven to the desperate recourse which wrought their doom. Casticus 
 himself may have been a blind participant in the unfortunate trend of 
 affairs. Somebody at least — though it may have been one of the Arverni 
 — was guilty of the suggestion that an alliance be made with the one 
 foe, the German Ariovistus, both for the purpose of allaying his own 
 hostile attitude and of securing his aid against the other foe, the 
 Aedui. 
 
 The coming of the German was at first a brilliant success outwardly. 
 The balance, with a mighty momentum, swung back toward the Sequani. 
 Casticus, the dethroned prince, may have thrust aside his personal 
 grievances and engaged in the several battles wherein the Aedui were 
 decisively crushed and a false hegemony restored to the Sequani (1, 31, 
 4-9; 6, 12, 2-5). But the disclosures which Divitiacus afterward made 
 to Caesar (1, 31) tell the wretched sequel. The restoration of the 
 Sequani to their former ascendancy was a bitter mockery, an empty 
 title. We are reminded of how in a like situation, the Saracens were 
 called in to champion the cause of a Spanish malcontent, and of how 
 eventually they gathered the peninsula into their power as in the 
 tentacles of the cuttle. If Casticus had been the Sequanian Count 
 Julian, he certainly fared as illy as his Spanish counterpart, for he 
 reaped the whirlwind. 
 
 It was during this ever increasing stress of political trouble that 
 there came into the land of the Sequani the powerful and distinguished 
 Helvetian Orgetorix. His mission publicly was to arrange amicable 
 relations between the two tribes, looking toward the contemplated migra- 
 tion of his own people. But with characteristic craft, Orgetorix sought 
 out Prince Casticus. Either he was sure of his quarry from a knowledge 
 of human instinct, or else Casticus was openly known as ready for 
 revolt. The Sequanian himself eagerly seized the proffered chance. 
 It needed no eloquence on the part of the Helvetian, for, as the latter 
 argued, with the assistance of the third conspirator, Dumnorix of the 
 Aedui, the combination would be irresistable. Not merely would Casticus 
 himself be established on his father’s throne, but the three could bring 
 about a partition of entire Gaul. The German terror could be dissipated 
 and the equally detested Romans could be restrained from further 
 encroachments. 
 
 If Casticus had any really patriotic sentiment in entering the coali- 
 tion with Orgetorix, it was quite probably overshadowed by a selfish 
 one. It may be questioned whether he was as eager to see in the 
 alliance an opportunity to overthrow Ariovistus and his hated regime 
 or to crush the advance of Rome as to get himself a crown at all hazards. 
 Perhaps he was assured in his own mind, that of the two evils, if the 
 restoration of the monarchy could be called an .evil, his countrymen 
 would far rather own a native sovereign than a foreign tyrant like 
 Ariovistus or such as the Romans bade fair to become. Times were 
 ripe for his conspiracy,' and Casticus knew it. 
 
 As to the latter days of Casticus, we have but a blank. Caesar 
 omits to tell us whether the Sequanian conspirator met with the same 
 arrest among his people which befell Orgetorix. If the writer knew, 
 
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he may not have thought if ot consequence to tell, for his purpose in 
 narrating so prefatory an incident at all is from the Helvetian stand- 
 point. But, as we know the violent end of both the other members of 
 the barbarian triumvirate, the silence of Caesar upon Casticus is rather 
 tantalizing. 
 
 There is perhaps some little reason to believe that Casticus escaped 
 rough usage at the hands of his countrymen. The same elements which, 
 as we have seen, could have lent themselves to the accomplishment of 
 the conspiracy, could also have secured the passive behavior of the 
 Sequani when it failed. For the country was in a turmoil and would 
 probably have allowed, if not welcomed, a change. The confusion which 
 prevailed could have prevented the arrest and execution of Casticus. 
 More than that, Ariovistus doubtless had secured such tyranny over the 
 life of the nation that even its executive and judiciary may have been 
 paralyzed. The people were neither inclined nor permitted to enforce 
 their own rights and laws. It may be that the conspiracy did not 
 assume such dangerous proportions in the eyes of the Sequani and the 
 Aedui as it did to the Helvetii. Or it may be that these two nations 
 did not succeed in obtaining such convicting evidence of the complicity 
 of their two representatives. Possibly the conspiracy eluded them 
 altogether or never attained more than the effect of rumor. Dumnorix 
 the Aeduan lived to play yet more prominent parts in the tragedy of 
 Gaul (1, 18-20: 5, 6-7). May we infer that Casticus too was exempt? 
 
 To reason, however, that Casticus escaped punishment merely because 
 Dumnorix did would be a non sequitur. Caesar informs us that the 
 latter was a great favorite with the people (1, 18, 3), which alone 
 would be sufficient to save him from the probabilities of condemnation. 
 Again, Dumnorix was, at the time of the coalition, Vergobret of the 
 Aedui (1, 3, 5), “who has the power of life and death over the people” 
 (1, 16, 5) and presumably therefore, by virtue of his supreme office, could 
 have suppressed summary action against himself. But we have no author- 
 ity that Casticus stood in either of these relations to his people. His position 
 may have been quite the reverse. The fact that he was a claimant to 
 the throne could have made him suspected by a great proportion of his 
 tribe, and especially the knowledge that he was actually aiming at vio- 
 lent restoration of the monarchy might easily have incensed the mob. 
 
 In fact there is plausible argument that Casticus, if he did not meet 
 with death as a result of his treason, must at least have died shortly 
 afterwards, otherwise the disappearance from the narrative of so 
 prominent a figure, if he were yet living, would seem rather remarkable. 
 The Casticus whom the shrewd Orgetorix had deemed of sufficient 
 strength and power to form one of his triad would certainly be heard 
 from again, unless we are to imagine that he had been the mere dupe 
 of the other conspirators, the cat’s-paw of the coalition. 
 
 For instance, when, in the third year, the Helvetians finally were on 
 the march and it was found necessary, as a last resort, to pass through 
 Sequanian territory, they made overtures to Dumnorix the Aeduan to 
 act as a mediator and to negotiate a safe passage (1, 9). It certainly 
 does seem that, if Casticus were still living at this time, some mention 
 would be made of him in connection with this episode. Could the 
 Helvetii forget that Dumnorix had been a fellow-conspirator of Orgetorix 
 and yet ignore Casticus? It could have been of prime importance to 
 apply as well to this third man, who was himself a native Sequanian 
 and who might be able to obtain terms for them. Of course there may 
 have been hesitation to entrust the entire burden of meditation to a 
 Sequanian, for Casticus, as a native, could not bring the same arguments 
 to bear upon his fellow-countrymen as an outsider like Dumnorix could. 
 And again, we are at Caesar’s mercy, for, even were Casticus alive and 
 concerned in this compact between the Helvetii and the Sequani, it may 
 
 13 
 
not have been to Caesar’s purpose to mention it. Dumnorix was Caesar’s 
 chief concern. In Caesar’s mind, Casticus may even have been given that 
 sort of recognition which we now give to Crassus or even to Pompeius 
 in Caesar’s own Triumvirate, that of being the weak member of that 
 famous but ill-starred coalition of chieftains. If still living, the infer- 
 ence is rather strong, though it may be quite unjust, that the person- 
 ality of Casticus was not of sufficient influence and prestige to warrant 
 Caesar’s naming him again in some one of the several passages, like 
 this one, in which the Sequani figure. 
 
 At some time subsequent to the conspiracy of Orgetorix, there had 
 occurred that famous Battle of Magetobriga (1, 31, 12; 40, 8: 6, 12, 3), 
 in which the united forces of Celtic Gaul, Sequanian and Aeduan alike, 
 went down in terrific carnage before the tyrant from the Rheinland. 
 May it be that Prince Casticus had fallen here on this bloody field, in 
 defense of common Gaul against a common foe, erasing the stigma of 
 his treason in gallant effort to stay the fall of his country? 
 
 Supposing that Casticus survived both the episode of the conspiracy 
 and the field of Magetobriga, it is left to us to wonder if he were 
 a member of that general legation that waited upon Caesar after the 
 latter’s defeat of the Helvetians, requesting a council of all Gaul and 
 conferring with him secretly about the awful regime of Ariovistus 
 (1, 30, 31). There were Sequanians among them, for Caesar remarked 
 it (1, 32) and was puzzled at their strange behavior. And perhaps 
 the spectacle is none too abject for our unfortunate Prince Casticus. 
 Inheritor of a great name, but fated not to sit upon the throne of his 
 fathers; member of a brilliant triad of conspirators, but overshadowed 
 by the greater fame of his associates: despoiled of an opportunity to 
 display any real genius; and now standing with bowed head, speechless, 
 sullen before the Roman Governor — if this be Casticus, we may behold 
 in him the type of what the Celt was now becoming, a disinherited, 
 disappointed, and degenerate people, suppliant before the master-mind 
 of a Caesar. 
 
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