De Bello Gallico and Other Commentaries - Caius Julius Caesar
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In our days, the greatest occasional gatherings of the human race are in
India, especially at the great fair of the _Hurdwar_ on the Ganges in
northern Hindustan: a confluence of some millions is sometimes seen at
that spot, brought together under the mixed influences of devotion and
commercial business, but very soon dispersed as rapidly as they had been
convoked. Some such spectacle of nations crowding upon nations, and some
such Babylonian confusion of dresses, complexions, languages, and
jargons, was then witnessed at Rome. Accommodations within doors, and
under roofs of houses, or roofs of temples, was altogether impossible.
Myriads encamped along the streets, and along the high-roads, fields, or
gardens. Myriads lay stretched on the ground, without even the slight
protection of tents, in a vast circuit about the city. Multitudes of
men, even senators, and others of the highest rank, were trampled to
death in the crowds. And the whole family of man might seem at that time
to be converged at the bidding of the dead Dictator. But these, or any
other themes connected with the public life of Caesar, we notice only in
those circumstances which have been overlooked, or partially
represented, by historians. Let us now, in conclusion, bring forward,
from the obscurity in which they have hitherto lurked, the anecdotes
which describe the habits of his private life, his tastes, and personal
peculiarities.
In person, he was tall, fair, gracile, and of limbs distinguished for
their elegant proportions. His eyes were black and piercing. These
circumstances continued to be long remembered, and no doubt were
constantly recalled to the eyes of all persons in the imperial palaces
by pictures, busts, and statues; for we find the same description of his
personal appearance three centuries afterwards in a work of the Emperor
Julian's. He was a most accomplished horseman, and a master
(_peritissimus_) in the use of arms. But, notwithstanding his skill and
horsemanship, it seems that, when he accompanied his army on marches, he
walked oftener than he rode; no doubt, with a view to the benefit of his
example, and to express that sympathy with his soldiers which gained him
their hearts so entirely. On other occasions, when travelling apart from
his army, he seems more frequently to have ridden in a carriage than on
horseback. His purpose, in this preference, must have been with a view
to the transport of luggage. The carriage which he generally used was a
_rheda_, a sort of gig, or rather curricle; for it was a _four_-wheeled
carriage, and adapted (as we find from the imperial regulations for the
public carriages, etc.) to the conveyance of about half a ton. The mere
personal baggage which Caesar carried with him was probably
considerable; for he was a man of elegant habits, and in all parts of
his life sedulously attentive to elegance of personal appearance. The
length of journeys which he accomplished within a given time appears
even to us at this day, and might well therefore appear to his
contemporaries, truly astonishing. A distance of one hundred miles was
no extraordinary day's journey for him in a _rheda_, such as we have
described it. So refined were his habits, and so constant his demand for
the luxurious accommodations of polished life as it then existed in
Rome, that he is said to have carried with him, as indispensable parts
of his personal baggage, the little ivory lozenges, squares and circles
or ovals, with other costly materials, wanted for the tessellated
flooring of his tent. Habits such as these will easily account for his
travelling in a carriage rather than on horseback.
The courtesy and obliging disposition of Caesar were notorious; and both
were illustrated in some anecdotes which survived for generations in
Rome. Dining on one occasion, as an invited guest, at a table where the
servants had inadvertently, for salad-oil, furnished some sort of coarse
lamp-oil, Caesar would not allow the rest of the company to point out
the mistake to their host, for fear of shocking him too much by exposing
what might have been construed into inhospitality. At another time,
whilst halting at a little _cabaret_, when one of his retinue was
suddenly taken ill, Caesar resigned to his use the sole bed which the
house afforded. Incidents as trifling as these express the urbanity of
Caesar's nature; and hence one is the more surprised to find the
alienation of the Senate charged, in no trifling degree, upon a gross
and most culpable failure in point of courtesy. Caesar, it is alleged--
but might we presume to call upon antiquity for its authority?--
neglected to rise from his seat, on their approaching him with an
address of congratulation. It is said, and we can believe it, that he
gave deeper offence by this one defect in a matter of ceremonial
observance than by all his substantial attacks upon their privileges.
What we find it difficult to believe is not that result from that
offence--this is no more than we should all anticipate--not _that_, but
the possibility of the offence itself, from one so little arrogant as
Caesar, and so entirely a man of the world. He was told of the disgust
which he had given; and we are bound to believe his apology, in which he
charged it upon sickness, that would not at the moment allow him to
maintain a standing attitude. Certainly the whole tenor of his life was
not courteous only, but kind, and to his enemies merciful in a degree
which implied so much more magnanimity than men in general could
understand that by many it was put down to the account of weakness.
Weakness, however, there was none in Caius Caesar; and, that there might
be none, it was fortunate that conspiracy should have cut him off in the
full vigour of his faculties, in the very meridian of his glory, and on
the brink of completing a series of gigantic achievements. Amongst these
are numbered:--a digest of the entire body of laws, even then become
unwieldy and oppressive; the establishment of vast and comprehensive
public libraries, Greek as well as Latin; the chastisement of Dacia
(that needed a cow-hiding for insolence as much as Affghanistan from us
in 1840); the conquest of Parthia; and the cutting a ship canal through
the Isthmus of Corinth. The reformation of the Calendar he had already
accomplished. And of all his projects it may be said that they were
equally patriotic in their purpose and colossal in their proportions.
As an orator, Caesar's merit was so eminent that, according to the
general belief, had he found time to cultivate this department of civil
exertion, the received supremacy of Cicero would have been made
questionable, or the honour would have been divided. Cicero himself was
of that opinion, and on different occasions applied the epithet
_splendidus_ to Caesar, as though in some exclusive sense, or with some
peculiar emphasis, due to him. His taste was much simpler, chaster, and
less inclined to the _florid_ and Asiatic, than that of Cicero. So far
he would, in that condition of the Roman culture and feeling, have been
less acceptable to the public; but, on the other hand, he would have
compensated this disadvantage by much more of natural and Demosthenic
fervour.
In literature, the merits of Caesar are familiar to most readers. Under
the modest title of _Commentaries_, he meant to offer the records of his
Gallic and British campaigns, simply as notes, or memoranda, afterwards
to be worked up by regular historians; but, as Cicero observes, their
merit was such in the eyes of the discerning that all judicious writers
shrank from the attempt to alter them. In another instance of his
literary labours he showed a very just sense of true dignity. Rightly
conceiving that everything patriotic was dignified, and that to
illustrate or polish his native language was a service of real and
paramount patriotism, he composed a work on the grammar and orthoepy of
the Latin language. Cicero and himself were the only Romans of
distinction in that age who applied themselves with true patriotism to
the task of purifying and ennobling their mother tongue. Both were aware
of a transcendent value in the Grecian literature as it then stood; but
that splendour did not depress their hopes of raising their own to
something of the same level. As respected the natural wealth of the two
languages, it was the private opinion of Cicero that the Latin had the
advantage; and, if Caesar did not accompany him to that length--which,
perhaps, under some limitations he ought to have done--he yet felt that
it was but the more necessary to draw forth any special or exceptional
advantage which it really had.
Was Caesar, upon the whole, the greatest of men? We restrict the
question, of course, to the classes of men great in _action_: great by
the extent of their influence over their social contemporaries; great by
throwing open avenues to extended powers that previously had been
closed; great by making obstacles once vast to become trivial, or prizes
that once were trivial to be glorified by expansion. I (said Augustus
Caesar) found Rome built of brick; but I left it built of marble. Well,
my man, we reply, for a wondrously little chap, you did what in
Westmoreland they call a good _darroch_ (day's work); and, if _navvies_
had been wanted in those days, you should have had our vote to a
certainty. But Caius Julius, even under such a limitation of the
comparison, did a thing as much transcending this as it was greater to
project Rome across the Alps and the Pyrenees,--expanding the grand
Republic into crowning provinces of i. France (_Gallia_), 2. Belgium, 3.
Holland (_Batavia_), 4. England (_Britannia_), 5. Savoy (_Allobroges_),
6. Switzerland (_Helvetia_), 7. Spain (_Hispania_),--than to decorate a
street or to found an amphitheatre. Dr. Beattie once observed that, if
that question as to the greatest man in action upon the rolls of History
were left to be collected from the suffrages already expressed in books
and scattered throughout the literature of all nations, the scale would
be found to have turned prodigiously in Caesar's favour as against any
single competitor; and there is no doubt whatsoever that even amongst
his own countrymen, and his own contemporaries, the same verdict would
have been returned, had it been collected upon the famous principle of
Themistocles, that he should be reputed the first whom the greatest
number of rival voices had pronounced to be the second.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
_Works_: Latin folio, Rome, 1469; Venice, 1471; Florence, 1514; London,
1585. De Bello Gallico, Esslingen (?), 1473. Translations by John
Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester (John Rastell), of Julius Caesar's
Commentaries-"newly translated into Englyshe ... as much as concerneth
thys realme of England"--1530 folio; by Arthur Goldinge, The Eyght
Bookes of C. Julius Caesar, London, 1563, 1565, 1578, 1590; by Chapman,
London, 1604 folio; by Clem. Edmonds, London, 1609; the same, with
Hirtius, 1655, 1670, 1695 folio with commendatory verses by Camden,
Daniel, and Ben Johnson (_sic_). Works: Translated by W. Duncan, 1753,
1755; by M. Bladen, 8th ed., 1770; MacDevitt, Bohn's Library, 1848. De
Bello Gallico, translated by R. Mongan, Dublin, 1850; by J.B. Owgan and
C.W. Bateman, 1882. Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War, translated
by T. Rice Holmes, London, 1908 (see also Holmes' Caesar's Conquest of
Gaul, 1911). Caesar's Gallic War, translated by Rev. F.P. Long, Oxford,
1911; Books IV. and V. translated by C.H. Prichard, Cambridge, 1912. For
Latin text of De Bello Gallico see Bell's Illustrated Classical Series;
Dent's Temple Series of Classical Texts, 1902; Macmillan and Co., 1905;
and Blackie's Latin Texts, 1905-7.
* * * * *
CONTENTS
THE WAR IN GAUL
THE CIVIL WAR
THE COMMENTARIES OF
CAIUS JULIUS CAESAR
THE WAR IN GAUL
BOOK I
I.--All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae
inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are
called Celts, in ours Gauls, the third. All these differ from each other
in language, customs and laws. The river Garonne separates the Gauls
from the Aquitani; the Marne and the Seine separate them from the
Belgae. Of all these, the Belgae are the bravest, because they are
farthest from the civilisation and refinement of [our] Province, and
merchants least frequently resort to them and import those things which
tend to effeminate the mind; and they are the nearest to the Germans,
who dwell beyond the Rhine, with whom they are continually waging war;
for which reason the Helvetii also surpass the rest of the Gauls in
valour, as they contend with the Germans in almost daily battles, when
they either repel them from their own territories, or themselves wage
war on their frontiers. One part of these, which it has been said that
the Gauls occupy, takes its beginning at the river Rhone: it is bounded
by the river Garonne, the ocean, and the territories of the Belgae: it
borders, too, on the side of the Sequani and the Helvetii, upon the
river Rhine, and stretches towards the north. The Belgae rise from the
extreme frontier of Gaul, extend to the lower part of the river Rhine;
and look towards the north and the rising sun. Aquitania extends from
the river Garonne to the Pyrenaean mountains and to that part of the
ocean which is near Spain: it looks between the setting of the sun and
the north star.
II.--Among the Helvetii, Orgetorix was by far the most distinguished and
wealthy. He, when Marcus Messala and Marcus Piso were consuls, incited
by lust of sovereignty, formed a conspiracy among the nobility, and
persuaded the people to go forth from their territories with all their
possessions, [saying] that it would be very easy, since they excelled
all in valour, to acquire the supremacy of the whole of Gaul. To this he
the more easily persuaded them, because the Helvetii are confined on
every side by the nature of their situation; on one side by the Rhine, a
very broad and deep river, which separates the Helvetian territory from
the Germans; on a second side by the Jura, a very high mountain which is
[situated] between the Sequani and the Helvetii; on a third by the Lake
of Geneva, and by the river Rhone, which separates our Province from the
Helvetii. From these circumstances it resulted that they could range
less widely, and could less easily make war upon their neighbours; for
which reason men fond of war [as they were] were affected with great
regret. They thought, that considering the extent of their population,
and their renown for warfare and bravery, they had but narrow limits,
although they extended in length 240, and in breadth 180 [Roman] miles.
III.--Induced by these considerations, and influenced by the authority
of Orgetorix, they determined to provide such things as were necessary
for their expedition--to buy up as great a number as possible of beasts
of burden and waggons--to make their sowings as large as possible, so
that on their march plenty of corn might be in store--and to establish
peace and friendship with the neighbouring states. They reckoned that a
term of two years would be sufficient for them to execute their designs;
they fix by decree their departure for the third year. Orgetorix is
chosen to complete these arrangements. He took upon himself the office
of ambassador to the states: on this journey he persuades Casticus, the
son of Catamantaledes (one of the Sequani, whose father had possessed
the sovereignty among the people for many years, and had been styled
"_friend_" by the senate of the Roman people), to seize upon the
sovereignty in his own state, which his father had held before him, and
he likewise persuades Dumnorix, an Aeduan, the brother of Divitiacus,
who at that time possessed the chief authority in the state, and was
exceedingly beloved by the people, to attempt the same, and gives him
his daughter in marriage. He proves to them that to accomplish their
attempts was a thing very easy to be done, because he himself would
obtain the government of his own state; that there was no doubt that the
Helvetii were the most powerful of the whole of Gaul; he assures them
that he will, with his own forces and his own army, acquire the
sovereignty for them. Incited by this speech, they give a pledge and
oath to one another, and hope that, when they have seized the
sovereignty, they will, by means of the three most powerful and valiant
nations, be enabled to obtain possession of the whole of Gaul.
IV.--When this scheme was disclosed to the Helvetii by informers, they,
according to their custom, compelled Orgetorix to plead his cause in
chains; it was the law that the penalty of being burned by fire should
await him if condemned. On the day appointed for the pleading of his
cause, Orgetorix drew together from all quarters to the court all his
vassals to the number of ten thousand persons; and led together to the
same place, and all his dependants and debtor-bondsmen, of whom he had a
great number; by means of these he rescued himself from [the necessity
of] pleading his cause. While the state, incensed at this act, was
endeavouring to assert its right by arms, and the magistrates were
mustering a large body of men from the country, Orgetorix died; and
there is not wanting a suspicion, as the Helvetii think, of his having
committed suicide.
V.--After his death, the Helvetii nevertheless attempt to do that which
they had resolved on, namely, to go forth from their territories. When
they thought that they were at length prepared for this undertaking,
they set fire to all their towns, in number about twelve--to their
villages about four hundred--and to the private dwellings that remained;
they burn up all the corn, except what they intend to carry with them;
that after destroying the hope of a return home, they might be the more
ready for undergoing all dangers. They order every one to carry forth
from home for himself provisions for three months, ready ground. They
persuade the Rauraci, and the Tulingi, and the Latobrigi, their
neighbours, to adopt the same plan, and after burning down their towns
and villages, to set out with them: and they admit to their party and
unite to themselves as confederates the Boii, who had dwelt on the other
side of the Rhine, and had crossed over into the Norican territory, and
assaulted Noreia.
VI.--There were in all two routes by which they could go forth from
their country--one through the Sequani, narrow and difficult, between
Mount Jura and the river Rhone (by which scarcely one waggon at a time
could be led; there was, moreover, a very high mountain overhanging, so
that a very few might easily intercept them); the other, through our
Province, much easier and freer from obstacles, because the Rhone flows
between the boundaries of the Helvetii and those of the Allobroges, who
had lately been subdued, and is in some places crossed by a ford. The
furthest town of the Allobroges, and the nearest to the territories of
the Helvetii, is Geneva. From this town a bridge extends to the
Helvetii. They thought that they should either persuade the Allobroges,
because they did not seem as yet well-affected towards the Roman people,
or compel them by force to allow them to pass through their territories.
Having provided everything for the expedition, they appoint a day on
which they should all meet on the bank of the Rhone. This day was the
fifth before the kalends of April [_i.e._ the 28th of March], in the
consulship of Lucius Piso and Aulus Gabinius [B.C. 58].
VII.--When it was reported to Caesar that they were attempting to make
their route through our Province, he hastens to set out from the city,
and, by as great marches as he can, proceeds to Further Gaul, and
arrives at Geneva. He orders the whole Province [to furnish] as great a
number of soldiers as possible, as there was in all only one legion in
Further Gaul: he orders the bridge at Geneva to be broken down. When the
Helvetii are apprised of his arrival, they send to him, as ambassadors,
the most illustrious men of their state (in which embassy Numeius and
Verudoctius held the chief place), to say "that it was their intention
to march through the Province without doing any harm, because they had"
[according to their own representations] "no other route:--that they
requested they might be allowed to do so with his consent." Caesar,
inasmuch as he kept in remembrance that Lucius Cassius, the consul, had
been slain, and his army routed and made to pass under the yoke by the
Helvetii, did not think that [their request] ought to be granted; nor
was he of opinion that men of hostile disposition, if an opportunity of
marching through the Province were given them, would abstain from
outrage and mischief. Yet, in order that a period might intervene, until
the soldiers whom he had ordered [to be furnished] should assemble, he
replied to the ambassadors, that he would take time to deliberate; if
they wanted anything, they might return on the day before the ides of
April [on April 12th].
VIII.--Meanwhile, with the legion which he had with him and the soldiers
who had assembled from the Province, he carries along for nineteen
[Roman, not quite eighteen English] miles a wall, to the height of
sixteen feet, and a trench, from the lake of Geneva, which flows into
the river Rhone, to Mount Jura, which separates the territories of the
Sequani from those of the Helvetii. When that work was finished, he
distributes garrisons, and closely fortifies redoubts, in order that he
may the more easily intercept them, if they should attempt to cross over
against his will. When the day which he had appointed with the
ambassadors came, and they returned to him, he says that he cannot,
consistently with the custom and precedent of the Roman people, grant
any one a passage through the Province; and he gives them to understand
that, if they should attempt to use violence, he would oppose them. The
Helvetii, disappointed in this hope, tried if they could force a passage
(some by means of a bridge of boats and numerous rafts constructed for
the purpose; others, by the fords of the Rhone, where the depth of the
river was least, sometimes by day, but more frequently by night), but
being kept at bay by the strength of our works, and by the concourse of
the soldiers, and by the missiles, they desisted from this attempt.
IX.--There was left one way, [namely] through the Sequani, by which, on
account of its narrowness, they could not pass without the consent of
the Sequani. As they could not of themselves prevail on them, they send
ambassadors to Dumnorix the Aeduan, that through his intercession they
might obtain their request from the Sequani. Dumnorix, by his popularity
and liberality, had great influence among the Sequani, and was friendly
to the Helvetii, because out of that state he had married the daughter
of Orgetorix; and, incited by lust of sovereignty, was anxious for a
revolution, and wished to have as many states as possible attached to
him by his kindness towards them. He, therefore, undertakes the affair,
and prevails upon the Sequani to allow the Helvetii to march through
their territories, and arranges that they should give hostages to each
other--the Sequani not to obstruct the Helvetii in their march--the
Helvetii, to pass without mischief and outrage.
X.--It-is again told Caesar that the Helvetii intend to march through
the country of the Sequani and the Aedui into the territories of the
Santones, which are not far distant from those boundaries of the
Tolosates, which [viz. Tolosa, Toulouse] is a state in the Province. If
this took place, he saw that it would be attended with great danger to
the Province to have warlike men, enemies of the Roman people, bordering
upon an open and very fertile tract of country. For these reasons he
appointed Titus Labienus, his lieutenant, to the command of the
fortification which he had made. He himself proceeds to Italy by forced
marches, and there levies two legions, and leads out from winter-quarters
three which were wintering around Aquileia, and with these five
legions marches rapidly by the nearest route across the Alps into
Further Gaul. Here the Centrones and the Graioceli and the Caturiges,
having taken possession of the higher parts, attempt to obstruct the
army in their march. After having routed these in several battles, he
arrives in the territories of the Vocontii in the Further Province on
the seventh day from Ocelum, which is the most remote town of the Hither
Province; thence he leads his army into the country of the Allobroges,
and from the Allobroges to the Segusiani. These people are the first
beyond the Province on the opposite side of the Rhone.
XI.--The Helvetii had by this time led their forces over through the
narrow defile and the territories of the Sequani, and had arrived at the
territories of the Aedui, and were ravaging their lands. The Aedui, as
they could not defend themselves and their possessions against them,
send ambassadors to Caesar to ask assistance, [pleading] that they had
at all times so well deserved of the Roman people, that their fields
ought not to have been laid waste--their children carried off into
slavery--their towns stormed, almost within sight of our army. At the
same time the Ambarri, the friends and kinsmen of the Aedui, apprise
Caesar that it was not easy for them, now that their fields had been
devastated, to ward off the violence of the enemy from their towns: the
Allobroges likewise, who had villages and possessions on the other side
of the Rhone, betake themselves in flight to Caesar and assure him that
they had nothing remaining, except the soil of their land. Caesar,
induced by these circumstances, decides that he ought not to wait until
the Helvetii, after destroying all the property of his allies, should
arrive among the Santones.