CESAR AND BIBULUS 311 So Bibulus shut himself up in his house, and contented himself with posting a daily placard, to the effect that he was "observing the heavens," and that it was therefore impossible that any legal meeting of the Comitia could take place. By the letter of the law he was undoubtedly right, and every bill that passed during the remainder of the year B.C. 59 was null and void. But what was to be done if the bills were not only carried but obeyed? The wits of Rome called the time "the consulship of Julius and of Cæsar," in derision of the unfortunate Bibulus. It would have been more correct to call it not a consulship at all, but a fine specimen of a tyranny. Cæsar meanwhile went on in his reckless career, passing bills good, bad, and indifferent. Some of them were excellent administrative measures; others-such as the ratification of Pompey's Asiatic acta—were eminently proper and justifiable. Others again were shameless bribes to the mob or the Equites. The one which struck contemporary opinion as the most objectionable was that which made a plebeian of Publius Clodius. That detestable young man had given Cæsar good cause of offence by the scandal at the mysteries of the Bona Dea, and had forced him (not without reason) to divorce his wife. But the consul bore him no grudge; indeed he seems to have regarded him with a sort of parental affection, as the destined successor who was about to repeat his own early career of political riot and private debauchery. Clodius wished to become a plebeian, in order to qualify for the tribunate. Cæsar indulged him, and proposed himself the lex curiata by which the adoption of the young man into a plebeian family was managed. The ceremony was carried out in an irregular, not to say a farcical, fashion. No sanction was procured from the Pontifices, the legal notice of three nundinae before the meeting of the Curies was not given. The adopter who undertook to make Clodius his son was a lad of nineteen, one P. Fonteius, who was far younger than Clodius, and unmarried. Yet he was made to profess his want of issue, and the necessity of his adopting a son to continue his race! (As a matter of fact he married not long after, and had many children.) Cæsar carried through the scandalous show, and left Clodius behind him as his agent for the due maintenance of mob law and anarchy during his absence in Gaul. Early in B.C. 58, the moment that his turbulent consulship was over, Cæsar hurried off to take over charge of the Gallic provinces and their legions. He had secured himself no mere annual governorship, but a long term of five years of command. Such had been the purport of the Vatinian Law, which was drafted on the same lines as the Gabinian and Manilian Laws that had been passed for Pompey's benefit nearly ten years before. Clearly Cæsar thought that five years would be required to enable him to make his name and to frame his army. What he was to do when his term ran out, we may doubt whether he had yet determined. His Spanish command had been a great experiment-his Gaulish one would be an even greater. As yet he cannot have framed any other intention than that of being the greatest man in Rome. Of what sort his predominance was to be, he had probably formed no fixed plan. All would depend on how affairs went in the land of the Celts. That Cæsar went to Gaul with a fixed intention of carrying the boundaries of the empire to the Rhine and the Ocean there is no reason to doubt. The existing frontier of the Transalpine province was drawn in an illogical and haphazard fashion; beyond it lay tribes in various illdefined relations of vassalship and amity to Rome. Ever since the Cimbric campaign of Marius, the province had CÆSAR GOES TO GAUL 313 been needing, and always failing to obtain, the hand of a master. But even if Cæsar had arrived with the most pacific intentions, he would have been forced to fight before his governorship was six months old. There were troubles brewing on the eastern frontier of Gaul which were already becoming dangerous, not only to the independent tribes, but to the Transalpine dominions of Rome. The Suevian king Ariovistus with a miscellaneous horde of migratory Germans, compacted from many races, had crossed the Rhine, as the Cimbri had crossed it fifty years before, and was threatening to overrun all Central Gaul. At the same moment the warlike Helvetii were deserting their narrow and mountainous home in Switzerland, with the object of conquering for themselves a more spacious and fertile abode in the valley of the Rhone. No proconsul, however slack and indolent, could have avoided interference in both these movements; to Cæsar they were an absolute godsend, as they provided him with the best possible reasons for enlarging his army and engaging in active hostilities the very moment that he reached his province. The Gaul and German were enemies well known to the Roman soldier. In marching against them Cæsar had none of the disadvantages which Crassus had suffered when he went forth to meet the unknown tactics of the Parthians. The Gaul, indeed, was one of the most familiar foes of the state; the bands whom Cæsar fought in B.C. 58-51 were precisely similar to those with whom Camillus or Marcellus had contended two or three centuries before. Their gallant but unstable hordes, "more than men at the first onslaught, less than women after a severe repulse," were precisely the sort of troops against whom the steady and untiring legion was most effective. The only really dangerous part of their hosts was the cavalry, formed of the chiefs and their sworn henchmen, who were far superior to any mounted troops of whom Cæsar could dispose when first he went to Gaul. To withstand them he had to enlist "friendlies" of their own nationality, and Spanish mercenaries: a little later Germans also, for the latter were found to be superior to the Gauls themselves in the cavalry arm. As to the tribal levies of infantry, they were difficult to check at their first rush, but when it was spent the individual swordsman with his immense claymore and big shield was not fit to cope, either in a single-handed fencing match or in a large body, with the well-trained legionary. The rank and file understood this as well as Cæsar himself, and their knowledge of the fact was no mean help to their general. The With the Germans it was at first otherwise. Roman army remembered Arausio quite as well as it remembered Vercellæ, and had an exaggerated respect for the "giants" of the northern forests, and their indomitable pluck. At his first encounter with Ariovistus, Cæsar had many anxious moments. There was a doubt whether the legions could be trusted to do their best: their general acknowledges that when he marched against the German many of his officers showed signs of malingering, and the rank and file began to make their willsas if they were going forward to certain death. It required a wonderful mixture of tact and firmness on the part of Cæsar to induce his troops to make their first attack on Ariovistus. But when the feat was accomplished the legionary discovered that the Teuton was, if bigger and fiercer, yet even more undisciplined and clumsy than the Celt, and far worse armed. The German tribes, even a century later, had hardly got to the stage of wearing armour or forming an orderly battle array. Yet both Gaul and German were enemies not to be CÆSAR'S COMMENTARIES 315 despised, and it was no ordinary general who could have set out with a light heart for the deliberate purpose of attacking them in order to win a great military reputation at their expense. Nothing but an ever-pressing, unconquerable ambition could have driven Cæsar to the taking up of such a formidable task. To give a detailed account of the eight marvellous campaigns, which laid Gaul at the feet of the great proconsul, does not fall within the scope of our task. We are concerned with the character of Cæsar as man and as general, rather than with the annals of his battles and sieges. In the main we must draw our conception of his work in Gaul from his own Commentaries; what information we get from other sources is comparatively unimportant. The book was published with a political object-probably it was written in haste during the year B.C. 50 as a vindication and advertisement of the author's doings before the eyes of the Roman public. Yet it compares favourably with most works issued with such a purpose: it is reticent and business-like; there is little self-laudation; the greatness of the author's achievements is not dinned into the reader's ears, but allowed to speak for itself. Moreover, it is difficult to detect in the Commentaries any very serious tampering with facts. They give, of course, Cæsar's own view of his wars, but they seem as little marred by a desire to hide reverses or to exaggerate successes as those of any other commander who has ever written the narrative of his own campaigns. The general result of the war speaks for itself. It is sufficient to look at the Roman boundary in B.C. 58 and to compare it with that of B.C. 50, in order to see that the main result of Cæsar's activity was much what he claimed. If minor checks are sometimes glozed over, the final triumph was indubitably complete. It can have been no ordinary conqueror who not merely subdued |
