Chapter 30

The seven books of the Gallic War are each the account of a year's campaigning. They were written apparently in winter quarters. When Cæsar entered on the administration of his province it was threatened with invasion. The Romans had never lost their dread of the northern barbarians, nor forgotten the capture of Rome three centuries before. Only a generation back, Marius had become the national hero by destroying the invading hordes of Cimbri and Teutones. Cæsar purposed to make the barbarians tremble at the Roman name. This first book of the Commentaries tells how he raised an army in haste, with which he outmarched, outmanoeuvred and defeated the Helvetian nation. This people, urged by pressure behind and encouragement in front, had determined to leave its old home in the Alpine valleys and to settle in the fairer regions of southeastern France. Surprised and dismayed by Cæsar's terrific reception of their supposed invincible host, they had to choose between utter destruction and a tame return, with sadly diminished numbers, to their old abodes. Nor was this all the work of the first year. Ariovistus, a German king, also invited by a Gallic tribe, and relying on the terror of his nation's name, came to establish himself and his people on the Gallic side of the Rhine. He too was astonished at the tone with which Cæsar ordered him to depart, but soon found himself forced to return far more quickly than he had come.

Having thus vindicated the Roman claim to the frontiers of Gaul against other invaders, the proconsul devoted his second summer to the subjugation of the Belgæ, the most warlike and the most remote of the Gauls. The second book tells how this was accomplished. There was one moment when the conqueror's career came near ending prematurely. One of the Belgian tribes, the valiant Nervii, surprised and nearly defeated the Roman army. But steady discipline and the dauntless courage of the commander, never so great as in moments of mortal peril, saved the day, and the Nervii are immortalized as the people who nearly destroyed Cæsar.

These unprecedented successes all round the eastern and northern frontiers thoroughly established Roman prestige and strengthened Rome's supremacy over the central Gauls, who were already her allies, at least in name. But much yet remained to do. The work was but fairly begun. The third book tells of the conquest of the western tribes. The most interesting episode is the creation of a fleet and the naval victory over the Veneti on the far-away coast of Brittany. In the fourth year Cæsar crossed the Rhine, after building a wonderful wooden bridge in ten days, carried fire and sword among the Germans on the further bank, and returned to his side of the river, destroying the bridge behind him. Modern schoolboys wish he had never built it. Later in the season he made an expedition into Britain. This was followed in the fifth year by an invasion of the island in greater force. To people of our race this portion of the Commentaries is especially interesting. The southern part of the country was overrun, the Thames was crossed some miles above London, and several victories were gained, but no organized conquest was attempted. That remained for the age of Claudius and later emperors.

During the ensuing winter, on account of the scarcity of provisions, the Roman troops had to be quartered in separate detachments at long distances. One of these was treacherously destroyed by the Gauls, and the others were saved only by the extraordinary quickness with which Cæsar marched to their relief on hearing of their imminent danger. The chief part in this rising had been taken by the Eburones, led by their king Ambiorix. A large part of the sixth book is occupied with the recital of Cæsar's vengeance upon these people and their abettors, and with the vain pursuit of Ambiorix. The remainder contains an elaborate contrast of the manners and customs of the Gauls and Germans, which forms an important source for the history of the primitive institutions of these nations. The seventh book is the thrilling tale of the formidable rising of all the Gauls against their conquerors, under the leadership of Vercingetorix, an Arvernian chief. This man was a real hero,--brave, patriotic, resourceful, perhaps the only worthy antagonist that Cæsar ever met. This war strained to the utmost Cæsar's abilities and the disciplined valor of his legions. The Gauls nearly succeeded in undoing all the work of six years, in destroying the Roman army and in throwing off the Roman yoke. In this campaign, more conspicuously than ever before, Cæsar's success was due to the unexampled rapidity of his movements. So perfect had become the training of his troops and their confidence in his ability to win under all circumstances, that after a campaign of incredible exertions they triumphed over the countless hosts of their gallant foes, and in the next two years the last embers of Gaulish independence were finally stamped out. In all his later wars, Cæsar never had anything to fear from Gaul. As we read the story of Avaricum, of Gergovia, of Alesia, our sympathy goes out to the brave barbarians who were fighting for liberty--but we have to remember that though the cause of freedom failed, the cause of civilization triumphed. The eighth book, containing the account of the next two years, 51 and 50 B.C., was written by one of Cæsar's officers, Aulus Hirtius.

The first book of the Civil War begins with the year 49 B.C., where the struggle between Cæsar and the Senatorial party opens with his crossing of the Rubicon, attended by the advanced guard of his legions. Pompey proved a broken reed to those who leaned upon him, and Cæsar's conquest of the Italian peninsula was little else than a triumphal progress through the country. The enemy retired to the eastern shore of the Adriatic to muster the forces of the East on the side of the aristocracy, leaving Cæsar in possession of the capital and of the machinery of government. The latter part of the book contains the account of the campaign against Pompey's lieutenants in Spain, which was won almost without bloodshed, by masterly strategy, and which ended with the complete possession of the peninsula. The second book describes the capture of Marseilles after a long siege, and the tragic defeat and death of Curio, a brave but rash young officer sent by Cæsar to secure the African province. In the third book (48 B.C.) we have the story of the campaign against Pompey; first the audacious blockade for months of Pompey's greatly superior forces near Dyrrachium on the Illyrian coast; and when that failed, of the long march into Thessaly, where Pompey was at last forced into battle, against his judgment, by his own officers, on the fatal plains of Pharsalia; of the annihilation of the Senatorial army; of Pompey's flight to Egypt; of his treacherous murder there; of Cæsar's pursuit. The books on the Alexandrian, the African, and the Spanish wars, which continue the narrative down to Cæsar's final victory at Munda in southern Spain, are by other and inferior hands. The question of their authorship has been the subject of much controversy and conjecture.

Under this modest title of 'Commentaries,' in the guise of a simple narrative of events, Cæsar puts forth at once an inimitable history and a masterly apology. The author speaks of himself in the third person, tells of the circumstances of each situation in a quiet moderate way, which carries with it the conviction on the reader's part of his entire truthfulness, accuracy, and candor. We are persuaded that the Cæsar about whom he tells could not have acted otherwise than he did. In short, he exercises the same spell over our minds that he cast over the hearts of men twenty centuries ago.

There is nothing that so fascinates and enchains the imagination of men as power in another man. This man could captivate a woman by his sweetness or tame an angry mob of soldiers with a word; could mold the passions of a corrupt democracy or exterminate a nation in a day; could organize an empire or polish an epigram. His strength was terrible. But all this immense power was marvelously balanced and under perfect control. Nothing was too small for his delicate tact. Nothing that he did was so difficult but we feel he could have done more. Usually his means seemed inadequate to his ends. But it was Cæsar who used them.

The Commentaries show us this man at his work. They show him as an organizer of armies and alliances, a wily diplomatist, an intrepid soldier, an efficient administrator, a strategist of inspired audacity, a tactician of endless resources, an engineer of infinite inventiveness, an unerring judge of men. But he never boasts, except in speeches to hearten discouraged troops. He does not vilify or underrate his enemies.

His soldiers trusted him implicitly; there was no limit to their zeal. They found in him a generous appreciation of their deeds. Many a soldier and centurion has received immortality at his hands as the guerdon of valor. He describes a victory of Labienus with as much satisfaction as if it had been his own, and praises another lieutenant for his prudent self-restraint when tempted by a prospect of success. And he tells with hearty admiration of the devoted Gauls who sacrificed their lives one after another in a post of danger at Avaricum. Even in the Civil War no officers deserted him except Labienus and two Gaulish chiefs.

It was difficult to deceive him. His analysis of other men's motives is as merciless as it is passionless. He makes us disapprove the course of his antagonists with the same moderate but convincing statement with which he recommends his own. Few men can have had as few illusions as he. One would scarcely care to possess such an insight into the hearts of others. He seems to feel little warmth of indignation, and never indulges in invective. But woe to those who stood in the way of the accomplishment of his objects. Dreadful was the punishment of those who revolted after making peace. Still, even his vengeance seems dictated by policy rather than by passion. He is charged with awful cruelty because he slew a million men and sold another million into slavery. But he did not enjoy human suffering. These were simply necessary incidents in the execution of his plans. It is hard to see how European civilization could have proceeded without the conquest of Gaul, and it is surely better to make a conquest complete, rapid, overpowering, that the work may have to be done but once.

It is hard not to judge men by the standards of our own age. The ancients rarely felt an international humanity, and in his own time "Cæsar's clemency" was proverbial. As he was always careful not to waste in useless fighting the lives of his soldiers, so he was always true to his own precept, "Spare the citizens." The way in which he repeatedly forgave his enemies when they were in his power was an example to many a Christian conqueror. The best of his antagonists showed themselves bloodthirsty in word or act; and most of them, not excepting Cicero, were basely ungrateful for his forbearance. His treatment of Cicero was certainly most handsome--our knowledge of it is derived mainly from Cicero's letters. Perhaps this magnanimity was dashed with a tinge of kindly contempt for his fellow-citizens; but whatever its motives, it was certainly wise and benign at the beginning of the new era he was inaugurating. He was no vulgar destroyer, and did not desire to ruin in order to rule.

He is charged with ambition, the sin by which the angels fell. It is not for us to fathom the depths of his mighty mind. Let us admit the charge. But it was not an ignoble ambition. Let us say that he was so ambitious that he laid the foundations of the Roman Empire and of modern France; that his services to civilization and his plans for humanity were so broad that patriots were driven to murder him.

Some of Cæsar's eulogists have claimed for him a moral greatness corresponding to his transcendent mental power. This is mistaken zeal. He may stand as the supreme representative of the race in the way of practical executive intellect. It is poor praise to put him into another order of men, with Plato or with Paul. Their greatness was of another kind. We cannot speak of degrees. He is the exponent of creative force in political history--not of speculative or ethical power.

Moreover, with all his originality of conception and power of execution, Cæsar lacked that kind of imagination which makes the true poet, the real creative artist in literature. Thus we observe the entire absence of the pictorial element in his writings. There is no trace of his ever being affected by the spectacular incidents of warfare nor by the grandeur of the natural scenes through which he passed. The reason may be that his intellect was absorbed in the contemplation of men and motives, of means and ends. We cannot conceive of his ever having been carried out of himself by the rapture of inspiration. Such clearness of mental perception is naturally accompanied by a certain coolness of temperament. A man of superlative greatness must live more or less alone among his fellows. With his immense grasp of the relations of things in the world, Cæsar cannot have failed to regard men to some extent as the counters in a great game--himself the player. So he used men, finding them instruments--efficient and zealous, often--of his far-reaching plans. He was just in rewarding their services--more than just: he was generous and kind. But he did not have real associates, real friends; therefore it is not surprising that he met with so little gratitude. Even his diction shows this independence, this isolation. It would be difficult to find an author of any nation in a cultivated age so free from the influence of the language of his predecessors. Cæsar was unique among the great Roman writers in having been born at the capital. Appropriately he is the incarnation of the specifically Roman spirit in literature, as Cicero was the embodiment of the Italian, the Hellenic, the cosmopolitan spirit.

Toward the close of Cæsar's career there are some signs of weariness observable--a certain loss of serenity, a suspicion of vanity, a dimming of his penetrating vision into the men about him. The only wonder is that mind and body had not succumbed long before to the prodigious strain put upon them. Perhaps it is well that he died when he did, hardly past his prime. So he went to his setting, like the other "weary Titan," leaving behind him a brightness which lasted all through the night of the Dark Ages. Cæsar died, but the imperial idea of which he was the first embodiment has proved the central force of European political history even down to our time.

Such is the man who speaks to us from his pages still. He was a man who did things rather than a man who said things. Yet who could speak so well? His mastery of language was perfect, but in the same way as his mastery of other instruments. Style with him was a means rather than an end. He had the training which others of his kind enjoyed. Every Roman noble had to learn oratory. But Cæsar wrote and spoke with a faultless taste and a distinction that no training could impart. So we find in his style a beauty which does not depend upon ornament, but upon perfect proportion; a diction plain and severe almost to baldness; absolute temperateness of expression. The descriptions are spirited, but never made so by strained rhetoric; the speeches are brief, manly, business-like; the arguments calm and convincing; always and everywhere the language of a strong man well inside the limits of his power.

The chief ancient authorities for the life of Cæsar, besides his own works, are Suetonius in Latin, Plutarch and Appian in Greek. Among modern works of which he is made the subject may be mentioned 'Jules César,' by Napoleon III. (Paris, 1865); continued by Colonel Stoffel, with an Atlas; 'Cæsar, a Sketch,' by J. A. Froude (London, 1886); 'Cæsar,' by A. Trollope (London, 1870); 'Cæsar,' by T. A. Dodge, U.S.A. (Boston, 1893).

THE DEFEAT OF ARIOVISTUS AND THE GERMANS

From 'The Gallic Wars'

When he had proceeded three days' journey, word was brought to him that Ariovistus was hastening with all his forces to seize on Vesontio,[115] which is the largest town of the Sequani, and had advanced three days' journey from his territories. Cæsar thought that he ought to take the greatest precautions lest this should happen, for there was in that town a most ample supply of everything which was serviceable for war; and so fortified was it by the nature of the ground as to afford a great facility for protracting the war, inasmuch as the river Doubs almost surrounds the whole town, as though it were traced round with a pair of compasses. A mountain of great height shuts in the remaining space, which is not more than six hundred feet, where the river leaves a gap in such a manner that the roots of that mountain extend to the river's bank on either side. A wall thrown around it makes a citadel of this mountain, and connects it with the town. Hither Cæsar hastens by forced marches by night and day, and after having seized the town, stations a garrison there.

Whilst he is tarrying a few days at Vesontio, on account of corn and provisions; from the inquiries of our men and the reports of the Gauls and traders (who asserted that the Germans were men of huge stature, of incredible valor and practice in arms,--that ofttimes they, on encountering them, could not bear even their countenance and the fierceness of their eyes), so great a panic on a sudden seized the whole army, as to discompose the minds and spirits of all in no slight degree. This first arose from the tribunes of the soldiers, the prefects and the rest, who, having followed Cæsar from the city [Rome] from motives of friendship, had no great experience in military affairs. And alleging, some of them one reason, some another, which they said made it necessary for them to depart, they requested that by his consent they might be allowed to withdraw; some, influenced by shame, stayed behind in order that they might avoid the suspicion of cowardice. These could neither compose their countenance, nor even sometimes check their tears: but hidden in their tents, either bewailed their fate or deplored with their comrades the general danger. Wills were sealed universally throughout the whole camp. By the expressions and cowardice of these men, even those who possessed great experience in the camp, both soldiers and centurions, and those [the decurions] who were in command of the cavalry, were gradually disconcerted. Such of them as wished to be considered less alarmed said that they did not dread the enemy, but feared the narrowness of the roads and the vastness of the forests which lay between them and Ariovistus, or else that the supplies could not be brought up readily enough. Some even declared to Cæsar that when he gave orders for the camp to be moved and the troops to advance, the soldiers would not be obedient to the command nor advance, in consequence of their fear.

When Cæsar observed these things, having called a council, and summoned to it the centurions of all the companies, he severely reprimanded them, "particularly for supposing that it belonged to them to inquire or conjecture either in what direction they were marching or with what object. That Ariovistus during his [Cæsar's] consulship had most anxiously sought after the friendship of the Roman people; why should any one judge that he would so rashly depart from his duty? He for his part was persuaded that when his demands were known and the fairness of the terms considered, he would reject neither his nor the Roman people's favor. But even if, driven on by rage and madness, he should make war upon them, what after all were they afraid of?--or why should they despair either of their own valor or of his zeal? Of that enemy a trial had been made within our fathers' recollection, when on the defeat of the Cimbri and Teutones by Caius Marius, the army was regarded as having deserved no less praise than their commander himself. It had been made lately too in Italy, during the rebellion of the slaves, whom, however, the experience and training which they had received from us assisted in some respect. From which a judgment might be formed of the advantages which resolution carries with it,--inasmuch as those whom for some time they had groundlessly dreaded when unarmed, they had afterwards vanquished when well armed and flushed with success. In short, that these were the same men whom the Helvetii, in frequent encounters, not only in their own territories, but also in theirs [the German], have generally vanquished, and yet cannot have been a match for our army. If the unsuccessful battle and flight of the Gauls disquieted any, these, if they made inquiries, might discover that when the Gauls had been tired out by the long duration of the war, Ariovistus, after he had many months kept himself in his camp and in the marshes, and had given no opportunity for an engagement, fell suddenly upon them, by this time despairing of a battle and scattered in all directions; and was victorious more through stratagem and cunning than valor. But though there had been room for such stratagem against savage and unskilled men, not even Ariovistus himself expected that thereby our armies could be entrapped. That those who ascribed their fear to a pretense about the deficiency of supplies and the narrowness of the roads acted presumptuously, as they seemed either to distrust their general's discharge of his duty or to dictate to him. That these things were his concern; that the Sequani, the Leuci, and the Lingones were to furnish the corn; and that it was already ripe in the fields; that as to the road, they would soon be able to judge for themselves. As to its being reported that the soldiers would not be obedient to command, or advance, he was not at all disturbed at that; for he knew that in the case of all those whose army had not been obedient to command, either upon some mismanagement of an affair fortune had deserted them, or that upon some crime being discovered covetousness had been clearly proved against them. His integrity had been seen throughout his whole life, his good fortune in the war with the Helvetii. That he would therefore instantly set about what he had intended to put off till a more distant day, and would break up his camp the next night in the fourth watch, that he might ascertain as soon as possible whether a sense of honor and duty, or whether fear, had more influence with them. But that if no one else should follow, yet he would go with only the tenth legion, of which he had no misgivings, and it should be his prætorian cohort."--This legion Cæsar had both greatly favored, and in it, on account of its valor, placed the greatest confidence.