correspondence with the Germans. Danger, if danger there was, was
threatened by the Treveri, a powerful tribe still unbroken on the
Moselle. Caesar, however, had contrived to attach the leading chiefs to
the Roman interest. He found nothing to alarm him, and once more went
down to the sea. In his first venture he had been embarrassed by want
of cavalry. He was by this time personally acquainted with the most
influential of the Gallic nobles. He had requested them to attend him
into Britain with their mounted retinues, both for service in the
field, and that he might keep these restless chiefs under his eye.
Among the rest he had not overlooked the Aeduan prince, Dumnorix, whose
intrigues had brought the Helvetii out of Switzerland, and whose
treachery had created difficulty and nearly disaster in the first
campaign. Dumnorix had not forgotten his ambition. He had affected
penitence, and he had been treated with kindness. He had availed
himself of the favor which had been shown to him to pretend to his
countrymen that Caesar had promised him the chieftainship. He had
petitioned earnestly to be excused from accompanying the expedition,
and, Caesar having for this reason probably the more insisted upon it,
he had persuaded the other chiefs that Caesar meant to destroy them,
and that if they went to Britain they would never return. These
whisperings were reported to Caesar. Dumnorix had come to Boulogne with
the rest, and he ordered him to be watched. A long westerly wind had
prevented Caesar from embarking as soon as he had wished. The weather
changed at last, and the troops were ordered on board. Dumnorix slipped
away in the confusion with a party of Aeduan horse, and it was now
certain that he had sinister intentions. The embarkation was suspended.
A detachment of cavalry was sent in pursuit, with directions to bring
Dumnorix back dead or alive. Dumnorix resisted, and was killed.

No disturbance followed on his death. The remaining chiefs were loyal,
or wished to appear loyal, and further delay was unnecessary. Labienus,
whom Caesar thoroughly trusted, remained behind with three legions and
two thousand horse to watch over Gaul; and on a fine summer evening,
with a light air from the south, Caesar sailed at sunset on the 20th of
July. He had five legions with him. He had as many cavalry as he had
left with Labienus. His flotilla, swollen by volunteers, amounted to
eight hundred vessels, small and great. At sunrise they were in
midchannel, lying in a dead calm, with the cliffs of Britain plainly
visible on their left hand. The tide was flowing. Oars were out; the
legionaries worked with such enthusiasm that the transports kept
abreast of the war-galleys. At noon they had reached the beach at Deal,
where this time they found no enemy to oppose their landing; the
Britons had been terrified at the multitude of ships and boats in which
the power of Rome was descending on them, and had fled into the
interior. The water was smooth, the disembarkation easy. A camp was
drawn out and intrenched, and six thousand men, with a few hundred
horse, were told off to guard it. The fleet was left riding quietly at
anchor, the pilots ignorant of the meaning of the treacherous southern
air which had been so welcome to them; and Caesar advanced inland as
far as the Stour. The Britons, after an unsuccessful stand to prevent
the Romans from crossing the river, retired into the woods, where they
had made themselves a fortress with felled trees. The weak defence was
easily stormed; the Britons were flying; the Romans were preparing to
follow; when an express came from Deal to tell Caesar that a gale had
risen again and the fleet was lying wrecked upon the shore. A second
accident of the same kind might have seemed an omen of evil, but Caesar
did not believe in omens. The even temperament of his mind was never
discomposed, and at each moment he was able always to decide, and to
do, what the moment required. The army was halted. He rode back himself
to the camp, to find that forty of his vessels only were entirely
ruined. The rest were injured, but not irreparably. They were hauled up
within the lines of the camp. He selected the best mechanics out of the
legions; he sent across to Labienus for more, and directed him to build
fresh transports in the yards at Boulogne. The men worked night and
day, and in little more than a week Caesar was able to rejoin his
troops and renew his march.

The object of the invasion had been rather to secure the quiet of Gaul
than the annexation of new subjects and further territory. But it could
not be obtained till the Romans had measured themselves against the
Britons, and had asserted their military superiority. The Britons had
already shown themselves a fearless race, who could not be despised.
They fought bravely from their cars and horses, retreated rapidly when
overmatched, and were found dangerous when pursued. Encouraged by the
report of the disaster to the fleet, Cassibelaunus, chief of the Cassi,
whose head-quarters were at St. Albans, had collected a considerable
army from both sides of the Thames, and was found in strength in
Caesar's front when he again began to move. They attacked his foraging
parties. They set on his flanking detachments. They left their cars,
and fought on foot when they could catch an advantage; and remounted
and were swiftly out of the reach of the heavily armed Roman infantry.
The Gaulish horse pursued, but did not know the country, and suffered
more harm than they inflicted. Thus the British gave Caesar
considerable trouble, which he recorded to their credit. Not a word can
be found in his Commentaries to the disparagement of brave and open
adversaries. At length he forced them into a battle, where their best
warriors were killed. The confederacy of tribes dissolved and never
rallied again, and he pursued his march thenceforward with little
molestation. He crossed the Medway, and reached the Thames seemingly at
Sunbury. There was a ford there, but the river was still deep, the
ground was staked, and Cassibelaunus with his own people was on the
other side. The legions, however, paid small attention to
Cassibelaunus; they plunged through with the water at their necks. The
Britons dispersed, driving off their cattle, and watching his march
from a distance. The tribes from the eastern counties made their
submission, and at Caesar's orders supplied him with corn. Caesar
marched on to St. Albans itself, then lying in the midst of forests and
marshes, where the cattle, the Cassi's only wealth, had been collected
for security. St. Albans and the cattle were taken; Cassibelaunus sued
for peace; the days were drawing in; and Caesar, having no intention of
wintering in Britain, considered he had done enough and need go no
farther. He returned as he had come. The Kentish men had attacked the
camp in his absence, but had been beaten off with heavy loss. The
Romans had sallied out upon them, killed as many as they could catch,
and taken one of their chiefs. Thenceforward they had been left in
quiet. A nominal tribute, which was never paid, was assigned to the
tribes who had submitted. The fleet was in order, and all was ready for
departure. The only, but unhappily too valuable, booty which they had
carried off consisted of some thousands of prisoners. These, when
landed in Gaul, were disposed of to contractors, to be carried to Italy
and sold as slaves. Two trips were required to transport the increased
numbers; but the passage was accomplished without accident, and the
whole army was again at Boulogne.

Thus ended the expedition into Britain. It had been undertaken rather
for effect than for material advantage; and everything which had been
aimed at had been gained. The Gauls looked no more across the Channel
for support of insurrections; the Romans talked with admiration for a
century of the far land to which Caesar had borne the eagles; and no
exploit gave him more fame with his contemporaries. Nor was it without
use to have solved a geographical problem, and to have discovered with
certainty what the country was, the white cliffs of which were visible
from the shores which were now Roman territory. Caesar during his stay
in Britain had acquired a fairly accurate notion of it. He knew that it
was an island, and he knew its dimensions and shape. He knew that
Ireland lay to the west of it, and Ireland, he had been told, was about
half its size. He had heard of the Isle of Man, and how it was
situated. To the extreme north above Britain he had ascertained that
there were other islands, where in winter the sun scarcely rose above
the horizon; and he had observed through accurate measurement by
water-clocks that the midsummer nights in Britain were shorter than in
the south of France and Italy. He had inquired into the natural
products of the country. There were tin mines, he found, in parts of
the island, and iron in small quantities; but copper was imported from
the Continent. The vegetation resembled that of France, save that he
saw no beech and no spruce pine. Of more consequence were the people
and the distribution of them. The Britons of the interior he conceived
to be indigenous. The coast was chiefly occupied by immigrants from
Belgium, as could be traced in the nomenclature of places. The country
seemed thickly inhabited. The flocks and herds were large; and farm
buildings were frequent, resembling those in Gaul. In Kent especially,
civilization was as far advanced as on the opposite continent. The
Britons proper from the interior showed fewer signs of progress. They
did not break the ground for corn; they had no manufactures; they lived
on meat and milk, and were dressed in leather. They dyed their skins
blue that they might look more terrible. They wore their hair long, and
had long mustaches. In their habits they had not risen out of the
lowest order of savagery. They had wives in common, and brothers and
sisters, parents and children, lived together with promiscuous
unrestraint. From such a country not much was to be gained in the way
of spoil; nor had much been expected. Since Cicero's conversion, his
brother Quintus had joined Caesar, and was now attending him as one of
his lieutenant-generals. The brothers were in intimate correspondence.
Cicero, though he watched the British expedition with interest,
anticipated that Quintus would bring nothing of value back with him but
slaves; and he warned his friend Atticus, who dealt extensively in such
commodities, that the slaves from Britain would not be found of
superior quality.[2]

[1] Nassau and Darmstadt.

[2] "Britannici belli exitus exspectatur. Constat enim, aditus insulae
    esse munitos mirificis molibus. Etiam illud jam cognitum est, neque
    argenti scrupulum esse ullum in illâ insulâ, neque ullam spem praedae,
    nisi ex mancipiis: ex quibus nullos puto te litteris aut musicis
    eruditos exspectare."--_Ad Atticum_, iv. 16. It does not appear
    what Cicero meant by the "mirificae moles" which guarded the
    approaches to Britain, whether Dover Cliff or the masses of sand
    under water at the Goodwins.

CHAPTER XVII.

The summer had passed off gloriously for the Roman arms. The expedition
to Britain had produced all the effects which Caesar expected from it,
and Gaul was outwardly calm. Below the smooth appearance the elements
of disquiet were silently working, and the winter was about to produce
the most serious disaster and the sharpest trials which Caesar had yet
experienced. On his return from Britain he held a council at Amiens.
The harvest had been bad, and it was found expedient, for their better
provision, to disperse the troops over a broader area than usual. There
were in all eight legions, with part of another to be disposed of, and
they were distributed in the following order. Lucius Roscius was placed
at Séex, in Normandy; Quintus Cicero at Charleroy, not far from the
scene of the battle with the Nervii. Cicero had chosen this position
for himself as peculiarly advantageous; and his brother speaks of
Caesar's acquiescence in the arrangement as a special mark of favor to
himself. Labienus was at Lavacherie, on the Ourthe, about seventy miles
to the south-east of Cicero; and Sabinus and Cotta were at Tongres,
among the Aduatuci, not far from Liége, an equal distance from him to
the north-east. Caius Fabius had a legion at St. Pol, between Calais
and Arras; Trebonius one at Amiens; Marcus Crassus one at Montdidier;
Munatius Plancus one across the Oise, near Compiègne. Roscius was far
off, but in a comparatively quiet country. The other camps lay within a
circle, two hundred miles in diameter, of which Bavay was the centre.
Amiens was at one point on the circumference. Tongres, on the opposite
side of it, to the north-east. Sabinus, being the most exposed, had, in
addition to his legion, a few cohorts lately raised in Italy. Caesar,
having no particular business to take him over the Alps, remained, with
Trebonius attending to general business. His dispositions had been
carefully watched by the Gauls. Caesar, they supposed, would go away as
usual; they even believed that he had gone; and a conspiracy was formed
in the north to destroy the legions in detail.

The instigator of the movement was Induciomarus, the leader of the
patriot party among the Treveri, whose intrigues had taken Caesar to
the Moselle before the first visit to Britain. At that time
Induciomarus had been able to do nothing; but a fairer opportunity had
arrived. The overthrow of the great German horde had affected
powerfully the semi-Teutonic populations on the left bank of the Rhine.
The Eburones, a large tribe of German race occupying the country
between Liége and Cologne, had given in their submission; but their
strength was still undiminished, and Induciomarus prevailed on their
two chiefs, Ambiorix and Catavoleus, to attack Sabinus and Cotta. It
was midwinter. The camp at Tongres was isolated. The nearest support
was seventy miles distant. If one Roman camp was taken, Induciomarus
calculated that the country would rise; the others could be separately
surrounded, and Gaul would be free. The plot was well laid. An
entrenched camp being difficult to storm, the confederates decided to
begin by treachery. Ambiorix was personally known to many of the Roman
officers. He sent to Sabiuus to say that he wished to communicate with
him on a matter of the greatest consequence. An interview being
granted, he stated that a general conspiracy had been formed through
the whole of Gaul to surprise and destroy the legions. Each station was
to be attacked on the same day, that they might be unable to support
each other. He pretended himself to have remonstrated; but his tribe,
he said, had been carried away by the general enthusiasm for liberty,
and he could not keep them back. Vast bodies of Germans had crossed the
Rhine to join in the war. In two days at the furthest they would
arrive. He was under private obligations to Caesar, who had rescued his
son and nephew in the fight with the Aduatuci, and out of gratitude he
wished to save Sabinus from destruction, which was otherwise
inevitable. He urged him to escape while there was still time, and to
join either Labienus or Cicero, giving a solemn promise that he should
not be molested on the road.

A council of officers was held on the receipt of this unwelcome
information. It was thought unlikely that the Eburones would rise by
themselves. It was probable enough, therefore, that the conspiracy was
more extensive. Cotta, who was second in command, was of opinion that
it would be rash and wrong to leave the camp without Caesar's orders.
They had abundant provisions. They could hold their own lines against
any force which the Germans could bring upon them, and help would not
be long in reaching them. It would be preposterous to take so grave a
step on the advice of an enemy. Sabinus unfortunately thought
differently. He had been over-cautious in Brittany, though he had
afterward redeemed his fault. Caesar, he persuaded himself, had left
the country; each commander therefore must act on his own
responsibility. The story told by Ambiorix was likely in itself. The
Germans were known to be furious at the passage of the Rhine, the
destruction of Ariovistus, and their other defeats. Gaul resented the
loss of its independence. Ambiorix was acting like a true friend, and
it would be madness to refuse his offer. Two days' march would bring
them to their friends. If the alarm was false, they could return. If
there was to be a general insurrection, the legions could not be too
speedily brought together. If they waited, as Cotta advised, they would
be surrounded, and in the end would be starved into surrender.

Cotta was not convinced, and the majority of officers supported him.
The first duty of a Roman army, he said, was obedience to orders. Their
business was to hold the post which had been committed to them, till
they were otherwise directed. The officers were consulting in the midst
of the camp, surrounded by the legionaries. "Have it as you wish,"
Sabinus exclaimed, in a tone which the men could hear; "I am not afraid
of being killed. If things go amiss, the troops will understand where
to lay the blame. If you allowed it, they might in forty-eight hours be
at the next quarters, facing the chances of war with their comrades,
instead of perishing here alone by sword or hunger."

Neither party would give way. The troops joined in the discussion. They
were willing either to go or to stay, if their commanders would agree;
but they said that it must be one thing or the other; disputes would be
certain ruin. The discussion lasted till midnight. Sabinus was
obstinate, Cotta at last withdrew his opposition, and the fatal
resolution was formed to march at dawn. The remaining hours of the
night were passed by the men in collecting such valuables as they
wished to take with them. Everything seemed ingeniously done to
increase the difficulty of remaining, and to add to the perils of the
march by the exhaustion of the troops. The Meuse lay between them and
Labienus, so they had selected to go to Cicero at Charleroy. Their
course lay up the left bank of the little river _Geer_. Trusting to the
promises of Ambiorix, they started in loose order, followed by a long
train of carts and wagons. The Eburones lay, waiting for them, in a
large valley, two miles from the camp. When most of the cohorts were
entangled in the middle of the hollow, the enemy appeared suddenly,
some in front, some on both sides of the valley, some behind
threatening the baggage. Wise men, as Caesar says, anticipate possible
difficulties, and decide beforehand what they will do if occasions
arise. Sabinus had foreseen nothing and arranged nothing. Cotta, who
had expected what might happen, was better prepared, and did the best
that was possible. The men had scattered among the wagons, each to save
or protect what he could. Cotta ordered them back, bade them leave the
carts to their fate, and form together in a ring. He did right, Caesar
thought; but the effect was unfortunate. The troops lost heart, and the
enemy was encouraged, knowing that the baggage would only be abandoned
when the position was desperate. The Eburones were under good command.
They did not, as might have been expected, fly upon the plunder. They
stood to their work, well aware that the carts would not escape them.
They were not in great numbers. Caesar specially says that the Romans
were as numerous as they. But everything else was against the Romans.
Sabinus could give no directions. They were in a narrow meadow, with
wooded hills on each side of them filled with enemies whom they could
not reach. When they charged, the light-footed barbarians ran back;
when they retired, they closed in upon them again, and not a dart, an
arrow, or a stone missed its mark among the crowded cohorts. Bravely as
the Romans fought, they were in a trap where their courage was useless
to them. The battle lasted from dawn till the afternoon, and though
they were falling fast, there was no flinching and no cowardice.
Caesar, who inquired particularly into the minutest circumstances of
the disaster, records by name the officers who distinguished
themselves; he mentions one whose courage he had marked before, who was
struck down with a lance through his thighs, and another who was killed
in rescuing his son. The brave Cotta was hit in the mouth by a stone as
he was cheering on his men. The end came at last. Sabinus, helpless and
distracted, caught sight of Ambiorix in the confusion, and sent an
interpreter to implore him to spare the remainder of the army. Ambiorix
answered that Sabinus might come to him, if he pleased; he hoped he
might persuade his tribe to be merciful; he promised that Sabinus
himself should suffer no injury. Sabinus asked Cotta to accompany him.
Cotta said he would never surrender to an armed enemy; and, wounded as
he was, he stayed with the legion. Sabinus, followed by the rest of the
surviving officers whom he ordered to attend him, proceeded to the spot
where the chief was standing. They were commanded to lay down their
arms. They obeyed, and were immediately killed; and with one wild yell
the barbarians then rushed in a mass on the deserted cohorts. Cotta
fell, and most of the others with him. The survivors, with the eagle of
the legion, which they had still faithfully guarded, struggled back in
the dusk to their deserted camp. The standard-bearer, surrounded by
enemies, reached the fosse, flung the eagle over the rampart, and fell
with the last effort. Those that were left fought on till night, and
then, seeing that hope was gone, died like Romans on each other's
swords--a signal illustration of the Roman greatness of mind, which had
died out among the degenerate patricians, but was living in all its
force in Caesar's legions. A few stragglers, who had been cut off
during the battle from their comrades, escaped in the night through the
woods, and carried the news to Labienus. Cicero, at Charleroy, was left
in ignorance. The roads were beset, and no messenger could reach him.

Induciomarus understood his countrymen. The conspiracy with which he
had frightened Sabinus had not as yet extended beyond a few northern
chiefs, hut the success of Ambiorix produced the effect which he
desired. As soon as it was known that two Roman generals had been cut
off, the remnants of the Aduatuci and the Nervii were in arms for their
own revenge. The smaller tribes along the Meuse and Sambre rose with
them; and Cicero, taken by surprise, found himself surrounded before he
had a thought of danger. The Gauls, knowing that their chances depended
on the capture of the second camp before assistance could arrive, flung
themselves so desperately on the entrenchments that the legionaries
were barely able to repel the first assault. The assailants were driven
back at last, and Cicero despatched messengers to Caesar to Amiens, to
give him notice of the rising; but not a man was able to penetrate
through the multitude of enemies which now swarmed in the woods. The
troops worked gallantly, strengthening the weak points of their
fortifications. In one night they raised a hundred and twenty towers on
their walls. Again the Gauls tried a storm, and, though they failed a
second time, they left the garrison no rest either by day or night.
There was no leisure for sleep; not a hand could be spared from the
lines to care for the sick or wounded. Cicero was in bad health, but he
clung to his work till the men carried him by force to his tent and
obliged him to lie down. The first surprise not having succeeded, the
Nervian chiefs, who knew Cicero, desired a parley. They told the same
story which Ambiorix had told, that the Germans had crossed the Rhine,
and that all Gaul was in arms. They informed him of the destruction of
Sabinus; they warned him that the same fate was hanging over himself,
and that his only hope was in surrender. They did not wish, they said,
to hurt either him or the Roman people; he and his troops would be free
to go where they pleased, but they were determined to prevent the
legions from quartering themselves permanently in their country.

There was but one Sabinus in the Roman army. Cicero answered, with a
spirit worthy of his country, that Romans accepted no conditions from
enemies in arms. The Gauls might, if they pleased, send a deputation to
Caesar, and hear what he would say to them. For himself, he had no
authority to listen to them. Force and treachery being alike
unavailing, they resolved to starve Cicero out. They had watched the
Roman strategy. They had seen and felt the value of the entrenchments.
They made a bank and ditch all round the camp, and, though they had no
tools but their swords with which to dig turf and cut trees, so many
there were of them that the work was completed in three hours.[1]
Having thus pinned the Romans in, they slung red-hot balls and flung
darts carrying lighted straw over the ramparts of the camp on the
thatched roofs of the soldiers' huts. The wind was high, the fire
spread, and amidst the smoke and the blaze the Gauls again rushed on
from all sides to the assault. Roman discipline was never more severely
tried, and never showed its excellence more signally. The houses and
stores of the soldiers were in flames behind them. The enemy were
pressing on the walls in front, covered by a storm of javelins and
stones and arrows, but not a man left his post to save his property or
to extinguish the fire. They fought as they stood, striking down rank
after rank of the Gauls, who still crowded on, trampling on the bodies
of their companions, as the foremost lines fell dead into the ditch.
Such as reached the wall never left it alive, for they were driven
forward by the throng behind on the swords of the legionaries.
Thousands of them had fallen, before, in desperation, they drew back at
last.

But Cicero's situation was almost desperate too. The huts were
destroyed. The majority of the men were wounded, and those able to bear
arms were daily growing weaker in number. Caesar was 120 miles distant,
and no word had reached him of the danger. Messengers were again sent
off, but they were caught one after another, and were tortured to death
in front of the ramparts, and the boldest men shrank from risking their
lives on so hopeless an enterprise. At length a Nervian slave was found
to make another adventure. He was a Gaul, and could easily disguise
himself. A letter to Caesar was enclosed in the shaft of his javelin.
He glided out of the camp in the dark, passed undetected among the
enemies as one of themselves, and, escaping from their lines, made his
way to Amiens.

Swiftness of movement was Caesar's distinguishing excellence. The
legions were kept ready to march at an hour's notice. He sent an order
to Crassus to join him instantly from Montdidier. He sent to Fabius at
St. Pol to meet him at Arras. He wrote to Labienus, telling him the
situation, and leaving him to his discretion to advance or to remain on
his guard at Lavacherie, as might seem most prudent. Not caring to wait
for the rest of his army, and leaving Crassus to take care of Amiens,
he started himself, the morning after the information reached him, with
Trebonius's legion to Cicero's relief. Fabius joined him, as he had
been directed, at Arras. He had hoped for Labienus's presence also; but
Labienus sent to say that he was surrounded by the Treveri, and dared
not stir. Caesar approved his hesitation, and with but two legions,
amounting in all to only 7,000 men, he hurried forward to the Nervian
border. Learning that Cicero was still holding out, he wrote a letter
to him in Greek, that it might be unintelligible if intercepted, to
tell him that help was near. A Gaul carried the letter, and fastened it
by a line to his javelin, which he flung over Cicero's rampart. The
javelin stuck in the side of one of the towers and was unobserved for
several days. The besiegers were better informed. They learnt that
Caesar was at hand, that he had but a handful of men with him. By that
time their own numbers had risen to 60,000, and, leaving Cicero to be
dealt with at leisure, they moved off to envelop and destroy their
great enemy. Caesar was well served by spies. He knew that Cicero was
no longer in immediate danger, and there was thus no occasion for him
to risk a battle at a disadvantage to relieve him. When he found the
Gauls near him, he encamped, drawing his lines as narrowly as he could,
that from the small show which he made they might imagine his troops to
be even fewer than they were. He invited attack by an ostentation of
timidity, and having tempted the Gauls to become the assailants, he
flung open his gates, rushed out upon them with his whole force, and
all but annihilated them. The patriot army was broken to pieces, and
the unfortunate Nervii and Aduatuci never rallied from this second
blow. Caesar could then go at his leisure to Cicero and his comrades,
who had fought so nobly against such desperate odds. In every ten men
he found that there was but one unwounded. He inquired with minute
curiosity into every detail of the siege. In a general address he
thanked Cicero and the whole legion. He thanked the officers man by man
for their gallantry and fidelity. Now for the first time (and that he
could have remained ignorant of it so long speaks for the passionate
unanimity with which the Gauls had risen) he learnt from prisoners the
fate of Sabinus. He did not underrate the greatness of the catastrophe.
The soldiers in the army he treated always as friends and comrades in
arms, and the loss of so many of them was as personally grievous to him
as the effects of it might be politically mischievous. He made it the
subject of a second speech to his own and to Cicero's troops, but he
spoke to encourage and to console. A serious misfortune had happened,
he said, through the fault of one of his generals, but it must be borne
with equanimity, and had already been heroically expiated. The meeting
with Cicero must have been an interesting one. He and the two Ciceros
had been friends and companions in youth. It would have been well if
Marcus Tullius could have remembered in the coming years the personal
exertion with which Caesar had rescued a brother to whom he was so
warmly attached.

Communications among the Gauls were feverishly rapid. While the Nervii
were attacking Cicero, Induciomarus and the Treveri had surrounded
Labienus at Lavacherie. Caesar had entered Cicero's camp at three
o'clock in the afternoon. The news reached Induciomarus before
midnight, and he had disappeared by the morning. Caesar returned to
Amiens, but the whole country was now in a state of excitement. He had
intended to go to Italy, but he abandoned all thoughts of departure.
Rumors came of messengers hurrying to and fro, of meetings at night in
lonely places, of confederacies among the patriots. Even Brittany was
growing uneasy; a force had been collected to attack Roscius, though it
had dispersed after the relief of Cicero. Caesar again summoned the
chiefs to come to him, and between threats and encouragements succeeded
in preventing a general rising. But the tribes on the upper Seine broke
into disturbance. The Aedui and the Remi alone remained really loyal;
and it was evident that only a leader was wanted to raise the whole of
Gaul. Caesar himself admitted that nothing could be more natural. The
more high-spirited of the Gauls were miserable to see that their
countrymen had so lost conceit of themselves as to submit willingly to
the Roman rule.

Induciomarus was busy all the winter soliciting help from the Germans,
and promising money and lands. The Germans had had enough of fighting
the Romans, and, as long as their own independence was not threatened,
were disinclined to move; but Induciomarus, nothing daunted, gathered
volunteers on all sides. His camp became a rallying point for
disaffection. Envoys came privately to him from distant tribes. He,
too, held his rival council, and a fresh attack on the camp of Labienus
was to be the first step in a general war. Labienus, well informed of
what was going on, watched him quietly from his entrenchments. When the
Gauls approached, he affected fear, as Caesar had done, and he secretly
formed a body of cavalry, of whose existence they had no suspicion.
Induciomarus became careless. Day after day he rode round the
entrenchments, insulting the Romans as cowards, and his men flinging
their javelins over the walls. Labienus remained passive, till one
evening, when, after one of these displays, the loose bands of the
Gauls had scattered, he sent his horse out suddenly with orders to
fight neither with small nor great, save with Induciomarus only, and
promising a reward for his head. Fortune favored him. Induciomarus was
overtaken and killed in a ford of the Ourthe, and for the moment the
agitation was cooled down. But the impression which had been excited by
the destruction of Sabinus was still telling through the country.
Caesar expected fresh trouble in the coming summer, and spent the rest
of the winter and spring in preparing for a new struggle. Future peace
depended on convincing the Gauls of the inexhaustible resources of
Italy; on showing them that any loss which might be inflicted could be
immediately repaired, and that the army could and would be maintained
in whatever strength might be necessary to coerce them. He raised two
fresh legions in his own province. Pompey had formed a legion in the
north of Italy, within Caesar's boundaries, for service in Spain.
Caesar requested Pompey to lend him this legion for immediate purposes;
and Pompey, who was still on good terms with Caesar, recognized the
importance of the occasion, and consented without difficulty.

[Sidenote: B.C. 53.] Thus amply reinforced, Caesar, before the grass
had begun to grow, took the field against the tribes which were openly
disaffected. The first business was to punish the Belgians, who had
attacked Cicero. He fell suddenly on the Nervii with four legions,
seized their cattle, wasted their country, and carried off thousands of
them to be sold into slavery. Returning to Amiens, he again called the
chiefs about him, and, the Seine tribes refusing to put in an
appearance, he transferred the council to Paris, and, advancing by
rapid marches, he brought the Senones and Carnutes to pray for
pardon.[2] He then turned on the Treveri and their allies, who, under
Ambiorix, had destroyed Sabinus. Leaving Labienus with the additional
legions to check the Treveri, he went himself into Flanders, where
Ambiorix was hiding among the rivers and marshes. He threw bridges over
the dikes, burnt the villages, and carried off an enormous spoil, of
cattle and, alas! of men. To favor and enrich the tribes that submitted
after a first defeat, to depopulate the determinately rebellious by
seizing and selling as slaves those who had forfeited a right to his
protection, was his uniform and, as the event proved, entirely
successful policy. The persuasions of the Treveri had failed with the
nearer German tribes; but some of the Suevi, who had never seen the
Romans, were tempted to adventure over and try their fortunes; and the
Treveri were waiting for them, to set on Labienus, in Caesar's absence.
Labienus went in search of the Treveri, tempted them into an engagement
by a feigned flight, killed many of them, and filled his camp with
prisoners. Their German allies retreated again across the river, and
the patriot chiefs, who had gone with Induciomarus, concealed
themselves in the forests of Westphalia. Caesar thought it desirable to
renew the admonition which he had given the Germans two years before,
and again threw a bridge over the Rhine at the same place where he had
made the first, but a little higher up the stream. Experience made the
construction more easy. The bridge was begun and finished in a few
days, but this time the labor was thrown away. The operation itself
lost its impressiveness by repetition, and the barrenness of practical
results was more evident than before. The Sueves, who had gone home,
were far away in the interior. To lead the heavily armed legions in
pursuit of wild light-footed marauders, who had not a town which could
be burned, or a field of corn which could be cut for food, was to waste
their strength to no purpose, and to prove still more plainly that in
their own forests they were beyond the reach of vengeance. Caesar drew
back again, after a brief visit to his allies the Ubii, cut two hundred
feet of the bridge on the German side, and leaving the rest standing
with a guard to defend it, he went in search of Ambiorix, who had as
yet eluded him, in the Ardennes. Ambiorix had added treachery to
insurrection, and as long as he was free and unpunished the massacred
legion had not been fully avenged. Caesar was particularly anxious to
catch him, and once had found the nest warm which Ambiorix had left but
a few moments before.

In the pursuit he came again to Tongres, to the fatal camp which
Sabinus had deserted and in which the last of the legionaries had
killed each other, rather than degrade the Roman name by allowing
themselves to be captured. The spot was fated, and narrowly escaped
being the scene of a second catastrophe as frightful as the first. The
entrenchments were standing as they were left, ready to be occupied.
Caesar, finding himself encumbered by his heavy baggage in the pursuit
of Ambiorix, decided to leave it there with Quintus Cicero and the 14th
legion. He was going himself to scour Brabant and East Flanders as far
as the Scheldt. In seven days he promised to return, and meanwhile he
gave Cicero strict directions to keep the legion within the lines, and
not to allow any of the men to stray. It happened that after Caesar
recrossed the Rhine two thousand German horse had followed in bravado,
and were then plundering between Tongres and the river. Hearing that
there was a rich booty in the camp, that Caesar was away, and only a
small party had been left to guard it, they decided to try to take the
place by a sudden stroke. Cicero, seeing no sign of an enemy, had
permitted his men to disperse in foraging parties. The Germans were on
them before they could recover their entrenchments, and they had to
form at a distance and defend themselves as they could. The gates of
the camp were open, and the enemy were actually inside before the few
maniples who were left there were able to collect and resist them.
Fortunately Sextius Bacillus, the same officer who had so brilliantly
distinguished himself in the battle with the Nervii, and had since been
badly wounded, was lying sick in his tent, where he had been for five
days, unable to touch food. Hearing the disturbance, Bacillus sprang
out, snatched a sword, rallied such men as he could find, and checked
the attack for a few minutes. Other officers rushed to his help, and
the legionaries having their centurions with them recovered their
steadiness. Sextius Bacillus was again severely hurt, and fainted, but
he was carried off in safety. Some of the cohorts who were outside, and
had been for a time cut off, made their way into the camp to join the
defenders, and the Germans, who had come without any fixed purpose,
merely for plunder, gave way and galloped off again. They left the
Romans, however, still in the utmost consternation. The scene and the
associations of it suggested the most gloomy anticipations. They
thought that German cavalry could never be so far from the Rhine,
unless their countrymen were invading in force behind them. Caesar, it
was supposed, must have been surprised and destroyed, and they and
every Roman in Gaul would soon share the same fate. Brave as they were,
the Roman soldiers seem to have been curiously liable to panics of this
kind. The faith with which they relied upon their general avenged
itself through the completeness with which they were accustomed to
depend upon him. He returned on the day which he had fixed, and not
unnaturally was displeased at the disregard of his orders. He did not,
or does not in his Commentaries, professedly blame Cicero. But the
Ciceros perhaps resented the loss of confidence which one of them had
brought upon himself. Quintus Cicero cooled in his zeal, and afterward
amused the leisure of his winter quarters with composing worthless
dramas.

Ambiorix had again escaped, and was never taken. The punishment fell on
his tribe. The Eburones were completely rooted out. The turn of the
Carnutes and Senones came next. The people themselves were spared; but
their leader, a chief named Acco, who was found to have instigated the
revolt, was arrested and executed. Again the whole of Gaul settled into
seeming quiet; and Caesar went to Italy, where the political frenzy was
now boiling over.

[1] Caesar says their trenches were fifteen miles long. This is, perhaps,
    a mistake of the transcriber. A Roman camp did not usually cover more
    than a few acres.

[2] People about Sens, Melun, and Chartres.

CHAPTER XVIII.

[Sidenote: B.C. 55.] The conference at Lucca and the Senate's
indifference had determined Cicero to throw in his lot with the
trimmers. He had remonstrated with Pompey on the imprudence of
prolonging Caesar's command. Pompey, he thought, would find out in time
that he had made Caesar too strong for him; but Pompey had refused to
listen, and Cicero had concluded that he must consider his own
interests. His brother Quintus joined the army in Gaul to take part in
the invasion of Britain, and to share the dangers and the honors of the
winter which followed it. Cicero himself began a warm correspondence
with Caesar, and through Quintus sent continued messages to him.
Literature was a neutral ground on which he could approach his
political enemy without too open discredit, and he courted eagerly the
approval of a critic whose literary genius he esteemed as highly as his
own. Men of genuine ability are rarely vain of what they can do really
well. Cicero admired himself as a statesman with the most unbounded
enthusiasm. He was proud of his verses, which were hopelessly
commonplace. In the art in which he was without a rival he was modest
and diffident. He sent his various writings for Caesar's judgment.
"Like the traveller who has overslept himself," he said, "yet by
extraordinary exertions reaches his goal sooner than if he had been
earlier on the road, I will follow your advice and court this man. I
have been asleep too long. I will correct my slowness with my speed;
and as you say he approves my verses, I shall travel not with a common
carriage, but with a four-in-hand of poetry." [1]

"What does Caesar say of my poems?" he wrote again. "He tells me in one
of his letters that he has never read better Greek. At one place he
writes [Greek: rathumotera] [somewhat careless]. This is his word. Tell
me the truth, Was it the matter which did not please him, or the
style?" "Do not be afraid," he added with candid simplicity; "I shall
not think a hair the worse of myself." [2]

His affairs were still in disorder. Caesar had now large sums at his
disposition. Cicero gave the highest proof of the sincerity of his
conversion by accepting money from him. "You say," he observed in
another letter, "that Caesar shows every day more marks of his
affection for you. It gives me infinite pleasure. I can have no second
thoughts in Caesar's affairs. I act on conviction, and am doing but my
duty; but I am inflamed with love for him." [3]

With Pompey and Crassus Cicero seemed equally familiar. When their
consulship was over, their provinces were assigned as had been
determined. Pompey had Spain, with six legions. He remained himself at
Rome, sending lieutenants in charge of them. Crassus aspired to equal
the glory of his colleagues in the open field. He had gained some
successes in the war with the slaves which persuaded him that he too
could be a conqueror; and knowing as much of foreign campaigning as the
clerks in his factories, he intended to use Syria as a base of
operations against the Parthians, and to extend the frontier to the
Indus. The Senate had murmured, but Cicero had passionately defended
Crassus;[4] and as if to show publicly how entirely he had now devoted
himself to the cause of the "Dynasts," he invited Crassus to dine with
him the day before his departure for the East.

The position was not wholly pleasant to Cicero. "Self-respect in
speech, liberty in choosing the course which we will pursue, is all
gone," he wrote to Lentulus Spinther--"gone not more from me than from
us all. We must assent, as a matter of course, to what a few men say,
or we must differ from them to no purpose.--The relations of the
Senate, of the courts of justice, nay, of the whole Commonwealth are
changed.--The consular dignity of a firm and courageous statesman can
no longer be thought of. It has been lost by the folly of those who
estranged from the Senate the compact order of the equites and a very
distinguished man [Caesar]." [5] And again: "We must go with the times.
Those who have played a great part in public life have never been able
to adhere to the same views on all occasions. The art of navigation
lies in trimming to the storm. When you can reach your harbor by
altering your course, it is a folly to persevere in struggling against
the wind. Were I entirely free I should still act as I am doing; and
when I am invited to my present attitude by the kindness of one set of
men, and am driven to it by the injurious conduct of the other, I am
content to do what I conceive will conduce at once to my own advantage
and the welfare of the State.--Caesar's influence is enormous. His
wealth is vast. I have the use of both, as if they were my own. Nor
could I have crushed the conspiracy of a set of villains to ruin me,
unless, in addition to the defences which I always possessed, I had
secured the goodwill of the men in power." [6]

[Sidenote: B.C. 54.] Cicero's conscience could not have been easy when
he was driven to such laborious apologies. He spoke often of intending
to withdraw into his family, and devoting his time entirely to
literature; but he could not bring himself to leave the political
ferment; and he was possessed besides with a passionate desire to
revenge himself on those who had injured him. An opportunity seemed to
present itself. The persons whom he hated most, after Clodius, were the
two consuls Gabinius and Piso, who had permitted his exile. They had
both conducted themselves abominably in the provinces, which they had
bought, he said, at the price of his blood. Piso had been sent to
Macedonia, where he had allowed his army to perish by disease and
neglect. The frontiers had been overrun with brigands, and the outcries
of his subjects had been audible even in Rome against his tyranny and
incapacity. Gabinius, in Syria, had been more ambitious, and had
exposed himself to an indignation more violent because more interested.
At a hint from Pompey, he had restored Ptolemy to Egypt on his own
authority and without waiting for the Senate's sanction, and he had
snatched for himself the prize for which the chiefs of the Senate had
been contending. He had broken the law by leading his legions over the
frontier. He had defeated the feeble Alexandrians, and the gratified
Ptolemy had rewarded him with the prodigious sum of ten thousand
talents--a million and a half of English money. While he thus enriched
himself he had irritated the knights, who might otherwise have
supported him, by quarrelling with the Syrian revenue farmers, and,
according to popular scandal, he had plundered the province worse than
it had been plundered even by the pirates.

When so fair a chance was thrown in his way, Cicero would have been
more than human if he had not availed himself of it. He moved in the
Senate for the recall of the two offenders, and in the finest of his
speeches he laid bare their reputed iniquities. His position was a
delicate one, because the senatorial party, could they have had their
way, would have recalled Caesar also. Gabinius was Pompey's favorite,
and Piso was Caesar's father-in-law. Cicero had no intention of
quarrelling with Caesar; between his invectives, therefore, he was
careful to interweave the most elaborate compliments to the conqueror
of Gaul. He dwelt with extraordinary clearness on the value of Caesar's
achievements. The conquest of Gaul, he said, was not the annexation of
a province. It was the dispersion of a cloud which had threatened Italy
from the days of Brennus. To recall Caesar would be madness. He wished
to remain only to complete his work; the more honor to him that he was
willing to let the laurels fade which were waiting for him at Rome,
before he returned to wear them. There were persons who would bring him
back, because they did not love him. They would bring him back only to
enjoy a triumph. Gaul had been the single danger to the Empire. Nature
had fortified Italy by the Alps. The mountain-barrier alone had allowed
Rome to grow to its present greatness, but the Alps might now sink into
the earth, Italy had no more to fear.[7]

The orator perhaps hoped that so splendid a vindication of Caesar in
the midst of his worst enemies might have purchased pardon for his
onslaught on the baser members of the "Dynastic" faction. He found
himself mistaken. His eagerness to revenge his personal wrongs
compelled him to drink the bitterest cup of humiliation which had yet
been offered to him. He gained his immediate purpose. The two governors
were recalled in disgrace, and Gabinius was impeached under the new
Julian law for having restored Ptolemy without orders, and for the
corrupt administration of his province. Cicero would naturally have
conducted the prosecution; but pressure of some kind was laid on, which
compelled him to stand aside. The result of the trial on the first of
the two indictments was another of those mockeries of justice which
made the Roman law-courts the jest of mankind. Pompey threw his shield
over his instrument. He used his influence freely. The Egyptian spoils
furnished a fund to corrupt the judges. The speech for the prosecution
was so weak as to invite a failure, and Gabinius was acquitted by a
majority of purchased votes. "You ask me how I endure such things,"
Cicero bitterly wrote, in telling the story to Atticus; "well enough,
by Hercules, and I am entirely pleased with myself. We have lost, my
friend, not only the juice and blood, but even the color and shape, of
a commonwealth. No decent constitution exists in which I can take a
part. How can you put up with such a state of things? you will say.
Excellently well. I recollect how public affairs went awhile ago, when
I was myself in office, and how grateful people were to me. I am not
distressed now, that the power is with a single man. Those are
miserable who could not bear to see me successful. I find much to
console me." [8] "Gabinius is acquitted," he wrote to his
brother.--"The verdict is so infamous that it is thought he will be
convicted on the other charge; but, as you perceive, the constitution,
the Senate, the courts, are all nought. There is no honor in any one of
us.--Some persons, Sallust among them, say that I ought to have
prosecuted him. I to risk my credit with such a jury! what if I had
acted, and he had escaped then! but other motives influenced me. Pompey
would have made a personal quarrel of it with me. He would have come
into the city.[9]--He would have taken up with Clodius again. I know
that I was wise, and I hope that you agree with me. I owe Pompey
nothing, and he owes much to me; but in public matters (not to put it
more strongly) he has not allowed me to oppose him; and when I was
flourishing and he was less powerful than he is now, he let me see what
he could do. Now when I am not even ambitious of power, and the
constitution is broken down, and Pompey is omnipotent, why should I
contend with him? Then, says Sallust, I ought to have pleased Pompey by
defending Gabinius, as he was anxious that I should. A nice friend
Sallust, who would have me push myself into dangerous quarrels, or
cover myself with eternal infamy!" [10]

Unhappy Cicero, wishing to act honorably, but without manliness to face
the consequences! He knew that it would be infamous for him to defend
Gabinius, yet at the second trial Cicero, who had led the attack on him
in the Senate, and had heaped invectives on him, the most bitter which
he ever uttered against man, nevertheless actually did defend Gabinius.
Perhaps he consoled himself with the certainty that his eloquence would
be in vain, and that his extraordinary client this time could not
escape conviction. Any way, he appeared at the bar as Gabinius's
counsel. The Syrian revenue farmers were present, open-mouthed with
their accusations. Gabinius was condemned, stripped of his spoils, and
sent into banishment. Cicero was left with his shame. Nor was this the
worst. There were still some dregs in the cup, which he was forced to
drain. Publius Vatinius was a prominent leader of the military
democratic party, and had often come in collision with Cicero. He had
been tribune when Caesar was consul, and had stood by him against the
Senate and Bibulus. He had served in Gaul in Caesar's first campaigns,
and had returned to Rome, at Caesar's instance, to enter for higher
office. He had carried the praetorship against Cato; and Cicero in one
of his speeches had painted him as another Clodius or Catiline. When
the praetorship was expired, he was prosecuted for corruption; and
Cicero was once more compelled to appear on the other side, and defend
him, as he had done Gabinius. Caesar and Pompey, wishing perhaps to
break completely into harness the brilliant but still half unmanageable
orator, had so ordered, and Cicero had complied. He was ashamed, but he
had still his points of satisfaction. It was a matter of course that,
as an advocate, he must praise the man whom, a year before, he had
spattered with ignominy; but he had the pleasure of feeling that he was
revenging himself on his conservative allies, who led the prosecution.
"Why I praised Vatinius," he wrote to Lentulus, "I must beg you not to
ask either in the case of this or of any other criminal. I put it to
the judges that since certain noble lords, my good friends, were too
fond of my adversary [Clodius], and in the Senate would go apart with
him under my own eyes, and would treat him with warmest affection, they
must allow me to have my Publius [Vatinius], since they had theirs
[Clodius], and give them a gentle stab in return for their cuts at me."
[11] Vatinius was acquitted. Cicero was very miserable. "Gods and men
approved," he said; but his own conscience condemned him, and at this
time his one consolation, real or pretended, was the friendship of
Caesar. "Caesar's affectionate letters," he told his brother, "are my
only pleasure; I attach little consequence to his promises; I do not
thirst for honors, or regret my past glory. I value more the
continuance of his good-will than the prospect of anything which he may
do for me. I am withdrawing from public affairs, and giving myself to
literature. But I am broken-hearted, my dear brother;--I am
broken-hearted that the constitution is gone, that the courts of law
are naught; and that now at my time of life, when I ought to be leading
with authority in the Senate, I must be either busy in the Forum
pleading, or occupying myself with my books at home. The ambition of my
boyhood--

    Aye to be first, and chief among my peers--

is all departed. Of my enemies, I have left some unassailed, and some I
even defend. Not only I may not think as I like, but I may not hate as
I like,[12] and Caesar is the only person who loves me as I should wish
to be loved, or, as some think, who desires to love me." [13]

[Sidenote: B.C. 53.] The position was the more piteous, because Cicero
could not tell how events would fall out after all. Crassus was in the
East, with uncertain prospects there. Caesar was in the midst of a
dangerous war, and might be killed or might die. Pompey was but a weak
vessel; a distinguished soldier, perhaps, but without the intellect or
the resolution to control a proud, resentful, and supremely
unscrupulous aristocracy. In spite of Caesar's victories, his most
envenomed enemy, Domitius Ahenobarbus, had succeeded after all in
carrying one of the consulships for the year 54. The popular party had
secured the other, indeed; but they had returned Appius Claudius,
Clodius's brother, and this was but a poor consolation. In the year
that was to follow, the conservatives had bribed to an extent which
astonished the most cynical observers. Each season the elections were
growing more corrupt; but the proceedings on both sides in the fall of
54 were the most audacious that had ever been known, the two reigning
consuls taking part, and encouraging and assisting in scandalous
bargains. "All the candidates have bribed," wrote Cicero; "but they
will be all acquitted, and no one will ever be found guilty again. The
two consuls are branded with infamy." Memmius, the popular competitor,
at Pompey's instance, exposed in the Senate an arrangement which the
consuls had entered into to secure the returns. The names and
signatures were produced. The scandal was monstrous, and could not be
denied. The better kind of men began to speak of a dictatorship as the
only remedy; and although the two conservative candidates were declared
elected for 53, and were allowed to enter on their offices, there was a
general feeling that a crisis had arrived, and that a great catastrophe
could not be very far off. The form which it might assume was the
problem of the hour.

Cicero, speaking two years before on the broad conditions of his time,
had used these remarkable words: "No issue can be anticipated from
discords among the leading men, except either universal ruin, or the
rule of a conqueror, or a monarchy. There exists at present an
unconcealed hatred implanted and fastened into the minds of our leading
politicians. They are at issue among themselves. Opportunities are
caught for mutual injury. Those who are in the second rank watch for
the chances of the time. Those who might do better are afraid of the
words and designs of their enemies." [14]

The discord had been suspended, and the intrigues temporarily checked,
by the combination of Caesar and Pompey with Crassus, the chief of the
moneyed commoners. Two men of equal military reputation, and one of
them from his greater age and older services expecting and claiming
precedency, do not easily work together. For Pompey to witness the
rising glory of Caesar, and to feel in his own person the superior
ascendency of Caesar's character, without an emotion of jealousy, would
have demanded a degree of virtue which few men have ever possessed.
They had been united so far by identity of conviction, by a military
detestation of anarchy, by a common interest in wringing justice from
the Senate for the army and people, by a pride in the greatness of
their country, which they were determined to uphold. These motives,
however, might not long have borne the strain but for other ties, which
had cemented their union. Pompey had married Caesar's daughter, to whom
he was passionately attached; and the personal competition between them
was neutralized by the third element of the capitalist party
represented by Crassus, which if they quarrelled would secure the
supremacy of the faction to which Crassus attached himself. There was
no jealousy on Caesar's part. There was no occasion for it. Caesar's
fame was rising. Pompey had added nothing to his past distinctions, and
the glory pales which does not grow in lustre. No man who had once been
the single object of admiration, who had tasted the delight of being
the first in the eyes of his countrymen, could find himself compelled
to share their applause with a younger rival without experiencing a
pang. So far Pompey had borne the trial well. He was on the whole,
notwithstanding the Egyptian scandal, honorable and constitutionally
disinterested. He was immeasurably superior to the fanatic Cato, to the
shifty Cicero, or the proud and worthless leaders of the senatorial
oligarchy. Had the circumstances remained unchanged, the severity of
the situation might have been overcome. But two misfortunes coming near
upon one another broke the ties of family connection, and by destroying
the balance of parties laid Pompey open to the temptation of patrician
intrigue. In the year 54 Caesar's great mother Aurelia, and his sister
Julia, Pompey's wife, both died. A child which Julia had borne to
Pompey died also, and the powerful if silent influence of two
remarkable women, and the joint interest in an infant, who would have
been Caesar's heir as well as Pompey's, were swept away together.

The political link was broken immediately after by a public disaster
unequalled since the last consular army was overthrown by the Gauls on
the Rhone; and the capitalists, left without a leader, drifted away to
their natural allies in the Senate. Crassus had taken the field in the
East, with a wild ambition of becoming in his turn a great conqueror.
At first all had gone well with him. He had raised a vast treasure. He
had plundered the wealthy temples in Phoenicia and Palestine to fill
his military chest. He had able officers with him; not the least among
them his son Publius Crassus, who had served with such distinction
under Caesar. He crossed the Euphrates at the head of a magnificent
army, expecting to carry all before him with the ease of an Alexander.
Relying on his own idle judgment, he was tempted in the midst of a
burning summer into the waterless plains of Mesopotamia; and on the
15th of June the great Roman millionaire met his miserable end, the
whole force, with the exception of a few scattered cohorts, being
totally annihilated.

The catastrophe in itself was terrible. The Parthians had not provoked
the war. The East was left defenceless; and the natural expectation was
that, in their just revenge, they might carry fire and sword through
Asia Minor and Syria. It is not the least remarkable sign of the times
that the danger failed to touch the patriotism of the wretched factions
in Rome. The one thought of the leaders of the Senate was to turn the
opportunity to advantage, wrest the constitution free from military
dictation, shake off the detested laws of Caesar, and revenge
themselves on the author of them. Their hope was in Pompey. If Pompey
could be won over from Caesar, the army would be divided. Pompey, they
well knew, unless he had a stronger head than his own to guide him,
could be used till the victory was won, and then be thrust aside. It
was but too easy to persuade him that he was the greatest man in the
Empire; and that as the chief of a constitutional government, and with
the Senate at his side, he would inscribe his name in the annals of his
country as the restorer of Roman liberty.

The intrigue could not be matured immediately. The aristocracy had
first to overcome their own animosities against Pompey, and Pompey
himself was generous, and did not yield to the first efforts of
seduction. The smaller passions were still at work among the baser
senatorial chiefs, and the appetite for provinces and pillage. The
Senate, even while Crassus was alive, had carried the consulships for
53 by the most infamous corruption. They meant now to attack Caesar in
earnest, and their energies were addressed to controlling the elections
for the next year. Milo was one of the candidates; and Cicero, who was
watching the political current, reverted to his old friendship for him,
and became active in the canvass. Milo was not a creditable ally. He
already owed half a million of money, and Cicero, who was anxious for
his reputation, endeavored to keep him within the bounds of decency.
But Milo's mind was fastened on the province which was to redeem his
fortunes, and he flung into bribery what was left of his wrecked credit
with the desperation of a gambler. He had not been praetor, and thus
was not legally eligible for the consulate. This, however, was
forgiven. He had been aedile in 54, and as aedile he had already been
magnificent in prodigality. But to secure the larger prize, he gave as
a private citizen the most gorgeous entertainment which even in that
monstrous age the city had yet wondered at. "Doubly, trebly foolish of
him," thought Cicero, "for he was not called on to go to such expense,
and he has not the means." "Milo makes me very anxious," he wrote to
his brother. "I hope all will be made right by his consulship. I shall
exert myself for him as much as I did for myself;[15] but he is quite
mad," Cicero added; "he has spent £30,000 on his games." Mad, but
still, in Cicero's opinion, well fitted for the consulship, and likely
to get it. All the "good," in common with himself, were most anxious
for Milo's success. The people would vote for him as a reward for the
spectacles, and the young and influential for his efforts to secure
their favor.[16]

The reappearance of the "Boni," the "Good," in Cicero's letters marks
the turn of the tide again in his own mind. The "Good," or the
senatorial party, were once more the objects of his admiration. The
affection for Caesar was passing off.

[Sidenote: B.C. 52.] A more objectionable candidate than Milo could
hardly have been found. He was no better than a patrician gladiator,
and the choice of such a man was a sufficient indication of the
Senate's intentions. The popular party led by the tribunes made a
sturdy resistance. There were storms in the Curia, tribunes imprisoning
senators, and the Senate tribunes. Army officers suggested the election
of military tribunes (lieutenant-generals), instead of consuls; and
when they failed, they invited Pompey to declare himself Dictator. The
Senate put on mourning, as a sign of approaching calamity. Pompey
calmed their fears by declining so ambitious a position. But as it was
obvious that Milo's chief object was a province which he might
misgovern, Pompey forced the Senate to pass a resolution that consuls
and praetors must wait five years from their term of office before a
province was to be allotted to them. The temptation to corruption might
thus in some degree be diminished. But senatorial resolutions did not
pass for much, and what a vote had enacted a vote could repeal. The
agitation continued. The tribunes, when the time came, forbade the
elections. The year expired. The old magistrates went out of office,
and Rome was left again without legitimate functionaries to carry on
the government. All the offices fell vacant together.

Now once more Clodius was reappearing on the scene. He had been silent
for two years, content or constrained to leave the control of the
democracy to the three chiefs. One of them was now gone. The more
advanced section of the party was beginning to distrust Pompey.
Clodius, their favorite representative, had been put forward for the
praetorship, while Milo was aspiring to be made consul, and Clodius had
prepared a fresh batch of laws to be submitted to the sovereign people;
one of which (if Cicero did not misrepresent it to inflame the
aristocracy) was a measure of some kind for the enfranchisement of the
slaves, or perhaps of the sons of slaves.[17] He was as popular as
ever. He claimed to be acting for Caesar, and was held certain of
success; if he was actually praetor, such was his extraordinary
influence, and such was the condition of things in the city, that if
Milo was out of the way he could secure consuls of his own way of
thinking, and thus have the whole constitutional power in his hands.[18]

Thus both sides had reason for fearing and postponing the elections.
Authority, which had been weak before, was now extinct. Rome was in a
state of formal anarchy, and the factions of Milo and Clodius fought
daily, as before, in the streets, with no one to interfere with them.

Violent humors come naturally to a violent end. Milo had long before
threatened to kill Clodius. Cicero had openly boasted of his friend's
intention to do it, and had spoken of Clodius in the Senate itself as
Milo's predestined victim. On the evening of the 13th January, while
the uncertainty about the elections was at its height, Clodius was
returning from his country house, which was a few miles from Rome on
"the Appian Way." Milo happened to be travelling accidentally down the
same road, on his way to Lanuvium (Civita Indovina), and the two rivals
and their escorts met. Milo's party was the largest. The leaders passed
one another, evidently not intending a collision, but their followers,
who were continually at sword's point, came naturally to blows. Clodius
rode back to see what was going on; he was attacked and wounded, and
took refuge in a house on the roadside. The temptation to make an end
of his enemy was too strong for Milo to resist. To have hurt Clodius
would, he thought, be as dangerous as to have made an end of him. His
blood was up. The "predestined victim," who had thwarted him for so
many years, was within his reach. The house was forced open. Clodius
was dragged out bleeding, and was despatched, and the body was left
lying where he fell, where a senator, named Sextus Tedius, who was
passing an hour or two after, found it, and carried it the same night
to Rome. The little which is known of Clodius comes only through
Cicero's denunciations, which formed or colored later Roman traditions;
and it is thus difficult to comprehend the affection which the people
felt for him; but of the fact there can be no doubt at all; he was the
representative of their political opinions, the embodiment, next to
Caesar, of their practical hopes; and his murder was accepted as a
declaration of an aristocratic war upon them, and the first blow in
another massacre. On the following day, in the winter morning, the
tribunes brought the body into the Forum. A vast crowd had collected to
see it, and it was easy to lash them into fury. They dashed in the
doors of the adjoining senate-house, they carried in the bier, made a
pile of chairs and benches and tables, and burnt all that remained of
Clodius in the ashes of the senate-house itself. The adjoining temples
were consumed in the conflagration. The Senate collected elsewhere.
They put on a bold front, they talked of naming an interrex--which they
ought to have done before--and of holding the elections instantly, now
that Clodius was gone. Milo still hoped, and the aristocracy still
hoped for Milo. But the storm was too furious. Pompey came in with a
body of troops, restored order, and took command of the city. The
preparations for the election were quashed. Pompey still declined the
dictatorship, but he was named, or he named himself, sole consul, and
at once appointed a commission to inquire into the circumstances of
Milo's canvass, and the corruption which had gone along with it. Milo
himself was arrested and put on his trial for the murder. Judges were
chosen who could be trusted, and to prevent intimidation the court was
occupied by soldiers. Cicero undertook his friend's defence, but was
unnerved by the stern, grim faces with which he was surrounded. The
eloquent tongue forgot its office. He stammered, blundered, and sat
down.[19] The consul expectant was found guilty and banished, to return
a few years after like a hungry wolf in the civil war, and to perish as
he deserved. Pompey's justice was even-handed. He punished Milo, but
the senate-house and temples were not to be destroyed without
retribution equally severe. The tribunes who had led on the mob were
deposed, and suffered various penalties. Pompey acted with a soldier's
abhorrence of disorder, and, so far, he did what Caesar approved and
would himself have done in Pompey's place.

But there followed symptoms which showed that there were secret
influences at work with Pompey, and that he was not the man which he
had been. He had taken the consulate alone; but a single consul was an
anomaly; as soon as order was restored it was understood that he meant
to choose a colleague; and Senate and people were watching to see whom
he would select as an indication of his future attitude. Half the world
expected that he would name Caesar, but half the world was
disappointed. He took Metellus Scipio, who had been the Senate's second
candidate by the side of Milo, and had been as deeply concerned in
bribery as Milo himself; shortly after, and with still more
significance, he replaced Julia by Metellus Scipio's daughter, the
widow of young Publius Crassus, who had fallen with his father.

Pompey, however, did not break with Caesar, and did not appear to
intend to break with him. Communications passed between them on the
matter of the consulship. The tribunes had pressed him as Pompey's
colleague. Caesar himself, being then in the north of Italy, had
desired, on being consulted, that the demand might not be insisted on.
He had work still before him in Gaul which he could not leave
unfinished; but he made a request himself that must be noticed, since
the civil war formally grew out of it, and Pompey gave a definite
pledge, which was afterwards broken.

One of the engagements at Lucca had been that, when Caesar's command
should have expired, he was to be again consul. His term had still
three years to run; but many things might happen in three years. A
party in the Senate were bent on his recall. They might succeed in
persuading the people to consent to it. And Caesar felt, as Pompey had
felt before him, that, in the unscrupulous humor of his enemies at Rome
he might be impeached or killed on his return, as Clodius had been, if
he came back a private citizen unprotected by office to sue for his
election. Therefore he had stipulated at Lucca that his name might be
taken and that votes might be given for him while he was still with his
army. On Pompey's taking the power into his hands, Caesar, while
abandoning any present claim to share it, reminded him of this
understanding, and required at the same time that it should be renewed
in some authoritative form. The Senate, glad to escape on any terms
from the present conjunction of the men whom they hoped to divide,
appeared to consent. Cicero himself made a journey to Ravenna to see
Caesar about it and make a positive arrangement with him. Pompey
submitted the condition to the assembly of the people, by whom it was
solemnly ratified. Every precaution was observed which would give the
promise, that Caesar might be elected consul in his absence, the
character of a binding engagement.[20]

It was observed with some surprise that Pompey, not long after,
proposed and carried a law forbidding elections of this irregular kind,
and insisting freshly on the presence of the candidates in person.
Caesar's case was not reserved as an exception or in any way alluded
to. And when a question was asked on the subject, the excuse given was
that it had been overlooked by accident. Such accidents require to be
interpreted by the use which is made of them.

[1] _Ad Quintum Fratrem_, ii. 15.

[2] "Ego enim ne pilo quidem minus me amabo."--_Ibid_., ii. 16. Other
    editions read "te."

[3] "Videor id judicio facere: jam enim debeo: sed amore sum
    incensus."--_Ad Quintum Fratrem_, iii. 1.

[4] Ad Crassum. _Ad Familiares_, v. 8.

[5] Ad Lentulum. _Ad Fam_., i. 8.

[6] _Ibid_., i. 9.

[7] _De Provinciis Consularibus_.

[8] _To Atticus_, iv. 16.

[9] Pompey, as proconsul with a province, was residing outside the
    walls.

[10] _Ad Quintum fratrem_, iii. 4.

[11] _Ad Familiares_, i. 9.

[12] "Meum non modo animum, sed ne odium quidem esse liberum."--_Ad
    Quintum Fratrem_, iii. 5.

[13] See the story in a letter to Atticus, lib. iv. 16-17.

[14] _De Haruspicum Responsis_.

[15] "Angit unus Milo. Sed velim finem afferat consulatus: in quo enitar
    non minus, quam sum enisus in nostro."--_Ad Quintum Fratrem_,
    iii. 9.

[16] _Ad Familiares_, ii. 6.

[17] "Incidebantur jam domi leges quae nos nostris servis addicerent....
    Oppressisset omnia, possideret, teneret lege novâ, quae est inventa
    apud eum cum reliquis legibus Clodianis. Servos nostros libertos suos
    fecisset."--_Pro Milone_, 32, 33. These strong expressions can
    hardly refer to a proposed enfranchisement of the libertini, or sons
    of freedmen, like Horace's father.

[18] "Caesaris potentiam suam esse dicebat.... An consules in praetore
    coercendo fortes fuissent? Primum, Milone occiso habuisset suos
    consules."--_Pro Milone_, 33.

[19] The _Oratio pro Milone_, published afterwards by Cicero, was the
    speech which he intended to deliver and did not.

[20] Suetonius, _De Vitâ Julii Caesaris_. Cicero again and again
    acknowledges in his letters to Atticus that the engagement had really
    been made. Writing to Atticus (vii. 1), Cicero says: "Non est locus ad
    tergiversandum. Contra Caesarem? Ubi illae sunt densae dexterae? Nam
    ut illi hoc liceret adjuvi rogatus ab ipso Ravennae de Caelio tribuno
    plebis. Ab ipso autem? Etiam a Cnaeo nostro in illo divino tertio
    consulatu. Aliter sensero?"

CHAPTER XIX.

The conquest of Gaul had been an exploit of extraordinary military
difficulty. The intricacy of the problem had been enhanced by the venom
of a domestic faction, to which the victories of a democratic general
were more unwelcome than national disgrace. The discomfiture of Crassus
had been more pleasant news to the Senate than the defeat of
Ariovistus, and the passionate hope of the aristocracy had been for
some opportunity which would enable them to check Caesar in his career
of conquest and bring him home to dishonor and perhaps impeachment.
They had failed. The efforts of the Gauls to maintain or recover their
independence had been successively beaten down, and at the close of the
summer of 53 Caesar had returned to the north of Italy, believing that
the organization of the province which he had added to the Empire was
all that remained to be accomplished. But Roman civilians had followed
in the van of the armies. Roman traders had penetrated into the towns
on the Seine and the Loire, and the curious Celts had learnt from them
the distractions of their new rulers. Caesar's situation was as well
understood among the Aedui and the Sequani as in the clubs and coteries
of the capital of the Empire, and the turn of events was watched with
equal anxiety. The victory over Sabinus, sharply avenged as it had
been, kept alive the hope that their independence might yet be
recovered. The disaffection of the preceding summer had been trampled
out, but the ashes of it were still smouldering; and when it became
known that Clodius, who was regarded as Caesar's tribune, had been
killed, that the Senate was in power again, and that Italy was
threatened with civil convulsions, their passionate patriotism kindled
once more into flame. Sudden in their resolutions, they did not pause
to watch how the balance would incline. Caesar was across the Alps.
Either he would be deposed, or civil war would detain him in Italy. His
legions were scattered between Trèves, Auxerre, and Sens, far from the
Roman frontier. A simultaneous rising would cut them off from support,
and they could be starved out or overwhelmed in detail, as Sabinus had
been at Tongres and Cicero had almost been at Charleroy. Intelligence
was swiftly exchanged. The chiefs of all the tribes established
communications with each other. They had been deeply affected by the
execution of Acco, the patriotic leader of the Carnutes. The death of
Acco was an intimation that they were Roman subjects, and were to be
punished as traitors if they disobeyed a Roman command. They buried
their own dissensions. Except among the Aedui there was no longer a
Roman faction and a patriot faction. The whole nation was inspired by a
simultaneous impulse to snatch the opportunity, and unite in a single
effort to assert their freedom. The understanding was complete. A day
was fixed for a universal rising. The Carnutes began by a massacre
which would cut off possibility of retreat, and, in revenge for Acco,
slaughtered a party of Roman civilians who were engaged in business at
_Gien_.[1] A system of signals had been quietly arranged. The massacre
at Gien was known in a few hours in the south, and the Auvergne
country, which had hitherto been entirely peaceful, rose in reply,
under a young high-born chief named Vercingetorix. Gergovia, the
principal town of the Arverni, was for the moment undecided.[2] The
elder men there, who had known the Romans long, were against immediate
action; but Vercingetorix carried the people away with him. His name
had not appeared in the earlier campaigns, but his father had been a
man of note beyond the boundaries of Auvergne; and he must himself have
had a wide reputation among the Gauls, for everywhere, from the Seine
to the Garonne, he was accepted as chief of the national confederacy.
Vercingetorix had high ability and real organizing powers. He laid out
a plan for the general campaign. He fixed a contingent of men and arms
which each tribe was to supply, and failure brought instantaneous
punishment. Mild offences were visited with the loss of eyes or ears;
neglect of a more serious sort with death by fire in the wicker tower.
Between enthusiasm and terror he had soon an army at his command, which
he could increase indefinitely at his need. Part he left to watch the
Roman province and prevent Caesar, if he should arrive, from passing
through. With part he went himself to watch the Aedui, the great
central race, where Roman authority had hitherto prevailed unshaken,
but among whom, as he well knew, he had the mass of the people on his
side. The Aedui were hesitating. They called their levies under arms,
as if to oppose him, but they withdrew them again; and to waver at such
a moment was to yield to the stream.

The Gauls had not calculated without reason on Caesar's embarrassments.
The death of Clodius had been followed by the burning of the
senate-house and by many weeks of anarchy. To leave Italy at such a
moment might be to leave it a prey to faction or civil war. His anxiety
was relieved at last by hearing that Pompey had acted, and that order
was restored; and seeing no occasion for his own interference, and
postponing the agitation for his second consulship, he hurried back to
encounter the final and convulsive effort of the Celtic race to
preserve their liberties. The legions were as yet in no danger. They
were dispersed in the north of France, far from the scene of the
present rising, and the northern tribes had suffered too desperately in
the past years to be in a condition to stir without assistance. But how
was Caesar to join them? The garrisons in the province could not be
moved. If he sent for the army to come across to him, Vercingetorix
would attack them on the march, and he could not feel confident of the
result; while the line of the old frontier of the province was in the
hands of the insurgents, or of tribes who could not be trusted to
resist the temptation, if he passed through himself without more force
than the province could supply. But Caesar had a resource which never
failed him in the daring swiftness of his own movements. He sent for
the troops which were left beyond the Alps. He had a few levies with
him to fill the gaps in the old legions, and after a rapid survey of
the stations on the provincial frontier he threw himself upon the
passes of the Cevennes. It was still winter. The snow lay six feet
thick on the mountains, and the roads at that season were considered
impracticable even for single travellers. The Auvergne rebels dreamt of
nothing so little as of Caesar's coming upon them at such a time and
from such a quarter. He forced his way. He fell on them while they were
lying in imagined security, Vercingetorix and his army being absent
watching the Aedui, and, letting loose his cavalry, he laid their
country waste. But Vercingetorix, he knew, would fly back at the news
of his arrival; and he had already made his further plans. He formed a
strong entrenched camp, where he left Decimus Brutus in charge, telling
him that he would return as quickly as possible; and, unknown to any
one, lest the troops should lose courage at parting with him, he flew
across through an enemy's country with a handful of attendants to
Vienne, on the Rhone, where some cavalry from the province had been
sent to wait for him. Vercingetorix, supposing him still to be in the
Auvergne, thought only of the camp of Brutus; and Caesar, riding day
and night through the doubtful territories of the Aedui, reached the
two legions which were quartered near Auxerre. Thence he sent for the
rest to join him, and he was at the head of his army before
Vercingetorix knew that only Brutus was in front of him. The Aedui, he
trusted, would now remain faithful. But the problem before him was
still most intricate. The grass had not begun to grow. Rapid movement
was essential to prevent the rebel confederacy from consolidating
itself; but rapid movements with a large force required supplies; and
whence were the supplies to come? Some risks had to be run, but to
delay was the most dangerous of all. On the defeat of the Helvetii,
Caesar had planted a colony of them at Gorgobines, near Nevers, on the
Loire. These colonists, called Boii, had refused to take part in the
rising; and Vercingetorix, turning in contempt from Brutus, had gone
off to punish them. Caesar ordered the Aedui to furnish his
commissariat, sent word to the Boii that he was coming to their relief,
swept through the Senones, that he might leave no enemy in his rear,
and then advanced on Gien, where the Roman traders had been murdered,
and which the Carnutes still occupied in force. There was a bridge
there over the Loire, by which they tried to escape in the night.
Caesar had beset the passage. He took the whole of them prisoners,
plundered and burnt the town, gave the spoil to his troops, and then
crossed the river and went up to help the Boii. He took Nevers.
Vercingetorix, who was hastening to its relief, ventured his first
battle with him; but the cavalry, on which the Gauls most depended,
were scattered by Caesar's German horse. He was entirely beaten, and
Caesar turned next to Avaricum (Bourges), a rich and strongly fortified
town of the Bituriges. From past experience Caesar had gathered that
the Gauls were easily excited and as easily discouraged. If he could
reduce Bourges, he hoped that this part of the country would return to
its allegiance. Perhaps he thought that Vercingetorix himself would
give up the struggle. But he had to deal with a spirit and with a man
different from any which he had hitherto encountered. Disappointed in
his political expectations, baffled in strategy, and now defeated in
open fight, the young chief of the Arverni had only learnt that he had
taken a wrong mode of carrying on the war, and that he was wasting his
real advantages. Battles in the field he saw that he would lose. But
the Roman numbers were limited, and his were infinite. Tens of
thousands of gallant young men, with their light, active horses, were
eager for any work on which he might set them. They could scour the
country far and wide. They could cut off Caesar's supplies. They could
turn the fields into a blackened wilderness before him on whichever
side he might turn. The hearts of the people were with him. They
consented to a universal sacrifice. They burnt their farmsteads. They
burnt their villages. Twenty towns (so called) of the Bituriges were
consumed in a single day. The tribes adjoining caught the enthusiasm.
The horizon at night was a ring of blazing fires. Vercingetorix was for
burning Bourges also; but it was the sacred home of the Bituriges, the
one spot which they implored to be allowed to save, the most beautiful
city in all Gaul. Rivers defended it on three sides, and on the fourth
there were swamps and marshes which could be passed only by a narrow
ridge. Within the walls the people had placed the best of their
property, and Vercingetorix, against his judgment, consented, in pity
for their entreaties, that Avaricum should be defended. A strong
garrison was left inside. Vercingetorix entrenched himself in the
forests sixteen miles distant, keeping watch over Caesar's
communications. The place could only be taken by regular approaches,
during which the army had to be fed. The Aedui were growing negligent.
The feeble Boii, grateful, it seemed, for Caesar's treatment of them,
exerted themselves to the utmost, but their small resources were soon
exhausted. For many days the legions were without bread. The cattle had
been driven into the woods. It came at last to actual famine.[3] "But
not one word was heard from them," says Caesar, "unworthy of the
majesty of the Roman people or their own earlier victories." He told
them that if the distress became unbearable he would raise the siege.
With one voice they entreated him to persevere. They had served many
years with him, they said, and had never abandoned any enterprise which
they had undertaken. They were ready to endure any degree of hardship
before they would leave unavenged their countrymen who had been
murdered at Gien.

Vercingetorix, knowing that the Romans were in difficulties, ventured
nearer. Caesar surveyed his position. It had been well chosen behind a
deep morass. The legions clamored to be allowed to advance and attack
him, but a victory, he saw, would be dearly purchased. No condemnation
could be too severe for him, he said, if he did not hold the lives of
his soldiers dearer than his own interest,[4] and he led them back
without indulging their eagerness.

The siege work was unexpectedly difficult. The inhabitants of the Loire
country were skilled artisans, trained in mines and iron works. The
walls, built of alternate layers of stone and timber, were forty feet
in thickness, and could neither be burnt nor driven in with the ram.
The town could be taken only with the help of an agger--a bank of turf
and fagots raised against the wall of sufficient height to overtop the
fortifications. The weather was cold and wet, but the legions worked
with such a will that in twenty-five days they had raised their bank at
last, a hundred yards in width and eighty feet high. As the work drew
near its end Caesar himself lay out all night among the men,
encouraging them. One morning at daybreak he observed that the agger
was smoking. The ingenious Gauls had undermined it and set it on fire.
At the same moment they appeared along the walls with pitch-balls,
torches, fagots, which they hurled in to feed the flames. There was an
instant of confusion, but Caesar uniformly had two legions under arms
while the rest were working. The Gauls fought with a courage which
called out his warm admiration. He watched them at the points of
greatest danger falling under the shots from the scorpions, and others
stepping undaunted into their places to fall in the same way. Their
valor was unavailing. They were driven in, and the flames were
extinguished; the agger was level with the walls, and defence was no
longer possible. The garrison intended to slip away at night through
the ruins to join their friends outside. The wailing of the women was
heard in the Roman camp, and escape was made impossible. The morning
after, in a tempest of rain and wind, the place was stormed. The
legionaries, excited by the remembrance of Gien and the long
resistance, slew every human being that they found, men, women, and
children all alike. Out of forty thousand who were within the walls,
eight hundred only, that had fled at the first sound of the attack,
made their way to the camp of Vercingetorix.

Undismayed by the calamity, Vercingetorix made use of it to sustain the
determination of his followers. He pointed out to them that he had
himself opposed the defence. The Romans had defeated them, not by
superior courage, but by superior science. The heart of the whole
nation was united to force the Romans out of Gaul, and they had only to
persevere in a course of action where science would be useless, to be
sure of success in the end. He fell back upon his own country, taking
special care of the poor creatures who had escaped from the carnage;
and the effect of the storming of Bourges was to make the national
enthusiasm hotter and fiercer than before.

The Romans found in the town large magazines of corn and other
provisions, which had been laid in for the siege, and Caesar remained
there some days to refresh his troops. The winter was now over. The
Aedui were giving him anxiety, and as soon as he could he moved to
Decize, a frontier town belonging to them on the Loire, almost in the
very centre of France. The anti-Roman faction were growing in
influence. He called a council of the principal persons, and, to secure
the fidelity of so important a tribe, he deposed the reigning chief and
appointed another who had been nominated by the Druids.[5] He lectured
the Aedui on their duty, bade them furnish him with ten thousand men,
who were to take charge of the commissariat, and then divided his army.
Labienus, with four legions, was sent to compose the country between
Sens and Paris. He himself, with the remaining six legions, ascended
the right bank of the Allier towards Gergovia in search of
Vercingetorix. The bridges on the Allier were broken, but Caesar seized
and repaired one of them and carried his army over.

The town of Gergovia stood on a high plateau, where the rivers rise
which run into the Loire on one side and into the Dordogne on the
other. The sides of the hill are steep, and only accessible at a very
few places, and the surrounding neighborhood is broken with rocky
valleys. Vercingetorix lay in force outside, but in a situation where
he could not be attacked except at disadvantage, and with his
communication with the fortress secured. He was departing again from
his general plan for the campaign in allowing Gergovia to be defended;
but it was the central home of his own tribe, and the result showed
that he was right in believing it to be impregnable. Caesar saw that it
was too strong to be stormed, and that it could only be taken after
long operations. After a few skirmishes he seized a spur of the plateau
which cut off the garrison from their readiest water-supply, and he
formed an entrenched camp upon it. He was studying the rest of the
problem when bad news came that the Aedui were unsteady again. The ten
thousand men had been raised as he had ordered, but on their way to
join him they had murdered the Roman officers in charge of them, and
were preparing to go over to Vercingetorix. Leaving two legions to
guard his works, he intercepted the Aeduan contingent, took them
prisoners, and protected their lives. In his absence Vercingetorix had
attacked the camp with determined fury. The fighting had been
desperate, and Caesar only returned in time to save it. The reports
from the Aedui were worse and worse. The patriotic faction had the
upper hand, and with the same passionate determination to commit
themselves irrevocably, which had been shown before at Gien, they had
massacred every Roman in their territory. It was no time for delaying
over a tedious siege: Caesar was on the point of raising it, when
accident brought on a battle under the walls. An opportunity seemed to
offer itself of capturing the place by escalade, which part of the army
attempted contrary to orders. They fought with more than their usual
gallantry. The whole scene was visible from the adjoining hills, the
Celtic women, with long streaming hair, wildly gesticulating on the
walls. The Romans were driven back with worse loss than they had yet
met with in Gaul. Forty-six officers and seven hundred men had been
killed.

Caesar was never more calm than under a reverse. He addressed the
legions the next day. He complimented their courage, but he said it was
for the general and not for them to judge when assaults should be
tried. He saw the facts of the situation exactly as they were. His army
was divided. Labienus was far away with a separate command. The whole
of Gaul was in flames. To persevere at Gergovia would only be
obstinacy, and he accepted the single military failure which he met
with when present in person through the whole of his Gallic campaign.

Difficulties of all kinds were now thickening. Caesar had placed
magazines in Nevers, and had trusted them to an Aeduan garrison. The
Aeduans burnt the town and carried the stores over the Loire to their
own strongest fortress, Bibracte (Mont Beauvray). The river had risen
from the melting of the snows, and could not be crossed without danger;
and to feed the army in its present position was no longer possible. To
retreat upon the province would be a confession of defeat. The passes
of the Cevennes would be swarming with enemies, and Labienus with his
four legions in the west might be cut off. With swift decision he
marched day and night to the Loire. He found a ford where the troops
could cross with the water at their armpits. He sent his horse over and
cleared the banks. The army passed safely. Food enough and in plenty
was found in the Aeduans' country, and without waiting he pressed on
toward Sens to reunite his forces. He understood the Gauls, and foresaw
what must have happened.

Labienus, when sent on his separate command, had made Sens his
head-quarters. All down the Seine the country was in insurrection.
Leaving the new Italian levies at the station, he went with his
experienced troops down the left bank of the river till he came to the
Essonne. He found the Gauls entrenched on the other side, and, without
attempting to force the passage, he marched back to Melun, where he
repaired a bridge which the Gauls had broken, crossed over, and
descended without interruption to Paris. The town had been burnt, and
the enemy were watching him from the further bank. At this moment he
heard of the retreat from Gergovia, and of the rebellion of the Aedui.
Such news, he understood at once, would be followed by a rising in
Belgium. Report had said that Caesar was falling back on the province.
He did not believe it. Caesar, he knew, would not desert him. His own
duty, therefore, was to make his way back to Sens. But to leave the
army of Gauls to accompany his retreat across the Seine, with the
tribes rising on all sides, was to expose himself to the certainty of
being intercepted. "In these sudden difficulties," says Caesar, "he
took counsel from the valor of his mind." [6] He had brought a fleet of
barges with him from Melun. These he sent down unperceived to a point
at the bend of the river four miles below Paris, and directed them to
wait for him there. When night fell he detached a few cohorts with
orders to go up the river with boats as if they were retreating,
splashing their oars, and making as much noise as possible. He himself
with three legions stole silently in the darkness to his barges, and
passed over without being observed. The Gauls, supposing the whole army
to be in flight for Sens, were breaking up their camp to follow in
boisterous confusion. Labienus fell upon them, telling the Romans to
fight as if Caesar was present in person; and the courage with which
the Gauls fought in their surprise only made the overthrow more
complete. The insurrection in the north-west was for the moment
paralysed, and Labienus, secured by his ingenious and brilliant
victory, returned to his quarters without further accident. There
Caesar came to him as he expected, and the army was once more together.

Meanwhile the failure at Gergovia had kindled the enthusiasm of the
central districts into white-heat. The Aedui, the most powerful of all
the tribes, were now at one with their countrymen, and Bibracte became
the focus of the national army. The young Vercingetorix was elected
sole commander, and his plan, as before, was to starve the Romans out.
Flying bodies harassed the borders of the province, so that no
reinforcements could reach them from the south. Caesar, however, amidst
his conquests had the art of making staunch friends. What the province
could not supply he obtained from his allies across the Rhine, and he
furnished himself with bodies of German cavalry, which when mounted on
Roman horses proved invaluable. In the new form which the insurrection
had assumed the Aedui were the first to be attended to. Caesar advanced
leisurely upon them, through the high country at the rise of the Seine
and the Marne, toward Alesia, or Alice St. Reine. Vercingetorix watched
him at ten miles' distance. He supposed him to be making for the
province, and his intention was that Caesar should never reach it. The
Celts at all times have been fond of emphatic protestations. The young
heroes swore a solemn oath that they would not see wife or children or
parents more till they had ridden twice through the Roman army. In this
mood they encountered Caesar in the valley of the Vingeanne, a river
which falls into the Saône, and they met the fate which necessarily
befell them when their ungovernable multitudes engaged the legions in
the open field. They were defeated with enormous loss: not they riding
through the Roman army, but themselves ridden over and hewn down by the
German horsemen and sent flying for fifty miles over the hills into
Alice St. Reine. Caesar followed close behind, driving Vercingetorix
under the lines of the fortress; and the siege of Alesia, one of the
most remarkable exploits in all military history, was at once
undertaken.

Alesia, like Gergovia, is on a hill sloping off all round, with steep
and, in places, precipitous sides. It lies between two small rivers,
the Ose and the Oserain, both of which fall into the Brenne, and thence
into the Seine. Into this peninsula, with the rivers on each side of
him, Vercingetorix had thrown himself with eighty thousand men. Alesia
as a position was impregnable except to famine. The water-supply was
secure. The position was of extraordinary strength. The rivers formed
natural trenches. Below the town to the east they ran parallel for
three miles through an open alluvial plain before they reached Brenne.
In every other direction rose rocky hills of equal height with the
central plateau, originally perhaps one wide table-land, through which
the water had ploughed out the valleys. To attack Vercingetorix where
he had placed himself was out of the question; but to blockade him
there, to capture the leader of the insurrection and his whole army,
and so in one blow make an end with it, on a survey of the situation
seemed not impossible. The Gauls had thought of nothing less than of
being besieged. The provisions laid in could not be considerable, and
so enormous a multitude could not hold out many days.

At once the legions were set to work cutting trenches or building walls
as the form of the ground allowed. Camps were formed at different
spots, and twenty-three strong block-houses at the points which were
least defensible. The lines where the circuit was completed were eleven
miles long. The part most exposed was the broad level meadow which
spread out to the west toward the Brenne river. Vercingetorix had
looked on for a time, not understanding what was happening to him. When
he did understand it, he made desperate efforts on his side to break
the net before it closed about him. But he could do nothing. The Gauls
could not be brought to face the Roman entrenchments. Their cavalry
were cut to pieces by the German horse. The only hope was in help from
without, and before the lines were entirely finished horsemen were sent
out with orders to ride for their lives into every district in Gaul and
raise the entire nation. The crisis had come. If the countrymen of
Vercingetorix were worthy of their fathers, if the enthusiasm with
which they had risen for freedom was not a mere emotion, but the
expression of a real purpose, their young leader called on them to come
now, every man of them, and seize Caesar in the trap into which he had
betrayed himself. If, on the other hand, they were careless, if they
allowed him and his eighty thousand men to perish without an effort to
save them, the independence which they had ceased to deserve would be
lost forever. He had food, he bade the messengers say, for thirty days;
by thrifty management it might be made to last a few days longer. In
thirty days he should look for relief.

The horsemen sped away like the bearers of the fiery cross. Caesar
learnt from deserters that they had gone out, and understood the
message which they carried. Already he was besieging an army far
outnumbering his own. If he persevered, he knew that he might count
with certainty on being attacked by a second army immeasurably larger.
But the time allowed for the collection of so many men might serve also
to prepare for their reception. Vercingetorix said rightly that the
Romans won their victories, not by superior courage, but by superior
science. The same power of measuring the exact facts of the situation
which determined Caesar to raise the siege of Gergovia decided him to
hold on at Alesia. He knew exactly, to begin with, how long
Vercingetorix could hold out. It was easy for him to collect provisions
within his lines which would feed his own army a few days longer.
Fortifications the same in kind as those which prevented the besieged
from breaking out would serve equally to keep the assailants off. His
plan was to make a second line of works--an exterior line as well as an
interior line; and as the extent to be defended would thus be doubled,
he made them of a peculiar construction, to enable one man to do the
work of two. There is no occasion to describe the rows of ditches, dry
and wet; the staked pitfalls; the cervi, pronged instruments like the
branching horns of a stag; the stimuli, barbed spikes treacherously
concealed to impale the unwary and hold him fast when caught, with
which the ground was sown in irregular rows; the vallus and the lorica,
and all the varied contrivances of Roman engineering genius. Military
students will read the particulars for themselves in Caesar's own
language. Enough that the work was done within the time, with the
legions in perfect good humor, and giving jesting names to the new
instruments of torture as Caesar invented them. Vercingetorix now and
then burst out on the working parties, but produced no effect. They
knew what they were to expect when the thirty days were out; but they
knew their commander, and had absolute confidence in his judgment.

Meanwhile, on all sides, the Gauls were responding to the call. From
every quarter, even from far-off parts of Belgium, horse and foot were
streaming along the roads. Commius of Arras, Caesar's old friend, who
had gone with him to Britain, was caught with the same frenzy, and was
hastening among the rest to help to end him. At last two hundred and
fifty thousand of the best fighting men that Gaul could produce had
collected at the appointed rendezvous, and advanced with the easy
conviction that the mere impulse of so mighty a force would sweep
Caesar off the earth. They were late in arriving. The thirty days had
passed, and there were no signs of the coming deliverers. Eager eyes
were straining from the heights of the plateau; but nothing was seen
save the tents of the legions or the busy units of men at work on the
walls and trenches. Anxious debates were held among the beleaguered
chiefs. The faint-hearted wished to surrender before they were starved.
Others were in favor of a desperate effort to cut their way through or
die. One speech Caesar preserves for its remarkable and frightful
ferocity. A prince of Auvergne said that the Romans conquered to
enslave and beat down the laws and liberties of free nations under the
lictors' axes, and he proposed that sooner than yield they should kill
and eat those who were useless for fighting.

Vercingetorix was of noble nature. To prevent the adoption of so
horrible an expedient, he ordered the peaceful inhabitants, with their
wives and children, to leave the town. Caesar forbade them to pass his
lines. Cruel--but war is cruel; and where a garrison is to be reduced
by famine the laws of it are inexorable.

But the day of expected deliverance dawned at last. Five miles beyond
the Brenne the dust-clouds of the approaching host were seen, and then
the glitter of their lances and their waving pennons. They swam the
river. They filled the plain below the town. From the heights of Alesia
the whole scene lay spread under the feet of the besieged.
Vercingetorix came down on the slope to the edge of the first trench,
prepared to cross when the turn of battle should give him a chance to
strike. Caesar sent out his German horse, and stood himself watching
from the spur of an adjoining hill. The Gauls had brought innumerable
archers with them. The horse flinched slightly under the showers of
arrows, and shouts of triumph rose from the lines of the town; but the
Germans rallied again, sent the cavalry of the Gauls flying, and hewed
down the unprotected archers. Vercingetorix fell back sadly to his camp
on the hill, and then for a day there was a pause. The relieving army
had little food with them, and, if they acted at all, must act quickly.
They spread over the country collecting faggots to fill the trenches,
and making ladders to storm the walls. At midnight they began their
assault on the lines in the plain; and Vercingetorix, hearing by the
cries that the work had begun, gave his own signal for a general sally.
The Roman arrangements had been completed long before. Every man knew
his post. The slings, the crossbows, the scorpions were all at hand and
in order. Mark Antony and Caius Trebonius had each a flying division
under them to carry help where the pressure was most severe. The Gauls
were caught on the cervi, impaled on the stimuli, and fell in heaps
under the bolts and balls which were poured from the walls. They could
make no impression, and fell back at daybreak beaten and dispirited.
Vercingetorix had been unable even to pass the moats and trenches, and
did not come into action till his friends had abandoned the attack.

The Gauls had not yet taken advantage of their enormous numbers.
Defeated on the level ground, they next tried the heights. The Romans
were distributed in a ring now fourteen miles in extent. On the north
side, beyond the Ose, the works were incomplete, owing to the nature of
the ground, and their lines lay on the slope of the hills descending
towards the river. Sixty thousand picked men left the Gauls' camp
before dawn; they stole round by a distant route, and were allowed to
rest concealed in a valley till the middle of the day. At noon they
came over the ridge at the Romans' back; and they had the best of the
position, being able to attack from above. Their appearance was the
signal for a general assault on all sides, and for a determined sally
by Vercingetorix from within. Thus before, behind, and everywhere, the
legions were assailed at the same moment; and Caesar observes that the
cries of battle in the rear are always more trying to men than the
fiercest onset upon them in front; because what they cannot see they
imagine more formidable than it is, and they depend for their own
safety on the courage of others.

Caesar had taken his stand where he could command the whole action.
There was no smoke in those engagements, and the scene was
transparently visible. Both sides felt that the deciding trial had
come. In the plain the Gauls made no more impression than on the
preceding day. At the weak point on the north the Romans were forced
back down the slope, and could not hold their positions. Caesar saw it,
and sent Labienus with six cohorts to their help. Vercingetorix had
seen it also, and attacked the interior lines at the same spot. Decimus
Brutus was then despatched also, and then Caius Fabius. Finally, when
the fighting grew desperate, he left his own station; he called up the
reserves which had not yet been engaged, and he rode across the field,
conspicuous in his scarlet dress and with his bare head, cheering on
the men as he passed each point where they were engaged, and hastening
to the scene where the chief danger lay. He sent round a few squadrons
of horse to the back of the hills which the Gauls had crossed in the
morning. He himself joined Labienus. Wherever he went he carried
enthusiasm along with him. The legionaries flung away their darts and
rushed upon the enemy sword in hand. The cavalry appeared above on the
heights. The Gauls wavered, broke, and scattered. The German horse were
among them, hewing down the brave but now helpless patriots who had
come with such high hopes and had fought so gallantly. Out of the sixty
thousand that had sallied forth in the morning, all but a draggled
remnant lay dead on the hill-sides. Seventy-four standards were brought
in to Caesar. The besieged retired into Alice again in despair. The
vast hosts that were to have set them free melted away. In the morning
they were streaming over the country, making back for their homes, with
Caesar's cavalry behind them, cutting them down and capturing them in
thousands.

The work was done. The most daring feat in the military annals of
mankind had been successfully accomplished. A Roman army which could
not at the utmost have amounted to fifty thousand men had held
blockaded an army of eighty thousand--not weak Asiatics, but European
soldiers, as strong and as brave individually as the Italians were; and
they had defeated, beaten, and annihilated another army which had come
expecting to overwhelm them, five times as large as their own.

Seeing that all was over, Vercingetorix called the chiefs about him. He
had gone into the war, he said, for no object of his own, but for the
liberty of his country. Fortune had gone against him; and he advised
them to make their peace, either by killing him and sending his head to
the conqueror or by delivering him up alive. A humble message of
submission was despatched to Caesar. He demanded an unconditional
surrender, and the Gauls, starving and hopeless, obeyed. The Roman
general sat amidst the works in front of the camp while the chiefs one
by one were produced before him. The brave Vercingetorix, as noble in
his calamity as Caesar himself in his success, was reserved to be shown
in triumph to the populace of Rome. The whole of his army were
prisoners of war. The Aedui and Arverni among them were set aside, and
were dismissed after a short detention for political reasons. The
remainder were sold to the contractors, and the proceeds were
distributed as prize-money among the legions. Caesar passed the winter
at Bibracte, receiving the submission of the chiefs of the Aedui and of
the Auvergne. Wounds received in war soon heal if gentle measures
follow a victory. If tried by the manners of his age, Caesar was the
most merciful of conquerors. His high aim was, not to enslave the
Gauls, but to incorporate them in the Empire; to extend the privileges
of Roman citizens among them and among all the undegenerate races of
the European provinces. He punished no one. He was gracious and
considerate to all, and he so impressed the central tribes by his
judgment and his moderation that they served him faithfully in all his
coming troubles, and never more, even in the severest temptation, made
an effort to recover their independence.

[Sidenote B.C. 51.] Much, however, remained to be done. The
insurrection had shaken the whole of Gaul. The distant tribes had all
joined in it, either actively or by sympathy; and the patriots who had
seized the control, despairing of pardon, thought their only hope was
in keeping rebellion alive. During winter they believed themselves
secure. The Carnutes of the Eure and Loire, under a new chief named
Gutruatus,[7] and the Bituriges, untaught by or savage at the fate of
Bourges, were still defiant. When the winter was at its deepest, Caesar
suddenly appeared across the Loire. He caught the country people
unprepared, and captured them in their farms. The swiftness of his
marches baffled alike flight and resistance; he crushed the whole
district down, and he was again at his quarters in forty days. As a
reward to the men who had followed him so cheerfully in the cold
January campaign, he gave each private legionary 200 sesterces and each
centurion 2,000. Eighteen days' rest was all that he allowed himself,
and with fresh troops, and in storm and frost, he started for the
Carnutes. The rebels were to have no rest till they submitted. The
Bellovaci were now out also. The Remi alone of all the Gauls had
continued faithful in the rising of Vercingetorix. The Bellovaci, led
by Commius of Arras, were preparing to burn the territory of the Remi
as a punishment. Commius was not as guilty, perhaps, as he seemed.
Labienus had suspected him of intending mischief when he was on the
Seine in the past summer, and had tried to entrap and kill him. Anyway
Caesar's first object was to show the Gauls that no friends of Rome
would be allowed to suffer. He invaded Normandy; he swept the country.
He drove the Bellovaci and the Carnutes to collect in another great
army to defend themselves; he set upon them with his usual skill; and
destroyed them. Commius escaped over the Rhine to Germany. Gutruatus
was taken. Caesar would have pardoned him; but the legions were growing
savage at these repeated and useless commotions, and insisted on his
execution. The poor wretch was flogged till he was insensible, and his
head was cut off by the lictor's axe.

All Gaul was now submissive, its spirit broken, and, as the event
proved, broken finally, except in the southwest. Eight years out of the
ten of Caesar's government had expired. In one corner of the country
only the dream still survived that, if the patriots could hold out till
Caesar was gone, Celtic liberty might yet have a chance of recovering
itself. A single tribe on the Dordogne, relying on the strength of a
fortress in a situation resembling that of Gergovia, persisted in
resistance to the Roman authority. The spirit of national independence
is like a fire: so long as a spark remains a conflagration can again be
kindled, and Caesar felt that he must trample out the last ember that
was alive. Uxellodunum--so the place was named--stood on an
inaccessible rock, and was amply provisioned. It could be taken only as
Edinburgh Castle was once taken, by cutting off its water; and the
ingenious tunnel may still be seen by which the Roman engineers tapped
the spring supplied the garrison. They, too, had then to yield, and the
war in Gaul was over.

[Sidenote B.C. 50.] The following winter Caesar spent at Arras. He
wished to hand over his conquests to his successor not only subdued,
but reconciled, to subjection. He invited the chiefs of all the tribes
to come to him. He spoke to them of the future which lay open to them
as members of a splendid Imperial State. He gave them magnificent
presents. He laid no impositions either on the leaders or their people,
and they went to their homes personally devoted to their conqueror,
contented with their condition, and resolved to maintain the peace
which was now established--a unique experience in political history.
The Norman Conquest of England alone in the least resembles it. In the
spring of 50 Caesar went to Italy. Strange things had happened
meanwhile in Rome. So long as there was a hope that Caesar would be
destroyed by the insurrection, the ill-minded Senate had waited to let
the Gauls do the work for him. The chance was gone. He had risen above
his perils more brilliant than ever, and nothing now was left to them
but to defy and trample on him. Servius Galba, who was favorable to
Caesar, had stood for the consulship for 49, and had received a
majority of votes. The election was set aside. Two patricians, Lentulus
and Caius Marcellus, were declared chosen, and their avowed purpose was
to strip the conqueror of Gaul of his honors and rewards.[8] The people
of his own Cisalpine Province desired to show that they at least had no
sympathy with such envenomed animosities. In the colonies in Lombardy
and Venetia Caesar was received with the most passionate demonstrations
of affection. The towns were dressed out with flags and flowers. The
inhabitants crowded into the streets with their wives and children to
look at him as he passed. The altars smoked with offerings; the temples
were thronged with worshippers praying the immortal gods to bless the
greatest of the Romans. He had yet one more year to govern. After a
brief stay he rejoined his army. He spent the summer in organizing the
administration of the different districts and assigning his officers
their various commands. That he did not at this time contemplate any
violent interference with the Constitution may be proved by the
distribution of his legions, which remained stationed far away in
Belgium and on the Loire.

[1] Above Orleans, on the Loire.

[2] Four miles from Clermont, on the Allier, in the Puy-de-Dôme.

[3] "Extrema fames."--_De Bell. Gall_., vii. 17.

[4] "Summâ se iniquitatis condemnari debere nisi eorum vitam suâ salute
    habeat cariorem."

[5] _De Bell. Gall_., vii. 33.

[6] "Tantis subito difficultatibus objectis ab animi virtute consilium
    petebat."

[7] Gudrund? The word has a German sound.

[8] "Insolenter adversarii sui gloriabantur L. Lentulum et C. Marcellum
    consules creatos, qui omnem honorem et dignitatem Caesaris
    exspoliarent. Ereptum Servio Galbae consulatum cum is multo plus
    gratiâ, suffragiisque valuisset, quod sibi conjunctus et
    familiaritate et necessitudine legationis esset."--_Auli Hirtii
    De Bell. Gall_. viii. 50.

CHAPTER XX.

[Sidenote: B.C. 51.] Crassus had been destroyed by the Parthians. The
nomination of his successor lay with the Senate, and the Senate gave a
notable evidence of their incapacity for selecting competent governors
for the provinces by appointing in his place Caesar's old colleague,
Bibulus. In their whole number there was no such fool as Bibulus. When
he arrived in Syria he shut himself into a fortified town, leaving the
Parthians to plunder and burn at their pleasure. Cicero mocked at him.
The Senate thanked him for his distinguished services. The few serious
men in Rome thought that Caesar or Pompey should be sent out;[1] or, if
they could not be spared, at least one of the consuls of the
year--Sulpicius Rufus or Marcus Marcellus. But the consuls were busy
with home politics and did not wish to go, nor did they wish that
others should go and gather laurels instead of them. Therefore nothing
was done at all,[2] and Syria was left to fate and Bibulus. The consuls
and the aristocracy had, in fact, more serious matters to attend to.
Caesar's time was running out, and when it was over he had been
promised the consulship. That consulship the faction of the
conservatives had sworn that he should never hold. Cato was threatening
him with impeachment, blustering that he should be tried under a guard,
as Milo had been.[3] Marcellus was saying openly that he would call him
home in disgrace before his term was over. Como, one of the most
thriving towns in the north of Italy, had been enfranchised by Caesar.
An eminent citizen from Como happening to be at Rome, Marcellus
publicly flogged him, and bade him go back and tell his fellow-townsmen
the value of Caesar's gift to them, Cicero saw the folly of such
actions;[4] but the aristocracy were mad--mad with pride and conscious
guilt and fear. The ten years of Caesar's government would expire at
the end of 49. The engagement had been entered into that he was to see
his term out with his army and to return to Rome for 48--as consul.
They remembered his first consulship and what he had done with it, and
the laws which he had passed--laws which they could not repeal; yet how
had they observed them? If he had been too strong for them all when he
was but one of themselves, scarcely known beyond the Forum and
senate-house, what would he do now, when he was recognized as the
greatest soldier which Rome had produced, the army, the people, Italy,
the provinces all adoring his name? Consul again he could not, must not
be. Yet how could it be prevented? It was useless now to bribe the
Comitia, to work with clubs and wire-pullers. The enfranchised citizens
would come to vote for Caesar from every country town. The legionaries
to a man would vote for him; and even in the venal city he was the idol
of the hour. No fault could be found with his administration. His wars
had paid their own expenses. He had doubled the pay of his troops, but
his military chest was still full, and his own wealth seemed boundless.
He was adorning the Forum with new and costly buildings. Senators,
knights, young men of rank who had been extravagant, had been relieved
by his generosity and were his pensioners. Gaul might have been
impatient at its loss of liberty, but no word of complaint was heard
against Caesar for oppressive government. The more genius he had shown
the more formidable he was. Let him be consul, and he would be the
master of them all.

Caesar had been credited with far-reaching designs. It has been assumed
that in early life he had designed the overthrow of the Constitution;
that he pursued his purpose steadily through every stage in his career,
and that he sought the command of Gaul only to obtain an army devoted
to him which would execute his will. It has not seemed incredible that
a man of middle age undertook the conquest of a country of which
nothing is known save that it was inhabited by warlike races, who more
than once had threatened to overrun Italy and destroy Rome; that he
went through ten years of desperate fighting exposed to a thousand
dangers from the sword, from exposure and hardship; that for ten years
he had banished himself from Rome, uncertain whether he would ever see
it again; and that he had ventured upon all this with no other object
than that of eventually controlling domestic politics. A lunatic might
have entertained such a scheme, but not a Caesar. The Senate knew him.
They knew what he had done. They knew what he would now do, and for
this reason they feared and hated him. Caesar was a reformer. He had
long seen that the Roman Constitution was too narrow for the functions
which had fallen to it, and that it was degenerating into an instrument
of tyranny and injustice. The courts of law were corrupt; the elections
wore corrupt. The administration of the provinces was a scandal and a
curse. The soil of Italy had become a monopoly of capitalists, and the
inhabitants of it a population of slaves. He had exerted himself to
stay the mischief at its fountain, to punish bribery, to punish the
rapacity of proconsuls and propraetors, to purify the courts, to
maintain respect for the law. He had endeavored to extend the
franchise, to raise the position of the liberated slaves, to replace
upon the land a free race of Roman citizens. The old Roman sentiment,
the consciousness of the greatness of the country and of its mighty
destinies, was chiefly now to be found in the armies. In the families
of veteran legionaries, spread in farms over Italy and the provinces,
the national spirit might revive; and, with a due share of political
power conceded to them, an enlarged and purified constituency might
control the votes of the venal populace of the city. These were
Caesar's designs, so far as could have been gathered from his earlier
actions; but the manipulation of elections, the miserable contests with
disaffected colleagues and a hostile Senate, were dreary occupations
for such a man as he was. He was conscious of powers which in so poor a
sphere could find no expression. He had ambition doubtless--plenty of