I imagine that Caesar’s army did not resemble those old Roman armies that are depicted to us in such grave and temperate guise, always trembling under the rod of the lictors, and submissive at all times to an inflexible discipline. It was, doubtless, sternly controlled in time of danger, and never complained of this. No other army has ever undergone greater fatigues and executed greater deeds; but when the danger was over discipline relaxed. Caesar allowed his soldiers rest, and sometimes diversion. He let them decorate themselves with splendid arms, and even adorn themselves with studied elegance. “What does it matter if they use perfumes?” he said, “they will know very well how to fight.”[[267]] And in fact these soldiers, whom the Pompeians called effeminate, are the same who, though dying of hunger at Dyrrhachium, declared that they would eat the bark of the trees rather than let Pompey escape. They were recruited for the most part among those Cisalpine Gauls from whom Roman civilization had not taken the good qualities of their race, an amiable and brilliant people who loved war and carried it on gaily. The chiefs very much resembled the common soldiers; they were lively and ardent, full of resources in critical moments, and trusted more to inspiration than to routine. It is to be remarked that no one of them had gained his reputation in earlier wars. Caesar seems to have wished that their military glory should come from him only. A few, and among these Labienus, perhaps the greatest of them, were his political friends, old conspirators like himself, who, after his example, and without any more preparation, from popular agitators had become excellent generals. Others, on the contrary, like Fabius Maximus and Servius Galba, bore illustrious names; they were partisans whom he secured in the aristocracy, or hostages that he took from it. The greater number, Crassus, Plancus, Volcatius Tullus, Decimus Brutus, and later Pollio, were young men whom he treated with marked preference, and whom he readily trusted in perilous enterprises. He liked the young by personal preference, and also by policy: as they did not yet belong to any party, and had not had time to attach themselves to the republic by serving it, he hoped they would have less difficulty in accustoming themselves to the new régime that he wished to establish.
These lieutenants, whose number varied, did not alone form the ordinary retinue of a proconsul. We must remember to add that crowd of young Romans, sons of illustrious houses, destined by their birth for public office, who came to serve their apprenticeship in war under him. They were called his tent-comrades, contubernales. Soldiers like the rest, and exposing themselves on the day of battle, they became after the fight the friends, the companions of the chief whom they followed in all his expeditions, as the clients accompanied their patron in the city. They were present at his receptions, took part in all his recreations and diversions, sat at his table, surrounded him when he sat on the judgment-seat; they formed, in sum, what was called the cohort, we should almost say the court, of the praetor (praetoria cohors). Scipio Africanus, it is said, invented this means of adding splendour to the public display of the supreme power in the eyes of the conquered nations, and after him governors had taken great care to preserve all this pomp which added to their prestige. These were not all; by the side of these military men there was room for men of very various abilities and positions. Able financiers, intelligent secretaries, and even learned lawyers might be necessary for the administration of those vast countries that a proconsul governed. Thus Trebatius himself, the pacific Trebatius, was not out of place in the train of an army, and he had opportunities of exercising his profession even among the Nervii and the Belgae. If we add to these men, to whom their high offices gave a certain importance, a crowd of inferior officers or subaltern servants, such as lictors, ushers, scribes, interpreters, apparitors, doctors, men-servants, and even soothsayers, we shall have some idea of that truly royal retinue which a proconsul always carried about with him.
Caesar’s train must have been even more magnificent than that of others. The ten legions that he commanded, the extent of country that he had to conquer and govern, explain the great number of officers and persons of all sorts by whom he was surrounded. Moreover, he naturally loved magnificence. He readily welcomed all who came to see him, and always found some office to give them in order to retain them. Even in those wild countries he took pleasure in astonishing them by his reception. Suetonius relates that he took with him everywhere marquetry or mosaic floors, and that he had always two tables laid at which rich Romans who visited him and provincials of distinction took their places.[[268]] His lieutenants imitated him, and Pinarius wrote to Cicero that he was delighted with the dinners his brother gave him.[[269]] Caesar did not care much for these sumptuous repasts, and these rich dwellings, on his own account. We know that he was temperate, that in case of need he could sleep well in the open air, and eat rancid oil without blinking; but he had a taste for display and luxury. Although the republic still existed, he was almost a king; even in his camps in Britain and Germany he had assiduous followers and courtiers. He could only be approached with difficulty; Trebatius made the attempt, and we know that it was a long time before he could reach him. No doubt Caesar did not receive men with that stiff and solemn majesty that repelled them in Pompey; but, however gracious he might wish to be, there was always something in him that inspired respect, and it was felt that that ease of manner that he affected with everybody proceeded from a superiority which was sure of itself. This defender of the democracy was none the less an aristocrat who never forgot his birth, and willingly spoke of his ancestors. Had they not heard him, at the commencement of his political life, at the very time when he attacked with most vivacity the institutions of Sulla, and tried to get back their ancient powers for the tribunes, had they not heard him pronounce over his aunt a funeral oration full of genealogical fictions, in which he complacently related that his family was descended at once from the kings and the gods? But in this he only followed the traditions of the Gracchi, his illustrious predecessors. They also defended public interests with ardour, but they called to mind the aristocracy from which they had sprung by the haughty elegance of their manners. We know that they had a court of clients at their rising, and that they were the first who thought of making distinctions between them which resembled the public and private admissions to the court of Louis XIV.
The most remarkable thing in those around Caesar was their love of letters. Assuredly they belonged no longer to the times when Roman generals burnt masterpieces of art, or took a pride in being ignorant. Since Mummius and Marius, letters had succeeded in penetrating even the camps, which, as we know, are not their usual abode. Nevertheless, I do not think that so many enlightened men of letters, so many men of culture and men of fashion have ever been seen united in any other army. Almost all Caesar’s lieutenants were private friends of Cicero, and they took pleasure in maintaining a constant intercourse with him who was regarded as the official patron of literature at Rome. Crassus and Plancus had learnt eloquence in pleading at his side, and in what remains to us of the letters of Plancus, we recognize, by a certain oratorical exuberance, that he had profited by his lessons. Trebonius, the conqueror of Marseilles, professed to relish his witticisms very much, and even published a collection of them. Cicero, however, to whom this admiration was not displeasing, thought that his editor had put too much of himself into the introduction under pretence of preparing the effect of the jokes and making them easier to understand. “They have exhausted their laughter,” he said, “when they get to me.” Hirtius was a distinguished historian, who undertook later to finish the Commentaries of his chief. Matius, a devoted friend of Caesar, who showed himself worthy of this friendship by remaining faithful to him, translated the Iliad into Latin verse. Quintus was a poet also, but a tragic poet. During the winter that he had to fight the Nervii, he was seized with such an ardour for poetry, that he composed four pieces in sixteen days: but this was to treat tragedy in a somewhat military fashion. He sent the one he thought the best, the Erigone, to his brother; but it was lost on the road. “Since Caesar has commanded in Gaul,” said Cicero, “the Erigone alone has not been able to travel in safety.”[[270]] It is surprising no doubt to meet all at one time with so many generals who are also men of letters; but what is still more astonishing is that all those Roman knights who followed the army, and whom Caesar made his commissaries and purveyors, collectors of stores, and farmers of the taxes, seem to have loved literature more than their habits and occupations usually admit. We find one of those he employed in offices of this kind, Lepta, thanking Cicero for sending him a treatise on rhetoric as though he were a man capable of appreciating the present. The Spaniard Balbus, that intelligent banker, that skilful administrator, who was able to put the finances of Rome into such good order, and what was still more difficult, those of Caesar, loved philosophy with more enthusiasm than one would expect in a banker. He hastened to have Cicero’s works copied before they were known to the public, and although he was by character the most discreet of men, he went so far as even to commit indiscretions in order to be the first to read them.
But among all these lettered men, it was Caesar who had the most decided taste for letters: they suited his cultivated nature; they seemed to him, no doubt, the most agreeable exercise and relaxation of an accomplished mind. I should not, however, venture to say that his love for them was wholly disinterested, when I see that this taste assisted his policy so wonderfully. He was compelled to gain public favour by every means; now, nothing attracts the general judgment more than the superiority of intelligence united with that of force. His principal works were composed with this intention, and we might say, from this point of view, that his writings were part of his actions. It was not only to please a few idle men of letters that, during the latter part of his stay in Gaul, he wrote his Commentaries with such a rapidity as to astonish his friends. He wished to prevent the Romans forgetting his victories; he wished, by his admirable manner of narrating them, to renew, and if possible, to increase, the effect they had produced. When he composed his two books De Analogia, he calculated that people would be struck by seeing the general of an army, who, according to the expression of Fronto, “busied himself with the formation of words while arrows were cleaving the air, and sought the laws of language amid the din of clarions and trumpets.” He knew very well the advantage that his reputation would draw from these very diverse performances, and how great would be the surprise and admiration at Rome when they received at the same moment a treatise on grammar, and the news of a new victory, from such a distance. The same thought also made him eager for Cicero’s friendship. If his refined and distinguished nature found a great pleasure in keeping up some intercourse with a man of so much cultivation, he was not ignorant of the power this man exercised over public opinion, and how far his praises would resound when they came from this eloquent mouth. We have lost the letters that he wrote to Cicero; but as Cicero was delighted with them, and it was not very easy to please him, we must believe that they were filled with flatteries and caresses. Cicero’s answers were also full of the most lively protestations of friendship. He declared at that time that Caesar came in his affections immediately after his children, and indeed almost in the same rank; he bitterly deplored all the prejudices that had up till then kept him apart from him, and he resolved to make him forget that he was one of the last who had entered into his friendship. “I shall imitate,” said he, “the travellers who have risen later than they wished to do; they double their speed, and make such good haste that they arrive at their destination before those who have travelled part of the night.”[[271]] They vied with each other, as it were, in compliments; they overwhelmed one another with flatteries, and emulated each other in works in verse and prose. On reading the first accounts of the expedition to Britain, Cicero exclaimed in a transport of enthusiasm: “What prodigious events! what a country! what people! what battles, and above all, what a general!” He wrote off immediately to his brother: “Give me Britain to paint; furnish me with the colours, I will use the brush.”[[272]] And he had seriously taken in hand an epic poem on this conquest, which his occupations prevented him completing as quickly as he wished. Caesar, on his part, dedicated his treatise De Analogia to Cicero, and on this occasion said to him in splendid phrases: “You have discovered all the resources of eloquence, and are the first to use them. In virtue of this you have deserved well of the Roman name, and you do honour to our country. You have obtained the most illustrious of all honours, and a triumph preferable to those of the greatest generals, for it is better to extend the boundaries of the mind than to enlarge the limits of the empire!”[[273]] This, coming from a victorious general like Caesar, was the most delicate flattery for a man of letters.
Such were the relations that Cicero kept up with Caesar and his officers during the Gallic war. His correspondence, which preserves the memory of them, makes us better acquainted with the tastes and preferences of all these men of cultivation, and shows them to us in a very living fashion and draws us closer to them. This is, assuredly, one of the greatest services it could render to us. We seem, when we have read it, to be able to understand of what kind the meetings of these men must have been, and can imagine ourselves present at their conversations. We are entitled to suppose that Rome took up very much of their thoughts. From the depths of Gaul, they had their eyes upon it, and it was to make a little stir there that they took so much trouble. While marching over so many unknown countries from the Rhine to the Ocean, all these young men hoped that they would be talked about at those feasts and assemblies where men of the world discussed public affairs. Caesar himself, when he crossed the Rhine on his wooden bridge, reckoned upon striking the imaginations of all those idlers who met together in the Forum, at the rostrum, to learn the news. After the landing of his troops in Britain, we see him hastening to write to his friends, and especially to Cicero;[[274]] not that he had much leisure at that moment, but he looked upon it no doubt as an honour to date his letter from a country where no Roman had yet set foot. If he was anxious to send glorious news to Rome, they were also very glad to receive it from Rome. All the letters that arrived were read with eagerness; they seemed as it were to carry even to Germany and Britain a whiff of that fashionable life, which those who have enjoyed can never forget or cease to regret. It was not enough for Caesar to read the journals of the Roman people, which contained a dry summary of the principal political events, and a concise report of the proceedings of the assemblies of the people. His messengers constantly traversed Gaul, bringing him letters accurate and full of the most minute details. “He is told everything,” said Cicero, “small as well as great.”[[275]] This news, impatiently waited for, and commented on with pleasure, must have been the usual subject of his conversations with his friends. I suppose that, at that sumptuous table of which I have spoken, after literature and grammar had been discussed, and they had listened to the verses of Matius or Quintus, the conversation turned especially upon Rome, of which these elegant young men, who regretted its pleasures, were never tired of talking. Certainly, if we could have heard them chatting about the last news, the political disorders, or, what interested them more, the private scandals of the city, telling the last rumours afloat, and quoting the most recent jokes, we should have found it difficult to believe that we were in the heart of the country of the Belgae, or near to the Rhine or the Ocean, or on the eve of a battle. I imagine that we should have rather fancied we were present at a party of clever men in some aristocratic house on the Palatine or in the rich quarter of Carinae.
Cicero’s letters render us yet another service. They show us the prodigious effect that Caesar’s victories produced at Rome. They excited as much surprise as admiration, for they were discoveries as well as conquests. What was known before him of those distant countries? A few ridiculous fables that traders related on their return, to give themselves importance. It was through Caesar that they were first really known. He first dared to attack, and he vanquished those Germans who have been depicted as giants, whose very looks caused terror; he first adventured as far as Britain, where it was said the night lasted three entire months, and all the wonders that had been related gave as it were a tinge of the marvellous to his victories. Nevertheless, not everybody willingly gave way to this fascination. The most clear-sighted of the aristocratic party, who felt, though indistinctly, that it was the fate of the republic that was being decided on the banks of the Rhine, wished to recall Caesar, and to appoint in his place another general, who might not perhaps complete the conquest of Gaul, but who would not be tempted to carry out that of his own country. Cato, who pushed everything to extremes, when the senate was asked to vote a thanksgiving to the gods for the defeat of Ariovistus, dared to propose, on the contrary, that they should deliver up the conqueror to the Germans. But these objections did not change public opinion, which declared itself in favour of him who had just conquered with such rapidity so many unknown countries. The knights, who had become the financiers and merchants of Rome, congratulated themselves on seeing immense countries opened up to their operations. Caesar, who wished to attach them to him, invited them to follow him, and his first care had been to open them a road across the Alps. The common people, who love military glory and who freely give way to enthusiasm, were never tired of admiring him who extended the limits of the Roman world. On the news of each victory, Rome had public rejoicings, and offered thanksgivings to the gods. After the defeat of the Belgae, the senate, under pressure of public opinion, was compelled to vote fifteen days of solemn thanksgiving, which had never been done for anybody. Twenty days was decreed, when the success of the expedition against Germany was reported, and twenty more after the taking of Alesia. Cicero usually demanded these honours for Caesar, and he became the mouthpiece of the public admiration when he said in his noble language: “This is the first time we have dared to attack the Gauls, hitherto we have been content to repulse them. The other generals of the Roman people regarded it as sufficient for their glory to prevent them invading us; Caesar has gone to seek them out in their own homes. Our general, our legions, our arms have overrun those countries of which no history has ever spoken, of whose name the world was ignorant. We had only a footpath in Gaul; now the boundaries of these nations have become the frontiers of our own empire. It is not without the signal favour of Providence that nature gave the Alps for a rampart to Italy. If the entrance had been free to this multitude of barbarians, Rome never would have been the centre and the seat of the empire of the world. Now let insurmountable mountains sink. From the Alps to the Ocean Italy has nothing now to fear.”[[276]]
These magnificent eulogies, for which Cicero has been so much blamed, are easily understood however, and, whatever politicians may say, it is easy to explain the enthusiasm that so many honest and sensible people then felt for Caesar. That which justified the unreserved admiration that his conquests caused, was less their grandeur than their necessity. They might threaten the future, at that moment they were indispensable. They later endangered the liberty of Rome, but they assured her existence then.[[277]] The patriotic instinct of the people let them divine what prejudice and fear, although quite legitimate, hid from the aristocracy. They understood in a confused way all the dangers that might soon come from Gaul, if they did not hasten to subdue it. It was not, in truth, the Gauls who were to be feared—their decadence had already commenced, and they no longer thought of making conquests—it was the Germans. Dio is quite wrong in asserting that Caesar wantonly stirred up wars for the sake of his glory. Whatever advantage he drew from them, we may certainly say that he rather submitted to them than provoked them. It was not Rome that went to seek the Germans at that time, but rather the Germans who came boldly towards her. When Caesar was appointed proconsul, Ariovistus occupied part of the country of the Sequani and wished to seize the rest. His compatriots, attracted by the fertility of this fine country, were crossing the Rhine every day to join him, and twenty-five thousand had come at one time. What would have happened to Italy if, while Rome was losing her strength in intestine struggles, the Suevi and the Sicambri had established themselves on the Rhone and the Alps? The invasion averted by Marius a century before was recommencing; it might have caused the downfall of Rome then as it did four centuries later, if Caesar had not arrested it. His glory is to have thrown back the Germans beyond the Rhine, as it was to the honour of the empire to have kept them there for more than three hundred years.
But this was not the sole or even the greatest effect of Caesar’s victories. In conquering Gaul, he rendered it entirely and for ever Roman. That marvellous rapidity with which Rome then assimilated the Gauls can only be understood, when we know in what a state she had found them. They were not altogether barbarians like the Germans; it is to be remarked that their conqueror, who knew them well, does not call them so in his Commentaries. They had great cities, a regular system of taxation, a body of religious beliefs, an ambitious and powerful aristocracy, and a sort of national education directed by the priests. This culture, although imperfect, if it had not entirely enlightened their minds, had at least awakened them. They were frank and inquisitive, intelligent enough to know what they were deficient in, and sufficiently free from prejudice to give up their usages when they found better ones. From the very beginning of the war, they succeeded in imitating the Roman tactics, in constructing siege machines, and in working them with a skill to which Caesar does justice. They were still rude and unpolished, but already quite inclined for a superior civilization for which they had the desire and instinct. This explains how they did so readily accept it. They had fought for ten years against the domination of the foreigner; they did not hesitate for a day to adopt his language and usages. We may say that Gaul resembled those lands, parched by a burning sun, which drink in with such avidity the first drops of rain; so completely did she imbibe the Roman civilization for which she longed before she knew it, that after so many centuries, and in spite of so many revolutions, she has not yet lost the mark of it; and this is the only thing that has endured to the present time in this country where everything changes. Caesar, then, did not only add a few new territories to the possessions of Rome; the present that he made her was greater and more useful; he gave her an entire people, intelligent, and civilized almost as soon as conquered, which, becoming Roman in heart as well as in language, sinking her interests in those of her new nationality, enlisting in her legions to defend her, and throwing herself with a remarkable ardour and talent into the study of the arts and letters, shed a new lustre over her, and for a long time gave a new youth and a return of vigour to the failing empire.
While these great events were passing in Gaul, Rome continued to be the theatre of the most shameful disorders. There was no longer any government; scarcely did they succeed in electing magistrates, and there was a fight every time the people assembled in the Forum or in the Campus Martius. These disorders, of which honest men were ashamed, added still more to the effect that Caesar’s victories produced. What a contrast was there between the battles fought with Ariovistus or Vercingetorix and those combats of gladiators that stained the streets of Rome with blood! And how glorious appeared the taking of Agendicum or Alesia to people who were only occupied with the siege of Milo’s house by Clodius or the assassination of Clodius by Milo! All the statesmen who had remained in Rome, Pompey as well as Cicero, had lost something of their dignity by mixing themselves up in these intrigues. Caesar, who had withdrawn in time, was the only man who had risen amidst the general degradation. Therefore all those whose heart was wounded by these sad spectacles, and who had some care for Roman honour, kept their eyes fixed upon him and his army. As happened at certain moments of our own revolution, military glory consoled honest men for scandals and distress at home. At the same time, the excess of the evil caused men to seek an efficacious remedy everywhere. The idea began to spread that, in order to obtain repose, it was necessary to create a strong and durable power. After Cicero’s exile, the aruspices had predicted that the monarchy was about to recommence,[[278]] and one did not need to be a prophet to anticipate this. A few years later, the evil having increased still more, the republican party itself, notwithstanding its repugnance, was forced to have recourse to the violent remedy of a temporary dictatorship. Pompey was appointed sole consul, but Pompey had shown more than once that he had neither the vigour nor the resolution necessary to overcome anarchy entirely. A stronger arm and a more determined will had to be sought elsewhere, and all eyes turned naturally towards the conqueror of Gaul. His glory pointed him out for this part; the hopes of some and the fears of others called him to fulfil it; men’s minds became accustomed every day to the idea that he would be the heir of the republic, and the revolution that delivered up Rome to him was more than half accomplished when he crossed the Rubicon.