In this great war, which ended in the conquest of Gaul, Cæsar’s expeditions to Britain were mere episodes which have been greatly exaggerated in the traditional histories of our schools. They were summer raids, like his dash across the Rhine, intended for a warning to the barbarians of the hinterland; for it seems that communication to and fro across the channel was continuous. It is probable enough that the persuasions of the Roman traders who swarmed after the eagles across Gaul had their influence also. Undoubtedly the Romans of this generation were keenly alive to commercial openings, and always on the search for mines, real or imaginary. Further, we cannot deny that Cæsar in all his undertakings had one eye upon his political position in Rome itself, and the “conquest of Britain,” that almost legendary corner of the earth, concealed in boreal mists and embosomed in the ever-flowing Ocean river, would be a sensational achievement calculated to outshine the Oriental triumphs of Pompeius. One cannot but place among the extravagances of hero-worship Mommsen’s belief that Cæsar had a prophetic insight into the true nature of the “German Peril” for Rome. When Cæsar took over the Gallic province there was no tremendous German menace. There had always been occasional irruptions of the barbarians from across the Rhine, and a steady German penetration of the Netherlands. Cæsar did not lay down any intelligible frontier policy: that was one of the achievements of Augustus. Both in Gaul and Britain it was simply a forward movement by a general of bold and untiring resolution, backed by an invincible army. The two trips to Britain, like those across the Rhine, were reconnaissances only, and the conquest of the island was one of the legacies which Cæsar intended to reserve for the future. His successor very wisely declined it. There was little immediate profit there, and the Gallic conquests had glutted the Roman market with slaves.

Gaul had submitted easily to a force of less than forty thousand Romans; then it had revolted unsuccessfully. In the end the whole country acknowledged defeat and rapidly began to assimilate Latin civilisation. Meanwhile in the imperial city the Republic was slowly expiring by a natural death. Every winter Cæsar returned to the Cisalpine part of his province to receive intelligence from Rome and secure his position there. Clodius, the most evil of mob-leaders, was his agent with the democracy. Clodius had managed to hound the respectable Cicero into exile for his share in suppressing Catiline, and when Cicero, who was really popular at Rome, had at length persuaded Pompeius to allow his return, the great orator remained thenceforward a timid and reluctant servant of the triumvirate, defending their friends or prosecuting their enemies, with inward reluctance, no doubt, but with unimpaired eloquence. With his astonishing victories in Gaul the star of Julius was rising in the political heavens. The commons of Rome were not only dazzled by his successes, but captivated by his largesses. Meanwhile Pompeius was living on his military reputation, and slowly squandering it by his political incapacity. He continued to hold various high offices unknown to the constitution; he became sole consul, a thing abhorrent to the Roman system; he held the province of Spain and governed it from Italy through his legates, and at the same time continued to exercise a general oversight over the corn-supply of Rome. In fact there was scarcely anything in the future position of a Roman emperor which had not its precedent in the career of Pompeius. Had he wished it, or, more probably, had he known how to obtain it, he and not Augustus might easily have been the first Roman emperor. By taste and natural sympathies he was an aristocrat, but the force of circumstances had driven him into an uncomfortable position of alliance with Cæsar the democrat and Crassus the plutocrat. This was in a large measure the secret of his political helplessness. He, the conqueror of the East, often found himself openly flouted, nay, actually hustled and threatened in the streets, by the organised roughs. Meanwhile there was a small but tenacious opposition party of aristocrats, who had no discipline and therefore no leaders, but among whom Cato and Marcellus were the most conspicuous. They had not the strength to offer any consistent resistance to Cæsar’s progress, which they watched with growing jealousy and alarm. They had not the sense to rally the respectable elements in the state to their side. Both Cicero and Pompeius would readily have joined them if they had made it possible. Instead of that, they were content to carp at Cæsar’s achievements and threaten him with a prosecution as soon as he should return to private life. That was the stupidest mistake, for it made Cæsar resolve at all costs to retain his command, and eventually precipitated the civil war.

As it can easily be seen, the coalition between Cæsar and Pompeius was not a natural one: psychologically they had nothing in common, and their interests soon began to diverge. Pompeius could hardly fail to perceive that Cæsar was climbing by his help and at his expense. The old general saw the memory of his great deeds eclipsed by the new one, and there was no lack of mischief-makers to widen the breach. The alliance had been cemented in a striking fashion at a conference at Lucca in 56 B.C. when the conservatives were threatening to annul Cæsar’s acts in Gaul. Cæsar had replied by inviting Pompeius to meet him in his southern province; he also invited those senators who were his friends to appear at the same time. Two hundred senators had answered the invitation, and for the time being the opposition died away into grumbling.

But now the breach was growing open to all men’s eyes. Cæsar’s charming daughter, Julia, who had been married to Pompeius as a pledge of union, and had done much to hold the two chiefs together, died at an early age in the year 54. In the next year Crassus, the mediating third party of the “triumvirate,” met his fate at Carrhæ. In the next there were more than ordinary disorders over the elections, culminating in a fierce battle in the forum between the rival gangs of Clodius for the triumvirate and Milo for the senate. The senate-house was burnt and Clodius slain. Pompeius then became sole consul, and proceeded, under threat of his army, to introduce a series of laws almost openly aimed at Cæsar. By the Pompeian law of magistrates Cæsar would be compelled to appear in Rome as a private citizen for some months in the year 49, at the mercy of his enemies, while Pompeius himself, by having his titular command in Spain prolonged, would still be master of an army. These laws were passed at the crisis of Cæsar’s fate in Gaul, when the whole nation had risen in arms against him. But Cæsar emerged victorious, and was now, in the year 50, free to consider his position in regard to Pompeius and the senate. Cæsar himself maintains that he was reluctant to resort to violence, and I think we may believe him. Though nine legions were still under his command, he could hardly venture to denude the newly conquered province of its garrisons, while Pompeius was master of an equal number of legions, including the veteran Spanish troops, and could levy any number of recruits or reservists in Italy. Cæsar could not have faced the prospect of a civil war with any confidence as to the result, even if he had been the sort of man to provoke it without scruple. There is a further proof: as late as 50 B.C. he resigned two legions to Pompeius, which would have been madness if he had then intended to wade through bloodshed to a throne. In all the abortive negotiations which preceded the outbreak of the great civil war, Cæsar was prepared to resign everything except the one condition upon which his very life depended, namely, that he should not have to return to Rome as a defenceless private citizen. The civil war was due to the mad folly of the conservatives led by Marcellus, who had convinced themselves that Cæsar meant to sack Rome with his Gallic cavalry and to reign as tyrant over its ashes. In the end they succeeded in communicating their panic to Pompeius.

Conciliatory to the last, Cæsar was driven to show that he was in earnest. Bidden to dismiss his army, and declared a public enemy, in January 49 B.C. he took the decisive step of crossing the little river Rubicon which marked the frontier of Italy. Even then it was only a demonstration of force. Only 1500 men followed Cæsar to Rimini and Arezzo, and he still offered peace on the most moderate terms. But the panic-stricken and conscience-stricken senators, still believing in the imminent sack of Rome, decided to leave their wives and children there while they saved their precious necks, in headlong flight to Capua, and then to Brindisi, and then to Greece. The great Pompeius showed equal panic. Apparently demoralised by Cæsar’s swift and decisive movements, he decided to give up Italy without a struggle and retire to the East, where all his triumphs had been won. From there he would fight for the lordship of the world.

FIG 1.
VENUS GENETRIX		FIG 2.
THE MEDICI VENUS
Plate XVIII

But meanwhile Cæsar, by his clemency no less than by his bold resolution, was winning all Italy to his side. Only one member of his army—his old lieutenant-general Labienus—deserted him, while fresh recruits even from the senatorial party daily joined him. Cool and methodical as ever, he left Rome to recover from its panic, and the East to wait until he had secured his hold upon the West. He knew the value of a veteran army, and therefore turned his march first to Spain. It took him but a short time to secure the capitulation of Pompeius’s lieutenants in that province, and then at last he returned to Rome. He was only in the city for eleven days, but in that time he was able to remove the panic and disorder there. He restored credit, assured the supply of corn, and got a grant of citizen rights for his faithful provincials of Cisalpine Gaul.

Meanwhile the Pompeian army was gathering in northern Greece, and the senators were breathing death and damnation against Cæsar. The final struggle on the Albanian coast and in Thessaly, which culminated in the great battle of Pharsalus (48 B.C.), decided the fate of the world. The troops were fairly equal, if numbers and training are taken into account; in numbers alone Cæsar was far inferior. But Cæsar’s men had extraordinary devotion to their general, as he had to his beloved legions. Never was there completer confidence between an army and its leader than between Cæsar and his veterans. He could be merciless in discipline. Once he had to decimate the Ninth Legion, but he could move his grim legionaries to tears by a reproach. He shared all their labours, he starved with them, and marched those prodigious forced marches by their side. They trusted in his generalship, and they were not disappointed. Pompeius showed, when at last he roused himself, that he too had not forgotten the military art. It was a battle of giants; Pompeius the more orthodox tactician, Cæsar incredibly bold, rapid, and far-seeing. More than once it was touch and go. Cæsar had terrible difficulties to face, above all in the necessity of transporting his army across the wintry Adriatic in face of the enemy when he had no fleet. The feat was accomplished by sheer audacity, and then he had to face and contain a larger army, thoroughly well prepared and supplied, with no base and no communications for his own men. He actually tried to fling a line of earthworks round the Pompeian army while his own men were starving. Yet it was by generalship that the battle of Pharsalus was won.