HISTORY OF THE ROMANS

UNDER THE EMPIRE.

CHAPTER XII.

CÆSAR'S SEVENTH CAMPAIGN IN GAUL, A. U. 702, B. c. 52.—VERCINGETORIX

EFFECTS A COALITION BETWEEN THE BELGIANS AND ARVERNIANS.-CÆSAR TAKES GENABUM AND AVARICUM.-WISE AND SPIRITED POLICY OF VERCINGETORIX.-SIEGE OF GERGOVIA.-REVOLT OF THE EDUI.-CESAR COMPELLED TO RAISE THE SIEGE: HE EFFECTS A JUNCTION WITH LABIENUS IN BELGIUM, AND RETREATS TOWARDS THE PROVINCE. HE OBTAINS A VICTORY, AND BLOCKADES THE GAULISH ARMY.-GREAT OPERATIONS BEFORE ALESIA. TRIUMPH OF THE ROMANS, AND SUBMISSION OF VERCINGETORIX.CÆSAR'S EIGHTH CAMPAIGN, A. u. 703, B. c. 51.-PARTIAL INSURRECTIONS IN THE NORTH, WEST AND CENTRE OF GAUL.-CAPTURE OF UXELLodunum. -THE CONQUEST OF GAUL COMPLETED.

E have seen the death of Crassus begin to bear fruit

Whave mutual alienation of the surviving members of

the conquered

the triple league, and in the renewed approxi- Cæsar's lenient mation of Pompeius to the party from which he policy towards had been so long estranged. During the win- states of Gaul. ter, Cæsar, from his retreat at Lucca, had been a close observer of this change in the political game, precipitated as it had been by the proceedings consequent upon the murder of Clodius. The sole consul had undertaken to maintain the position of the Roman oligarchy by an extensive conscription throughout Italy. At the decree of the great council of the nobles, the youth of the peninsula were marshalled in arms;

the Etrurians, the Marsians, the Samnites and the Umbrians were sworn to defend the senate and people' of Rome under the auspices of the new Sulla. It remained to be seen whether the old allies of Marius would prove a source of strength or of weakness to the enemy who had ventured to invoke their aid. At a crisis of such intense interest it was, we may imagine, from no patriotic motives, nor from a stern sense of duty to his country, that Cæsar again withdrew from the focus of action and intrigue to the obscure banishment of a distant province. While he remained unarmed within reach of the city, even his personal safety was at the mercy of his enemies. With less patience and self-control he might have been excited by the adverse turn of circumstances to make a premature appeal to the chances of war. He might have. called at once upon his own devoted legions; he might have thrown himself upon the generous impulses of his friends in the city; even the new Pompeian levies he might have summoned in the names of Marius and Drusus, of Pompædius and Telesinus. But his resources were yet only half developed; the Gauls were hostile and still unbroken. The conquest must be thoroughly completed before they could be bent to his ulterior purposes, and made to serve as willing instruments in his meditated career. The proconsul, in fact, now regarded the magnificent country subjected to his rule not merely as a great province which he had attached to the empire, but rather as a private estate to be organized for the furtherance of his own designs. As such, he made it, in the first place, the nursery of his army, levying fresh Roman legions within its limits, without regard to the authority of the senate, and without recourse to the national treasury. With the same view he quartered his friends and partizans upon the conquered land, establishing them in permanent employments throughout the province, and effecting, through their agency, a systematic development of its resources. The subjugated and allied states he treated with studious forbearance, such

1 Cæs. B. G. vii. 1.: "De senatus consulto certior factus ut omnes juniores Italiæ conjurarent," where conjurare is a military term for simul jurare.

as they seldom experienced from other commanders: he endowed their faithful cities with privileges, and encouraged their commerce, which already flourished in the south under his equitable administration.

Favourable dis

position of the

Gaulish democ

him.

But a closer view of Cæsar's policy in Gaul, with its principles and results, must be reserved for another opportunity; it is sufficient for the present to indicate thus far the direction in which it lay. The barbarians were easily seduced by these caresses. They so- racies towards licited with ardour the honour of enrolment in the Julian gens.' The parts of the country where the old aristocratic rule had been most impaired were those which submitted with least reluctance to the Roman domination. Wherever the people had an influential voice in the direction of affairs, they showed themselves generally willing to accept a yoke which promised personal security, equal burdens, and all the enervating indulgences which Rome lavished upon her obedient subjects. Brief and inglorious had been the flourishing period of Gaulish democracy. On the other hand, it was the chieftains principally who were impatient of the conquest. Wherever the power of this class was great, as in the recent uncivilized communities of Belgium, the flames of insurrection might be repressed, but were not extinguished. It was from this indomitable spirit of resistance to their conqueror, not less than from their acknowledged character among their own countrymen, that the Belgians merited the testimony Cæsar bore them, as the most warlike people of Gaul. Even among the Arvernians the sentiments of clanship were not extinct, and the gallant appeals of Vercingetorix could still sway the feelings of the multitude, in spite of the decision of their assemblies, and the maturer judgment of the nation itself.

1 In the later history of the Empire, we shall meet with an Africanus, an Agricola, a Classicus, a Florus, an Indus, a Sacrovir, a Sabinus, and several others, all of Gaulish extraction, and bearing the gentile name of Julius. It was, however, to Augustus, no doubt, that many families owed their introduction into the Julian house, as he also gave to some of his colonies the designation of Julia, in honour of his adoptive parent.

Cæsar lavishes

and decorates

But upon those parts of Gaul in which the resistance had been vigorous, and where the yoke of conquest was still shaken by repeated revolts, the hand of the prothe treasures of consul lay heavy. The estates of the chieftains, Gaul, enriches his dependants, the ornaments of the cities, the hoarded treasures the city. of the temples, were distributed without remorse among his friends and officers. All that he could withhold from their insatiable appetite he reserved to defray his own lavish expenditure in Rome, to bribe the nobles withmoney, and cajole the multitude with public benefactions. The triumvirs had vied with one another in courting popular applause by pomp and munificence. Cæsar determined to eclipse the theatre of Pompeius by buildings of greater splendour or utility. The spoils of the Gauls were employed to adorn and enlarge the forum, in which their victorious ancestors had encamped; and the remains of the Julian basilica, on the one side, and the contemporary edifice of Æmilius, on the other, still indicate to antiquaries the limits of that venerable enclosure.1

The magnificent results thus brought before their eyes furnished the Romans with a vivid idea of the magnitude of Exultation of the labour by which they had been achieved. the people of Nothing in their history could be remembered Rome at Cæsar's victories. equal to them, nothing certainly in the recorded transactions between Rome and Gaul, fertile as they had

1 Stat. Sylv. i. 1. 29. :

"At laterum passus hinc Julia tecta tuentur,

Illinc belligeri sublimis regia Paulli."

Cicero (ad Att. iv. 16.) says that Oppius and himself were employed as friends of Cæsar to purchase and lay out a space on one side of the forum, which they effected at a cost of 60,000,000 sesterces, by clearing away a great many private dwellings. The Curia and Basilica Julia, which occupied part of this site, were not begun till some years later (see the chronological tables in Bunsen's Beschreibung Roms). Cæsar gave orders at the same time for rebuilding of marble the Septa, or polling-booths in the Campus Martius, and surrounding them with an arcade a mile in length. Cic. l. c. L. Æmilius Paulus was quæstor of Macedonia, prætor a. u. 701, and finally became consul A. U. 704, with C. Marcellus.

been to the republic in disastrous defeats and ineffective victories. Marius, said the popular orator, arrested the deluge of the Gauls in Italy, but he never penetrated into their abodes, he never subdued their cities. Caesar has not only repulsed the Gauls, he has conquered them. The Alps were once the barrier between Italy and the barbarians; the gods had placed them there for that very purpose, for by them alone was Rome protected through the perils of her infancy. Now let them sink and welcome: from the Alps to the ocean Rome has henceforth no enemy to fear."

2

The Gauls flat

ter themselves with revived

ering their in

In the midst, however, of these rhetorical flourishes, it so happened that the Gauls also, on their side, conceived that their cause was on the eve of triumph. They had heard of the confusion which reigned at Rome, of the levies of the youth of Italy, and the hopes of recovapparent imminence of intestine war. They dependence. were persuaded that Cæsar was retained beyond the Alps by the urgency of public affairs. They hoped to be forgotten by Rome, at least for a moment, and determined to make the most of the brief respite which might never again recur. Ten legions indeed remained in their country; but Cæsar was absent. It was the general himself, they said, who had conquered them, and not his army. The proconsul had previously tried the experiment of dispersing his forces through a great extent of territory, and had suffered severe losses in consequence. This winter he concentrated them more closely together; but the tribes which were not awed by their immediate presence were able to carry on their intrigues the more securely, and succeeded in organizing another general revolt; while he was obliged to trust to the fidelity of the Edui and Arverni even for the transmission of his couriers and despatches between the head-quarters of his army and his own winter residence within the Alps. The Gauls, indeed, were not without hopes of intercepting him on his re

1 Cic. de Prov. Consul. 13, 14.

2 Cæs. B. G. vii. 1.: "Addunt ipsi et affingunt rumoribus Galli quod res poscere videbatur, retineri urbano motu Cæsarem."