num, the capital of their country, and, by so doing, kept both the Andi and the Armoricans in check. The neighbouring tribes assembled in great force to reduce him by a siege; all the troops the Romans could spare were sent to his assistance; and the result of a great battle fought on the banks of the Loire, was the total rout of the confederate army. Reduction of the last Gaulish Upon the dispersion of this multitude, a small band once more rallied under the standard of a chieftain named Drappes.' The Romans branded them as a handful of robbers, fugitives, and slaves, united only by Uxellodunum, the hope of plunder, and unworthy of the com- stronghold. mon rights of war. This little troop crossed the country hastily to the southward, and prepared to attack the northwestern frontier of the Province, in expectation of sympathy and aid from various quarters, and especially from Aquitania. But the speedy arrival of two legions in pursuit forced them to abandon this bold enterprize, and shut themselves up in the strong fortress of Uxellodunum. Here they made a desperate resistance; Cæsar himself hastened from the north to conduct the siege, the last important operation that now remained to be performed; and with the reduction of this stronghold, the conquest of Gaul may be said to have been completed.' He did not the enemy with severity. Final Gaul. The proconsul, whose policy it now became to soothe by forbearance the passions of the chieftains and regularly organized states of Gaul, made a severe example of the Cæsar treats rabble captured in Uxellodunum. put them to death, nor sell them into slavery; in pacification of either case their persons would vanish from the sight of their countrymen, and their example be speedily forgotten. As a more permanent memorial of their crimes, and the condign judgment which had overtaken them, he cut off their right hands, and threw them thus mutilated upon the com 1 Auct. B. G. viii. 30. 2 Uxellodunum, le Puy, or Puech d'Usolle in the Quercy, department du Lot. Thierry, Gaulois, iii. 195.; d'Anville. 3 Auct. B. G. viii. 43. Plut. Cæs. 75. passion of their neighbours. Gutruatus, a rebellious chieftain among the Carnutes, he sacrificed to the importunate demands of his soldiers. In making these severe examples, his historian coolly remarks, he well knew his own reputation for clemency, and was satisfied that no one would suspect him of personal cruelty.' Commius, the champion of the Atrebates, whose romantic adventures invest him with a greater interest than most of his fellow-chieftains, was allowed to surrender himself upon honourable terms. Labienus had acted towards him with signal perfidy. Pretending that the repeated rebellion of the Gaulish chieftain justified any treachery on the part of his enemies, he had sent Volusenus to meet him in an amicable conference, and to seize the opportunity of assassi nating him. Struck on the head and almost stunned, the Gaul was saved by the promptitude of his attendants. Partly through apprehension and partly through indignation, he never ceased to regard the Romans with peculiar horror, and determined never again to meet one on terms of peace. The same Volusenus was afterwards employed to pursue the Atrebate from fastness to fastness: the excitement of the chace was added to the bitterness of their mutual hatred. Commius, constantly reduced to the utmost straits, still succeeded in eluding his pursuer; but Volusenus at length approached his prey incautiously; the hunted chieftain turned at bay, and pierced his enemy through the thigh. M. Antonius, who was now commanding in Belgium, was anxious to bring these hostilities to an end; and, both parties being equally tired of the unprofitable contest, overtures of reconciliation were made and accepted, Commius only stipulating that, in the amicable arrangement of the conditions, he should never be personally brought into the presence of a Roman.* The last book of the Commentaries on the Gallic war, 1 Auct. B. G. viii. 38. 44.: "Cæsar quum suam lenitatem cognitam omnibus sciret, neque vereretur, ne quid crudelitate naturæ videretur asperius fecisse," &c. 2 Auct. B. G. viii. 23. 3 Auct. B G. viii. 48. 4 Auct. B. G. 1. c. " the ancient writers of the state to which Gaul was reduced. which have so long guided us, is supplied by the hand of one of the proconsul's officers; nor is it likely, from Pictures from the character of the record which Cæsar himself has left, that if he had completed the work with his own hand, he would have chosen to gratify our curiosity with any general delineation of the state of the Province at the conclusion of his eight years' labour. A writer of a much later age has thought fit to embellish a feeble narrative with a picture which might have struck our imagination more had the colours been less elaborate. Let the reader conceive, says Orosius,' the languid and bloodless figure of Gaul, just escaped from a burning fever and inflammation of her vital parts; let him remark how thin and pale she is, how helpless and nerveless she lies; how she fears even to move a limb lest she should bring on a worse relapse; for the Roman army rushed upon her as a plague stronger than the strongest patient, which rages the more, the more resistance it encounters. The thirst that consumed her was her impatience at the demand for pledges of her perpetual servitude; liberty was the sweet cold draught for which she burned; she raved for the waters which were stolen from her. Or let him turn to a passage of a very different character, the cold and dry enumeration of Plutarch, which seems to bear the impress of the very words of Cæsar himself: He took more than eight hundred cities by storm, worsted three hundred nations, and encountered, at different times, three millions of enemies, of whom he slew one million in action, and made prisoners of an equal number. Whichever of these two records be thought the most impressive, the reader will feel that enough has been said to account for the long prostration of the energies of Gaul from this time forward, and for the almost passive endurance with which it submitted to the establishment and development of the provincial administration. 1 Oros. vi. 12.; comp. Thierry, Gaulois, iii. 206. 2 Plut. Cæs. 15. CHAPTER XIII. POMPEIUS, AS SOLE CONSUL, UNDERTAKES THE REFORM OF ABUSES: HIS ILL SUCCESS: HE CONNECTS HIMSELF AGAIN WITH THE OLIGARCHY BY ESPOUSING THE DAUGHTER OF SCIPIO.-CÆSAR INTRIGUES TO OBTAIN THE CONSULSHIP BEFORE RELINQUISHING HIS PROVINCE. CICERO ACCEPTS THE GOVERNMENT OF CILICIA: HIS CIVIL AND MILITARY ADMINISTRATION.-THE NOBLES SEEK TO DEPRIVE CESAR OF HIS COMMAND.-M. MARCELLUS INSULTS HIM BY THE HARSH PUNISHMENT OF A TRANSPADANE GAUL.-POMPEIUS FALLS SICK.-REJOICINGS FOR HIS RECOVERY.-CÆSAR CONCILIATES THE GAULS.-STRENGTH AND COMPOSITION OF HIS ARMY: HIS POPULARITY WITH THE SOLDIERS.-CHARACTER OF THE YOUNGER CURIO: HIS DEVOTION TO CÆSAR'S INTERESTS.-CESAR RECEIVED WITH ACCLAMATIONS IN CISALPINE GAUL.-HE FIXES HIS QUARTERS AT RAVENNA.-HE OFFERS A COMPROMISE WITH THE SENATE, WHICH IT REFUSES, AND REQUIRES HIM TO RESIGN HIS COMMAND. THE TRIBUNES INTERPOSE, ARE MENACED WITH VIOLENCE, AND THEREUPON FLY TO CESAR'S CAMP. —A. u. 702-704, B. C. 52-50. W Comparison of A. U. 702. B. C. 52. 7HEN Pompeius entered upon his office as sole consul, he submitted his reputation as a statesman to a crowning trial. His position was in substance that of a dictator, but without the odium of the name. But, in return for the irresponsible power which formed the peculiar feature of this extraordinary charge, no less was expected from him than to direct the stream of public affairs back into the old channels which it had deserted, to repair the youth and vigour of a decaying commonwealth, and to restore the spirit of a constitution which seemed only to survive in forms and traditions. The work of Sulla was the model which the nobles thrust under his eyes, still cherishing the vain hope that he possessed the genius no less than the desire to restore an oligarchical su premacy which the march of events had rendered impossible. But if the champion they had summoned to their side was ambitious of wielding the power of his early patron, his motives were merely personal and selfish. The dictator, indeed, had thrown himself in implicit faith upon the principles of his faction. The ascendency of his class was the object to which his career was devoted; he was no less ready to become the martyr than the champion of his political creed. As the spirit of the two men differed, so did the comprehensiveness of their views, and the vigour of their execution. If Sulla was blinded by his original prejudices to the real evils of his times and their true remedies, he at least felt and acknowledged the responsibility which he assumed. He placed his object steadily before him, and cut out a complete constitution, such as it was, with two or three rough strokes of the chisel. It was the work of a master, complete, consistent, fulfilling its idea. But Pompeius, on the contrary, was satisfied with the tentative palliation of a few prominent abuses; he probed nothing to the bottom; he removed some scandals for the moment, but made no attempt to reach the sources of evil. In one respect only the dictator and the sole consul acted alike; neither the one nor the other submitted to the trammels to which they had subjected their countrymen. Sulla, in his zeal for social reformation, had enacted new and severe laws against violence, immorality and extravagance; but in his own person he was notorious for the indulgence of prodigal tastes and licentious passions. The correctives which Pompeius applied to social abuses were subtler in their character; but he, too, scrupulous as he was in all matters of public decorum, could not restrain himself from the violation of his own laws for transient political purposes." 1 Duruy, Hist. des Rom. ii. 297. 2 Tac. Ann. iii. 28.: "Tum Cn. Pompeius tertium consul, corrigendis moribus delectus, et gravior remediis quam delicta erant, suarumque legum auctor idem atque subversor, quæ armis tuebatur armis amisit." It is curious to observe the aristocrat of so late an age still clinging to the conviction that the evils of the times were not so great as Pompeius chose to represent them, and that he betrayed his party by the extent to which he carried his reforms. |