_Ancient Classics for English Readers_
EDITED BY THE
REV. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A.
CÆSAR
_The Volumes published of this Series contain_
HOMER: THE ILIAD, BY THE EDITOR.
HOMER: THE ODYSSEY, BY THE SAME.
HERODOTUS, BY GEORGE C. SWAYNE, M.A.
Late Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
The following Authors, by various Contributors, are in preparation:--
VIRGIL.
HORACE.
ÆSCHYLUS.
SOPHOCLES.
ARISTOPHANES.
CICERO.
JUVENAL.
XENOPHON.
OTHERS WILL FOLLOW.
_A Volume will be published on the 1st of every
alternate Month, price 2s. 6d._
THE COMMENTARIES
OF
CÆSAR
BY
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCLXX
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION, 1
II. FIRST BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL.--CÆSAR DRIVES
FIRST THE SWISS AND THEN THE GERMANS OUT
OF GAUL.--B.C. 58, 28
III. SECOND BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL.--CÆSAR SUBDUES
THE BELGIAN TRIBES.--B.C. 57, 45
IV. THIRD BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL.--CÆSAR SUBDUES
THE WESTERN TRIBES OF GAUL.--B.C. 56, 54
V. FOURTH BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL.--CÆSAR
CROSSES THE RHINE, SLAUGHTERS THE GERMANS,
AND GOES INTO BRITAIN.--B.C. 55, 63
VI. FIFTH BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL.--CÆSAR’S
SECOND INVASION OF BRITAIN.--THE GAULS
RISE AGAINST HIM.--B.C. 54, 74
VII. SIXTH BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL.--CÆSAR PURSUES
AMBIORIX.--THE MANNERS OF THE GAULS
AND OF THE GERMANS ARE CONTRASTED.--B.C.
53, 88
VIII. SEVENTH BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL.--THE REVOLT
OF VERCINGETORIX.--B.C. 52, 100
IX. FIRST BOOK OF THE CIVIL WAR.--CÆSAR CROSSES
THE RUBICON.--FOLLOWS POMPEY TO BRUNDUSIUM.--AND
CONQUERS AFRANIUS IN SPAIN.--B.C.
49, 116
X. SECOND BOOK OF THE CIVIL WAR.--THE TAKING OF
MARSEILLES.--VARRO IN THE SOUTH OF SPAIN.--THE
FATE OF CURIO BEFORE UTICA.--B.C. 49, 131
XI. THIRD BOOK OF THE CIVIL WAR.--CÆSAR FOLLOWS
POMPEY INTO ILLYRIA.--THE LINES OF PETRA
AND THE BATTLE OF PHARSALIA.--B.C. 48, 146
XII. CONCLUSION, 174
CÆSAR
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
It may perhaps be fairly said that the Commentaries of Cæsar are the
beginning of modern history. He wrote, indeed, nearly two thousand years
ago; but he wrote, not of times then long past, but of things which were
done under his own eyes, and of his own deeds. And he wrote of countries
with which we are familiar,--of our Britain, for instance, which he
twice invaded, of peoples not so far remote but that we can identify
them with our neighbours and ourselves; and he so wrote as to make us
feel that we are reading actual history, and not romance. The simplicity
of the narratives which he has left is their chief characteristic, if
not their greatest charm. We feel sure that the circumstances which he
tells us did occur, and that they occurred very nearly as he tells them.
He deals with those great movements in Europe from which have sprung,
and to which we can trace, the present political condition of the
nations. Interested as the scholar, or the reader of general literature,
may be in the great deeds of the heroes of Greece, and in the burning
words of Greek orators, it is almost impossible for him to connect to
any intimate and thoroughly-trusted link the fortunes of Athens, or
Sparta, or Macedonia, with our own times and our own position. It is
almost equally difficult to do so in regard to the events of Rome and
the Roman power before the time of Cæsar. We cannot realise and bring
home to ourselves the Punic Wars or the Social War, the Scipios and the
Gracchi, or even the contest for power between Marius and Sulla, as we
do the Gallic Wars and the invasion of Britain, by which the
civilisation of Rome was first carried westwards, or the great civil
wars,--the “Bellum Civile,”--by which was commenced a line of emperors
continued almost down to our own days, and to which in some degree may
be traced the origin and formation of almost every existing European
nation. It is no doubt true that if we did but know the facts correctly,
we could refer back every political and social condition of the present
day to the remotest period of man’s existence; but the interest fails us
when the facts become doubtful, and when the mind begins to fear that
history is mixed with romance. Herodotus is so mythic that what delight
we have in his writings comes in a very slight degree from any desire on
our part to form a continuous chain from the days of which he wrote down
to our own. Between the marvels of Herodotus and the facts of Cæsar
there is a great interval, from which have come down to us the works of
various noble historians; but with Cæsar it seems that that certainty
commences which we would wish to regard as the distinguishing
characteristic of modern history.
It must be remembered from the beginning that Cæsar wrote only of what
he did or of what he caused to be done himself. At least he only so
wrote in the two works of his which remain to us. We are told that he
produced much besides his Commentaries,--among other works, a poem,--but
the two Commentaries are all of his that we have. The former, in seven
books, relates the facts of his seven first campaigns in Gaul for seven
consecutive years; those campaigns in which he reduced the nations
living between the Rhine, the Rhone, the Mediterranean, the Pyrenees,
and the sea which we now call the British Channel.[1] The latter
Commentary relates the circumstances of the civil war in which he
contended for power against Pompey, his former colleague, with Crassus,
in the first triumvirate, and established that empire to which Augustus
succeeded after a second short-lived triumvirate between himself and
Lepidus and Antony.
It is the object of this little volume to describe Cæsar’s Commentaries
for the aid of those who do not read Latin, and not to write Roman
history; but it may be well to say something, in a few introductory
lines, of the life and character of our author. We are all more or less
familiar with the name of Julius Cæsar. In our early days we learned
that he was the first of those twelve Roman emperors with whose names
it was thought right to burden our young memories; and we were taught to
understand that when he began to reign there ceased to exist that form
of republican government in which two consuls elected annually did in
truth preside over the fortunes of the empire. There had first been
seven kings,--whose names have also been made familiar to us,--then the
consuls, and after them the twelve Cæsars, of whom the great Julius was
the first. So much we all know of him; and we know, too, that he was
killed in the Capitol by conspirators just as he was going to become
emperor, although this latter scrap of knowledge seems to be
paradoxically at variance with the former. In addition to this we know
that he was a great commander and conqueror and writer, who did things
and wrote of them in the “veni, vidi, vici” style--saying of himself, “I
came, I saw, I conquered.” We know that a great Roman army was intrusted
to him, and that he used this army for the purpose of establishing his
own power in Rome by taking a portion of it over the Rubicon, which
little river separated the province which he had been appointed to
govern from the actual Roman territory within which, as a military
servant of the magistrates of the republic, he had no business to appear
as a general at the head of his army. So much we know; and in the
following very short memoir of the great commander and historian, no
effort shall be made,--as has been so frequently and so painfully done
for us in late years,--to upset the teachings of our youth, and to
prove that the old lessons were wrong. They were all fairly accurate,
and shall now only be supplemented by a few further circumstances which
were doubtless once learned by all school-boys and school-girls, but
which some may perhaps have forgotten since those happy days.
Dean Merivale, in one of the early chapters of his admirable history of
the Romans under the Empire, declares that Caius Julius Cæsar is the
greatest name in history. He makes the claim without reserve, and
attaches to it no restriction, or suggestion that such is simply his own
opinion. Claims of this nature, made by writers on behalf of their
pet-heroes, we are, all of us, generally inclined to dispute; but this
claim, great as it is, can hardly be disputed. Dr Merivale does not say
that Cæsar was the greatest man that ever lived. In measuring such
supremacy, men take for themselves various standards. To satisfy the
judgment of one, it is necessary that a poet should be selected; for
another, a teacher of religion; for a third, some intellectual hero who
has assisted in discovering the secrets of nature by the operations of
his own brain; for a fourth, a ruler,--and so on. But the names of some
of these cannot be said to be great in history. Homer, Luther, Galileo,
and Charles V., are great names,--as are also Shakespeare, Knox, Queen
Elizabeth, and Newton. Among these, the two rulers would probably be the
least in general admiration. But no one can assert that the names of the
poets, divines, and philosophers, are greater than theirs in history.
The Dean means that of all men who have lived, and whose deeds are
known to us, Julius Cæsar did most to move the world; and we think that
the Dean is right. Those whom we might, perhaps, compare with Cæsar, are
Alexander, Charlemagne, Cromwell, Napoleon, and Washington. In regard to
the first two, we feel, when claims are made for them, that they are
grounded on the performance of deeds only partially known to us. In the
days of Alexander, history was still dark,--and it had become dark again
in those of Charlemagne. What Cromwell did was confined to our own
islands, and, though he was great for us, he does not loom as large
before the eyes of mankind in general as does one who moved all Europe,
present and future. If there be any fair antagonist to Cæsar in this
claim, it is Napoleon. As a soldier he was equally great, and the area
of his operations was as extended. But there is an old saying which
tells us that no one can be sure of his fortune till the end shall have
come; and Cæsar’s death on the steps of the Capitol was more in
accordance with our ideas of greatness than that of Napoleon at St
Helena. We cannot, moreover, but feel that there were fewer drawbacks
from greatness in the personal demeanour of the Roman “Imperator” and
Dictator than in that of the French Emperor. For Julius Cæsar was never
really emperor, in that sense in which we use the word, and in
accordance with which his successor Augustus really became an emperor.
As to Washington, we may perhaps allow that in moral attributes he was
the greatest of all. To aid his country he dared all,--even a rebel’s
disgraceful death, had he not succeeded where success was most
improbable; and in all that he attempted he succeeded. His is the name
that culminates among those of the men who made the United States a
nation, and does so by the eager consent of all its people. And his work
came altogether from patriotism,--with no alloy of personal ambition.
But it cannot be said that the things he did were great as those which
were done by Cæsar, or that he himself was as potent in the doing of
them. He ventured everything with as grand a purpose as ever warmed the
heart of man, and he was successful; but the things which he did were in
themselves small in comparison with those effected by his less noble
rival for fame. Mommsen, the German historian, describes Cæsar as a man
too great for the scope of his intelligence and power of delineation.
“The historian,” he says, speaking of Cæsar, “when once in a thousand
years he encounters the perfect, can only be silent regarding it.”
Napoleon also, in his life of Cæsar, paints his hero as perfect; but
Napoleon when doing so is, in fact, claiming godlike perfection for that
second Cæsar, his uncle. And the perfection which he claims is not that
of which Mommsen speaks. The German intends to convey to us his
conviction that Cæsar was perfect in human capacity and intelligence.
Napoleon claims for him moral perfection. “We may be convinced,” says
the Emperor, “by the above facts, that during his first consulate, one
only motive animated Cæsar,--namely, the public interest.” We cannot,
however, quite take the facts as the Emperor of the French gives them to
us, nor can we share his conviction; but the common consent of reading
men will probably acknowledge that there is in history no name so great
as that of Julius Cæsar,--of whose written works some account is
intended to be given in the following chapters.
He was born just one hundred years before Christ, and came of an old
noble Roman family, of which Julius and not Cæsar was the distinctive
name. Whence came the name of Cæsar has been a matter of doubt and of
legend. Some say that it arose from the thick hair of one of the Julian
tribe; others that a certain scion of the family, like Macduff, “was
from his mother’s womb untimely ripped,” for which derivations Latin
words are found to be opportune. Again we are told that one of the
family once kept an elephant,--and we are referred to some eastern
language in which the word for elephant has a sound like Cæsar. Another
legend also rose from Cæsar’s name, which, in the Gallic language of
those days,--very luckily for Cæsar,--sounded as though one should say,
“Send him back.” Cæsar’s horse once ran away with him, and carried him
over to the enemy. An insolent Gaul, who knew him, called out, “Cæsar,
Cæsar!” and so the other Gauls, obeying the order supposed to be given,
allowed the illustrious one to escape. It must be acknowledged, however,
that the learned German who tells us this story expresses a contemptuous
conviction that it cannot be true. Whatever may have produced the word,
its significance, derived from the doings and writings of Caius Julius,
has been very great. It has come to mean in various languages the holder
of despotic power; and though it is said that, as a fact, the Russian
title Czar has no connection with the Roman word, so great is the
prestige of the name, that in the minds of men the popular appellation
of the Russian Emperor will always be connected with that of the line of
the Roman Emperor.
Cæsar was the nephew by marriage of that Marius who, with alternations
of bloody successes and seemingly irreparable ruin, had carried on a
contest with Sulla for supreme power in the republic. Sulla in these
struggles had represented the aristocrats and patricians,--what we
perhaps may call the Conservative interest; while Marius, whose origin
was low, who had been a common soldier, and, rising from the ranks, had
become the darling of the army and of the people, may perhaps be
regarded as one who would have called himself a Liberal, had any such
term been known in those days. His liberality,--as has been the case
with other political leaders since his time,--led him to personal power.
He was seven times Consul, having secured his seventh election by
atrocious barbarities and butcherings of his enemies in the city; and
during this last consulship he died. The young Cæsar, though a patrician
by birth, succeeded his uncle in the popular party, and seems from a
very early age,--from his very boyhood,--to have looked forward to the
power which he might win by playing his cards with discretion.
And very discreet he was,--self-confident to a wonderful degree, and
patient also. It is to be presumed that most of our readers know how the
Roman Republic fell, and the Roman Empire became established as the
result of the civil wars which began with Marius and ended with, that
“young Octavius” whom we better recognise as Augustus Cæsar. Julius
Cæsar was the nephew by marriage of Marius, and Augustus was the
great-nephew and heir of Julius. By means of conscriptions and murders,
worse in their nature, though less probably in number, than those which
disgraced the French Revolution, the power which Marius achieved almost
without foresight, for which the great Cæsar strove from his youth
upwards with constant foresight, was confirmed in the hands of Augustus,
and bequeathed by him to the emperors. In looking back at the annals of
the world, we shall generally find that despotic power has first grown
out of popular movement against authority. It was so with our own
Cromwell, has twice been so in the history of modern France, and
certainly was so in the formation of the Roman Empire. In the great work
of establishing that empire, it was the mind and hand and courage of
Cæsar that brought about the result, whether it was for good or evil.
And in looking at the lives of the three men--Marius, Cæsar, and
Augustus, who followed each other, and all worked to the same end, the
destruction of that oligarchy which was called a Republic in Rome--we
find that the one was a man, while the others were beasts of prey. The
cruelties of Marius as an old man, and of Augustus as a young one, were
so astounding as, even at this distance, to horrify the reader, though
he remembers that Christianity had not yet softened men’s hearts.
Marius, the old man, almost swam in the blood of his enemies, as also
did his rival Sulla; but the young Octavius, he whom the gods favoured
so long as the almost divine[2] Augustus, cemented his throne with the
blood of his friends. To complete the satisfaction of Lepidus and
Antony, his comrades in the second triumvirate, he did not scruple to
add to the list of those who were to die, the names of the nearest and
dearest to him. Between these monsters of cruelty--between Marius and
Sulla, who went before him, and Octavius and Antony who followed
him--Cæsar has become famous for clemency. And yet the hair of the
reader almost stands on end with horror as Cæsar recounts in page after
page the stories of cities burned to the ground, and whole communities
slaughtered in cold blood. Of the destruction of the women and children
of an entire tribe, Cæsar will leave the unimpassioned record in one
line. But this at least may be said of Cæsar, that he took no delight in
slaughter. When it became in his sight expedient that a people should
suffer, so that others might learn to yield and to obey, he could give
the order apparently without an effort. And we hear of no regrets, or of
any remorse which followed the execution of it. But bloodshed in itself
was not sweet to him. He was a discreet, far-seeing man, and could do
without a scruple what discretion and caution demanded of him.
And it may be said of Cæsar that he was in some sort guided in his life
by sense of duty and love of country; as it may also be said of his
great contemporaries, Pompey and Cicero. With those who went before
him, Marius and Sulla, as also with those who followed him, Antony and
Augustus, it does not seem that any such motives actuated them. Love of
power and greed, hatred of their enemies and personal ambition, a
feeling that they were urged on by their fates to seek for high place,
and a resolve that it was better to kill than be killed, impelled them
to their courses. These feelings were strong, too, with Cæsar, as they
are strong to this day with statesmen and with generals; but mingled
with them in Cæsar’s breast there was a noble idea, that he would be
true to the greatness of Rome, and that he would grasp at power in order
that the Roman Empire might be well governed. Augustus, doubtless, ruled
well; and to Julius Cæsar very little scope for ruling was allowed after
his battling was done; but to Augustus no higher praise can be assigned
than that he had the intelligence to see that the temporary wellbeing of
the citizens of Rome was the best guarantee for his own security.
Early in life Cæsar lifted himself to high position, though he did so in
the midst of dangers. It was the wonder of those around him that Sulla
did not murder him when he was young,--crush him while he was yet, as it
were, in his shell; but Sulla spared him, and he rose apace. We are told
that he became priest of Jupiter at seventeen, and he was then already a
married man. He early trained himself as a public orator, and amidst
every danger espoused the popular cause in Rome. He served his country
in the East,--in Bithynia, probably,--escaping, by doing so, the perils
of a residence in the city. He became Quæstor and then Ædile, assisted
by all the Marian party, as that party would assist the rising man whom
they regarded as their future leader. He attacked and was attacked, and
was “indefatigable in harassing the aristocracy,”[3] who strove, but
strove in vain, to crush him. Though young, and addicted to all the
pleasures of youth,--a trifler, as Sulla once called him,--he omitted to
learn nothing that was necessary for him to know as a chief of a great
party and a leader of great armies. When he was thirty-seven he was made
Pontifex Maximus, the official chief of the priesthood of Rome, the
office greatest in honour of any in the city, although opposed by the
whole weight of the aristocracy, and although Catulus was a candidate,
who, of all that party, was the highest not only in renown but in
virtue. He became Prætor the next year, though again he was opposed by
all the influence of those who feared him. And, after his twelve months
of office, he assumed the government of Spain,--the province allotted to
him as Proprætor, in accordance with the usage of the Republic,--in the
teeth of a decree of the Senate ordering him to remain in Rome. Here he
gained his first great military success, first made himself known to his
soldiery, and came back to Rome entitled to the honour of a triumph.
But there was still another step on the ladder of the State before he
could assume the position which no doubt he already saw before him. He
must be Consul before he could be the master of many legions, and in
order that he might sue in proper form for the consulship, it was
necessary that he should abandon his Triumph. He could only triumph as
holding the office of General of the Republic’s forces, and as General
or Imperator he could not enter the city. He abandoned the Triumph, sued
for his office in the common fashion, and enabled the citizens to say
that he preferred their service to his personal honours. At the age of
forty-one he became Consul. It was during the struggle for the
consulship that the triumvirate was formed, of which subsequent ages
have heard so much, and of which Romans at the time heard probably so
little. Pompey, who had been the political child of Sulla, and had been
the hope of the patricians to whom he belonged, had returned to Rome
after various victories which he had achieved as Proconsul in the East,
had triumphed,--and had ventured to recline on his honours, disbanding
his army and taking to himself the credit of subsiding into privacy. The
times were too rough for such honest duty, and Pompey found himself for
a while slighted by his party. Though he had thought himself able to
abandon power, he could not bear the loss of it. It may be that he had
conceived himself able to rule the city by his influence without the aid
of his legions. Cæsar tempted him, and they two with Crassus, who was
wanted for his wealth, formed the first triumvirate. By such pact among
themselves they were to rule all Rome and all Rome’s provinces; but
doubtless, by resolves within himself of which no one knew, Cæsar
intended even then to grasp the dominion of the whole in his own hands.
During the years that followed,--the years in which Cæsar was engaged
in his Gallic wars,--Pompey remained at Rome, not indeed as Cæsar’s
friend--for that hollow friendship was brought to an end by the death of
Julia, Cæsar’s daughter, whom Pompey, though five years Cæsar’s elder,
had married--but in undecided rivalship to the active man who in foreign
wars was preparing legions by which to win the Empire. Afterwards, when
Cæsar, as we shall hear, had crossed the Rubicon, their enmity was
declared. It was natural that they should be enemies. In middle life,
Pompey, as we have seen, had married Cæsar’s daughter, and Cæsar’s
second wife had been a Pompeia.[4] But when they were young, and each
was anxious to attach himself to the politics of his own party, Pompey
had married the daughter-in-law of Sulla, and Cæsar had married the
daughter of Cinna, who had almost been joined with Marius in leading
the popular party. Such having been the connection they had made in
their early lives, it was natural that Pompey and Cæsar should be
enemies, and that the union of those two with any other third in a
triumvirate should be but a hollow compromise, planned and carried out
only that time might be gained.
Cæsar was now Consul, and from his consular chair laughed to scorn the
Senate and the aristocratic colleague with whom he was joined,--Bibulus,
of whom we shall again hear in the Commentary on the civil war. During
his year of office he seems to have ruled almost supreme and almost
alone. The Senate was forced to do his bidding, and Pompey, at any rate
for this year, was his ally. We already know that to prætors and to
consuls, after their year of office in the city, were confided the
government of the great provinces of the Republic, and that these
officers while so governing were called proprætors and proconsuls. After
his prætorship Cæsar had gone for a year to southern Spain, the province
which had been assigned to him, whence he came back triumphant,--but not
to enjoy his Triumph. At the expiration of his consulship the joint
provinces of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum were assigned to him, not for
one year, but for five years; and to these was added Transalpine Gaul,
by which grant dominion was given to him over all that country which we
now know as Northern Italy, over Illyria to the east, and to the west
across the Alps, over the Roman province already established in the
south of France. This province, bounded on the north by Lake Leman and
the Swiss mountains, ran south, to the Mediterranean, and to the west
half across the great neck of land which joins Spain to the continent of
Europe. This province of Transalpine Gaul was already Roman, and to
Cæsar was intrusted the task of defending this, and of defending Rome
itself, from the terrible valour of the Gauls. That he might do this it
was necessary that he should collect his legions in that other Gaul
which we now know as the north of Italy.
It does not seem that there was any preconceived idea that Cæsar should
reduce all Gallia beneath the Roman yoke. Hitherto Rome had feared the
Gauls, and had been subject to their inroads. The Gauls in former years
had even made their way as invaders into the very city, and had been
bought out with a ransom. They had spread themselves over Northern
Italy, and hence, when Northern Italy was conquered by Roman arms, it
became a province under the name of Cisalpine Gaul. Then, during the
hundred years which preceded Cæsar’s wars, a province was gradually
founded and extended in the south of France, of which Marseilles was the
kernel. Massilia had been a colony of Greek merchants, and was supported
by the alliance of Rome. Whither such alliance leads is known to all
readers of history. The Greek colony became a Roman town, and the Roman
province stretched itself around the town. It was Cæsar’s duty, as
governor of Transalpine Gaul, to see that the poor province was not hurt
by those ravaging Gauls. How he performed that duty he tells us in his
first Commentary.
During the fourth year of his office, while Pompey and Crassus, his
colleagues in the then existing triumvirate, were consuls, his term of
dominion over the three provinces was prolonged by the addition of five
other years. But he did not see the end of the ten years in that scene
of action. Julia, his daughter, had died, and his great rival was
estranged from him. The Senate had clamoured for his recall, and Pompey,
with doubtful words, had assented, A portion of his army was demanded
from him, was sent by him into Italy in obedience to the Senate, and
shortly afterwards was placed under the command of Pompey. Then Cæsar
found that the Italian side of the Alps was the more convenient for his
purposes, that the Hither or Cisalpine Gaul demanded his services, and
that it would be well for him to be near the Rubicon. The second
Commentary, in three books, ‘De Bello Civili,’ giving us his record of
the civil war, tells us of his deeds and fortunes for the next two
years,--the years B.C. 49 and 48. The continuation of his career as a
general is related in three other Commentaries, not by his own hand, to
which, as being beyond the scope of this volume, only short allusion
will be made. Then came one year of power, full of glory, and, upon the
whole, well used; and after that there came the end, of which the tale
has been so often told, when he fell, stabbed by friend and foe, at the
foot of Pompey’s pillar in the Capitol.
It is only further necessary that a few words should be added as to the
character of Cæsar’s writings,--for it is of his writings rather than of
his career that it is intended here to give some idea to those who have
not an opportunity of reading them. Cæsar’s story can hardly be told in
this little volume, for it is the history of the world as the world then
was. The word which our author has chosen as a name for his work,--and
which now has become so well known as connected with Cæsar, that he who
uses it seems to speak of Cæsar,--means, in Cæsar’s sense, a Memoir.
Were it not for Cæsar, a “Commentary” would be taken to signify that
which the critic had added, rather than the work which the author had
first produced. Cæsar’s “Commentaries” are memoirs written by himself,
descriptive of his different campaigns, in which he treats of himself in
the third person, and tells his story as it might have been told by some
accompanying scribe or secretary. This being so, we are of course driven
to inquire whether some accompanying scribe or secretary may not in
truth have done the work. And there is doubtless one great argument
which must be powerful with us all towards the adoption of such a
surmise. The amount of work which Cæsar had on hand, not only in regard
to his campaigns, but in the conduct of his political career, was so
great as to have overtasked any brain without the addition of literary
labour. Surely no man was ever so worked; for the doctrine of the
division of labour did not prevail then in great affairs as it does now.
Cæsar was not only a general; he was also an engineer, an astronomer, an
orator, a poet, a high priest--to whom, as such, though himself, as we
are told, a disbeliever in the gods of Olympus, the intricate and
complicated system of Roman worship was a necessary knowledge. And he
was a politician, of whom it may be said that, though he was intimately
acquainted with the ferocity of opposition, he knew nothing of its
comparative leisure. We have had busy statesmen writing books, two prime
ministers translating Homer, another writing novels, a fourth known as a
historian, a dramatist, and a biographer. But they did not lead armies
as well as the Houses of Parliament, and they were occasionally blessed
by the opportunities of comparative political retirement which
opposition affords. From the beginning of the Gallic war, Cæsar was
fighting in person every year but one till he died. It was only by
personal fighting that he could obtain success. The reader of the
following pages will find that, with the solitary exception of the siege
of Marseilles, nothing great was done for him in his absence. And he had
to make his army as well as to lead it. Legion by legion, he had to
collect it as he needed it, and to collect it by the force of his own
character and of his own name. The abnormal plunder with which it was
necessary that his soldiers should be allured to abnormal valour and
toil had to be given as though from his own hand. For every detail of
the soldiers’ work he was responsible; and at the same time it was
incumbent on him so to manipulate his Roman enemies at Rome,--and,
harder still than that, his Roman friends,--that confusion and
destruction should not fall upon him as a politician. Thus weighted,
could he write his own Commentaries? There is reason to believe that
there was collected by him, no doubt with the aid of his secretaries, a
large body of notes which were known as the Ephemerides of
Cæsar,--jottings down, as we may say, taken from day to day. Were not
the Commentaries which bear Cæsar’s name composed from these notes by
some learned and cunning secretary?
These notes have been the cause of much scholastic wrath to some of the
editors and critics. One learned German, hotly arguing that Cæsar wrote
no Ephemerides, does allow that somebody must have written down the
measurements of the journeys, of the mountains, and of the rivers, the
numbers also of the captives and of the slaves.[5] “Not even I,” says
he,--“not even do I believe that Cæsar was able to keep all these things
simply in his memory.” Then he goes on to assert that to the keeping of
such notes any scribe was equal; and that it was improbable that Cæsar
could have found time for the keeping of notes when absolutely in his
tent. The indignation and enthusiasm are comic, but the reasoning seems
to be good. The notes were probably collected under Cæsar’s immediate
eyes by his secretaries; but there is ample evidence that the
Commentaries themselves are Cæsar’s own work. They seem to have become
known at once to the learned Romans of the day; and Cicero, who was
probably the most learned, and certainly the best critic of the time,
speaks of them without any doubt as to their authorship. It was at once
known that the first seven books of the Gallic War were written by
Cæsar, and that the eighth was not. This seems to be conclusive. But in
addition to this, there is internal evidence. Cæsar writes in the third
person, and is very careful to maintain that mode of expression. But he
is not so careful but that on three or four occasions he forgets
himself, and speaks in the first person. No other writer, writing for
Cæsar, would have done so. And there are certain trifles in the mode of
telling the story, which must have been personal to the man. He writes
of “young” Crassus, and “young” Brutus, as no scribe would have written;
and he shows, first his own pride in obtaining a legion from Pompey’s
friendship, and then his unmeasured disgust when the Senate demand and
obtain from him that legion and another one, and when Pompey uses them
against himself, in a fashion which would go far to prove the
authenticity of each Commentary, were any proof needed. But the assent
of Cæsar’s contemporaries suffices for this without other evidence.
And it seems that they were written as the wars were carried on, and
that each was published at once. Had it not been so, we could not
understand that Cæsar should have begun the second Commentary before he
had finished the first. It seems that he was hindered by the urgency of
the Civil War from writing what with him would have been the two last
books of the Gallic War, and therefore put the completion of that work
into the hands of his friend Hirtius, who wrote the memoir of the two
years in one book. And Cæsar’s mode of speaking of men who were at one
time his friends and then his enemies, shows that his first Commentary
was completed and out of hand before the other was written. Labienus,
who in the Gallic War was Cæsar’s most trusted lieutenant, went over to
the other side and served under Pompey in the Civil War. He could not
have failed to allude in some way to the desertion of Labienus, in the
first Commentary, had Labienus left him and joined Pompey while the
first Commentary was still in his hands.
His style was at once recognised by the great literary critic of the day
as being excellent for its intended purpose. Cæsar is manifestly not
ambitious of literary distinction, but is very anxious to convey to his
readers a narrative of his own doings, which shall be graphic, succinct,
intelligible, and sufficiently well expressed to insure the attention of
readers. Cicero, the great critic, thus speaks of the Commentaries;
“Valde quidam, inquam, probandos; nudi enim sunt, recti, et venusti,
omni ornatu orationis, tanquam veste, detracto.” The passage is easily
understood, but not perhaps very easily translated into English. “I
pronounce them, indeed, to be very commendable, for they are simple,
straightforward, agreeable, with all rhetorical ornament stripped from
them, as a garment is stripped.” This was written by Cicero while Cæsar
was yet living, as the context shows. And Cicero does not mean to imply
that Cæsar’s writings are bald or uncouth: the word “venusti” is
evidence of this. And again, speaking of Cæsar’s language, Cicero says
that Cæsar spoke with more finished choice of words than almost any
other orator of the day. And if he so spoke, he certainly so wrote, for
the great speeches of the Romans were all written compositions.
Montaigne says of Cæsar: “I read this author with somewhat more
reverence and respect than is usually allowed to human writings, one
while considering him in his person, by his actions and miraculous
greatness, and another in the purity and inimitable polish of his
language and style, wherein he not only excels all other historians, as
Cicero confesses, but peradventure even Cicero himself.” Cicero,
however, confesses nothing of the kind, and Montaigne is so far wrong.
Cæsar was a great favourite with Montaigne, who always speaks of his
hero with glowing enthusiasm.
To us who love to make our language clear by the number of words used,
and who in writing rarely give ourselves time for condensation, the
closely-packed style of Cæsar is at first somewhat difficult of
comprehension. It cannot be read otherwise than slowly till the reader’s
mind is trained by practice to Cæsarean expressions, and then not with
rapidity. Three or four adjectives, or more probably participles, joined
to substantives in a sentence, are continually intended to convey an
amount of information for which, with us, three or four other distinct
sentences would be used. It is almost impossible to give the meaning of
Cæsar in English without using thrice as many words as he uses. The same
may be said of many Latin writers,--perhaps of all; so great was the
Roman tendency to condensation, and so great is ours to dilution. But
with Cæsar, though every word means much, there are often many words in
the same sentence, and the reader is soon compelled to acknowledge that
skipping is out of the question, and that quick reading is undesirable.
That which will most strike the ordinary English reader in the narrative
of Cæsar is the cruelty of the Romans,--cruelty of which Cæsar himself
is guilty to a frightful extent, and of which he never expresses
horror. And yet among his contemporaries he achieved a character for
clemency which he has retained to the present day. In describing the
character of Cæsar, without reference to that of his contemporaries, it
is impossible not to declare him to have been terribly cruel. From
bloodthirstiness he slaughtered none; but neither from tenderness did he
spare any. All was done from policy; and when policy seemed to him to
demand blood, he could, without a scruple,--as far as we can judge,
without a pang,--order the destruction of human beings, having no regard
to number, sex, age, innocence, or helplessness. Our only excuse for him
is that he was a Roman, and that Romans were indifferent to blood.
Suicide was with them the common mode of avoiding otherwise inevitable
misfortune, and it was natural that men who made light of their own
lives should also make light of the lives of others. Of all those with
whose names the reader will become acquainted in the following pages,
hardly one or two died in their beds. Cæsar and Pompey, the two great
ones, were murdered. Dumnorix, the Æduan, was killed by Cæsar’s orders.
Vercingetorix, the gallantest of the Gauls, was kept alive for years
that his death might grace Cæsar’s Triumph. Ariovistus, the German,
escaped from Cæsar, but we hear soon after of his death, and that the
Germans resented it. He doubtless was killed by a Roman weapon. What
became of the hunted Ambiorix we do not know, but his brother king
Cativolcus poisoned himself with the juice of yew-tree. Crassus, the
partner of Cæsar and Pompey in the first triumvirate, was killed by the
Parthians. Young Crassus, the son, Cæsar’s officer in Gaul, had himself
killed by his own men that he might not fall into the hands of the
Parthians, and his head was cut off and sent to his father. Labienus
fell at Munda, in the last civil war in Spain. Quintus Cicero, Cæsar’s
lieutenant, and his greater brother, the orator, and his son, perished
in the proscriptions of the second triumvirate. Titurius and Cotta were
slaughtered with all their army by Ambiorix. Afranius was killed by
Cæsar’s soldiers after the last battle in Africa. Petreius was hacked to
pieces in amicable contest by King Juba. Varro indeed lived to be an old
man, and to write many books. Domitius, who defended Marseilles for
Pompey, was killed in the flight after Pharsalia. Trebonius, who
attacked Marseilles by land, was killed by a son-in-law of Cicero at
Smyrna. Of Decimus Brutus, who attacked Marseilles by sea, one Camillus
cut off the head and sent it as a present to Antony. Curio, who
attempted to master the province of Africa on behalf of Cæsar, rushed
amidst his enemy’s swords and was slaughtered. King Juba, who conquered
him, failing to kill himself, had himself killed by a slave. Attius
Varus, who had held the province for Pompey, fell afterwards at Munda.
Marc Antony, Cæsar’s great lieutenant in the Pharsalian wars, stabbed
himself. Cassius Longinus, another lieutenant under Cæsar, was drowned.
Scipio, Pompey’s partner in greatness at Pharsalia, destroyed himself in
Africa. Bibulus, his chief admiral, pined to death. Young Ptolemy, to
whom Pompey fled, was drowned in the Nile. The fate of his sister
Cleopatra is known to all the world. Pharnaces, Cæsar’s enemy in Asia,
fell in battle. Cato destroyed himself at Utica. Pompey’s eldest son,
Cnæus, was caught wounded in Spain and slaughtered. Sextus the younger
was killed some years afterwards by one of Antony’s soldiers. Brutus and
Cassius, the two great conspirators, both committed suicide. But of
these two we hear little or nothing in the Commentaries; nor of Augustus
Cæsar, who did contrive to live in spite of all the bloodshed through
which he had waded to the throne. Among the whole number there are not
above three, if so many, who died fairly fighting in battle.
The above is a list of the names of men of mark,--of warriors chiefly,
of men who, with their eyes open, knowing what was before them, went out
to encounter danger for certain purposes. The bloody catalogue is so
complete, so nearly comprises all whose names are mentioned, that it
strikes the reader with almost a comic horror. But when we come to the
slaughter of whole towns, the devastation of country effected purposely
that men and women might starve, to the abandonment of the old, the
young, and the tender, that they might perish on the hillsides, to the
mutilation of crowds of men, to the burning of cities told us in a
passing word, to the drowning of many thousands,--mentioned as we should
mention the destruction of a brood of rats,--the comedy is all over, and
the heart becomes sick. Then it is that we remember that the coming of
Christ has changed all things, and that men now,--though terrible things
have been done since Christ came to us,--are not as men were in the days
of Cæsar.