Julius Caesar (11 page)

When he left Rome Caesar knew well that his actions both before and during his consulship would provide material for his open enemies—and others—to bring him to book for anything from high treason to graft at all levels. He had endeavored to effect a reconciliation with Cicero by offering him a position as his legate and right-hand man, but Cicero had seen that this would be a betrayal of his principles and his friends and had wisely refused. He did not want to be contaminated, and he knew as well as Caesar that the latter was protected by law only so long as he remained in office. Already there were many signs that the three allies were in very deep trouble: the two consuls whom they had earmarked to represent their interests in the following year were prevented from campaigning for office by the worthy Bibulus, who, as was fully his right, had the consular elections postponed. Caesar could feel the hatred of his enemies closing around him like a net; the city was becoming unsafe for him, and he moved outside the walls where he spent three months engaged in the preparations for his coming campaigns. As the law stood, once outside the walls his future governorship had begun and until it was over he could not be prosecuted for anything that had happened within the city.

Before he left it was essential to deal with his major enemies, as well as to secure a “friend” whose interests coincided with his own. This was the violent and profligate Clodius who was already indebted to him, and whom the triumvirate now managed to get elected as one of the tribunes for the following year. In this position he would serve them well, and he acted in their interests immediately by having Cicero indicted for the leading role he had played in the execution of the Catiline conspirators. Cicero knew well enough that this would mean banishment or worse, and he knew too that Clodius would stop at nothing. He fled abroad to distant Macedonia for safety. That was one great enemy of the triumvirate safely removed, and the next to go was Cato.

Clodius introduced a bill for the annexation of the kingdom of Cyprus to the empire, and Cato was the man chosen to deal with it. Although it is unlikely that he wanted to leave Rome at that moment, with Pompey and Crassus dominating the city and the senate and Clodius in a position of power, yet Cato could hardly refuse to go. It would have been an insult to the Roman people to reject such an offer, and so the crooked schemer had the upright man trapped. With these two enemies out of Rome, Caesar could leave.

His year as consul had enabled him to lay the foundations for his final rise, but he knew that only if he triumphed in Gaul and achieved so great a strength that he was almost unassailable could he ever return to the city. He also knew that he must keep in constant touch with friends in Rome, never making Pompey’s mistake but always keeping a watch over his shoulder. During the years of campaigning that were to follow, years during which the readers of his accounts might think (and were supposed to) that Caesar was totally concerned with fighting the enemy for the greater glory of Rome it was for the greater glory of himself.

He was now forty-three years old and ahead lay eight years of such harsh campaigning as would have taxed the strength of any young man. The youth who had appeared slight and almost delicate had evolved into an adult of such intense energy that he would wear out men far younger than himself, and was capable of an endurance that few in history can match. It is clear too that at the time he himself had no conception of how long he would be away in the field, nor of the extent of the territory into which his campaigns would lead him. After all, Narbonese Gaul had only come under his command as almost an afterthought and there was only one legion stationed in the province, plus the three legions that waited at Aquileia.

Transalpine Gaul had long been an area of concern to the Romans, for the danger to Italy from violent warrior tribes crossing the Alps was real and constant. Those famous opening words of the
Gallic War
which have haunted or reduced to tears generations of European schoolboys—”All Gaul is divided into three parts”—refer to the three main races who inhabited the area. These were the Gauls themselves, the Belgae and the Aquitani.

J. A. Froude has summarized the areas involved and the people that inhabited them:

The Transalpine Gaul of Caesar was the country included between the Rhine, the Ocean, the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean, and the Alps. Within these limits, including Switzerland, there was at this time a population vaguely estimated at six or seven millions. The Roman Province [Narbonese Gaul] stretched along the coast to the Spanish border; it was bounded on the north by the Cevennes mountains, and for some generations by the Isere; but it had been found necessary lately to annex the territory of the Allobroges (Dauphine and Savoy), and the proconsular authority was now extended to within a few miles of Geneva. The rest was divided into three sections, inhabited by races which, if allied, were distinctly different in language, laws, and institutions. The Aquitani, who were connected with the Spaniards, or perhaps the Basques, held the country between the Pyrenees and the Garonne. The Belgae, whom Caesar believed to have been originally Germans, extended from the mouth of the Seine to the mouth of the Rhine, and inland to the Marne and the Moselle. The people whom the Romans meant especially when they spoke of Gauls occupied all the remainder. At one time the Celts had probably been master of the whole of France, but had gradually yielded to encroachment.

To this it should be added that there were some 200 different tribes of Celtic Gaul.

The news that had reached Rome and which will have alerted Caesar was that a Celtic people, the Helvetii, who had settled in Switzerland had decided, under duress from their German neighbors, to leave their homeland and travel west with a view to settling beyond the Rhone. This was a mass migration, men, women and children, well over 300,000 of them, and the direction in which they were moving seemed to indicate that they would pass through the Roman province. It was clear that this massive locust-like movement must be halted, or the province’s security would be put in jeopardy. The Allobroges, who inhabited what is now Savoy, were probably on their chosen route, but since they had recently been in revolt against Rome it was unlikely that they would do anything to oppose the Helvetii.

Caesar took eight days to reach Geneva, the legionaries making about 35 miles a day. That was where their strength lay, all over the world, against enemies who had no conception of their endurance and discipline. The fourth legion was sent up to join him, along with the allies or provincial auxiliaries. Even so, a legion at maximum strength had no more than 6,000 men and the Helvetii are credited with having had 92,000 men of military age. Caesar, for so long absent from the military world, totally absorbed in the almost equally dangerous one of Roman politics, and whose previous experiences in Spain, and earlier in Asia Minor, had been relatively small, showed from the very start that he remained a master here too. He immediately had the bridge over the Rhone at Geneva demolished.

Seeing that they could not expect an unopposed passage, the Helvetian chiefs came to him in a delegation. They said that they had no wish to make war against the Romans, and only asked for a peaceful passage through the province so that they could reach the lands where they wanted to settle—far in the west. Caesar prevaricated and told them he would give them a reply on 13 April (he had arrived at Geneva on the 2nd). This gave him eight days—eight days in which he intended to block the other routes by which the Helvetii could move on to the west. When they returned, still hopeful that everything could be arranged without recourse to arms, they found an implacable Caesar who told them that he could not allow them any passage through the province and that he would oppose any attempt to force one. It is clear throughout, reading between the lines, that the Helvetii were only on the move in search of new lands and, burdened with their families, and carts and baggage, had no wish for battle. They made one or two attempts to cross the Rh6ne, but in vain, and so they decided to take another and more difficult passage whereby they would not come in conflict with the Romans. This northern route passed through territory to the north of the Narbonese province and so would be of no concern to the province or its governor.

The threat, then, seemed over and another man might have congratulated himself on having achieved a considerable victory without recourse to arms, a brilliant piece of defensive generalship. Only a proconsul intent on conquest and military glory, as Caesar was, would have done anything more than check on the withdrawal of the Helvetii before returning with a feeling of considerable triumph to home base. But Caesar was after another kind of triumph altogether.

12

The Tools of the Trade

CAESAR had other plans for the “peaceful” withdrawal of the Helvetii. But, before considering this first of his Gallic campaigns, it is important to take a look at the men, the units and the arms with which Rome had built up her empire and with which Caesar was about to expand it. Naturally, in view of his Roman audience, Caesar does not bother to elaborate upon the equipment of his troops, but specialists in many countries have since made studies of Roman arms and armor, much helped by the activities of archaeologists. Enough is now known to throw some light upon almost all the basic activities of the legions.

The army of Rome had started out originally as a purely citizen army called out from their homes and farms whenever the republic was threatened and, as soon as the emergency was over, discharged. As for the legionary’s arms and armor, they were whatever he himself could provide. All men between seventeen and forty-six were considered available as soldiers of the state and were given a minimal payment to cover their time spent in the national service. It can readily be seen that such as system could work when these were no more than citizen-soldiers and peasant-farmers defending their small republic, but it began to break down the moment that Rome acquired an empire and overseas entanglements. The man who changed the old military system was Caesar’s uncle, the great Marius, who realized during a lengthy war in North Africa—where there was naturally a great shortage of recruits—that the whole system must be radically altered to meet the new circumstances.

Previously, a property-qualification as well as Roman citizenship had been required of a legionary, but Marius now discarded the former and threw the army open to every Roman citizen. This meant that the urban poor, who were steadily increasing in numbers, flocked to the legions. They looked to their general to provide for them, and consequently a successful general, who could furnish plenty of opportunities for plunder, was always sure of a following. It was plunder, not pay, that rewarded these soldiers. Caesar changed this somewhat by giving his soldiers adequate pay, but this remained the basic ration, as it were, and the looting of a great town and the plundering of foreign land and settlements was what the soldier hoped for. At the same time, being now a professional, he was landless and, when it came to his retirement, looked to his general to provide him with a big enough plot for him to settle and engage those other talents inherited from his peasant forebears.

Another great change that Marius made was to give each soldier an identification with his own particular legion. Whereas previously the legions had been disbanded at the end of every campaign—so that continuity was lost—the legions were now given numbers and a distinctive standard, the eagle. These were to Roman troops what the Colours became to British infantry in later centuries. The loss of an eagle was a disgrace to a legion which would one day have to be redeemed by blood. Another of Marius’ major changes was to cut down the size of the baggage trains, which had previously both held up the pace of the army and provided a desirable object for plunder. Marius saw to it that these were both better organized and reduced, thus increasing mobility. At the same time he had to compensate for this loss of immediate provisions by turning each soldier into his own food carrier. So, in addition to his sword, his spear, his entrenching tool, stakes for palisades and so on, the Roman soldier now also carried his own essential supplies. Jokingly, they referred to themselves as “Marius’ mules.”

The eagle was the standard of the whole legion and, by Caesar’s time, it was made of silver and gold. When the legion marched, it was carried by the senior centurion and guarded by the first cohort of the troops: otherwise it never left camp. There were also special standards for each cohort (a gold hand, for instance, or a series of silver discs) and special banners or flags which bore the name of the legion. All these trappings of war had the same intention—of inspiring regimental spirit, a dedication to one’s own legion, and rivalry with others. Eagles, standards and flags were attached to long poles, ending in an iron-shod point so that they could be stuck in the earth. The poles were fitted with hand-grips so that, when planted in muddy or awkward ground, the bearer could quickly hoist them free whenever the order came to move.

By the time of Caesar the arms of the legionary had been streamlined from an earlier complexity into two only—the sword and the spear. Swords were basically of a type that the Roman had first encountered in Spain. They had a double-cutting edge and a stabbing-point, were sheathed in a metal-bound leather scabbard, and hung on the legionary’s right hand side. The blade-length of a standard sword was 50-56 cm. The spears came in two main types; both were throwing spears, known as a
pilum,
and one was a light-weight and the other a heavy-weight. Both were constructed on the same principle: a long metal shaft which ended in a spear point was attached to a wooden shaft. It was thus quite unlike the simple spears of antiquity and, when sunk deep into a man or horse, instead of simply standing proud as a wooden spear would have done, the
pilum
with its soft iron neck would bend at the point where it joined the wooden stick. A horse thus struck would very likely be brought to the ground, and a man transfixed would be unable to run away but held on the spot by the curve that the
pilum
had now become.