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CHAPTER XII. CONCLUSION.Five words which are used by C?sar in the description of this affair give us a strong instance of his conciseness in the use of words, and of the capability for conciseness which the Latin language affords. “Premebantur Afraniani pabulatione, aquabantur ?gre.” “The soldiers of Afranius were much distressed in the matter of forage, and could obtain water only with great difficulty.” These twenty words translate those five which C?sar uses, perhaps with fair accuracy; but many more than twenty would probably have been used by any English historian in dealing with the same facts.

��ʿ��ʫ� ���Ž�ɳ����8066���Ž�ɳ����8066Pompey orders that his first rank shall not leave its order to advance, but shall receive the shock of C?sar’s attack. C?sar points out to us that he is wrong in this, because the very excitement of a first attack gives increased energy and strength to the men. C?sar’s{168} legionaries are told to attack, and they rush over the space intervening between the first ranks to do so. But they are so well trained that they pause and catch their breath before they throw their weapons. Then they throw their piles and draw their swords, and the ranks of the two armies are close pitted against each other.���Ž�ɳ����8066

���Ž�ɳ����8066���Ž�ɳ����8066Having done so much, Ambiorix and the Eburones do not desist. Now, if ever, after so great a disgrace, and with legions still scattered, may C?sar be worsted. Q. Cicero is with his legion among the Nervii, and thither Ambiorix goes. The Nervii are quite ready, and Cicero is attacked in his camp. And here, too, for a long while it goes very badly with the Romans;—so badly that Cicero is hardly able to hold his ramparts against the attacks made upon them by the barbarians. Red-hot balls of clay and hot arrows are thrown into the camp, and there is a fire. The messengers sent to C?sar for help are slain on the road, and the Romans begin to think that there is hardly a chance for them of escape. Unless C?sar be with them they are not safe. All their power, their prestige, their certainty of conquest, lies in C?sar. Cicero behaves like a prudent and a valiant man; but unless he had at last succeeded in getting a Gaulish slave to take a letter concealed in a dart to C?sar, the enemy would have destroyed him.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.���Ž�ɳ����8066

���Ž�ɳ����8066Soon after this Gaul was really subdued, and then we hear the first preparatory notes of the coming civil war. An attempt was made at Rome to ruin C?sar in his absence. One of the consuls of the year,—B.C. 51,—endeavoured to deprive him of the remainder of the term of his proconsulship, and to debar him from seeking the suffrages of the people for the consulship in his absence. Two of his legions are also demanded from him, and are surrendered by him. The order, indeed, is for one legion from him and one from Pompeius; but he has had with him, as the reader will remember, a legion borrowed from Pompeius;—and thus in fact C?sar is called upon to give up two legions. And he gives them up,—not being as yet quite ready to pass the Rubicon.���Ž�ɳ����8066

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It is the object of this little volume to describe C?sar’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 C?sar. In our early days we learned that he{4} 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 C?sars, 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{5} 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.���ȿ��� ���Ž�ɳ����8066During the latter days of this contest the Afranians, as they are called—Roman legionaries, as are the soldiers of C?sar—fraternise with their brethren in C?sar’s camp, and there is something of free intercourse between the two Roman armies. The upshot is that the soldiers of Afranius resolve to give themselves up to C?sar, bargaining, however, that their own generals shall be secure. Afranius is willing enough; but his{129} brother-general, Petreius, with more of the Roman at heart, will not hear of it. We shall hear hereafter the strange fate of this Petreius. He stops the conspiracy with energy, and forces from his own men, and even from Afranius, an oath against surrender. He orders that all C?sar’s soldiers found in their camp shall be killed, and, as C?sar tells us, brings back the affair to the old form of war. But it is all of no avail. The Afranians are so driven by the want of water, that the two generals are at last compelled to capitulate and lay down their arms.���Ž�ɳ����8066

���Ž�ɳ����8066C?sar had two kinds of ships—“naves long?,” long ships for carrying soldiers; and “naves onerari?,” ships for carrying burdens. The long ships do not seem to have been such ships of war as the Romans generally used in their sea-fights, but were handier, and more easily worked, than the transports. These he laid broadside to the shore, and harassed the poor natives with stones and arrows. Then the eagle-bearer of the tenth legion jumped into the sea, proclaiming that he, at any rate, would do his duty. Unless they wished to see their eagle fall into the hands of the enemy, they must follow him. “Jump down, he said, my fellow-soldiers, unless you wish to betray your eagle to the enemy. I at least will do my duty to the Republic and to our General. When he had said this with a loud voice, he threw himself out of the ship and advanced the eagle against the enemy.” Seeing and hearing this, the men leaped forth freely, from that ship and from others. As usual, there was some sharp fighting. “Pugnatum est ab utrisque acriter.” It is{72} nearly always the same thing. C?sar throws away none of his glory by underrating his enemy. But at length the Britons fly. “This thing only was wanting to C?sar’s usual good fortune,”—that he was deficient in cavalry wherewith to ride on in pursuit, and “take the island!” Considering how very short a time he remains in the island, we feel that his complaint against fortune is hardly well founded. But there is a general surrender, and a claiming of hostages, and after a few days a sparkle of new hope in the breasts of the Britons. A storm arises, and C?sar’s ships are so knocked about that he does not know how he will get back to Gaul. He is troubled by a very high tide, not understanding the nature of these tides. As he had only intended this for a little tentative trip,—a mere taste of a future war with Britain,—he had brought no large supply of corn with him. He must get back, by hook or by crook. The Britons, seeing how it is with him, think that they can destroy him, and make an attempt to do so. The seventh legion is in great peril, having been sent out to find corn, but is rescued. Certain of his ships,—those which had been most grievously handled by the storm,—he breaks up, in order that he may mend the others with their materials. When we think how long it takes us to mend ships, having dockyards, and patent slips, and all things ready, this is most marvellous to us. But he does mend his ships, and while so doing he has a second fight with the Britons, and again repulses them. There is a burning and destroying of everything far and wide, a gathering of ambassadors to C?sar asking{73} for terms, a demand for hostages,—a double number of hostages now,—whom C?sar desired to have sent over to him to Gaul, because at this time of the year he did not choose to trust them to ships that were unseaworthy; and he himself, with all his army, gets back into the Boulogne and Calais country. Two transports only are missing, which are carried somewhat lower down the coast. There are but three hundred men in these transports, and these the Morini of those parts threaten to kill unless they will give up their arms. But C?sar sends help, and even these three hundred are saved from disgrace. There is, of course, more burning of houses and laying waste of fields because of this little attempt, and then C?sar puts his army into winter quarters.When the number of men whom C?sar took with him into countries hitherto unknown to him or his army is considered, and the apparently reckless audacity with which he did so, it must be acknowledged that he himself says very little about his difficulties. He must constantly have had armies for which to provide twice as large as our Crimean army,—probably as large as the united force of the English and French in the Crimea; and he certainly could not bring with him what he wanted in ships. The road from Balaclava up to the heights over Sebastopol, we know, was very bad; but it was short. The road from the foot of the Alps in the Roman province to the countries with which we were dealing in the last chapter could not, we should say, have been very good two thousand{56} years ago, and it certainly was very long;—nearly a hundred miles for C?sar to every single one of those that were so terrible to us in the Crimea. C?sar, however, carried but little with him beyond his arms and implements of war, and of those the heaviest he no doubt made as he went. The men had an allowance of corn per day, besides so much pay. We are told that the pay before C?sar’s time was 100 asses a-month for the legionaries,—the as being less than a penny,—and that this was doubled by C?sar. We can conceive that the money troubled him comparatively slightly, but that the finding of the daily corn and forage for so large a host of men and horses must have been very difficult. He speaks of the difficulty often, but never with that despair which was felt as to the roasting of our coffee in the Crimea. We hear of his waiting till forage should have grown, and sometimes there are necessary considerations “de re frumentaria,”—about that great general question of provisions; but of crushing difficulties very little is said, and of bad roads not a word. One great advantage C?sar certainly had over Lord Raglan;—he was his own special correspondent. Coffee his men certainly did not get; but if their corn were not properly roasted for them, and if, as would be natural, the men grumbled, he had with him no licensed collector of grumbles to make public the sufferings of his men.

In the mean time things have not been going altogether smoothly for C?sar in Italy, although his friends at Rome have made him Dictator. His soldiers have mutinied against their officers, and against his authority; and a great company of Pompeians is collected in that province of Africa in which poor Curio was conquered by Juba,—when Juba had Roman senators walking in his train, and C?sar’s army was destroyed. The province called by the name of Africa lay just opposite to Sicily, and was blessed with that Roman civilisation which belonged to the possessions of the Republic which were nearest to Rome, the great centre of all things. It is now the stronghold of the Republican faction,—as being the one spot of Roman ground in which C?sar had failed of success. Pompey, indeed, is no more, but Pompey’s two sons are here,—and Scipio, Pompey’s father-in-law, whom Pompey had joined with himself in the command at Pharsalus. Labienus is here, who, since he turned from C?sar, has been more Pompeian than Pompey himself; and Afranius, to whom C?sar was so kind in Spain; and Petreius and King Juba,—of whom a joint story has yet to be told; and Varus, who held the province against Curio;—and last of all there is that tower of strength, the great Cato, the most virtuous and impracticable of men, who, in spite of his virtue, is always in the wrong, and of{178} whom the world at large only remembers that he was fond of wine, and that he destroyed himself at Utica.���Ž�ɳ����8066In the month of January C?sar was at Ravenna, just north of the Rubicon, and in his own province. Messages pass between him and the Senate, and he proposes his terms. The Senate also proposes its terms. He must lay down his arms, or he will be esteemed an enemy by the Republic. All Rome is disturbed. The account is C?sar’s account, but we imagine that Rome was disturbed. “Soldiers are recruited over all Italy; arms are demanded, taxes are levied on the municipalities,{123} and money is taken from the sacred shrines; all laws divine and human are disregarded.” Then C?sar explains to his soldiers his wrongs, and the crimes of Pompey. He tells them how they, under his guidance, have been victorious, how under him they have “pacified” all Gaul and Germany, and he calls upon them to defend him who has enabled them to do such great things. He has but one legion with him, but that legion declares that it will obey him,—him and the tribunes of the people, some of whom, acting on C?sar’s side, have come over from Rome to Ravenna. We can appreciate the spirit of this allusion to the tribunes, so that there may seem to be still some link between C?sar and the civic authorities. When the soldiers have expressed their goodwill, he goes to Ariminum, and so the Rubicon is passed.���Ž�ɳ����8066���Ž�ɳ����8066