[167] De Bello Gallico, I. 9.—The country of the Sequani comprised the Jura, and reached to the Pas-de-l’Ecluse. (See Plate 2, Map of Gaul.)

[168] It has been considered to have been an error of CÆsar to place the Santones in the proximity of the Tolosates: modern researchers have proved that the two peoples were not more than thirty or forty leagues from each other.

[169] Several authors have stated wrongly that CÆsar went into Illyria; he informs us himself (De Bello Gallico, III. 7) that he went thither for the first time in the winter of 698.

[170] We believe, with General de Goeler, from the itinerary marked on the Peutingerian table, that the troops of CÆsar passed by Altinum (Altino), Mantua, Cremona, Laus Pompei (Lodi Vecchio), Pavia, and Turin; but, after quitting this last place, we consider that they followed the route of Fenestrella and Ocelum. Thence they directed their march across the Cottian Alps, by Cesena and Brigantium (BrianÇon); then, following the road indicated by the Theodosian table, which appears to have passed along the banks of the Romanche, they proceeded to Cularo (Grenoble), on the frontier of the Vocontii, by Stabatio (Chahotte or Le Monestier, Hautes-Alpes), Durotineum (Villards-d’Arenne), Melloseeum (Misoen or Bourg-d’Oysans, IsÈre), and Catorissium (Bourg-d’Oysans or Chaource, IsÈre).

[171] “Locis superioribus occupatis.” (De Bello Gallico, I. 10.)

[172] There is difference of opinion as to the site of Ocelum. The following remark has been communicated to me by M.E. Celesia, who is preparing a work on ancient Italy: Ocelum only meant, in the ancient Celtic or Iberian language, principal passage. We know that, in the Pyrenees, these passages were called ports. There existed places of the name of Ocelum, in the Alps, in Gaul, and as far as Spain. (Ptolemy, II. 6.)—The itineraries found in the baths of Vicarello indicate, between Turin and Susa, an Ocelum, which appears to us to have been that of which CÆsar speaks; there was a place similarly named in Maurienne, on the left bank of the Arc, at an equal distance from the source of that river and the town of Saint-Jean; it is now Usseglio. There was another in the valley of the Lanzo, on the left bank of the Gara, from which appears to be derived the name of Garaceli or Graioceli; it was called Ocelum Lanciensium. The Ocelum of CÆsar, according to M. Celesia, who adopts the opinion of D’Anville, was called Ocelum ad Clusonem fluvium; it was situated in the valley of the Pragelatto, on the road leading from Pignerol to the defile of Fenestrella. This place has continued to preserve its primitive name of Ocelum, Occelum, Oxelum, Uxelum (Charta Adeladis, an. 1064), whence by corruption its modern name of Usseau. According to this hypothesis, CÆsar would have passed from the valley of Chiusone into that of Pragelatto, and thence, by Mount GenÈvre, to BrianÇon, in order to arrive among the Vocontii.—PolyÆnus (Stratag., VIII. xxiii. 2) relates that CÆsar took advantage of a mist to escape the mountaineers.

[173] “Segusiavi sunt trans Rhodanum primi.” (De Bello Gallico, I. 10.) It is to be supposed that there existed a bridge on the Rhone, near Lyons.

[174] CÆsar had deferred his reply till the Ides of April (April the 8th). If it were then decided to bring the legions from Aquileia, the time necessary to bring them would have been as follows:

According to this reckoning, CÆsar required 60 days, reckoning from the moment when he decided on this course, to transport his legions from Aquileia to Lyons; that is to say, if he sent, as is probable, couriers on the 8th of April, the day he refused the passage to the Helvetii, the head of his column arrived at Lyons towards the 7th of June.

[175] To estimate the volume and weight represented by the provisions for three months for three hundred and sixty-eight thousand persons of both sexes and of all ages, let us allow that the ration of food was small, and consisted, we may say, only in a reserve of meal, trium mensium molita cibaria, at an average of ¾ of a pound (¾ of a pound of meal gives about a pound of bread); at this rate, the Helvetii must have carried with them 24,840,000 pounds, or 12,420,000 kilogrammes of meal. Let us allow also that they had great four-wheeled carriages, capable each of carrying 2,000 kilogrammes, and drawn by four horses. The 100 kilogrammes of unrefined meal makes 2 cubic hectolitres; therefore, 2,000 kilogrammes of meal make 4 cubic mÈtres, so that this would lead us to suppose no more than 4 cubic mÈtres as the average load for the four-wheeled carriages. On our good roads in France, levelled and paved, three horses are sufficient to draw, at a walking pace, during ten hours, a four-wheeled carriage carrying 4,000 kilogrammes. It is more than 1,300 kilogrammes per collar.

We suppose that the horses of the emigrants drew only 500 kilogrammes in excess of the dead weight, which would give about 6,000 carriages and 24,000 draught animals to transport the three months’ provisions.

But these emigrants were not only provided with food, for they had also certainly baggage. It appears to us no exaggeration to suppose that each individual carried, besides his food, fifteen kilogrammes of baggage on an average. We are thus left to add to the 6,000 provision carriages about 2,500 other carriages for the baggage, which would make a total of 8,500 carriages drawn by 34,000 draught animals. We use the word animals instead of horses, as at least a part of the teams would, no doubt, be composed of oxen, the number of which would diminish daily, for the emigrants would be led to use the flesh of these animals for their own food.

Such a column of 8,500 carriages, supposing them to march in file, one carriage at a time, on a single road, could not occupy less than thirty-two leagues in length, if we reckon fifteen mÈtres to each carriage. This remark explains the enormous difficulties the emigration would encounter, and the slowness of its movements: we need, then, no longer be astonished at the twenty days which it took three quarters of the column to pass the SaÔne.

We have not comprised the provisions of grain for the animals themselves: yet it is difficult to believe that the Helvetii, so provident for their own wants, had neglected to provide for those of their beasts, and that they had reckoned exclusively for their food on the forage they might find on the road.

[176] De Bello Gallico, I. 11.

[177] It is an error to translate Arar, quod per fines Æduorum et Sequanorum in Rhodamam influit, by the words, “the SaÔne, which forms the common boundary line of the Ædui and the Sequani.” CÆsar always understands by fines, territory, and not boundary line. He expresses himself very differently when he speaks of a river separating territories. (De Bello Gallico, I. 6, 83; VII. 5.) The expression per fines thus confirms the supposition that the territories of these two peoples extended on both sides of the SaÔne. (See Plate 2.)

[178] De Bello Gallico, I. 12.—The excavations, carried on in 1862 between TrÉvoux and Riottier, on the plateaux of La BruyÈre and Saint-Bernard, leave no doubt of the place of this defeat. They revealed the existence of numerous sepulchres, as well Gallo-Roman as Celtic. The tumuli furnished vases of coarse clay, and many fragments of arms in silex, ornaments in bronze, iron arrow-heads, fragments of sockets. These sepultures are some by incineration, others by inhumation. In the first, the cremation had nowhere been complete, which proves that they had been burnt hastily, and excludes all notion of an ordinary cemetery. Two common fosses were divided each into two compartments, one of which contained cinders, the other human skeletons, thrown in pell-mell, skeletons of men, women, and children. Lastly, numerous country ovens line, as it were, the road followed by the Helvetii. These ovens, very common at the foot of the abrupt hills of TrÉvoux, Saint-Didier, Frans, Jassans, and MizÉrieux, are found again on the left bank of the Ain and as far as the neighbourhood of Ambronay.

[179] CÆsar declares, on two different occasions, the fixed design of the Helvetii to establish themselves in the country of the Santones (I. 9 and 11), and Titus Livius confirms this fact in these words: “CÆsar Helvetios, gentem vagam, domuit, quÆ, sedem quÆrens, in provinciam CÆsaris Narbonem iter facere volebat.” (Epitome, CIII.) Had they, for the execution of this project, the choice between several roads (the word “road” being taken here in the general sense)? Some authors, not considering the topography of France, have believed that, to go to the Santones, the Helvetii should have marched by the shortest line, from east to west, and passed the Loire towards Roanne. But they would have had first to pass, in places almost impassable, the mountains which separate the SaÔne from the Loire, and, had they arrived there, they would have found their road barred by another chain of mountains, that of Le Forez, which separates the Loire from the Allier.

The only means of going from the Lower SaÔne into Saintonge consists in travelling at first to the north-west towards the sources of the Bourbince, where is found the greatest depression of the chain of mountains which separates the SaÔne from the Loire, and marching subsequently to the west, to descend towards the latter river. This is so true, that at an epoch very near to our own, before the construction of the railways, the public conveyances, to go from Lyons to La Rochelle, did not pass by Roanne, but took the direction to the north-west, to Autun, and thence to Nevers, in the valley of the Loire. We understand, in exploring this mountainous country, why CÆsar was obliged to confine himself to pursuing the Helvetii, without being ever able to attack them. We cannot find a single point where he could have gained upon them by rapidity of movement, or where he could execute any manoeuvre whatever.

[180] The Romans used little precision in the division of time. Forcellini (Lex., voce Hora) refers to Pliny and Censorinus. He remarks that the day—that is, the time between the rising and setting of the sun—was divided into twelve parts, at all seasons of the year, and the night the same, from which it would result that in summer the hours of the day were longer than in winter, and vice versa for the nights.—Galenus (De San. Tuend., VI. 7) observed that at Rome the longest days were equal to fifteen equinoctial hours. Now, these fifteen hours only reckoning for twelve, it happened that towards the solstice each hour was more than a quarter longer than towards the equinox. This remark was not new, for it is found in Plautus. One of his personages says to a drunkard: “Thou wilt drink four good harvests of Massic wine in an hour!” “Add,” replied the drunkard, “in an hour of winter.” (Plautus, Pseudolus, v. I, 302, edit. Ritschl.)—Vegetius says that the soldier ought to make twenty miles in five hours, and notes that he speaks of hours in summer, which at Rome, according to the foregoing calculation, would be equivalent to six hours and a quarter towards the equinox. (Vegetius, Mil., I. 9.)

Pliny (Hist. Nat., VII. 60) remarks that, “at the time when the Twelve Tables were compiled, the only divisions of time known were the rising and setting of the sun; and that, according to the statement of Varro, the first public solar dial was erected near the rostra, on a column, by M. Valerius Messala, who brought it from Catania in 491, thirty years after the one ascribed to Papirius; and that it was in 595 that Scipio Nasica, the colleague of M. Popilius LÆnas, divided the hours of night and day, by means of a clepsydra or water-clock, which he consecrated under a covered building.”

Censorinus (De Die Natali, xxiii., a book dated in the year 991 of Rome, or 338 A.D.) repeats, with some additions, the details given by Pliny. “There is,” he says, “the natural day and the civil day. The first is the time which passes between the rising and setting of the sun; on the contrary, the night begins with the setting and ends with the rising of the sun. The civil day comprises a revolution of the heaven—that is, a true day and a true night; so that when one says that a person has lived thirty days, we must understand that he has lived the same number of nights.

“We know that the day and the night are each divided into twelve hours. The Romans were three hundred years before they were acquainted with hours. The word hour is not found in the Twelve Tables. They said in those times, ‘before or after mid-day.’ Others divided the day, as well as the night, into four parts—a practice which is preserved in the armies, where they divide the night into four watches.” Upon these and other data, M. Le Verrier has had the goodness to draw up a table, which will be found at the end of the volume, and which indicates the increase or decrease of the hours with the seasons, and the relationship of the Roman watches with our modern hours. (See Appendix B.)

[181] De Bello Gallico, I. 22.

[182] They reckon from Villefranche to Remilly about 170 kilomÈtres.

[183] Each soldier received twenty-five pounds of wheat every fortnight.

[184] It is generally admitted that Bibracte stood on the site of Autun, on account of the inscription discovered at Autun in the seventeenth century, and now preserved in the cabinet of antiquities at the BibliothÈque ImpÉriale. Another opinion, which identifies Bibracte with Mont Beuvray (a mountain presenting a great surface, situated thirteen kilomÈtres to the west of Autun), had nevertheless already found, long ago, some supporters. It will be remarked first that the Gauls chose for the site of their towns, when they could, places difficult of access: in broken countries, these were steep mountains (as Gergovia, Alesia, Uxellodunum, &c.); in flat countries, they were grounds surrounded by marshes (such as Avaricum). The Ædui, according to this, would not have built their principal town on the site of Autun, situated at the foot of the mountains. It was believed that a plateau so elevated as that of Mont Beuvray (its highest point is 810 mÈtres above the sea) could not have been occupied by a great town. Yet the existence of eight or ten roads, which lead to this plateau, deserted for so many centuries, and some of which are in a state of preservation truly astonishing, ought to have led to a contrary opinion. Let us add that recent excavations leave no further room for doubt. They have brought to light, over an extent of 120 hectares, foundations of Gaulish towers, some round, others square; of mosaics, of foundations of Gallo-Roman walls, gates, hewn stones, heaps of roof tiles, a prodigious quantity of broken amphorÆ, a semicircular theatre, &c.... Everything, in fact, leads us to place Bibracte on Mont Beuvray: the striking resemblance of the two names, the designation of F???????, which Strabo gives to Bibracte, and even the vague and persistent tradition which, prevailing among the inhabitants of the district, points to Mont Beuvray as a centre of superstitious regard.

[185] The cavalry was divided into turmÆ, and the turma into three decuries of ten men each.

[186] The word sarcinÆ, the original sense of which is baggage or burthens, was employed sometimes to signify the bundles carried by the soldiers (De Bello Gallico, II. 17), sometimes for the heavy baggage (De Bello Civili, I, 81). Here we must take sarcinÆ as comprising both. This is proved by the circumstance that the six legions of the Roman army were on the hill. Now, if CÆsar had sent the heavy baggage forward, towards Bibracte, as General de Goeler believes, he would have sent with it, as an escort, the two legions of the new levy, as he did, the year following, in the campaign against the Nervii. (De Bello Gallico, II. 19.)

[187] De Bello Gallico, I. 24.—In the phalanx, the men of the first rank covered themselves with their bucklers, overlapping one another before them, while those of the other ranks held them horizontally over their heads, arranged like the tiles of a roof.

[188] According to Plutarch (CÆsar, 20), he said, “I will mount on horseback when the enemy shall have taken flight.”

[189] The pilum was a sort of javelin thrown by the hand: its total length was from 1·70 to 2 mÈtres; its head was a slender flexible blade from 0·60 to 1 mÈtre long, weighing from 300 to 600 grammes, terminating in a part slightly swelling, which sometimes formed a barbed point.

The shaft, sometimes round, sometimes square, had a diameter of from 25 to 32 millimÈtres. It was fixed to the head by ferules, or by pegs, or by means of a socket.

Such are the characteristics presented by the fragments of pila found at Alise. They answer in general to the descriptions we find in Polybius (VI. 28), in Dionysius (V. 46), and in Plutarch (Marius). Pila made on the model of those found at Alise, and weighing with their shaft from 700 grammes to 1·200 kilog., have been thrown to a distance of 30 and 40 mÈtres: we may therefore fix at about 25 mÈtres the average distance to which the pilum carried.

[190] Latere aperto, the right side, since the buckler was carried on the left arm. We read, indeed, in Titus Livius: “Et cum in latus dextrum, quod parebat, NumidÆ jacularentur, translatis in dextrum scutis,” &c. (XXII. 50.)

[191] Dio Cassius (XXXVIII. 33) says on this subject that “the Helvetii were not all on the field of battle, on account of their great number, and of the haste with which the first had made the attack. Suddenly those who had remained in the rear came to attack the Romans, when they were already occupied in pursuing the enemy. CÆsar ordered his cavalry to continue the pursuit; with his legions, he turned against the new assailants.”

[192] Plutarch, CÆsar, 20.

[193] De Bello Gallico, I. 26.—Till now the field of battle where CÆsar defeated the Helvetii has not been identified. The site which we have adopted, between Luzy and Chides, satisfies all the requirements of the text of the “Commentaries.” Different authors have proposed several other localities; but the first cause of error in their reckonings consists in identifying Bibracte with Autun, which we cannot admit; and further, not one of these localities fulfils the necessary topographical conditions. In our opinion, we must not seek the place of engagement to the east of Bibracte, for the Helvetii, to go from the Lower SaÔne to the Santones, must have passed to the west, and not to the east, of that town. Cussy-la-Colonne, where the field of battle is most generally placed, does not, therefore, suit at all; and, moreover, Cussy-la-Colonne is too near to the territory of the Lingones to require four days for the Helvetii to arrive there after the battle.

[194] “He drove back this people into their country as a shepherd drives back his flock into the fold.” (Florus, II. x. 3.)

[195] De Bello Gallico, I. 29.

[196] CÆsar pursued the Helvetii, taking for auxiliaries about 20,000 Gaulish mountaineers. (Appian, De Rebus Gallicis, IV. 15, edit. Schweigh.)

[197] Appian, De Bello Celt., IV. i. 3.

[198] Tacitius (Germania, iv. 32.) speaks of this custom of the German horsemen of fighting on foot. Titus Livius (XLIV. 26) ascribes this practice to the Bastarni (the Moldavians.)

[199] Appian, De Bello Celt., IV. i. 3.

[200] De Bello Gallico, IV. 1, 2, 3.—General de Goeler, in our opinion, extends the territory of the Ubii much too far to the south.

[201] De Bello Gallico, VI. 25.—This statement agrees well enough with the length of the Black Forest and the Odenwald, which is sixty leagues.

[202] It is difficult to fix with precision the localities inhabited at this period by the German peoples, for they were nearly all nomadic, and were continually pressing one upon another. CÆsar, in his fourth book De Bello Gallico (cap. I), asserts that the Suevi never occupied the same territory more than one year.

[203] Strabo (VII., p. 244) relates, after Posidonius, that the Boii had inhabited first the Hercynian forest; elsewhere he says (V. 177) that the Boii established themselves among the Taurisci, a people dwelling near Noricum. The same author (VII. 243) places the solitudes inhabited by the Boii to the east of Vindelicia (Southern Bavaria and Western Austria). Lastly, he says (IV. 471) that the RhÆtii and the Vindelicii are the neighbours of the Helvetii and the Boii. The Nemetes and the Vangiones subsequently passed over to the left bank of the Rhine, towards Worms and Spire, and the Ubii towards Cologne.

[204] Which formed the present Upper Alsace.

[205] We look upon it as certain, from the tenth chapter of Book IV. of the “Commentaries,” that the Triboci occupied also the left bank of the Rhine. We therefore naturally place among this German people the spot where the army of Ariovistus was assembled. Moreover, to understand the campaign about to be related, we must not seek this place, in the valley of the Rhine, higher than Strasburg.

[206] In the speech which Dio Cassius puts in the mouth of CÆsar before entering on the campaign against Ariovistus, he dilates upon the right which the governor of the Roman province has to act according to circumstances, and to take only his own advice. This speech is naturally amplified and arranged by Dio Cassius, but the principal arguments must be true. (Dio Cassius, XXXVIII. 41.—De Bello Gallico, I. 33, 34, 35.)

[207] De Bello Gallico, I. 36.

[208] Since this information was given to CÆsar by the Treviri, it is certain that the Suevi assembled on the Rhine, opposite or not far from the country of the Treviri, and, in all probability, towards Mayence, where the valley of the Maine presents a magnificent and easy opening upon the Rhine.

[209] Between Tanlay and Gland, the Roman way is still called the Route de CÉsar. (See the map of the Etat-Major.)

[210] To explain this rapid movement upon BesanÇon, we must suppose that CÆsar, at the moment when he received news of the march of Ariovistus, believed him to be as near BesanÇon as he was himself. In fact, CÆsar might fear that during the time the news had taken to reach him, the German king, who had already advanced three days’ journey out of his territory, might have arrived in the neighbourhood of Mulhausen or Cernay. Now CÆsar was at Arc-en-Barrois, 130 kilomÈtres from BesanÇon, and the distance from this latter town to Cernay is 125 kilomÈtres.

[211] The “Commentaries” give here the erroneous number DC: the breadth of the isthmus which the Doubs forms at BesanÇon cannot have undergone any sensible variation; it is at present 480 mÈtres, or 1,620 Roman feet. The copyists have, no doubt, omitted an M before DC.

[212] De Bello Gallico, I. 38.

[213] “ ... qui ex urbe, amicitiÆ causa, CÆsarem secuti, non magnum in re militari usum habebant.” (De Bello Gallico, I. 39.)—We see in the subsequent wars Appius repairing to CÆsar to obtain appointments of military tribunes, and Cicero recommending for the same grade several persons, among others, M. Curtius, Orfius, and Trebatius. “I have asked him for a tribuneship for M. Curtius.” (Epist. ad Quint., II. 15; Epist. Famil., VII. 5, a letter to CÆsar.) Trebatius, though a bad soldier, was treated with kindness, and at once appointed a military tribune. “I wonder that you despise the advantages of the tribuneship, especially since they have allowed you to dispense with the fatigues of the military service.” (Cicero, Epist. Famil., VII. 8.)—“Resign yourself to the military service, and remain.” (Cicero, Epist. Famil., VII. 11.)—Trebatius appeared little satisfied, complained of the severity of the service, and, when CÆsar passed into Britain, he prudently remained on the Continent.

[214] Dio Cassius, XXXVIII. 36.

[215] This shows that then, in Italy, a great number of slaves were Germans.

[216] This Latin phrase indicated the putting the troops in march.

[217] De Bello Gallico, I. 41.

[218] There has been much discussion on the meaning of the words millium amplius quinquaginta circuitu. Some pretend that the number of fifty miles means the whole distance, and that thus CÆsar would have taken seven days to travel fifty miles, which would make about seven kilomÈtres a day: this supposition is inadmissible. Others pretend, on the contrary, that we must add fifty miles to the direct distance. This last interpretation is refuted by a passage in the “Commentaries” (De Bello Civili, I. 64). We read there, Ac tantum fuit in militibus studii, ut, millium vi. ad iter addito circuito, &c. This shows that when CÆsar means to speak of a turn of road, to be added to the total length of the route, he is careful to indicate it. We consider it more simple, therefore, to admit that the fifty miles are only a part of the distance performed during the seven days’ march; that is, that after making a circular dÉtour of fifty miles, which required three or four days, CÆsar had still to march some time before he met the enemy, following the direct road from BesanÇon to the Rhine. The study of the ground completely justifies this view, for it was sufficient for CÆsar to make a circuit of fifty miles (or seventy-five kilomÈtres) to turn the mass of mountains which extends from BesanÇon to MontbÉliard.

[219] It is probable that, during the negotiations, Ariovistus had approached nearer to the Roman camp, in order to facilitate intercommunication; for, if he had remained at a distance of thirty-six kilomÈtres from CÆsar, we should be obliged to admit that the German army, which subsequently advanced towards the Roman camp, in a single day, to within nine kilomÈtres, had made a march of twenty-five kilomÈtres at least, which is not probable when we consider that it dragged after it wagons and women and children.

[220] De Bello Gallico, I. 42.

[221] Planities erat magna, et in ea tumulus terrenus satis grandis.... (De Bello Gallico, I. 43)—This phrase would be sufficient itself to prove that the encounter of the two armies took place in the plains of Upper Alsace. We may ask how, in spite of a text so explicit, different writers should have placed the field of battle in the mountains of the Jura, where there is nowhere to be found a plain of any extent. It is only at Mulhausen, to the north of the Doller, that the vast plain of the valley of the Rhine opens.

CÆsar employs three times the word tumulus to designate the eminence on which his interview with Ariovistus took place, and he never calls it collis. Is it not evident from this that we must consider this tumulus as a rounded knoll, insulated in the plain? Now it is to be considered that the plain which extends to the north of the Doller, between the Vosges and the Rhine, contains a rather large number of small rounded eminences, to which the word collis would not apply, and which the word knoll or tumulus perfectly describes. The most remarkable of these are situated, one near Feldkirch, the other between Wittenheim and Ensisheim. We may suppose that the interview took place on one of these knolls, marked 231 on Plate 6.

General de Goeler has adopted as the place of the interview an eminence which rises on the left bank of the Little Doller, to the north of the village of Aspach-le-Bas. CÆsar would have called this eminence collis, for it is rather extensive, and, by its elongated form, but not rounded, does not at all represent to the eye what is commonly called a knoll or tumulus; moreover, contrary to the text, this elevation is not, properly speaking, in the plain. It is only separated from the hills situated to the south by a brook, and the plain begins only from its northern slope.

[222] De Bello Gallico, I. 47.

[223] It is not unworthy of remark that CÆsar’s communications with the Leuci and the Lingones remained open. We have seen that, in his address to the troops at BesanÇon, he reckoned on obtaining from these peoples a part of his supplies.

[224] Tacitus (Germania, VI. 32) and Titus Livius (XLIV. 26) speak of this method of fighting employed by the Germans.

[225] De Bello Gallico, I. 50.—The predictions of these priestesses, who pretended to know the future by the noise of waters and by the vortexes made by the streams in rivers, forbade their giving battle before the new moon. (Plutarch, CÆsar, 21.)

[226] “Having skirmished opposite their retrenchments and the hills on which they were encamped, he exasperated and excited them to such a degree of rage, that they descended and fought desperately.” (Plutarch, CÆsar, 21.)

[227] General de Goeler adopts this same field of battle, but he differs from us in placing the Romans with their back to the Rhine. It would be impossible to understand in this case how, after their defeat, the Germans would have been able to fly towards that river, CÆsar cutting off their retreat; or how Ariovistus, reckoning upon the arrival of the Suevi, should have put CÆsar between him and the re-inforcements he expected.

[228] As the legions were six in number, the above phrase proves that in this campaign CÆsar had one quÆstor and five lieutenants. (See Appendix D.)

[229] Dio Cassius, XXXVIII. 49.—We have adopted the version of Dio Cassius, as we cannot admit with Orosius that an army of more than 100,000 men could have formed only a single phalanx.

[230] Dio Cassius, XXXVIII. 49.

[231] Orosius expresses himself thus: “United in one phalanx, and their heads protected by their bucklers, they attempted, thus covered, to break the Roman lines; but some Romans, not less agile than bold, rushed upon this sort of tortoise, grappled with the German soldiers body to body, tore from them their shields, with which they were covered as with scales, and stabbed them through the shoulders.” (Orosius, VI. 7.)

[232] Dio Cassius, XXXVIII. 49.

[233] Appian, De Bello Celt., IV. 1, 3.

[234] The manuscripts followed by the early editors of the “Commentaries” gave some the number of 50 miles, others that of 5 miles. We believe that CÆsar wrote 50 miles. This is proved by the very words he employs, neque prius fugere destiterunt ... which could not be applied to a flight of merely a few miles. Moreover, the testimony of old writers confirms the number of 50 miles: Paulus Orosius relates that the carnage extended over a space of 40 miles; Plutarch, over 300 or 400 stadia, that is, 35 or 50 miles, according to the editions; and J. Celsus (Petrarch) (De Vita J. CÆsaris, I., p. 40, edit. Lemaire) says, usque ad ripam Rheni fuga perpetua fuit, a phrase in which the word perpetua is significative.

Modern writers, supposing erroneously that CÆsar had indicated the distance, that is, the shortest line from the field of battle to the Rhine, have discussed lengthily the number to be adopted. They have overlooked the fact that the Latin text states, not exactly the distance from the field of battle to the Rhine, but the length of the line of retreat from the battle-field to the river. This line may have been oblique towards the Rhine, for it is probable that the retreat of the Germans lay down the valley of the Ill, which they had previously ascended. We must therefore seek towards Rhinau the point where they attempted to re-pass the river.

[236] Appian. De Bello Celt., IV. 1, 3.—Plutarch, CÆsar, 21.

[237] De Bello Gallico, I. 53.—The war against Ariovistus became the subject of a poem by P. Terentius Varro Atacinus (De Bello Sequanico). (Priscian, X., p. 877, P.)

[238] “Inita Æstate.” (De Bello Gallico, II. 2.)—Æstas according to Forcellini, signifies the period comprised between the two equinoxes of spring and autumn.

[239] See his biography, Appendix D.

[240] Strabo, IV. 171, V. 174.

[241] “In the year 642, the consul C. Manlius and the proconsul Q. CÆpio were defeated by the Cimbri and the Teutones, and there perished 80,000 Romans and allies and 40,000 valets (colones et lixÆ). Of all the army, ten men only escaped.” (Orosius, V. 16.) These data are no doubt exaggerated, for Titus Livius (XXXVI. 38) pretends that Orosius took his information from Valerius of Antium, who habitually magnified his numbers.

[242] This route, the most direct from BesanÇon to the territory of the Remi, is still marked by the numerous vestiges of the Roman road which joined Vesontio with Durocortorum (BesanÇon with Rheims).

[243] De Bello Gallico, II. 4.

[244] The word fines in CÆsar, always signifies territory. We must therefore understand by extremi fines the part of the territory farthest removed from the centre, and not the extreme frontier, as certain translators have thought. The Aisne crossed the northern part of the country of the Remi, and did not form its boundary. (See Plate 2.)

[245] The retrenchments of this tÊte-du-pont, especially the side parallel to the Aisne, are still visible at Berry-au-Bac. The gardens of several of the inhabitants are made upon the rampart itself, and the fosse appears at the outside of the village in the form of a cistern. The excavations have displayed distinctly the profile of the fosse.

[246] The excavations undertaken in 1862, by bringing to light the fosses of the camp, showed that they were 18 feet wide, with a depth of 9 or 10. (See Plates 8 and 9.) If, then, we admit that the platform of earth of the parapet was 10 feet wide, it would have measured 8 feet in height, which, with the palisade of 4 feet, would give the crest of the parapet a command of 22 feet above the bottom of the fosse.

[247] The following localities have been suggested for Bibrax: BiÈvre, BruyÈres, NeufchÂtel, Beaurieux, and the mountain called Vieux-Laon. Now that the camp of CÆsar has been discovered on the hill of Mauchamp, there is only room to hesitate between Beaurieux and Vieux-Laon, as they are the only localities among those just mentioned which, as the text requires, are eight miles distant from the Roman camp. But Beaurieux will not suit, for the reason that even if the Aisne had passed, at the time of the Gallic war, at the foot of the heights on which the town is situated, we cannot understand how the re-enforcements sent by CÆsar could have crossed the river and penetrated into the place, which the Belgian army must certainly have invested on all sides. This fact is, on the contrary, easily understood when we apply it to the mountain of Vieux-Laon, which presents towards the south impregnable escarpments. The BelgÆ would have surrounded it on all parts except on the south, and it was no doubt by that side that, during the night, CÆsar’s re-enforcements would enter the town.

[248] De Bello Gallico, II. 7.—(Plate 9 gives the plan of the camp, which has been found entire, and that of the redoubts with the fosses, as they have been exposed to view by the excavations; but we have found it impossible to explain the outline of the redoubts.)

[249] De Bello Gallico, II. 12.—Sabinus evidently commanded on both sides the river.

[250] De Bello Gallico II. 12.—Sabinus evidently commanded on both sides the river.

[251] See the biographies of CÆsar’s lieutenants, Appendix D.

[252] De Bello Gallico, II. 11.

[253] The vineÆ were small huts constructed of light timber work covered with hurdles and hides of animals. (Vegetius, Lib. IV. c. 16.) See the figures on Trajan column.

In a regular siege the vineÆ were constructed out of reach of the missiles, and they were then pushed in file one behind the other up to the wall of the place attacked, a process which was termed agere vineas; they thus formed long covered galleries which, sometimes placed at right angles to the wall and sometimes parallel, performed the same part as the branches and parallels in modern sieges.

[254] The terrace (agger) was an embankment, made of any materials, for the purpose of establishing either platforms to command the ramparts of a besieged town, or viaducts to conduct the towers and machines against the walls, when the approaches to the place presented slopes which were too difficult to climb. These terraces were used also sometimes to fill up the fosse. The agger was most commonly made of trunks of trees, crossed and heaped up like the timber in a funeral pile.—(Thucydides, Siege of PlatÆa.—Lucan, Pharsalia.—Vitruvius, book XI., Trajan Column.)

[255] Antiquaries hesitate between Beauvais, Montdidier, or Breteuil. We adopt Breteuil as the most probable, according to the dissertation on Bratuspantium, by M. l’AbbÉ Devic, cure of Mouchy-le-ChÂtel. In fact, the distance from Breteuil to Amiens is just twenty-five miles, as indicated in the “Commentaries.” We must add, however, that M. l’AbbÉ Devic does not place Bratuspantium at Breteuil itself, but close to that town, in the space now comprised between the communes of Vaudeuil, Caply, Beauvoir, and their dependencies.—Paris, 1843, and Arras, 1865.

[256] De Bello Gallico, II. 15.

[257] De Bello Gallico, II. 14, 15, 16. Mons is, in fact, seated on a hill completely surrounded by low meadows, traversed by the sinuous courses of the Haine and the Trouille.

[258] According to scholars, the frontier between the Nervii and the Ambiani lay towards Fins and Bapaume. Supposing the three days’ march of the Roman army to be reckoned from this point, it would have arrived, in three days, of twenty-five kilomÈtres each, at Bavay.

[259] If CÆsar had arrived on the right bank of the Sambre, as several authors have pretended, he would already have found that river at Landrecies, and would have had no need to learn, on the third day of this march, that he was only fifteen kilomÈtres from it.

[260] It is worthy of remark, that still at the present day the fields in the neighbourhood of the Sambre are surrounded with hedges very similar to those here described. Strabo (II., p. 161) also mentions these hedges.

[261] De Bello Gallico, II. 17.

[262] “The signal for battle is a purple mantle, which is displayed before the general’s tent.” (Plutarch, Fabius Maximus, 24.)

[263] Signum dare, “to give the word of order.” In fact, we read in Suetonius: “Primo etiam imperii die signum excubanti tribuno dedit: Optimam matrem.” (Nero, 9; Caligula, 56.—Tacitus, Histor., III. 22.)

[264] The soldiers wore either the skins of wild beasts, or plumes or other ornaments, to mark their grades. “Excussit cristas galeis.” (Lucan, Pharsalia, line 158.)

[265] Except the Treviran cavalry, who had withdrawn.

[266] According to Titus Livius (Epitome, CIV.), 1,000 armed men succeeded in escaping.

[267] De Bello Gallico, II. 28.

[268] According to the researches which have been carried on by the Commandant Locquessye in the country supposed to have been formerly occupied by the Aduatuci, two localities only, Mount Falhize and the part of the mountain of Namur on which the citadel is built, appear to agree with the site of the oppidum of the Aduatuci. But Mount Falhize is not surrounded with rocks on all sides, as the Latin text requires. The countervallation would have had a development of more than 15,000 feet, and it would have twice crossed the Meuse, which is difficult to admit. We therefore adopt, as the site of the oppidum of the Aduatuci, the citadel of Namur.

Another locality, Sautour, near Philippeville, would answer completely to CÆsar’s description, but the compass of Sautour, which includes only three hectares, is too small to have contained 60,000 individuals. The site of the citadel of Namur is already in our eyes very small.

[269] We translate quindecim millium by 15,000 feet; the word pedum, employed in the preceding sentence, being understood in the text. When CÆsar intends to speak of paces, he almost always uses the word passus.

[270] De Bello Gallico, II. 33.

[271] De Bello Gallico, II. 35.—Plutarch, CÆsar, 20.—Cicero, Epist. Famil., I. 9, 17, 18.

[272] This passage has generally been wrongly interpreted. The text has, QuÆ civitates propinquÆ his locis erant ubi bellum gesserat. (De Bello Gallico, II. 35.) We must add the name of Crassus, overlooked by the copyists; for if Anjou and Touraine are near Brittany and Normandy, where Crassus had been fighting, they are very far from the Sambre and the Meuse, where CÆsar had carried the war.

[273] De Bello Gallico, III. 6

[274] Some manuscripts read Esuvios, but we adopt Unellos, because the geographical position of the country of the Unelli agrees better with the relation of the campaign.

[275] They leagued with the Osismii (the people of the department of FinistÈre), the Lexovii (department of Calvados), the Namnetes (Loire-InfÉrieure), the Ambiliates (on the left bank of the Loire, to the south of Angers), the Morini (the Boulonnais and bishopric of Saint-Omer), the Diablintes (Western Maine), and the Menapii (between the Rhine and the mouths of the Scheldt). (De Bello Gallico, III. 9.)

[276] Orosius (VI. 8) confirms this fact as stated in the Commentaries.

[277] “The Veneti fought at sea against CÆsar; they had made their dispositions to prevent his passage, into the isle of Britain, because they were in possession of the commerce of that country.” (Strabo, IV. iv., p. 162, edit. Didot.)

[278] We must not confound him with M. Junius Brutus, the assassin of CÆsar. Decimus Junius Brutus was the adopted son of A. Postumius Albinus. (See Drumann, IV. 9, and Appendix D.)

[279] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 40.

[280] We suppose, in this enumeration, that the legion of Galba, cantoned the preceding winter among the Allobroges, had rejoined the army.

[281] I borrow this interpretation of the Roman works from the very instructive book of General de Goeler.

[282] De Bello Gallico, III. 13.—Strabo, IV., p. 162.

[283] The fleet of the Veneti, superior to that of the Romans in number, in the magnitude of their vessels, and in their rigging and sails, must have issued from the river Auray by the Morbihan entrance to the gulf, and met Brutus to fight him, instead of waiting for him at the head of the bay, where retreat would be impossible. This follows from CÆsar’s account: ex portu profectÆ, nostris adversÆ constiterunt. According to the memoir by M. le Comte de GrandprÉ, a post-captain, inserted in the Recueil de la SociÉtÉ des Antiquaires de France, tom. II., 1820, the wind must have been east or north-east, for it was towards the end of the summer. It appears that these winds usually prevail at that period, and that, when they have blown during the morning, there is a dead calm towards the middle of the day: it is just what happened in this combat; the calm came, probably, towards midday. It was necessary, indeed, that the wind should be between the north and the east, to allow, on one hand the Roman fleet to leave the Loire and sail towards the Point Saint-Jacques, and, on the other, to permit the fleet of the Veneti to quit the river Auray. These latter, in this position, could, in case of defeat, take refuge in the Bay of Quiberon, or fly to the open sea, where the Romans would not have dared to follow them.

With winds blowing from below, it matters not from what point, the Romans could not have gone in search of their enemies, or the latter come to meet them. Supposing that, in one tide, the Roman fleet had arrived at the mouth of the Loire towards five o’clock in the morning; it might have been towards ten o’clock, the moment when the battle commenced, between Haedik and Sarzeau. Supposing similarly that, as early as five o’clock in the morning, the movement of the Roman fleet had been announced to the Veneti, they could, in five hours, have issued from the river Auray, defiled by the entrance of the Morbihan, rallied and advanced in order of battle to meet the Romans in the part of the sea above described.

As to the place where CÆsar encamped, it is very probable, as we have said, that it was on the heights of Saint-Gildas; for from thence he could see the dispositions of the enemy, and perceive far off the approach of his fleet. In case of check, the Roman galleys found, under his protection, a place of refuge in the Vilaine. Thus, he had his rear secured; rested upon the towns of the coast which he had taken; could recall to him, if necessary, Titurius Sabinus; and lastly, could cross the Vilaine, to place that river between him and his enemies. Placed, on the contrary, on the other side of the Bay of Quiberon, he would have been too much enclosed in an enemy’s country, and would have had none of the advantages offered by the position of Saint-Gildas.

[284] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 41.

[285] We see, in fact, in Vegetius, that the word falces was applied to the head of a battering ram, armed with a point, and with a hook to detach the stones from the walls. “QuÆ (trabes) aut adunco prÆfigitur ferro, et falx vocatur ab eo quod incurva est, ut de muro extrahat lapides.” (Vegetius, IV. 14.)

[286] De Bello Gallico, III. 17.

[287] This position is at the distance of seven kilomÈtres to the east of Avranches. The vestiges still visible of Chastellier are probably those of a camp made at a later period than this Gallic war, but we think that Sabinus had established his camp on the same site.

[288] De Bello Gallico, III. 19.

[289] CÆsar, after having said, in the first book of his “Commentaries”, that Aquitaine was one of the three parts of Gaul, states here that it formed the third part by its extent and population, which is not correct.

[290] Nicholas of Damascus (in AthenÆus, Deipn., VI. 249) writes in this manner the name of King Adiatomus, and adds that the soldurii were clothed in royal vestments.

[291] This combat is remarkable as being the only one in the whole war in Gaul in which the Romans attack a fortified Gaulish camp.

[292] Of this number were the Tarbelli, The Bigerriones, The Ptiani, the Vasates, the Tarusates, the Elusates, the Gaites, the Ausci, the Garumni, the Sibusates, and the Cocosates.

[293] De Bello Gallico, III. 27.

[294] Pliny, Hist. Nat., III. x. 6.

[295] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 44.

[296] CÆsar never entirely subjugated the north-west of Gaul. (See Sallust, cited by Ammianus Marcellinus, XV., 15.) Still, under the reign of Augustus, in 724 and 726, there were triumphs over the Morini.

[297] De Bello Gallico, III. 29.

[298] “In praetura, in consulatu prÆfectum fabrum detulit.” (Cicero, Orat. pro Balbo, 28.)

[299] Mamurra, a Roman knight, born at FormiÆ. (Pliny, Hist. Nat., XXXVI. 7.)

[300] From Xanten to Nimeguen, for a length of fifty kilomÈtres, extends a line of heights which form a barrier along the left bank of the Rhine. All appearances would lead us to believe that the river flowed, in CÆsar’s time, close at the foot of these heights; but now it has removed from them, and at Emmerich, for instance, is at a distance of eight kilomÈtres. This chain, the eastern slope of which is scarped, presents only two passes; one by a large opening at Xanten itself, to the north of the mountain called the Furstenberg; the other by a gorge of easy access, opening at Qualburg, near Cleves. These two passes were so well defined as the entries to Gaul in these regions, that, after the conquest, the Romans closed them by fortifying the Furstenberg (Castra vetera), and founding, on the two islands formed by the Rhine opposite these entries, Colonia Trajana, now Xanten, and Quadriburgium, now Qualburg. The existence of these isles facilitated at that time the passage of the Rhine, and, in all probability, it was opposite these two localities just named that the Usipetes and Tencteri crossed the river to penetrate into Gaul.

[301] The account of this campaign is very obscure in the “Commentaries.” Florus and Dio Cassius add to the obscurities: the first, by placing the scene of the defeat of the Usipetes and Tencteri towards the confluence of the Moselle and the Rhine; the second, by writing that CÆsar came up with the Germans in the country of the Treviri. Several authors have given to the account of these two historians more credit than to that of CÆsar himself, and they give of this campaign an explanation quite different from ours. General de Goeler, among others, supposes that the whole emigration of the Germans had advanced as far as the country of the Condrusi, where CÆsar came up with them, and that he had driven them from west to east, into the angle formed by the Moselle and the Rhine. From researches which were kindly undertaken by M. de Cohausen, major in the Prussian army, and which have given the same result as those of MM. Stoffel and De Locqueyssie, we consider this explanation of the campaign as inadmissible. It would be enough, to justify this assertion, to consider that the country situated between the Meuse and the Rhine, to the south of Aix-la-Chapelle, is too much broken and too barren to have allowed the German emigration, composed of 430,000 individuals, men, women, and children, with wagons, to move and subsist in it. Moreover, it contains no trace of ancient roads; and if CÆsar had taken this direction, he must necessarily have crossed the forest of the Ardennes, a circumstance of which he would not have failed to inform us. Besides, is it not more probable that, on the news of the approach of CÆsar, instead of directing their march towards the Ubii, who were not favourable to them, the Germans, at first spread over a vast territory, would have concentrated themselves towards the most distant part of the fertile country on which they had seized—that of the Menapii?

[302] The Ambivariti were established on the left bank of the Meuse, to the west of Ruremonde, and to the south of the marshes of Peel.

[303] De Bello Gallico, IV. 13.

[304] “Acie triplici instituta.” Some authors have translated these words by “the army was formed in three columns;” but CÆsar, operating in a country which was totally uncovered and flat, and aiming at surprising a great mass of enemies, must have marched in order of battle, which did not prevent each cohort from being in column.

[305] Attacked unexpectedly in the afternoon, while they were sleeping. (Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 48.)

[306] The study of the deserted beds of the Rhine leads us to believe that the confluence of the Waal and the Meuse, which is at present near Gorkum, was then much more to the east, towards Fort Saint-AndrÉ. In that case, CÆsar made no mistake in reckoning eighty miles from the junction of the Waal and the Meuse to the mouth of the latter river.

[307] De Bello Gallico, IV. 14, 15.

[308] The following reasons have led us to adopt Bonn as the point where CÆsar crossed the Rhine:—

We learn from the “Commentaries” that in 699 he debouched in the country of the Ubii, and that two years later it was a little above (paulum supra) the first bridge that he established another, which joined the territory of the Treviri with that of the Ubii. Now everything leads to the belief that, in the first passage as in the second, the bridge was thrown across between the frontiers of the same peoples; for we cannot admit, with some authors, that the words paulum supra apply to a distance of several leagues. As to those who suppose that the passage was effected at Andernach, because, changing with Florus the Meuse (Mosa) into Moselle, they placed the scene of the defeat of the Germans at the confluence of the Moselle and the Rhine, we have given the reasons for rejecting this opinion. We have endeavoured to prove, in fact, that the battle against the Usipetes and the Tencteri had for its theatre the confluence of the Meuse and the Rhine; and since, in crossing this latter river, CÆsar passed from the country of the Treviri into that of the Ubii, we must perceive that after his victory he must necessarily have proceeded up the valley of the Rhine to go from the territory of the Menapii to the Treviri, as far up as the territory of the Ubii, established on the right bank.

This being admitted, it remains to fix, within the limits assigned to these two last peoples, the most probable point of passage. Hitherto, Cologne has been adopted; but, to answer to the data of the “Commentaries,” Cologne appears to us to be much too far to the north. In fact, in the campaign of 701, CÆsar, having started from the banks of the Rhine, traversed the forest of the Ardennes from east to west, passed near the Segni and the Condrusi, since they implored him to spare their territory, and directed his march upon Tongres. If he had started from Cologne, he would not have crossed the countries in question. Moreover, in this same year, 2,000 Sicambrian cavalry crossed the Rhine thirty miles below the bridge of the Roman army. Now, if this bridge had been constructed at Cologne, the point of passage of the Sicambri, thirty miles below, would have been at a very great distance from Tongres, where, nevertheless, they seem to have arrived very quickly.

On the contrary, everything is explained if we adopt Bonn as the point of passage. To go from Bonn to Tongres, CÆsar proceeded, as the text has it, across the forest of the Ardennes; he passed through the country of the Segni and Condrusi, or very near them; and the Sicambri, crossing the Rhine thirty miles below Bonn, took the shortest line from the Rhine to Tongres. Moreover, we cannot place CÆsar’s point of passage either lower or higher than Bonn. Lower, that is, towards the north, the different incidents related in the “Commentaries” are without possible application to the theatre of the events; higher, towards the south, the Rhine flows upon a rocky bed, where the piles could not have been driven in, and presents, between the mountains which border it, no favourable point of passage. We may add that CÆsar would have been much too far removed from the country of the Sicambri, the chastisement of whom was the avowed motive of his expedition.

Another fact deserves to be taken into consideration: that, less than fifty years after CÆsar’s campaigns, Drusus, in order to proceed against the Sicambri—that is, against the same people whom CÆsar intended to combat—crossed the Rhine at Bonn. (Florus, IV. 12.)

[309] The following passage has given room for different interpretations:—

“HÆc utraque insuper bipedalibus trabibus immissis, quantum eorum tignorum junctura distabat, binis utrimque fibulis ab extrema parte distinebantur; quibus disclusis atque in contrariam partem revinctis, tanta erat operis firmitudo atque ea rerum natura, ut, quo major vis aquÆ se incitavisset, hoc arctius illigata tenerentur.” (De Bello Gallico, IV. 17.)

It has not been hitherto observed that the words hÆc utraque relate to the two couples of one row of piles, and not to the two piles of the same couple. Moreover, the words quibus disclusis, &c., relate to these same two couples, and not, as has been supposed, to fibulis.

[310] De Bello Gallico, IV. 20.

[311] De Bello Gallico, II. 4.

[312] De Bello Gallico, V. 13.

[313] Pliny, Hist. Nat., IV. 30, § 16.

[314] Pliny, Hist. Nat., IV. 30, § 16.—Tacitus, Agricola, 10.

[315] De Bello Gallico, V. 12.

[316] Strabo, IV., p. 199.

[317] Agricola, 12.

[318] De Bello Gallico, V. 12.

[319] De Bello Gallico, V. 13 and 14.

[320] De Bello Gallico, V. 20.

[321] Annales, XIV. 33.

[322] Although the greater number of manuscripts read Cenimagni, some authors have made two names of it, the Iceni and the Cangi.

[323] The Anderida Silva, 120 miles in length by 30 in breadth, extended over the counties of Sussex and Kent, in what is now called the Weald. (See Camden, Britannia, edit. Gibson, I., col. 151, 195, 258, edit. of 1753.)

[324] Diodorus Siculus, V. 21.—Tacitus, Agricola, 12.

[325] IV., p. 200.

[326] Agricola, 11.

[327] Diodorus Siculus, V. 21.

[328] De Bello Gallico, V. 21.

[329] De Bello Gallico, V. 14.

[330] Strabo, IV., p. 200.

[331] De Bello Gallico, V. 14.

[332] Pliny, Hist. Nat., XXII. 1.

[333] De Bello Gallico, V. 14.

[334] Diodorus Siculus, V. 22.

[336] De Bello Gallico, V. 12.

[337] De Bello Gallico, VI. 13.

[338] Agricola, 11.

[339] Strabo, IV., p. 199.

[340] De Bello Gallico, V. 12.

[341] Diodorus Siculus, V. 22.

[342] Pliny, Hist. Nat., IV. 30, § 16.

[343] Tacitus, Agricola, 36.

[344] De Bello Gallico, V. 16.

[345] Tacitus, Agricola, 12.

[346] Frontinus, Stratagm., II. 3, 18.—Diodorus Siculus, V. 21.—Strabo, IV., p. 200.

[347] The account on page 213 confirms this interpretation, which is conformable to that of General Goeler.

[348] De Bello Gallico, IV. 32 and 33.

[349] Strabo, IV., p. 200.

[350] Strabo, IV., p. 201.

[351] From what will be seen further on, each transport ship, on its return, contained 150 men. Eighty ships could thus transport 12,000 men, but since, reduced to sixty-eight, they were enough to carry back the whole army to the continent, they can only have carried 10,200 men, which was probably the effective force of the two legions. The eighteen ships appropriated to the cavalry might transport 450 horses, at the rate of twenty-five horses each ship.

[352] The port of Dover extended formerly from the site of the present town, between the cliffs which border the valley of the Dour or of Charlton. (See Plate 17.) Indeed, from the facts furnished by ancient authors, and a geological examination of the ground, it appears certain that once the sea penetrated into the land, and formed a creek which occupied nearly the whole of the valley of Charlton. The words of CÆsar are just justified: “Cujus loci hÆc erat natura, atque ita montibus angustis mare continebatur, uti ex locis superioribus in littus telum adjici posset.” (IV. 23.)

The proofs of the above assertion result from several facts related in different notices on the town of Dover. It is there said that in 1784 Sir Thomas Hyde Page caused a shaft to be sunk at a hundred yards from the shore, to ascertain the depth of the basin at a remote period; it proved that the ancient bed of the sea had been formerly thirty English feet below the present level of the high tide. In 1826, in sinking a well at a place called Dolphin Lane, they found, at a depth of twenty-one feet, a bed of mud resembling that of the present port, mixed with the bones of animals and fragments of leaves and roots. Similar detritus have been discovered in several parts of the valley. An ancient chronicler, named Darell, relates that “Wilbred, King of Kent, built in 700 the church of St. Martin, the ruins of which are still visible near the market-place, on the spot where formerly ships cast anchor.”

The town built under the Emperors Adrian and Septimus Severus occupied a part of the port, which had already been covered with sand; yet the sea still entered a considerable distance inland. (See Plate 17.)

It would appear to have been about the year 950 that the old port was entirely blocked up with the maritime and fluvial alluvium which have been increasing till our day, and which at different periods have rendered it necessary to construct the dykes and quays which have given the port its present form.

[353] “Constat enim aditus insulÆ esse munitos mirificis molibus.” (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, IV. 16.)

[354] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 51.

[355] The Emperor Julian (p. 70, edit. Lasius) makes CÆsar say that he had been the first to leap down from the ship.

[356] It is in the text, in scopulum vicinum insulÆ, which must be translated by “a rock near the isle of Britain,” and not, as certain authors have interpreted it, “a rock isolated from the continent.” (Valerius Maximus, III. ii. 23.)—In fact, these rocks, called Malms, are distinctly seen at low water opposite the arsenal and marine barracks at Deal.

[357] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 51.

[358] CÆsar himself had only carried three servants with him, as Cotta relates. (AthenÆus, Deipnosophist., VI. 105.)

[359] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 53.

[360] At the battle of Arcola, in 1796, twenty-five horsemen had a great influence on the issue of the day. (MÉmoires de Montholon, dictÉes de Sainte-HÉlÈne, II. 9.)

[361] De Bello Gallico, IV. 36 and 37.

[362] De Bello Gallico, IV. 38.

[363] Dio Cassius, XL. 1.—See Strabo, IV., p. 162, edit. Didot.

[364] De Bello Gallico, V. I.

[365] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 56. XL. 1.

[366] This opinion has been already supported by learned archÆologists. I will cite especially M. Mariette; Mr. Thomas Lewin, who has written a very interesting account of CÆsar’s invasions of England; and lastly, M. l’AbbÉ HaignerÉ, archivist of Boulogne, who has collected the best documents on this question.

[367] Strabo, IV. 6, p. 173.

[368] According to the Itinerary of Antoninus, the road started from Bagacum (Bavay), and passed by Pons-Scaldis (Escaut-Pont), Turnacum (Tournay), Viroviacum (Werwick), Castellum (Montcassel, Cassel), Tarvenna (ThÉrouanne), and thence to Gesoriacum (Boulogne). According to Mariette, medals found on the road demonstrate that it had been made in the time of Agrippa; moreover, according to the same Itinerary of Antoninus, a Roman road started from Bavay, and, by Tongres, ended at the Rhine at Bonn. (See JahrbÜcher des Vereins von Alterthums Freunden, Heft 37, Bonn, 1864. Now, admitting that there had been already under Augustus a road which united Boulogne with Bonn, we understand the expression of Florus, who explains that Drusus amended this road by constructing bridges on the numerous water-courses which it crossed, Bonnam et Gesoriacum pontibus junxit. (Florus, IV. 12.)

[369] Suetonius, Caligula, 46.—The remains of the pharos of Caligula were still visible a century ago.

[370] Suetonius, Claudius, 17.

[371] Ammianus Marcellinus, XX. 1.

[372] Ammianus Marcellinus, XX. 7, 8.

[373] Eumenius, Panegyric of Constantinus CÆsar, 14.

[374] Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, cited by Mr. Lewin.

[375] “Qui tertia vigilia Morino solvisset a portu.” (Florus, III. 10.)

[376] Strabo, IV. 5, p. 166.

[377] “Ultimos Gallicarum gentium Morinos, nec portu quam Gesoriacum vocant quicquam notius habet.” (Pomponius Mela, III. 2.)—“??????? G?s???a??? ?p??e???.” (Ptolemy, II. ix. 3.)

[378] “HÆc [Britannia] abest a Gesoriaco Morinorum gentis litore proximo trajectu quinquaginta M.” (Pliny, Hist. Nat., IV. 30.)

[379] The camp of Labienus, during the second expedition, was, no doubt, established on the site now occupied by the high town. From thence it commanded the surrounding country, the sea, and the lower course of the Liane.

[380] Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire, tom. IV., I. 17.

[381] What is now called Romney Marsh is the northern part of a vast plain, bounded on the east and south by the sea, and on the west and north by the line of heights at the foot of which the military canal has been cut. It is difficult to determine what was the aspect of Romney Marsh in the time of CÆsar. Nevertheless, the small elevation of the plain above the level of the sea, as well as the nature of the soil, lead us to conclude that the sea covered it formerly up to the foot of the heights of Lymne, except at least in the part called Dymchurch-Wall. This is a long tongue of land, on which are now raised three forts and nine batteries, and which, considering its height above the rest of the plain, has certainly never been covered by the sea. These facts appear to be confirmed by an ancient chart in the Cottonian collection in the British Museum.

Mr. Lewin appears to have represented as accurately as possible the appearance of Romney Marsh in the time of CÆsar, in the plate which accompanies his work. The part not covered by the sea extended, no doubt, as he represents it, from the bay of Romney to near Hythe, where it terminated in a bank of pebbles of considerable extent. But it appears to us that it would have been difficult for the Roman army to land on a bank of pebbles at the very foot of the rather steep heights of Lymne. Mr. Lewin places the Roman army, in the first expedition, at the foot of the heights, on the bank of pebbles itself, surrounded on almost all sides by the sea. In the second expedition, he supposes it to have been on the heights, at the village of Lymne; and, to explain how CÆsar joined his fleet to the camp by retrenchments common to both, he admits that this fleet was drawn on land as far as the slope of the heights, and shut up in a square space of 300 mÈtres each side, because we find there the ruins of an ancient castle called Stutfall Castle. All this is hardly admissible.

[382] Word for word, this expression signifies that the ships set sail four days after the arrival of the Romans in England. The Latin language often employed the ordinal number instead of the cardinal number. Thus, the historian Eutropius says, “Carthage was destroyed 700 years after it was founded, Carthago septingentesimo anno quam condita erat deleta est.” Are we, in the phrase, post diem quartum, to reckon the day of the arrival?—Virgil says, speaking of the seventeenth day, septima post decimam.—Cicero uses the expression post sexennium in the sense of six years. It is evident that Virgil counts seven days after the tenth. If the tenth was comprised in this number, the expression septima post decimam would signify simply the sixteenth day. On his part, Cicero understands clearly the six years as a lapse of time which was to pass, starting from the moment in which he speaks. Thus, the post diem quartum of CÆsar must be understood in the sense of four days accomplished, without reckoning the day of landing.

[383] Titus Livius, XLIV. 37.

[384] We must now go back to the fourteenth day before the full moon, that is, to the 17th of August, 699, to find a day on which high tide took place at Dover towards midday.

[385] Mr. Lewin has stated that the country between Deal and Sandwich produces no wheat. This assertion is tolerably true for the tongue of marshy land which separates those two localities; but what does it signify, since wheat grows in great quantities in all the part of the county of Kent situated to the west of the coast which extends from the South Foreland to Deal and Sandwich?

[386] It is almost impossible to fix with certainty the day when CÆsar quitted Britain; we know only that it was a short time before the equinox (propinqua die Æquinoxii), which, according to the calculations of M. Le Verrier, fell on the 26th of September, and that the fleet started a little after midnight. If we admit a passage of nine hours, with a favorable wind (ipse idoneam tempestatem nactus), as on the return of the second expedition, CÆsar would have arrived at Boulogne towards nine o’clock in the morning. As the fleet could not enter the port until the tide was in, it is sufficient, to know approximatively the date of CÆsar’s return, to seek what day in the month of September, 699, there was high tide at that hour at Bolougne. Now, in this port, the tide is always at its height towards nine o’clock in the morning two or three days before full moon and before new moon; therefore, since the full moon of the month of September, 699, took place on the 14th, it must have been about the 11th or 12th of September that CÆsar returned to Gaul. As to the two ships which were driven farther down, Mr. Lewin (Invasion of Britain by J. CÆsar) explains this accident in a very judicious manner. He states that we read in the tide-tables of the English Admiralty the following recommendation: “In approaching Boulogne when the tide is flowing in, great attention must be paid, because the current, which, on the English side, drags a ship towards the east, on the Boulogne side drags them, on the contrary, towards the Somme.” Nothing, then, is more natural than that the two Roman transport ships should be driven ashore to the south of Boulogne.

[387] “It was there (the mouth of the Seine) that CÆsar established his naval arsenal, when he passed over to that island (Britain.)” (Strabo, II. 160.)

[388] De Bello Gallico, V. 3, 4.

[389] The MeldÆ dwelt on the Marne, in the country around Meaux; and as we have seen, according to Strabo, that CÆsar had established his naval arsenal at the mouth of the Seine, there is nothing extraordinary in the circumstance that some of the ships were built near Meaux. But it is not reasonable to suppose, with some writers, that the MeldÆ dwelt at the mouth of the Scheldt, and believe that CÆsar had left important shipyards in an enemy’s country, and out of reach of protection.

[390] The five legions which CÆsar led into Britain made, at about 5,000 men each, 25,000 men. There were, in addition to these, 2,000 cavalry. If we suppose, as in the first expedition, twenty-five horses per ship, it would require eighty to contain the cavalry. In the preceding year, eighty transport ships had been sufficient for two legions, without baggage—200 ought to have been enough for five legions; but as the “Commentaries” give us to understand that those vessels were narrower, and that the troops had their baggage, it may be believed that they required double the number of ships, that is, 400, for the transport of the five legions, which would make about sixty-two men in a ship. There would remain 160 transport ships for the Gaulish and Roman chiefs, the valets, and the provisions. The twenty-eight galleys were, no doubt, the true ships of war, destined to protect the fleet and the landing.

[391] According to a passage in the “Commentaries” (Book V. 26), there was in the Roman army a body of Spanish cavalry.

[392] Dio Casstas, XL. 1.

[393] De Bella Galtico, V. 8.

[394] This appears to us to be evident, since we shall see subsequently CÆsar inclosed his fleet within the retrenchments contiguous to his camp.

[395] As in the first expedition the disaster which happened to his fleet must have proved to CÆsar the danger to which the vessels were exposed on the coast, the above reflection indicates that, in his second expedition, he chose a better anchorage, at a few kilomÈtres farther to the north.

[396] Ten cohorts formed a legion; but CÆsar does not employ this last expression, because, no doubt, he drew from each of his legions two cohorts, which he left for the guard of the camp. In this manner he preserved the tactical number of five legions, which was more advantageous, and caused each legion to participate in the honour of combating.

[397] If from the sea-shore, near Deal, where we suppose that the Romans established their camp, we describe, with a radius of twelve miles, an arc of a circle, we cut towards the west, the villages of Kingston and Barham, and more to the north, the village of Littlebourne, a stream called the Little Stour, which rises near Lyminge, flows from south to north across a rather irregular country, and falls into the Great Stour. This stream is incontestably the flumen of the “Commentaries.” There is the less room for error, as we find no other stream in the part of the county of Kent comprised between the coast of Deal and the Great Stour, and as this latter runs too far from Deal to answer to the text. Although the Little Stour is not, between Barham and Kingston, more than from three to four mÈtres broad, we need not be astonished at the denomination of flumen given to it by CÆsar, for he employs the same expression to designate simple rivulets, such as the Ose and the Oserain. (De Bello Gallico, VII. 69, Alesia.)

But did CÆsar reach the Little Stour towards Barham and Kingston or towards Littlebourne? The doubt is allowable. We believe, nevertheless, that the country of Barham and Kingston agrees best with the idea we form from reading the “Commentaries.” The heights on the left bank of the Little Stour are not so broken as to prevent chariots and cavalry from manoeuvring on them, and the Britons might have occupied, as the text requires, a commanding position, locus superior, on the banks which end at the river in gentle slopes.

This stream, considering its little depth, does not form any real obstacle. Now it appears, in fact, to result from the recital of the “Commentaries,” that the engagement as it was not of a serious character, and that CÆsar’s cavalry passed it without difficulty. This last fact forms an objection to the Great Stour, which several authors, and among others General de Goeler, take for the flumen of the text; it is sufficiently broad and sufficiently steep-banked towards Sturry, where they place the scene of the action, to render the passage difficult for cavalry. Moreover, Sturry is fifteen, and not twelve miles from the coast of Deal.

[398] It is evident that this place must not be sought at more than a few kilomÈtres from the Little Stour; for it must be remembered that the Romans had landed the day before, that they had made a night march of twelve miles, and that they have just given battle. Unfortunately, the country situated to the west of Kingston is so much broken and wooded, that it is impossible to choose one site rather than another to make a British oppidum. Perhaps it might be placed towards Bursted or Upper Hardres.

[399] De Bello Gallico, V. 9.

[400] It has appeared to us interesting to explain how CÆsar could join the fleet to his camp.

The Roman camp must have been on flat ground, to allow of the possibility of drawing up the ships of the fleet. Supposing that the mean size of each ship was twenty-five mÈtres long by six mÈtres broad, and that the 800 ships composing the fleet had been placed at two mÈtres from each other, on five lines separated by a distance of three mÈtres, the fleet would have covered a rectangle of 1,280 mÈtres by 140, joined with the camp by other trenches. It is, of course, understood that the lightest boats would form the line farthest from the sea.

[401] De Bello Gallico, V. 11.

[402] This is the expression of CÆsar, but it is certain that this number does not indicate the shortest distance from the Thames to the Straits. CÆsar, no doubt, meant to tell us the length of the route he took from the sea to the Thames.

[403] On the chariots of the Britons consult Strabo (IV., p. 166), and Dio Cassius (LXXVI. 12). CÆsar spoke of many thousand cavalry and war-chariots, in the third book of a Memoir addressed to Cicero, but which is lost. (Junius Philargyrus, Comm. on the Georgics of Virgil, III., p. 204.)

[404] De Bello Gallico, V. 17.

[405] There remains not the slightest vestige in the county of Kent which might help us in tracing the march of the Roman army. The camp of Holwood, near Keston, which the English maps call CÆsar’s Camp, does not belong to the period of which we are treating. On St. George’s Hill, near Walton-on-the-Thames, no camp ever existed.

Unfortunately, it is no more possible to ascertain the exact place where CÆsar crossed the Thames by a ford. We are convinced of this by the researches of all kinds made by the officers Stoffel and Hamelin. The boatmen of the Thames all assured them that between Shepperton and London there are now reckoned eight or nine places fordable; the most favourable is that at Sunbury. At Kingston, where General de Goeler places the passage, nothing leads us to suppose that a ford ever existed. The same thing must be said of Coway Stakes. At Halliford, in spite of the termination of the word, the inhabitants have no tradition of an ancient ford. The only thing which appears to us evident is, that the Roman army did not pass below Teddington. We know that this village, the name of which comes from Tide-end-town, marks the last point of the Thames where the tide is felt. We cannot believe that CÆsar would expose himself to be surprised during his passage by an increase of the volume of water.

[406] De Bello Gallico, V. 18.—PolyÆnus expresses himself thus: “CÆsar, when he was in the isle of Britain, sought to pass a great river. Cassivellaunus, King of the Britons, opposed the passage with a numerous cavalry and many chariots. CÆsar had a very great elephant, an animal which the Britons had never seen; he armed it with iron flakes, and placed on its back a great tower filled with archers and slingers, all men of skill, and caused it to advance into the river. The Britons were struck with astonishment at the view of such an enormous animal, which was unknown to them. And is it necessary to say that their horses were frightened at it, since we know that, even among the Greeks, the presence of an elephant causes the horses to flee? Much more were those of the barbarians unable to support the view of an elephant armed and loaded with a tower from which flew stones and arrows. Britons, horses, and chariots, all equally took flight; and the Romans, by means of the terror caused by a single animal, passed the river without danger.” (Strateg., VIII. 23, § 5.)

[407] After having crossed the Thames, CÆsar invaded the territory of Cassivellaunus, and directed his march to the oppidum of that chief. Certain commentators place this oppidum to the west of Wendover (see Plate 15), others at St. Albans, the ancient Verulamium. All we can possibly say is, that the brief indications of the “Commentaries” seem to agree best with the latter locality.

[408] De Bello Gallico, V. 22.

[409] De Bello Gallico, V. 23.

[410] Strabo, p. 167.

[411] Pliny, Hist. Nat., IX., 116.—Solinus, LIII. 28.

[412] “I have received, on the 4th of the nones of June (the 1st of June, according to the concordance here adopted, see Appendix A), your letter dated from Placentia; that of the following day, dated from Lodi, arrived on the very day of the nones (4th of June).” It was accompanied with a letter from CÆsar, expressing his satisfaction at the arrival of Quintus. (Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, II. 15.

[413] Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, IV. 15. This letter was closed on the 5th of the calends of August, answering to the 26th of July.

[414] “I have received, on the day of the ides of September (the 9th of September), your fourth letter, dated from Britain on the 4th of the ides of August (8th of August).” (Epist. ad Quintum, III. 1.

[415] “The 11th of the calends of October (16th of September) your courier arrived; he has taken twenty days on the road; my uneasiness was mortal.” (Epist. ad Quintum, III. 1.)—“CÆsar has written to me from Britain a letter, dated on the calends of September (28th of August), which I received on the 4th of the calends of October. It appears that affairs are not going on ill with him. CÆsar adds, to prevent me from being surprised at not hearing from you, that you were not with him when he came to the coast (23rd of September).”

[416] Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, III. 3.

[417] At ten miles to the east of Deal it is high tide half an hour later than at Dover, and the reflux begins there four hours after the hour of high tide.

[418] Those who refuse to admit Boulogne and Deal for the points of CÆsar’s embarking and landing, pretend that so long a time was not necessary to effect so short a passage. But a fleet requires a longer time to navigate the more numerous it is; resembling in that an army, which marches much more slowly than a single man.

[419] Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, IV. 17.

[420] To find the time required, we must suppose that, by some delay or by the absence of regular couriers, CÆsar’s letter to Cicero had been thirteen days on the road between Lodi and Rome.

[421] Much uncertainty exists in regard to the distribution of the legions; yet the location of two of the winter quarters appears to us certain, Samarobriva (Amiens) and Aduatuca (Tongres). If now, from a point situate near to the Sambre, from Bavay as the centre, we describe a circle, we shall see that CÆsar’s winter quarters, except those of Normandy, were all comprised in a radius of 100 miles, or 148 kilomÈtres. The researches which Major Cohausen kindly made for me, and those of MM. Stoffel and Locqueyssie, have enabled me to determine approximately the winter quarters.

[422] The brother of the orator.

[423] The Commandant of Artillery, De Locqueyssie, has found on the Ourthe, near the village of Lavacherie (Duchy of Luxemburg), the remains of a Roman camp with triangular fosses, and in a position which appears to agree with the date of the “Commentaries.”

[424] Under the name of Belgium, we must only comprise a part of the peoples of Belgic Gaul, such as the Atrebates, the Ambiani, and the Bellovaci. (De Bello Gallico, V. 24, 25, 46; VIII. 46.)

[425] Unam legionem, quam proxime trans Padum conscripserat.—According to the use of the good Latin writers, proxime does not mean recently, but in the last place. Through an incorrect interpretation of this phrase, General de Goeler has supposed that CÆsar had, at this time, brought from Italy the 15th legion; this legion, as we shall see, was only raised at a later period.

[426] More than fourteen different localities have been proposed for identification with Aduatuca. If some writers have advanced good arguments for placing Aduatuca on the right bank of the Meuse, others have believed that they have offered equally good ones for seeking it on the left bank of that river; but the greater part of them have admitted this or that site for the most futile reasons. Nobody has dreamt of resolving the question by the simplest of all means—which consists in seeking if, among the different sites proposed, there is one which, by the form of the ground, agrees with the requirements of the narrative given in the “Commentaries.” Now, Tongres is in this position, and it alone, and so completely satisfies them that we cannot think of placing Aduatuca elsewhere. In fact, Tongres is situated in the country occupied formerly by the Eburones, and, as CÆsar expresses it, in modiis finibus Eburonum, which signifies entirely in the country of the Eburones, and not in the centre of the country. It is moreover enclosed in a circle of a hundred miles radius, comprising all the winter quarters of the Roman army except those of Roscius. This locality fulfils all the conditions required for the establishment of a camp; it is near a river, on a height which commands the neighborhood, and the country produces wheat and forage. At two miles towards the west is a long defile, magna convallis, the vale of Lowaige, where the relation of the massacre of the cohorts of Sabinus is perfectly explained. At three miles from Tongres we find a plain, separated from the town by a single hill; on the same side as this hill rises a rounded eminence—that of Berg, to which the name of tumulus may be fairly applied. Lastly, the Geer, the banks of which were formerly marshy, defended through a large extent the height of Tongres. (See Plate 18.)

[427] De Bello Gallico, V. 25.

[428] See the notice by M. M. F. Driesen on the position of Aduatuca, in the Bulletins de l’AcadÉmie Royale de Belgique, 2nd series, tom. XV. No. 3.

[430] De Bello Gallico, V. 39.

[431] The towers of the Romans were constructed of timber of small size, bound together by cross pieces. (See Plate 27, fig. 8.) They still raise scaffolding at Rome in the same manner at the present day.

[432] Although the text has passuum, we have not hesitated in substituting pedum, for it is very improbable that Gauls could have made, in three hours’ time, a countervallation of more than 22 kilomÈtres.

[433] The siege machine called testudo, “a tortoise,” was ordinarily a gallery mounted upon wheels, made of wood strongly squared, and covered with a solid blindage. It was pushed against the wall of the place besieged. It protected the workmen employed either in filling the fosse, or in mining the wall, or in working the ram. The siege operations of the Gauls lead us to presume that the camp of Cicero was in a fort surrounded by a wall. (See, on the word falces, note (1) on p. 143.)

[434] In the coal-basin, in the centre of which Charleroy is situated, the coal layers crop out of the surface of the soil on different points. Still, at the present day, they knead the clay with small coal. But, what is most curious, people have found at Breteuil (Oise), as in the ruins of Carthage, a quantity of ovoid balls made of pottery.

[435] It will be seen that we use indifferently the terms vallum and rampart.

[436] Dio Cassius, XL. 8.

[437] It has appeared to us that the movement of concentration of CÆsar and Fabius did not allow the winter quarters of the latter to be placed at Therouanne or at Montreuil-sur-Mer, as most authors have supposed. These localities are too far distant from the route from Amiens to Charleroy to have enabled Fabius to join CÆsar on the territory of the Atrebates, as the text of the Commentaries requires. For this reason, we place Fabius at Saint-Pol.

[438] The “Commentaries” say, GrÆcis conscriptam litteris; but PolyÆnus and Dio Cassius affirm that the letter was written in Greek.

[439] PolyÆnus, Strateg., VIII. xxiii. 6.

[440] We admit that Cicero encamped at Charleroi: all circumstances concur in justifying this opinion. Charleroi is situated on the Sambre, near the Roman road from Amiens to Tongres (Aduatuca), and, as the Latin text requires, at fifty miles from this latter town. On the high part of Charleroi, where the camp was, no doubt, established, we command the valley of the Sambre, and we can see, in the distance towards the west, the country through which CÆsar arrived. Moreover, the valley of the Haine and mount Sainte-Aldegonde, above the village of CarniÈres, agree perfectly with the details of the combat in which the Gauls were defeated.

[441] From Amiens to Charleroi it is 170 kilomÈtres. CÆsar must have arrived on the territory of the Nervii, towards Cambrai, the morning of the third day, counting from his departure from Amiens, after marching ninety kilomÈtres. He immediately sends the Gaulish horseman to Cicero. This horseman has to perform eighty kilomÈtres. He can only take eight to nine hours, and arrive at the camp in the afternoon of the third day. He throws his javelin, which remains where it was fixed the third and the fourth day. The fifth day it was discovered, and the smoke of the fires is then seen. CÆsar, then, arrived on the fifth day (reckoning thirty kilomÈtres for a day’s march) at Binche, twenty kilomÈtres from Charleroi. That town is on a sufficiently elevated knoll to allow the smoke to be seen. The siege lasted about fifteen days.

[442] De Bello Gallico, V. 53.

[443] “I have read with a lively joy what you tell me of the courage and strength of mind of CÆsar in this cruel trial.” (Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, III. viii. 166.)

[444] Suetonius, CÆsar, 67.—PolyÆnus, Strateg., VIII. xxiii.

[445] One is on the site of the citadel of Amiens; the second is near Tirancourt; the third is the camp of l’Etoile. (See the Dissertation sur les Camps Romains de la Somme, by the Comte L. d’Allonville.)

[446] De Bello Gallico, V. 58.

[447] PrÉcis des Guerres de CÉsar, by Napoleon, Chapter V. 5.

[448] De Bello Gallico, VI. 4.

[449] The “Commentaries,” after having informed us (V. 24) that Labienus established himself in the country of the Remi, on the confines of that of the Treviri, give us afterwards to understand that he encamped among the Treviri, where he had passed the winter, “Labienum cum una legione, quÆ in eorum finibus hiemaverat.” (VI. 7.) We believe, with certain authors, that the country in which he encamped was either on the boundary of the two countries, or ground of which the Remi and the Treviri disputed the possession. Is it not evident, moreover, that after the catastrophe of Aduatuca and the insurrection of the people seduced by Ambiorix, everything dictated to Labienus the necessity of engaging himself no further in a hostile country, by separating himself from the other legions?

[450] De Bello Gallico, VI. 6.

[451] De Bello Gallico, VI. 8.

[452] See page 82.

[453] De Bello Gallico, VI. 29.

[454] We must suppose from this that, during his march, CÆsar crossed the territory of the Segni and Condrusi, or that at least he passed not far from it. This consideration has induced us to extend this territory farther towards the north than is generally done. (See Plates 1 bis and 13.)

[455] CÆsar might very well say that the Scheldt mingles his waters with those of the Meuse. Several ancient authors share in this opinion. This took place by the eastern arm of the Scheldt, formerly more developed than in modern times, which spread itself in the space which, according to Tacitus, formed the immense mouth of the Meuse (immensum MosÆ os).

[456] De Bello Gallico, VI. 34.

[457] Forty-five kilomÈtres reckoned down from Bonn bring us to the confluence of the Wipper and the Rhine.

[458] CÆsar complained of the conduct of Quintus, when he wrote to Cicero the orator: “He did not keep within the camp, as would have been the duty of a prudent and scrupulous general.” (Charisius, p. 101.)

[459] De Bello Gallico, VI. 42.

[460] An ancient manuscript belonging to Upper Auvergne, the manuscript of Drugeac, informs us that this custom continued long in use, and that it still existed in the Middle Ages. Rough towers were built for this purpose on the heights, 400 or 500 mÈtres apart; watchmen were placed in them, who transmitted the news from one to another by sonorous monosyllables. A certain number of these towers still exist in the Cantal. If the wind prevented this mode of transmission, they had recourse to fire.

It is evident that criers had been posted beforehand from Genabum to Gergovia, since it was agreed that the Carnutes should give the signal of war. It is exactly 160 miles (about 240 kilomÈtres), through the valleys of the Loire and the Allier, from Gien to Gergovia, the principal oppidum of the Arverni.

[461] “Hic corpore, armis, spirituque terribilis, nomine etiam quasi ad terrorem composito.” (Florus, II. x. 21.)—Vercingetorix was born at Gergovia. (Strabo, IV., p. 158.)

[462] De Bello Gallico, VII. 5.

[463] Coins of Lucterius have been found, as well as of many of the Gaulish chiefs mentioned in the “Commentaries.” The first has been described by MM.[“Messieurs” methinks] Mionet and Chaudruc de Crazannes. (Revue Numismatique, t. V., pl. 16, p. 333.)

[464] Their capital was Alba, now Aps (ArdÈche). During recent researches, remains of an ancient road have been discovered, which passed by the places here indicated, and led from the land of the Helvi to the Vellavi and Arverni.

[465] De Bello Gallico, VII. 9.

[466] Since CÆsar did not start until after the murder of Clodius, which took place on the 13th of the Calends of February (December 30th, 701), and had raised troops in Italy, passed through the Roman province, penetrated over the CÉvennes into Auvergne, and had thence returned to Vienne, it is probable that he did not arrive at Sens before the commencement of March.

[467] The Latin term has Altero die, quum ad oppidum Senonum Vellaunodunum venisset, &c. All authors, without exception, considering wrongly the expression of altero die as identical with those of postro die, proximo die, insequenti die, pridie ejus diei, have translated it by the following day. We consider that altero die, when used with regard to an event, signifies the second day which follows that of the said event.

Thus Cicero gives it this sense in his Philippica Prima, § 13, where he reminds us of the conduct of Antony after the death of CÆsar. Antony had begun by treating with the conspirators who had taken refuge in the Capitol, and, at a sitting of the Senate, which he called together ad hoc, on the day of the Liberalia, that is to say, the 16th of the Calends of April, an amnesty was pronounced in favour of the murderers of CÆsar. Cicero, speaking of this session of the Senate, says, Proximo, altero, tertio, denique reliquis consecutis diebus, &c. Is it not evident that here altero die signifies the second day which followed the session of the Senate, or two days after that session?

Here are other examples which show that the word alter must be taken in the sense of secundus. Virgil says (Eclogue VIII., line 39), Alter ab undecimo tum jam me ceperat annus, which must be translated, I was thirteen years old. Servius, who composed a commentary on Virgil at a time when the traditions were still preserved, makes the following comment on this verse: Id est tertius decimus. Alter enim de duobus dicimus ut unus ab undecimo sit duodecimus, alter tertius decimus, et vult significare jam se vicinum fuisse pubertati, quod de duodecimo anno procedere non potest. (Virgil, edit. Burmann, tom. I., p. 130.)

Forcellini peremptorily establishes that vicesimo altero signifies the twenty-second; legio altera vicesima means the twenty-second legion.

The “Commentaries” inform us (De Bello Civili, III. 9) that Octavius, when besieging Salona, had established five camps round the town, and that the besieged took those five camps one after the other. The text is thus expressed: Ipsi in proxima Octavii castra irruperunt. Mis expugnatis, eodem impetu, altera sunt adorti; inde tertia et quarta, et deinceps reliqua. (See also De Bello Civili, III. 83.)

In the “Commentaries” we find sixty-three times the expression postero die, thirty-six times proximo die, ten times insequenti die, eleven times postridie ejus diei, or pridie ejus diei. The expression altero die is used only twice in the eight books De Bello Gallico, viz., lib. VII. cc. 11 and 68, and three times in De Bello Civili, lib. III. cc. 19, 26, and 30. Is that coincidence alone not sufficient to make us suppose that altero die ought not to be confounded with the preceding expressions; and does it not appear certain that, if CÆsar had arrived at Vellaunodunum the morning after his departure from Agedincum, he would have written, Postero die (or proximo die) quum ad oppidum Senonum Vellaunodunum venisset, &c.?

We believe, therefore, that we are authorized in concluding that CÆsar arrived at Vellaunodunum the second day after the army moved.

Farther on, on page 339, will be found a new confirmation of the sense which we give to altero die. It results from the appreciation of the distance which separates Alesia from the battle-field where CÆsar defeated the cavalry of Vercingetorix. (See the opinions of the commentators on altero die in the sixth volume of Cicero, edit. Lemaire, Classiques Latins, Excursus ad Philippicam primam.)

[468] De Bello Gallico, VII. 11.—Contrary to the generally received opinion, we adopt Gien and not Orleans for the ancient Genabum, TriguÈres for Vellaunodonum, Sancerre for Noviodunum, and, lastly, Saint-Parize-le-ChÂtel for the Gorgobina of the Boii.

As CÆsar’s object, on quitting Sens, was to march as quickly as possible to the oppidum of the Boii, in order to raise the siege, since he starts without baggage, so as to be less impeded in his march, we will first examine the probable position of this latter town, before discussing the question relating to the intermediate points.

Gorgobina Boiorum. After the defeat of the Helvetii, CÆsar allowed the Ædui to receive the Boii upon their territory, and it is probable that they were established on the western frontier, as in an advanced post against the Arverni and the Bituriges. Several data confirm this opinion. Tacitus (Histor., II. 61) relates that: Mariccus quidam, e plebe Boiorum,.... concitis octo millibus hominum, proximos Æduorum pagos trahebat. The possessions of the Boii were, therefore, contiguous to the Æduan territory. Pliny the Elder (Hist. Nat., IV. 18) places the Boii in the number of the nations who inhabited the centre of the Lyonnaise. Intus autem Ædui foederati, Carnuti foederati, Boii, Senones.... The place here occupied by the word Boii shows us again that this people was not far from the Ædui, the Senones, and the Carnutes. Lastly, the text of the “Commentaries” represents Vercingetorix as obliged to traverse the country of the Bituriges to repair to Gorgobina. The most plausible opinion is that which places the Boii between the Loire and the Allier, towards the confluence of these two rivers. This was already an old tradition, adopted in the fifteenth century by Raimondus Marlianus, one of the first editors of CÆsar. This space of ground, covered in its eastern part with woods and marshes, was admirably suited by its extent to the limited population of the Boii, who did not number more than 20,000 souls. Neither Saint-Pierre-le-Moutier, marked on the map of Gaul as Gorgobina, nor La Guerche, proposed by General de Goeler, answer completely, by their topographical position, to the site of a Gaulish oppidum. In fact, Saint-Pierre-le-Moutier is far from being advantageously situated; this village stands at the foot of the hills which border the right bank of the Allier. La-Guerche-sur-Aubois fulfils no better the conditions of defence which must be required in the principal town of the Boii: it is situated almost in a plain, on the edge of a marshy valley of the Aubois. It presents a few remains of fortifications of the Middle Ages, but not a trace of more remote antiquity has been discovered in it. To seek Gorgobina farther down, and on the left bank of the Loire, is impossible, since, according to CÆsar, the Boii had been established on the territory of the Ædui, and the Loire formed the boundary between the Ædui and the Bituriges. If we are reduced to conjectures, we must at least admit as incontestable what is advanced by CÆsar.

The village of Saint-Parize-le-ChÂtel suits better. It is about eight kilomÈtres to the north of Saint-Pierre-le-Moutier, nearly in the middle of the space comprised between the Loire and the Allier; it occupies the centre of ancient agglomeration of inhabitants, which Guy Coquille, at the end of the sixteenth century, designates under the name of the bourg de Gentily, and which the chronicles called, down to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Pagus Gentilicus, or bourg des gentils. The history of this people has this remarkable peculiarity, that, whilst all the neighbouring nations on the other side of the Allier and the Loire had, as early as the fourth century, accepted the Christian religion, they alone continued in idolatry until the sixth century. Does this fact apply to a tribe settled in a foreign country, as the Boii were, who would retain their customs and religion for a longer time unchanged? An ancient tradition states that, in the environs of Saint-Parize, there was, at a very remote period, a considerable town, which was destroyed by a fire. A few scattered foundations, discovered in the woods of Bord, to the south-west of Saint Parize, seem to indicate the site of the oppidum of the Boii. The name of the castle, of the domain, and of the place called Les BruyÈres de Buy, remind us of that of the Boii.

There was probably a Roman station at Saincaise-Meauce (thirteen kilomÈtres to the north of Saint-Pierre-le-Moutier), on the right bank of the Allier. In 1861, there were discovered there numerous objects of the Gallo-Roman period, and two busts in white marble, life-size, representing Roman emperors. At Chantenay, eight kilomÈtres south from Saint-Pierre, a few Roman foundations have been found, and a considerable number of Gaulish coins, one of which, amongst others, bears the name of the Æduan Litavicus.

Genabum. The position of Gorgobina once established at the confluence of the Loire and the Allier, we must admit Gien as the ancient Genabum, and not Orleans, for the following reasons:—

1st. We cannot believe that CÆsar, leaving Sens in spite of the rigour of the season, and in haste to raise the siege of Gorgobina, should, without any reason, have taken a circuitous road of seventy-five kilomÈtres, which would represent three or four days march, in order to pass by Orleans. In fact, the distance from Sens to the confluence of the Allier and the Loire, is, by Orleans, 270 kilomÈtres, whilst it is only 180 kilomÈtres by the way of Gien.

2nd. From Sens to Gien the road was short and easy; on the contrary, from Sens to Orleans it was necessary to pass the great marsh of Sceaux and the forest of Orleans, probably impracticable. Now, the road indicated on the Peutingerian Table, as leading from Orleans to Sens, must have had a decided curve towards the south, and passed close by Gien, after having passed through AquÆ-Segeste (Craon and CheneviÈre), for the distance between Sens and Orleans is marked at fifty-nine Gaulish leagues, or 134 kilomÈtres. The Roman road, which leads directly from Sens to Orleans, by way of Sceaux, and which the itineraries do not mention, has only a length of 110 kilomÈtres: it is certainly less ancient than the former, and can never have been a Gaulish road.

3rd. The “Commentaries” inform us that the news of the insurrection of Genabum arrived in a short time among the Averni (of whom Gergovia, near Clermont, was the principal centre), at a distance of 160 miles (237 kilomÈtres) from Genabum. Now, the distance from Gien to Gergovia, by the valleys of the Loire and the Allier, is 240 kilomÈtres, which agrees with the text, whilst from Orleans to the same spot it is 300 kilomÈtres.

4th. After having crossed the Loire at Genabum, CÆsar was in the territory of the Bituriges. This is true if he passed by Gien, and false if he passed by Orleans, since, opposite Orleans, the left bank belonged to the territory of the Carnutes. It is true that it has been pretended that Gien belonged to the ancient diocese of Auxerre, and that, consequently, it was in the territory of the Senones, and not in that of the Carnutes. The limits of the ancient dioceses cannot be considered as indicating in an absolute manner the frontiers of the peoples of Gaul; and we cannot admit that the territory of the Senones formed an acute angle upon the territory of the Carnutes, the summit of which would be occupied by Gien. Moreover, whatever change it may have experienced in feudal times, in regard to its diocesan attribution, Gien has never formed a part of the OrlÉanais, in its civil and political relations. In 561, Gien was included in the kingdom of Orleans and Burgundy.

We believe, therefore, that Genabum was, not old Gien, which, notwithstanding its epithet, may be posterior to CÆsar, but the present Gien. This little town, by its position on the banks of the Loire, besides containing a hill very appropriate for the site of an ancient oppidum, possesses sufficiently interesting ruins, and agrees much better than Old Gien with the oppidum of the Carnutes. Without attaching too great faith to traditions and etymologies, we must, nevertheless, mention a gate at Gien, which, from time immemorial, has been called CÆsar’s Gate (la Porte de CÉsar); a street called À la Genabye, which leads, not towards Orleans, but towards the high part of town; a piece of ground, situated to the north of Gien, at the angle formed by the road to Montargis and the Roman road, at a distance of about one kilomÈtre, which still preserves the name of the Field of the Camp (La PiÈce du Camp). Perhaps this is the spot where CÆsar placed his camp, opposite the most accessible part of the town.

The principal reason why Orleans has been taken for Genabum is that the Itinerary of Antoninus indicates that town under the name of Cenabum or Cenabo, and that this name is also found in some lately discovered inscriptions. It may be supposed that the inhabitants of Gien, after having escaped from the destruction of their town, descended the river, and, on the spot where Orleans now stands, formed a new establishment, to which they gave the name of the first city; in the same manner the inhabitants of Bibracte removed to Autun, and those of Gergovia to Clermont.

Independently of the above considerations, Orleans, by its position on a declivity uniformly inclined toward the Loire, does not at all answer to the conditions of a Gaulish oppidum. If we admit Orleans to be Genabum, it becomes very difficult to assign a convenient site for the oppida of Vellaunodunum and Noviodunum.

Vellaunodunum. The situation of the territory of the Boii being admitted, as well as that of Genabum, we have to find, on the road which CÆsar pursued from Sens to Gorgobina, the intermediate points of Vellaunodunum and Noviodunum.

On the direct line from Sens to Gien, at the distance of 40 kilomÈtres from Sens, we meet with the little town of TriguÈres. The hill which overlooks it from the north agrees with the position of the ancient oppidum; the remains of walls, fosses, and parapets have been found on it. Farther, there were discovered in 1856, at 500 mÈtres to the north-west of TriguÈres, the ruins of a large semi-elliptical theatre, capable of containing from 5,000 to 6,000 spectators. In another direction, the ruins of a Druidical monument have been pointed out; in fact, everything leads to the belief that there existed at TriguÈres, in the Gallo-Roman period, an important centre, which had been preceded by a Gaulish establishment anterior to the conquest. A road paved with stones, considered by some as a Gaulish or Celtic way, but accepted by all archÆologists as a Roman road, goes direct from Sens to TriguÈres, by Courtenay, and passes along the eastern side of the oppidum. Another ancient way leads similarly from TriguÈres to Gien. We feel no hesitation, after what precedes, in placing Vellaunodunum at TriguÈres.

It will be objected that the distance from Sens to this little town (40 kilomÈtres) is too small to have taken the Roman army, without baggage, three days’ march; but CÆsar does not say that he employed three days in proceeding from Agedincum to Vellaunodunum: he informs us merely that, leaving all his baggage at Agedincum, he journeyed towards the country of the Boii, and that on the second day he arrived at Vellaunodunum. Nothing, therefore, obliges us to suppose that, before it marched, the Roman army was concentrated or encamped at Agedincum itself. Persons unacquainted with military art are apt to suppose that an army lives and marches always concentrated on one point.

CÆsar, although he was effecting the concentration of his troops before entering into campaign, did not keep them massed at the gates of Sens, but he probably distributed them in Échelon in the neighbourhood of the town, along the Yonne. When afterwards he decided on marching to the succour of the Boii, we must suppose that the first day was employed in concentrating the whole army at Sens itself, in leaving the baggage there, perhaps also in crossing the Yonne, a long operation for more than 60,000 men. The first day having passed, the army continued its march next day, and arrived at TriguÈres the day following, having performed two days’ march of 20 kilomÈtres each. We see, then, that the distance between Sens and TriguÈres does not prevent us from identifying this latter locality with Vellaunodunum. TriguÈres is distant 44 kilomÈtres from Gien, the distance which separated Vellaunodunum from Genabum, and which might have been marched in two days.

Noviodunum. To find the site of Noviodunum, we must seek a position which agrees best with the “Commentaries” in the triangle formed by the three known points, Gien, Le Bec-d’Allier, and Bourges. Since, according to the text, Vercingetorix did not raise the siege of the town of the Boii until he had heard of CÆsar’s arrival on the left bank of the Loire, and since the two hostile armies, marching towards each other, met at Noviodunum, it follows that this last-named town must be about half-way between the spot where the Loire was passed and the town of the Boii; on another hand, since CÆsar took several days to reach Bourges from Noviodunum, there must have been a rather considerable distance between those two last-named towns. Moreover, in order that the inhabitants of Noviodunum should have seen in the distance, from the top of their walls, the cavalry of Vercingetorix, the town must necessarily have been situated on an eminence. Lastly, the cavalry combat, fought at a small distance from the town, proves that the ground was sufficiently flat to permit that engagement.

It is, therefore, because certain points hitherto indicated do not answer to the conditions required by the text, that we have not admitted, as representing Noviodunum, the towns of Nouan-le-Fuselier, Pierrefitte-sur-Saudre, Nohant-en-GoÛt, Neuvy-en-Sullias, or Neuvy-sur-Barangeon. In fact, some of these are too far from Bec-d’Allier, while others are too near Bourges, and most of them are situated in a plain.

Sancerre, on the contrary, answers all the conditions of the text. It is situated on a hill which rises 115 mÈtres above the valley watered by the Loire. Encircled on all sides by deep ravines, it can only be approached from one point, situated to the east, where the ancient Roman road of Bourges terminated, which is still at the present day called the Big Road (le Gros Chemin). The AbbÉ Leboeuf, as early as 1727, had designated this town as the ancient Noviodunum. It is near Saint-Satur, at the very foot of the mountain of Sancerre, that a Gallo-Roman town existed, of which, within the last few years, numerous foundations have been found. It is probable that this Gallo-Roman town had succeeded to a great centre of Gaulish population, for the Bituriges must necessarily have occupied in their territory a point so admirably fortified by nature, and which commanded the course of the Loire, the line of boundary between them and the Ædui. The present town seems to have kept within the very limits of the ancient oppidum; it has the form of an ellipse of from 700 to 800 mÈtres in length on a breadth of about 500 mÈtres, capable of containing a population of from 4,000 to 5,000 inhabitants. At Sancerre there was also, at the extremity of one of the streets, towards the north, a gate called the Gate of CÆsar (Porte de CÉsar), which was demolished in the beginning of the nineteenth century. By adopting Sancerre, all the movements of the commencement of the campaign of 702 are easily explained. This town is forty-six kilomÈtres from Gien, forty-eight kilomÈtres from Le Bec-d’Allier, distances nearly equal, so that Vercingetorix and CÆsar, starting almost at the same time from two opposite points, may have met under its walls. Its elevated position allowed the eye to range far towards the south along the valley of the Loire, through which the inhabitants would have seen the approach of the cavalry of Vercingetorix. CÆsar may have occupied with his army the heights of Verdigny or Saint-Satur, to the north of Sancerre. A cavalry engagement may have taken place in the valley of Saint-Satur, or on the plain between MÉnÉtrÉol and Saint-Thibaud. The captain of staff Rouby has examined with the greatest care the places just mentioned.

CÆsar, after the surrender of Noviodunum, marches towards Bourges. Vercingetorix follows him by short marches (minoribus itineribus). The Roman general, having Bourges before him, and a hostile army on his left, marches slowly and with precaution. Perhaps he took three or four days to perform the forty-five kilomÈtres which separate Sancerre from Bourges. At last, after having reconnoitred the site of Avaricum, he must have traversed the marshes of the YÈvre, at a distance of three or four kilomÈtres from that town, so as to take up a position to the south-east of the oppidum, in that part which was not surrounded by the river and the marshes, and which only offered a narrow passage. As to Vercingetorix, he follows, or rather hovers on, the Roman army, taking up his position on its left, and still keeping up his communication with Avaricum, hesitating whether he shall deliver it to the flames.

[469] De Bello Gallico, VII. 13.

[470] ArchÆlogists have pretended they find traces still existing of the camp of Vercingetorix in the neighbourhood of Bourges, not considering that CÆsar declares that the Gaulish chief did not, for the first time, think of retrenching his camp in the Roman fashion till after the siege of this town. We believe that Vercingetorix, although he came from the east, encamped to the south of Bourges. It was, indeed, natural that he should place himself between the Roman army and the land of the Arverni, whence, probably, it drew its provisions. Besides, if he had placed his camp to the east of Bourges, he would have intercepted the provisions which CÆsar expected from the land of the Ædui, which the text does not say.

[471] The ravine which descends to the Auron is still recognised at the present day, between the Portes Saint-Michel and Saint-Paul, by the sudden incline of the ground. Old plans of Bourges designate it by the name of the VallÉe Saint-Paul. The opposite ravine, which runs towards the Porte Bourbonnoux, has disappeared under the successive fillings up composing the soil of the garden of the archbishop’s palace. The ridge of land forming the avenue cannot have been in CÆsar’s time more than 100 mÈtres broad. It has lost its primitive physiognomy, especially by the formation of the Place SÉrancourt, in 1700, on a site the level of which did not then exceed that of the field of the present fair. The depression of the ground which existed before the wall is more visible; it has been filled-up during the different sieges of Bourges.

[472] This is evident, since the Romans, in order to be able to give the assault, were obliged to construct a terrace eighty feet high. General de Goeler believed this measurement exaggerated. Nevertheless, as this terrace was constructed in a ravine, it was necessary that it should compensate a difference of level of eighty mÈtres, of which thirty, perhaps, represent the height of the wall.

[473] Vercingetorix, encamped first towards Dun-le-Roi, had approached nearer Bourges. He had established his new camp to the east of that of CÆsar, perhaps at La CheneviÈre, at the confluence of the YÈvre and the brook of Villabon, fourteen kilomÈtres from Bourges.

[474] See the quotation from Vegetius, p. 143, note (1).

[475] We read in Vitruvius, on occasion of the siege of Marseilles: “When the tortoise approached to batter the wall, they let down a cord furnished with a slip-knot, in which they caught the ram, and raised its head so high, by means of a wheel, that they prevented its striking the wall.” (Vitruvius, X. 16.)

[476] Titus Livius expresses himself thus in speaking of the beseiged in Ambracia, who dug a mine to meet that of the enemies: “Aperiunt viam rectam in cuniculum.” (XXXVII. 7.)

[477] Several authors have thought that these beams, instead of being placed perpendicularly to the direction of the wall, were placed parallel to that direction. This interpretation appears to us inadmissable. The beams so placed would have no solidity, and would easily have been torn down. We see on the Trajan Column walls constructed as we describe; moreover, the Latin expression trabes directÆ can leave no doubt, for the word directus means always perpendicular to a direction. (See De Bello Gallico, IV. 17, directa materia injecta, and the dissertation in the Philologus, Jahrganges 19, Heft. 3.)

[478] The name of pluteus was given generally to all kinds of covering with hurdles or with skins. (Festus, in voce Pluteus.—Vitruvius, X. 20.)—Vegetius (IV. 15) applies the name of pluteus to a kind of penthouse, of wicker-work or skins, mounted on three wheels, and protecting the men placed behind it, so that they might shoot at the defenders.

[479] They gave this name to a small engine resembling the balistÆ, which threw darts. These scorpions composed, as it were, the field-artillery of the ancients.

[480] De Bello Gallico, VII. 32.

[481] It is very probably that CÆsar proceeded first to Noviodunum (Nevers), since he informs us that he had established in that town a great magazine and provisions of every kind.

[482] At present the Allier is fordable almost everywhere in summer; but in the course of nineteen centuries the bed of the river must have been considerably raised.

[483] The commentators are not agreed on this passage. I have adopted the version which seemed to me the best, and which MM. KÖchly and Rustow have followed in their German translation, Stuttgart, 1862.

[484] Dio Cassius, XL. 35.

[485] CÆsar, on leaving Decize, followed, no doubt the Gaulish road which led to the Allier, and the existence of which may be assumed from the later construction of the Roman road which goes from Decize to Bourbon-l’Archambault (AquÆ Borvonis), and which crossed the Allier a little below Moulins. Thence he followed the course of the river for some days, constantly in face of the enemy. In order to pass it by the help of a stratagem, he took advantage of the remains of a bridge; and, as this bridge indicates that there must have been a road, it becomes a question to find among the ancient roads which crossed the Allier that which CÆsar followed. Now we only know two Roman roads leading to the Allier below Moulins, one at Varennes, the other at Vichy. We adopt Varennes. That locality is seventy-seven kilomÈtres from Gergovia, reckoning them along the Allier, and CÆsar took five days to perform them; but, as the four legions sent forward to deceive the enemy returned during the night, in order to rejoin him, they must have suffered great fatigues; hence it is to be presumed that the next day the first march was very short. The fifth also was not long, for, according to the “Commentaries,” CÆsar had time on the day of his arrival to fortify his camp, to reconnoitre the place, and to engage in a cavalry combat. Besides, the country, interspersed with woods and marshes, was unknown to him; and we believe that we do not depart from the truth if we admit that the first and the last march were of no more than ten kilomÈtres, and the three others of nineteen, which gives a total of seventy-seven kilomÈtres, the distance from Varennes to Gergovia. When CÆsar left Gergovia, he crossed the Allier again, but at a point nearer to Gergovia, being in haste to place the river between him and the enemy. Indeed, on the second day after his check, he fought a successful cavalry engagement, broke up his camp, and the following day (tertio die) crossed the Allier again, according to our opinion, at Vichy, which is only fifty-five kilomÈtres from Gergovia.

[487] It is by seeking the essential conditions required for the placing of troops that Commandant Baron Stoffel succeeded in finding the camps. CÆsar had to place from 30,000 to 40,000 men in the neighbourhood of water, at a convenient distance from Gergovia, and in such a manner as to preserve his line of operation upon Nevers, where his magazines were. These necessities indicated that the principal camp would be near the Auzon, and to the east. Moreover, it must be sufficiently near the oppidum, that from the top of the mountain of Gergovia could be seen what was going on in it; and yet sufficiently distant that the objects could not be clearly distinguished. The camp must be in the plain; Dio Cassius (XL. 36) formally says, “CÆsar remained in the plain, not having been able to take (for placing his camp) a place strong by its elevation;” and then the “Commentaries” inform us that the Romans only occupied one single hill, namely, the one they took by surprise (La Roche-Blanche). Lastly, it was indispensable that there should be in front of the camp a space sufficiently large to admit of cavalry engagements.

[488] Vercingetorix, placed in the centre of a kind of semicircle, might easily be considered by CÆsar as surrounded by his numerous troops (collocaverat copias circum se).

[489] The combats of cavalry took place in the plain which extends from the small eminence called Le Puy-de-Marmant to the marsh of SarliÈves.

[490] The hill is certainly the Roche-Blanche, for it is situated opposite the oppidum (e regione oppidi); it begins at the very foot of the slopes of the mountain of Gergovia (sub ipsis radicibus montis), is singularly fortified by nature, and, as it were, cut out from all sides (egregie munitus atque ex omni parte circumcisus). So long as the Gauls occupied it, they could go to the Auzon by the ravine of Merdogne, to obtain water and forage; but as soon as it was in the power of the Romans, the Gauls were compelled to draw their water from the springs on the mountain of Gergovia, and from the little brook of ArtiÈres.

The excavations made in 1862 brought the two camps to light. The fosses of the little camp are clearly defined in the calcareous soil. They form an irregular outline, represented on Plate 22. The Roche-Blanche, which presents in its southern part an escarpment almost as perpendicular as a wall, has lost on the sides its abrupt form by successive landslips, the last of which took place within memory of the inhabitants. The communication between the great and little camps was composed of a parapet, formed by the earth thrown out of two contiguous fosses, each four feet in depth and six in breadth, so that the breadth of the two together is only twelve feet. If we wonder that the Romans should have dug two little ditches, each six feet broad and four feet deep, instead of making one eight feet wide by six feet deep, which would have given the same amount of soil to take out, it may be answered that the two little ditches were much more quickly made than one large ditch.

[491]

[492] Plate 22 shows the places which CÆsar’s eye could embrace from the summit of the Roche-Blanche. He could see neither the plateau, nor the country situated on the norther slopes of the mountains of Gergovia and Rissoles. It was for this reason that he had to learn from the deserters the form of the ground which lay on the other side. He thus learnt that the ridge of this latter mountain (dorsum ejus jugi) was not very uneven, and gave access to the western part of the town (ad alteram partem oppidi) by a narrow wooded passage (the defile of the Goules, which separates Rissoles from Gergovia). (See Plate 21 in C.) This defile leads to the gate P of the oppidum. The foundations, of masonry, and the approaches to this gate, were uncovered in the month of July, 1861. The wide road which led from this gate to the defile C is distinctly seen. The alarm of Vercingetorix may be imagined; he feared lest the Romans might shut up from the Gauls this issue from the oppidum. These latter would have been almost blockaded (poene circumvallati), without any way out, and in the impossibility of producing forage from the valley of the ArtiÈres, since the northern part of the town was difficult to access. Consequently, the words si alterum collem amisissent can only apply to the mountain mass of Rissoles, and not, as several authors have pretended, to Montrognon or to Puy-Giroux; for the possession of those two peaks, detached and rather far from the mountain mass of Gergovia, offered no interest either for the attack or for the defence.

The spot which it was important for the Gauls to fortify was the part D E of the heights of Rissoles which are opposite the village of Opme, because troops could only scale the mass by the western slope. How can any one suppose that, fearing for the defile of the Goules, the Gauls would have abandoned their camp before the place to go and entrench themselves on Montrognon, three kilomÈtres from Gergovia? How admit that CÆsar, to threaten the defile, would have sent troops to make the circuit of the mountain of Gergovia by the north? How could the legion, which supported this movement, without advancing far, and which concealed itself in the woods, have assisted in the stratagem, if the false attack had been made to the east and to the north of Gergovia, at two leagues from the camp? In passing by the south, that is, by the defile of Opme, the legion was always in communication with the camps, on which it could fall back, and the broken and wooded ground prevented the Gauls from knowing accurately the importance of the attack. Besides, two facts which result from the “Commentaries” prove that the Gauls were not very far from the oppidum. CÆsar sees the southern front abandoned, and he establishes his legions at a distance of 1,200 paces from the place. The soldiers scale the heights at a rapid pace; but scarcely have they reached the principal enclosure, when the Gauls, who hear the cries of the women and of the small number of defenders left in the place (primo exaudito clamore), have time to hurry to them, and drive back the Romans. Consequently, the Gauls were at a distance where the cries could be heard; and this distance may be measured by the time which the attacking columns must have taken to climb the space of 1,200 paces, since they arrived almost simultaneously. We believe, therefore, that they were at a distance of less than two kilomÈtres from the gate O of the town, engaged in fortifying the plateau of the heights of Risolles.

[493] According to PolyÆnus (VIII. xxiii. 9), the soldiers marched with their heads bent down, in order not to be seen.

[494] It is, in fact, 1780 mÈtres from the foot of the mountain, where CÆsar must have assembled his troops, between the Roche-Blanche and the Puy-de-Marmant, to the gate O of the oppidum. This is the line which passes by the ravine in which the village of Merdogne is situated; to the left and to the right the ground is too rugged for the troops to climb it.

[495] General Goeler believes, with apparent reason, that we ought to read regressus instead of progressus. The 10th legion, which acted as reserve, must, in the presence of a combat, the issue of which was uncertain, have taken up a position behind rather than towards the front.

[496] The part of the southern slope of Gergovia which was the scene of the last battle is clearly indicated by the ground itself. This battle took place on the whole space which extends in front of the gate O of the oppidum, the principal object of the attack. The ravine which, according to the “Commentaries,” prevented the legions from hearing the signal to retreat, is that which descends to the west of the Merdogne. Hence it may be concluded that, at this moment, CÆsar and the 10th legion were to the right of this ravine. Lastly, we understand on the spot the movement of the Ædui. To the east of Merdogne there is a spur, H, attached to the mountain of Gergovia, forty mÈtres below the table-land, and presenting several successive terraces. So long as the Ædui, who came from the east, had not arrived on the crest of this spur, they could not be perceived by the Romans, who were fighting towards Merdogne; but it may be imagined that, when they appeared all at once on this crest, and at a distance of 600 mÈtres from the right flank of the legions, the sight of them must have singularly surprised the troops, who were expecting no re-enforcement from that side.

General de Goeler, without having seen the locality, has indicated nearly the site of the Roman camp; but he does not place it sufficiently to the west. He makes the Gaulish troops encamp on the four slopes of the mountain of Gergovia. It is, no doubt, the expression circum se (VII. 36) which led him into this error. It is, indeed, impossible to admit that the Gauls could have encamped on the abrupt slopes of the northern declivity. General de Goeler is also mistaken in directing the false attack upon Montrognon. Lastly, he places the scene of the battle too much towards the west.

[497] De Bello Gallico, VII. 52.

[498] “In the war of the Gauls, Caius Julius CÆsar was surprised by an enemy, who carried him off, armed as he was, on his horse, when another Gaul, who recognized CÆsar, called out, intending to insult him, “CÆcos, CÆsar!” which in the Gaulish language signifies, let him go, set him loose; and so he escaped. CÆsar says so himself, in his Ephemerides, in the passage where he speaks of his good fortune.” (Servius Maurus Honoratus, a grammarian of the fifth century, in his commentary on the 11th book of the Æneid, line 743, II. p. 48, edit. Albert Lion.)

The manuscripts of Servius do not all present the same reading. The following are some of the principal variations: Cecos, CÆsar; CÆcos ac CÆsar; and CÆsar, Cesar.

[499] Plutarch, CÆsar, 29.

[500] There has always been a ford at Bourbon-Lancy.

[501] De Bello Gallico, VII. 56.

[502] A sling-ball of lead has been found at Sens, on which are stamped in relief the words “T. Labienus.” This ball forms part of the collection of the Museum of Saint-Germain.

[503] MM. de Saulcy and J. Quicherat have already demonstrated in a conclusive manner that Labienus must have followed the left bank of the Yonne, after leaving Sens, and that he crossed over to the right bank of the Seine at Melun. In fact, Labienus, on the right bank, found himself, as CÆsar says, threatened on one side by the Bellovaci, on the other by the army of Camulogenus (VII. 59). On the opposite bank, on the contrary, Labienus would not have been placed between the two, since he would have had Camulogenus in front, and, at a greater distance, the Bellovaci coming from the north.

“A very large river kept the legions separated from their reserve and their baggage.” This very great river cannot be the Marne, which CÆsar does not even mention in the whole course of this campaign: it was evidently the Seine, which Labienus has crossed once only, at Melodunum (Melun); by crossing over to the right bank, he was separated from his base of operations, which was at Sens. On the contrary hypothesis, no river would have separated Labienus from his line of retreat; unless we admit, with Dulaure and several others, the identity of Agedincum with Provius, which is no longer possible.

The Captain of the Staff Rouby has made investigations on the spot, which prove that from Sens the most ancient ways leading to Paris passed on the left bank of the Yonne and of the Seine. Moreover, the discoveries of M. CarrÉ have made us acquainted with the exact direction followed by the Roman road after quitting Sens towards Paris; it was entirely on the left bank of the Yonne. If CÆsar’s lieutenant had followed the right bank of the Yonne, he would, the day after his departure, have been arrested by the course of the Seine, and would have fallen in with the Gaulish town of Condate, built in the very angle of the two streams, in the midst of perhaps impassable marshes. If only a few thousand Gauls had occupied the heights which played so important a part in the campaign of 1814, Labienus, compelled to seek for a place to cross higher up the stream, would have been diverted considerably from his aim.

It has been supposed wrongly that the BiÈvre was the marsh where Labienus, in his march on the left bank of the Seine, had been arrested by the Gaulish army. Leaving out of consideration the fact that the BiÈvre, which flows through a calcareous soil, can at no epoch have formed a marsh capable of arresting an army, how can we suppose that Labienus, if he had arrived at this stream, that is, close to Lutetia, would have retraced his steps as far back as Melun, to march from thence towards the oppidum of the Parisii by the right bank of the Seine, which would have obliged him to make a journey of twenty-four leagues? The manoeuvre of Labienus can only be explained by his desire to turn the strong position of Camulogenus, and arrive at Paris before him. The text of the “Commentaries” says clearly that Labienus, stopped by the marsh which shelves towards the Seine, stole away by night, surprised the passage of the Seine at Melun, and marched upon Lutetia, where he arrived before Camulogenus. To allow of the success of this manoeuvre, the marsh in question must necessarily not have been far from Melun. The Essonne alone fulfils that condition. The ground on the banks of this little river offers, even at present, by its nature, a very serious obstacle to an army. It is cut up by innumerable peat mosses; and it was behind this line of Essonne that, in 1814, the Emperor Napoleon I. established his army, whilst the enemy occupied Paris.

[504] We have not translated these words, fugam parare, because this passage has always appeared unintelligible to us. How, indeed, could the Gauls, seeing that the Romans were ready to pass the Seine by force, believe that this was a flight?

[505] Some manuscripts have Metiosedum, a version which, in our opinion, is utterly incorrect.

[506] De Bello Gallico, VII. 62.

[507] See Appendix D.

[508] De Bello Gallico, VII. 65.—Evocati was the name given to the old soldiers who, after having served, returned voluntarily to the ranks of the army.

[509] Let us here recapitulate the numbers of the legions employed during the war in Gaul. CÆsar’s army, as we have seen, was composed in 696 of six legions, the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th. In 697, two new legions were raised in Italy, the 13th and 14th. Probably, in the winter between 699 and 700, CÆsar brought several cohorts composed of soldiers and sailors who were to serve in the fleet; for, on his return from the second expedition into England, notwithstanding the losses he had sustained, he was at the head of eight legions and five cohorts (V. 24). He lost at Aduatuca one legion and a half, that is, the 14th legion, besides five cohorts; but in 701 three new legions replaced the cohorts lost, and even doubled their number. These legions were the 1st, lent by Pompey (De Bello Gallico, VIII. 54, and Lucan, Pharsalia, VII., 1. 218); the 14th, which took the number of the legion destroyed at Aduatuca (De Bello Gallico, VI. 32; VIII. 4); and the 15th; this last legion was afterwards, with the 1st, given to Pompey for the war of the Parthians; it figured in the Civil War, and took, in Pompey’s army, the number 3. (CÆsar, De Bello Civili, III. 88.)

The 6th legion, judging from its number, must have been one of the oldest, for Dio Cassius (XXXVIII. 47) informs us that the legions were designated according to their order of inscription on the rolls of the army; but, as it only appears for the first time in 702, it is probable that it had remained in garrison among the Allobroges or in Italy. A proof that this legion assisted in the siege of Alesia is found in the fact that, after the surrender of the place, it was sent to winter quarters on the SaÔne, where CÆsar found it a few months afterwards (De Bello Gallico, VIII. 4). The distribution of the troops in their winter quarters after the taking of Alesia confirms the number of legions given above. The re-distribution after the siege of Uxellodunum gives also the same result, for in book VII. c. 46 the “Commentaries” give the positions of ten legions, without reckoning the 15th, which, according to book VIII. c. 24, had been sent to Cisalpine Gaul. These facts are repeated again, book VIII. c. 54.

[510] It is evident that an army could not remain in the wars for eight years without receiving frequent re-enforcements in order to keep it up to its effective number. Thus, when, after the murder of Clodius, all the youth of Italy had been called to arms, CÆsar made new levies, which were used probably to swell the ranks of his legions, for no new numbers appear (De Bello Gallico, VII. 1).—In the same manner, when he arrived, in 702, in the south of Gaul, and crossed the CÉvennes, he placed himself at the head of the troops which had been recruited in the Roman province and of the re-enforcements which he had brought from Italy (partem copiarum ex provincia supplementumque quod ex Italia adduxerat in Helvois, qui fines Arvernorum contingunt, convenire jubet). (De Bello Gallico, VII. 7.)—Labienus, on the other hand, during his expedition to Paris, left his recruits in dÉpÔt at Sens (Labienus eo supplemento quod nuper ex Italia venerat relicto). (De Bello Gallico, VII. 57.)

[511] Plutarch, Cato, 53.

[512] Plutarch, CÆsar, 36.

[513] See above, page 87.

[514] See above, page 108, note (2).

[515] We learn from the text that he formed three camps. This disposition was necessitated by circumstances and the character of the locality. The heights of Sacquenay form, in fact, three promontories, V, V, V (see Plate 24), advancing towards the north; the road to Dijon passes over the one to the left, the road to Pontallier over the one in the middle. By establishing three camps on these three promontories, Vercingetorix occupied each of these roads with one-third of his army, whilst he backed his right wing against the Vingeanne.

The Gaulish army had there a position of great natural strength, for, to attack it, the enemy would have to climb high hills which were easy to defend; it was, moreover, protected by two watercourses: one, the Vingeanne, which covered its right; the other, the Badin, a small tributary of the Vingeanne, which protected its front. In the space comprised between these two watercourses and the road from Dijon to Langres, a ground extends, measuring five kilomÈtres in every direction, slightly broken in some parts, but almost flat everywhere else, particularly between the Vingeanne and the hillock of Montsaugeon. Near the road, and to the west, arise hills which command it, as well as the whole country as far as Badin and the Vingeanne.

[516] The field of battle of the Vingeanne, which H.M. Defay, of Langres, first pointed out, answers perfectly to all the requirements of the Latin narrative, and, moreover, material proofs exist which are undeniable evidences of the struggle. We allude to the tumuli which are found, some at Prauthoy, others on the banks of the Vingeanne, at Dardenay, and Cusey, and those which, at Pressant, RiviÈres-les-Fosses, Chamberceau, and Vesvres, mark, as it were, the line of retreat of the Gaulish army, to a distance of twelve kilomÈtres.

Two of these tumuli are situated near each other, between Prauthoy and Montsaugeon (see Plate 24, where the tumuli are marked). There is one near Dardenay, three to the west of Cusey, one at RiviÈres-les-Fosses, another at Chamberceau. We will not mention those which have been destroyed by agriculture, but which are still remembered by the inhabitants.

Researches lately made in these tumuli have brought to light skeletons, many of which had bronze bracelets round the arms and legs, calcined bones of men and horses, thirty-six bracelets, several iron circles which were worn around the neck, iron rings, fibulÆ, fragments of metal plates, pieces of Celtic pottery, an iron sword, &c.

It is a fact worthy of remark, that the objects found in the tumuli at RiviÈres-les-Fosses and Chamberceau bear so close a resemblance to those of the tumuli on the banks of the Vingeanne, that we might think they had come from the hand of the same workman. Hence there can be no doubt that all these tumuli refer to one and the same incident of war. (Several of these objects are deposited in the Museum of Saint-Germain.)

We must add that the agricultural labourers of Montsaugeon, Isomes, and Cusey have found during many years, when they make trenches for drainage, horse-shoes buried a foot or two deep under the soil. In 1860, at the dredging of the Vingeanne, hundreds of horse-shoes, the inhabitants say, of excellent metal, were extracted from the gravel of the river, at a depth of two or three feet. They are generally small, and bear a groove all round, in which the heads of the nails were lodged. A great number of these horse-shoes have preserved their nails, which are flat, have a head in the form of a T, and still have their rivet—that is, the point which is folded back over the hoof—which proves that they are not shoes that have been lost, but shoes of dead horses, the foot of which has rotted away in the soil or in the gravel. Thirty-two of these horse-shoes have been collected. One of them is stamped in the middle of the curve with a mark, sometimes found on Celtic objects, and which has a certain analogy with the stamp on a plate of copper found in one of the tumuli of Montsaugeon.

When we consider that the action between the Roman and Gaulish armies was merely a cavalry battle, in which were engaged from 20,000 to 25,000 horses, the facts just stated cannot but appear interesting, although they may possibly belong to a battle of a later date.

[517] We have adopted the reading, aciemque constitui jubebat, which alone gives a reasonable interpretation.

[518] He was not the same as the one mentioned in pp. 307, 321, 320. (De Bello Gallico, VII. 67.)

[519] The three Gaulish camps having been established on the heights of Sacquenay, four or five kilomÈtres behind the position occupied by the infantry during the battle, and the line of retreat towards Alesia lying to the left, in the direction of Pressant and Vesvres, if Vercingetorix had returned to ascend the hills with his 80,000 men, to remove the baggage, that operation would have taken two or three hours, during which CÆsar might have cut off his retreat, or have inflicted a still more serious defeat upon him. But, by immediately hastening his march on Pressant, in order to follow from thence the road which, by RiviÈres-les-Fosses and Vesvres, joined the great road from Langres to Alise, near Aujeur, he got in advance of the Roman army, which, in the disorder in which it was at that moment, was not able to pursue him at once. And this is what he did.

The text says, also, that Vercingetorix gave orders that the baggage should be taken out of the camps in all haste, to follow him. If the baggage of an army of 100,000 men had accompanied Vercingetorix, on the road followed by the infantry, we cannot understand how the Roman army, which pursued the Gauls as long as daylight lasted, should not have captured it all. But investigations made in the country situated between the field of battle and the Alise, behind the heights of Sacquenay, have brought to light vestiges of a Roman road which, starting from Thil-ChÂtel, thirteen kilomÈtres behind Sacquenay, proceeded, by Avelanges, towards the hamlet of Palus, where it branched from the road from Langres to Alise. We may suppose, therefore, that Vercingetorix caused his baggage to follow in his rear as far as Thil-ChÂtel, where it took the road to Palus.

The Roman road from Langres to Alise, which, without any doubt, marks the direction followed by the two armies, has been traced almost in its whole extent by Commandant Stoffel. Even at the present day, on the territories of Fraignot, Salives, Echalot, and Poiseul-la-Grange, the inhabitants call it the Road of the Romans, or CÆsar’s way.

[520] We read (De Bello Gallico, VII. 68) the words, Altero die ad Alesiam castra fecit. We have before sought to prove that the words altero die must be translated by the second day after, and not by the next day. [See page 279, note (1).] It took CÆsar, therefore, two days’ march to move from the field of battle to Alesia.

A study of the country fully confirms the interpretation we give to the expression altero die. In fact, to the north and east of Alise-Sainte-Reine (Alesia), to less than two days’ march, the ground is so cut up and broken that no cavalry battle would be possible upon it. It retains this character as far as fifty-five or sixty kilomÈtres from Alise, to the east of the road from Pranthoy to Dijon, where it becomes more easy and open. The battle-field of the Vingeanne, which we consider as the true one, is at a distance of sixty-five kilomÈtres from Alise. Supposing that, on the day of the victory, the Roman army had pursued the Gauls over a space of fifteen kilomÈtres, it would have had to traverse in the two following days, before arriving at Alesia, a distance of fifty kilomÈtres, that is to say, twenty-five kilomÈtres a day.

[521] We call the reader’s attention particularly to the numerous Roman and Gaulish coins found in one of the fosses of the camp D, the list of which will be found in Appendix C, at the end of this volume.

[522] Near the western summit of the mountain two abundant springs arise; there is another on the eastern side. With these springs, as at Gergovia, it was easy to form large watering-places for cattle. Besides, manifest traces of a great number of wells are visible on the table-land, so that it is evident the besieged can never have wanted water, besides which, they could always descend to the two rivers.

[523] We believe that these castella were palisaded redoubts having a recess attached, similar to the wooden blockhouses represented on the Trajan Column; often even these recesses alone composed the castellum.

[524] It was not, as will be remarked, the countervallation which was 11,000 feet in extent, but the line of investment.

[525] Eadem altitudine. See paragraph XIII., Details on the Excavations of Alesia, page 364.

[526] Dolabratis, diminished to a point, and not delibratis, peeled.

[527] In the excavations at Alesia, five stimuli have been found, the form of which is represented in Plate 27. The new names which CÆsar’s soldiers gave to these accessory defenses prove that they were used for the first time.

[528] This appears from a passage in De Bello Civili, III. 47.

[529]

[530] See note on page 143.

[531] This passage proves clearly that the army of succour attacked also the circumvallation of the plain. In fact, how can we admit that, of 240,000 men, only 60,000 should have been employed? It follows, from the accounts given in the “Commentaries,” that among this multitude of different peoples, the chiefs chose the most courageous men to form the corps of 60,000 which operated the movement of turning the hills; and that the others, unaccustomed to war, and less formidable, employed in the assault of the retrenchments in the plain, were easily repulsed.

[532] According to PolyÆnus (VIII. xxiii. 11), CÆsar, during the night, detached 3,000 legionaries and all his cavalry to take the enemy in the rear.

[533] “CÆsar (at Alexandria) was greatly perplexed, being burdened with his purple vestments, which prevented him from swimming.” (Xiphilinus, Julius CÆsar, p. 26.)—“Crassus, instead of appearing before his troops in a purple-coloured paludamentum, as is the custom of the Roman generals....” (Plutarch, Crassus, 28.)

[534] “The inhabitants of Alesia despaired of their safety when they saw the Roman soldiers bringing from all sides into their camp an immense quantity of shields ornamented with gold and silver, cuirasses stained with blood, plate, and Gaulish flags.” (Plutarch, CÆsar, 30.)

[535] Florus, III. x. 26.—According to Plutarch (CÆsar, 30), Vercingetorix, after having laid down his arms, seated himself in silence at the foot of CÆsar’s tribunal.

[536] De Bello Gallico, VII. 90.—By comparing the data of the VIIth book with those of the VIIIth, we obtain the following results:

[537] There have been found, on a length of 200 mÈtres, in the bottom of the upper fosse, ten Gaulish coins, twenty arrow-heads, fragments of shields, four balls of stone of different diameters, two millstones of granite, skulls and bones, earthenware, and fragments of amphoras in such quantity, that it would lead us to suppose that the Romans threw upon the assailants everything that came to hand. In the lower fosse, near which the struggle was hotter after the sally of Labienus, the result has surpassed all hopes. This fosse has been opened for a space of 500 mÈtres in length from X to X (see Plate 25): it contained, besides 600 coins (see Appendix C), fragments of pottery, and numerous bones, the following objects: ten Gaulish swords and nine scabbards of iron, thirty-nine pieces which belonged to arms of the description of the Roman pilum, thirty heads of javelins, which, on account of their lightness, are supposed to have been the points of the hasta amentata; seventeen more heavy heads may also have served for javelins thrown by the amentum, or simply by the hand, or even for lances; sixty-two blades, of various form, which present such finished workmanship that they may be ranged among the spears.

Among objects of defensive armour there have been found one iron helmet and seven cheek-pieces, the forms of which are analogous to those which we see represented on Roman sculptures; umbos of Roman and Gaulish shields; an iron belt of a legionary; and numerous collars, rings and fibulÆ.

[538] In the fosses of the plain of Laumes have been found a fine sword, several nails, and some bones; on the left bank of the Oserain, two coins, three arrow-heads, and other fragments of arms; in the fosse which descends towards the Ose, on the northern slopes of Mont Penneville, a prodigious quantity of bones of animals. A spot planted with vines, close by, on the southern slope of Mont Penneville, is still at the present day called, on the register of lands, CÆsar’s Kitchen (la Cuisine de CÉsar).

[539] In the fosses of the circumvallation in the plain of Laumes have been found stone balls, some fragments of arms, pottery, and a magnificent silver vase, of good Greek art. This last was found at z (see Plate 25), near the imperial road from Paris to Dijon, at the very bottom of the fosse, at a depth of 1·40m. Bronze arms, consisting of ten spears, two axes, and two swords, have been found previously at y near the Oserain.

[540] This book, as is known, was written by Hirtius.

[541] De Bello Gallico, VIII. 5.

[542] Viz., the Aulerci-Eburovices.

[543] It has been objected that Mont Saint-Pierre was not sufficiently large to contain seven legions; but, since CÆsar for a long while had only four legions with him, the camp was made for that number. Afterwards, instead of remaining on the defensive, he determined, as at Alesia, to invest the Gaulish camp, and it was then only that he sent for three more legions. The appearance of the different camps which have been found is, on the contrary, very rational, and in conformity with the number of troops mentioned in the “Commentaries.” Thus, the camp of Berry-au-Bac, which contained eight legions, had forty-one hectares of superfices; that of Gergovia, for six legions, had thirty-three hectares; and that of Mont Saint-Pierre, for four legions, twenty-four hectares.

[545] It may be seen, by the profiles of the fosses which have been brought to light, that they could not have had vertical sides; the expression used by Hirtius leads us to believe that, by lateribus directis, he meant fosses not triangular, but with a square bottom.

[546] De Bello Gallico, VIII. 17.

[547] De Bello Gallico, VIII. 23.

[548] Rebilus had at first only one legion; we believe, with Rustow, that the 10th, which was quartered at Bibracte, had come to join him. It is said (VII. 90) that Rebilus had been sent to the Ruteni; but it appears, from a passage of Orosius (VI. 11), “that he was stopped on his way by a multitude of enemies, and ran the greatest dangers.” He remained, therefore, in the country of the Pictones, where Fabius came to his succour.

[549] Some manuscripts read erroneously the 13th legion.

[550] De Bello Gallico, VIII. 25.

[551] De Bello Gallico, VIII. 31.

[552] See his biography in Appendix D.

[553] De Bello Gallico, VIII. 44.

[554] It is due to the persevering research of M. J. B. Cessac, assisted subsquently by the departmental commission of the Lot.

[555] List of the objects found at Puy-d’Issolu: one blade of a dolabrum, thirty-six arrow-heads, six heads of darts for throwing by catapults, fragments of bracelets, bear’s tooth (an amulet), necklace beads, rings, a blade of a knife, and nails.

[556] According to Frontinus (Stratag., II. 11), Commius sought an asylum in Great Britain.

[557] De Bello Gallico, VIII. 48.

[558] Plutarch, Marius, 19.

[559] MÉmoires de NapolÉon I., Revolt of Pavia, VII. 4.

[560] For the clearer intelligence of the recapitulation, we have adopted the modern names of the different people of Gaul, although these names are far from answering to their ancient boundaries.

[561] Cicero, when proconsul in Cilicia, obtained the sum of twelve millions of sesterii (2,280,000 francs) from the sale of prisoners made at the siege of Pindenissus. (Cicero, EpistolÆ ad Atticum, V. 20.)

[562] Julian (CÆsares, p. 72, edit. Lasius) makes CÆsar say that he had treated the Helvetii like a philanthropist, and rebuilt their burnt towns.

[563] It was probably at this time that the chiefs of Auvergne, and perhaps Vercingetorix himself, as Dio Cassius tells us, came to render homage to the Roman proconsul. (See above, p. 80.)

[564] Mommsen, RÖmische Geschichte, III., p. 291. Berlin, 1861.

[565] Plutarch, Pompey, 51, 52.

[566] “He soon allowed himself to be enervated by his love for his young wife. Entirely occupied in pleasing her, he passed whole days with her in his country house or in his gardens, and ceased to think of public affairs. Thus even Clodius, then tribune of the people, regarding him no longer with anything but contempt, dared to embark in the rashest enterprises.” (Plutarch, Pompey, 50.)

[567] Dio Cassius, XXXVIII. 13.

[568] Plutarch, Pompey, 51, 52.

[569] Dio Cassius, XXXVIII. 30.

[570] Plutarch, Pompey, 48 and 50.

[571] “Pompey is going at last to labour on my recall: he only waited for a letter from CÆsar to cause the proposal to be made by one of his partisans.” (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, III. 18.)—“If CÆsar has abandoned me, if he has joined my enemies, he has been unfaithful to his friendship, and has done me an injury; I ought to have been his enemy, I deny it not; but if CÆsar has interested himself in my restoration, if it be true that you thought it important for me that CÆsar should not be opposed,” &c.... (Orat. de Provinciis Consularibus, 18.)

[572] “It was then that P. Sextius, the tribune nominate, repaired to CÆsar to interest him in my recall. I say only that if CÆsar were well intentioned towards me, and I believe he was, these proceedings added nothing to his good intentions. He (Sextius) thought that, if they wished to restore concord among the citizens and decide on my recall, they must secure the consent of CÆsar.” (Cicero, Pro Sextio, 33)

[573] “Pompey took my brother as witness that all he had done for me he had done by the will of CÆsar.” (Cicero, Epist. Familiar., I. 9.)

[574] Cicero, Pro Sextio, 31, et seq.

[575] Cicero, Pro Sextio, 31.

[576] Plutarch, Pompey, 51.—Cicero, Pro Sextio, 32; De Responsu Haruspic., 23: Pro Milone, 7.—Asconius, Comment. in Orat. pro Milone, p. 47, edit. Orelli.

[577] Plutarch, Pompey, 51.—Cicero, Pro Milone, 7.—Asconius, Comment. in Orat. pro Milone, p. 47, edit. Orelli.

[578] Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, III. 23.—Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 6.

[579] Cicero, Pro Sextio, 33.

[580] Cicero, Orat. pro Domo sua, 27; Pro Sextio, 34.

[581] Cicero, Pro Sextio, 34; De Legibus, III. 19.

[582] Cicero, Pro Sextio, 34.

[583] Cicero, Pro Sextio, 35.—Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 7.—Plutarch, Pompey, 51.

[584] Cicero, Pro Sextio, 35; Orat. prima post Reditum, 5, 6.

[585] Cicero, De Officiis, II. 17; Orat. pro Sextio, 39.—Dio Cassius XXXIX. 8.

[586] Cicero, Orat. secunda post Reditum ad Senatum, 10; Orat. pro Domo sua, 28; Orat. in Pisonem, 15.

[587] We thus see that the power of observing the sky continued to exist in spite of the law Clodia.

[588] Cicero, in the passages cited.

[589] Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, IV, 1.

[590] Asconius, Comment in Orat. Ciceronis pro Milone, p. 48, edit. Orelli.

[591] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 9.—Plutarch, Pompey, 52.

[592] Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, IV. 1.—Cicero’s proposal was further amplified by C. Messius, tribune of the people, who demanded for Pompey a fleet, an army, and the authority to dispose of the finances.

[593] Plutarch, Pompey, 52.—Cicero, Orat. pro Domo sua, 10.

[594] Epist. ad Attic., IV. 2.

[595] “I will add that, in the opinion of the public, Clodius is regarded as a victim reserved for Milo.” (Cicero, De Respons. Harusp., 3.)—This oration on the reply of the Aruspices is of May, June, or July, 698. See, also, what he says in his letter to Atticus, of November, 697. (Epist. ad Attic. IV. 3.)

[596] Plutarch, CÆsar, 23.—De Bello Gallico, II. 35.

[597] “But why, especially on that occasion, should any one be astonished at my conduct or blame it, when I myself have already several times supported propositions which were more honourable for CÆsar than necessary for the state? I voted in his favour fifteen days of prayers; it was enough for the Republic to have decreed to CÆsar the same number of days which Marius had obtained. The gods would have been satisfied, I think, with the same thanksgivings which had been rendered to them in the most important wars. So great a number of days had therefore for its only object to honour CÆsar personally. Ten days of thanksgivings were accorded, for the first time, to Pompey, when the war of Mithridates had been terminated by the death of that prince. I was consul, and, on my report, the number of days usually decreed to the consulars was doubled, after you had heard Pompey’s letter, and been convinced that all the wards were terminated on land and sea. You adopted the proposal I made to you of ordaining ten days of prayers. At present I have admired the virtue and greatness of soul of Cn. Pompey, who, loaded with distinctions such as no other before him had received the like, gave to another more honours than he had obtained himself. Thus, then, those prayers which I voted in favour of CÆsar were accorded to the immortal gods, to the customs of our ancestors, and to the needs of the state; but the flattering terms of the decree, this new distinction, and the extraordinary number of days, it is to the person itself of CÆsar that they were addressed, and they were a homage rendered to his glory.” (Cicero, Orat. pro Provinc. Consular., 10, 11.) (August, A.U.C. 698.)

[598] Cicero, Epist. ad Quint., II. 1.

[599] Cicero, Epist. ad Quint., II. 1.

[600] Cicero, Epist. ad Quint., II. 1.

[601] Cicero, Epist. ad Attic., IV. 3.

[602] Cicero, Epist. ad Attic., IV. 2 and 3; Epist. ad Quint., II. 1.

[603] Atia had wedded in first marriage Octavius, by whom she had a son, who was afterwards Augustus.

[604] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 14.

[605] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 12, 13.—Plutarch, Pompey, 52.

[606] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 14.—“I do not spare upon him even reproaches, to prevent him (Pompey) from meddling in this infamy.” Cicero, Epist. Famil., I. 1.

[607] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 15.

[608] Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, II. 2.

[609] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 16.

[610] Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, II. 2.—Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 18.

[611] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 18, 19.

[612] Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, II. 3.

[613] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 20.

[614] Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, II. 3.

[615] Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, II. 3.

[616] Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, II. 3.—We look upon this word as giving the explanation of the quarrel then existing between the two triumvirs. Egypt was so rich a prey, that it was calculated to cause division between them.

[617] “Clodius is cast down from the tribune, and I steal away, for fear of accident.” (Cicero, Ep. ad Quint., II. 3.)

[618] Cicero, Ep. ad Quint., II. 3.

[619] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 22.

[620] Plutarch, Cato, 45, tells us that Cato returned under the consulship of Marcius Philippus.

[621] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 23.

[622] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 7.

[623] Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, II. 1.

[624] Plutarch, Cato, 40; Cicero, 45.

[625] “There has reached me a mass of private talk of people here, whom you may guess, who have always been, and always are, in the same ranks with me. They openly rejoice at knowing that I am, at the same time, already on terms of coolness with Pompey, and on the point of quarrelling with CÆsar; but what was most cruel was to see their attitude towards my enemy (Clodius), to see them embrace him, flatter him, coax him, and cover him with caresses.” (Cicero, Epist. Familiar., I. 9.)

[626] Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, II. 3.

[627] These words are reported by Cicero (Epist. ad Quintum, II. 3), to whom they were addressed by Pompey. Dio Cassius, contrary to all probability, pretends that Pompey, from this moment, was irritated against CÆsar, and sought to deprive him of his province. There is no proof of such an allegation. The interview at Lucca, which took place this same year, offers a formal contradiction to it.

[628] See Nonius Marcellus (edit. Gerlach and Roth, p. 261), who quotes a passage from Book XXII. of the Annals of Fenestella, who wrote under Augustus or Tiberius.

[629] Suetonius, CÆsar, 24.

[630] Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, II. 5.

[631] Cicero, Epist. Familiar., I. 9.

[632] “The question of the lands of Campania, which ought to have been settled on the day of the Ides and the day following, is not yet decided. I have much difficulty in making up my mind on this question.” (Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, II. 8.) (April, 698.)

[633] “Appius is not yet returned from his visit to CÆsar.” (Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, II. 6.) (April, 698.)

[634] “Knowing well that small news as well as great news have reached CÆsar.” (Epist. ad Quintum, III. i. 3.)

[635] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 25.

[636] Plutarch, CÆsar, 24.

[637] “Appius, he says, has visited CÆsar, in order to wrest from him some nominations of tribunes.” (Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, II. 15.)

[638] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 17.—The consuls and proconsuls had twelve lictors, the prÆtors six, the dictators twenty-four, and the master of the cavalry a number which varied. The curule Ædiles, the quÆstors, and the tribunes of the people, not having the imperium, had no lictors. As, at the time of the conference of Lucca, there was no dictator or master of cavalry, the number of 120 fasces can only apply to the collective escort of proconsuls and prÆtors. It is not probable that the two consuls then in office at Rome should have gone to Lucca. On the other hand, the proconsuls were prohibited from quitting their provinces as long as they were in the exercise of their commands. (see Titus Livius, XLI. 7; XLIII. 1.) But as the conferences of Lucca took place just at the epoch when the proconsuls and proprÆtors were starting for their provinces (we know from Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, III. 9, that this departure took place in the months of April and May), it is probable that the newly-named proconsuls and proprÆtors repaired to Lucca before they went to take possession of their commands. Thus the number of 120 fasces would represent the collective number of the lictors of proprÆtors or proconsuls who could pass through Lucca before embarking either at Pisa, or Adria, or at Ravenna.

On this hypothesis, we should have the following numbers:—

Plutarch (Pompey, 53) says in so many words that there were seen every day at his door 120 fasces of proconsuls and prÆtors.

[639] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 17.

[640] See Suetonius, CÆsar, 24.—The proof that this plan originated with CÆsar is found in the fact that Pompey and Crassus had not previously taken any steps to ensure their election.

[641] We have put into the mouth of CÆsar the following words of Cicero: “In giving the Alps as a boundary to Italy, Nature had not done it without a special intention of the gods. If the entrance had been open to the ferocity and the multitude of the Gauls, this town would never have been the seat and centre of a great empire. These lofty mountains may now level themselves; there is now nothing, from the Alps to the ocean, which Italy has to fear. One or two campaigns more, and fear or hope, punishments or recompenses, arms or the laws, will reduce all Gaul into subjection to us, and attach her to us by everlasting ties.” (Cicero, Orat. de Provinciis Consularibus, 14.

[642] Cicero, Orat. pro MurÆna, 18.

[643] Orat. de Provinciis Consularibus, 15.

[644] “Evidently all opposition to these great men, especially since the brilliant successes of CÆsar, was contrary to the general feeling, and unanimously rejected.” (Cicero, Epist. Familiar., I. 9.)

[645] “CÆsar, strengthened by his successes, and by the recompenses, honours, and testimonials with which the Senate had loaded him, had just lent to this illustrious order his glory and his influence.” (Cicero, Epist. Familiar., I. 9.)

[646] “Why should I wait to be reconciled with CÆsar? Has this reconcilement not been effected already by the Senate? the Senate, the supreme council of the Republic, my rule and my guide in all my opinions. I walk in your steps, senators, I obey your counsels, I yield to your authority.... So long as the political measures of CÆsar have not had your approbation, you did not see me allied with him. When his exploits had changed your feelings and dispositions, you have seen me not only agree in your decisions, but loudly applaud them.” (Cicero, Orat. de Provinciis Consularibus, 10.)

[647] Epist. Familiar., I. 9.

[648] Epist. ad Atticum, IV. 5.

[649] Cicero, Orat. de Prov. Consularibus, 9. (August, A.U.C. 698.)

[650] Cicero, Orat. de Prov. Consularibus, 13. (August, A.U.C. 698.)

[651] Cicero, Orat. pro Balbo, 27.

[652] Cicero, Epist. Familiar., I. 7.

[653] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 27.

[654] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 29.

[655] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 30.—Plutarch, Pompey, 53; Crassus, 18.

[656] PrÉcis des Guerres de CÉsar, III. 5.

[657] Plutarch, CÆsar, 18.

[658] Suetonius, CÆsar, 57.

[659] “What does CÆsar think of my poem, I pray? He has written to me that he had read the first book, and that he had seen nothing, even in Greek, which ever pleased him more. The rest, up to a certain passage, is less finished: that is his expression. Tell me what it is that displeases him, the matter or the form, and fear not to speak candidly”. (Cicero, Ep. ad Quint., II. 16.)

[660] Plutarch, Crassus, 16.—Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 31.

[661] Plutarch, Cato, 48; Pompey, 54.

[662] Cicero, Epist. Familiar., I. 9.

[663] Plutarch, Pompey, 55.

[664] Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, II. 9.

[665] The country of the VaccÆi comprised part of old Castile, of the kingdom of Leon, and of the Basque provinces. Clunia, a town of the Celtiberii, was situated near CoruÑa del Conde.

[666] Plutarch, Crassus, 19.

[667] Plutarch, Crassus, 19.

[668] Plutarch, CÆsar, 24.

[669] Plutarch, Cato, 49.—Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 34.

[670] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 35.

[671] Plutarch, Cato, 49.—Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 33, 35.—Dio Cassius pretends erroneously that the imperium in the province of Gaul was only continued to CÆsar by a sort of favour, and but for three years, when his partisans murmured at seeing that Crassus and Pompey thought only for themselves. He does not mention the conference of Lucca, which is attested by Suetonius, Plutarch, and Appian. He forgets that Trebonius, CÆsar’s creature, was one of his most devoted lieutenants in the Civil War. We think that the testimony of the other historians is to be preferred.

[673] Plutarch, Crassus, 19.

[674] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 37.

[675] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 38.

[676] Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VII. 1.

[677] According to the letter from Cicero to Atticus (IV. 13), Crassus had left Rome a little before the 17th of the Calends of December, 699, which answers, according to the concordance established by M. Le Verrier, to the 28th of October, 699.

[678] Justin, XLI. 6.

[679] Justin, XLII. 4.

[680] De Bello Gallico, IV. 38.

[681] “CÆsar was very proud of his expedition into Britain, and everybody at Rome cried it up with enthusiasm. People congratulated each other on becoming acquainted with a country of the existence of which they were previously ignorant, and of having penetrated into countries of which they had never heard before; everybody took his hopes for reality, and all that people flattered themselves with obtaining some day caused as great an outburst of joy as if they had already possessed it.” (Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 53.)—“After having landed in Britain, CÆsar believed he had discovered a new world. He wrote (it is unknown to whom) that Britain was not an island, but a country surrounding the ocean.” (Eumenius, Panegyrici, IV. 2.)

[682] Lucan, Pharsalia, II., line 571.

[683] “Without paying any attention to the opinion of Cato, the people during fifteen days performed sacrifices to celebrate this victory, and exhibited the greatest marks of joy.” (Plutarch, Nicias and Crassus, 4.)

[684] Plutarch, Cato of Utica, 58.

[685] See page 456.

[686] Cicero, Epist. Familiar., I. 7.

[687] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 56, 57, 58.—Schol. Bob. Pro Plancio, 271.

[688] Plutarch, Antony, 2.

[689] Dio Cassius speaks of it as follows: “The influence of powerful men and of riches was so great, even against the decrees of the people and of the Senate, that Pompey wrote to Gabinius, governor of Syria, to charge him with the restoring of Ptolemy in Egypt, and that he, who had already taken the field, performed this task, in spite of the public will, and in contempt of the oracles of the Sibyl. Pompey only sought to do what would be agreeable to Ptolemy; but Gabinius had yielded to corruption. Afterwards, when brought under accusation for this fact, he was not condemned, thanks to Pompey and to his gold. There reigned then in Rome such a degree of moral disorder, that the magistrates and judges, who had received from Gabinius but a small part of the sums which had served to corrupt him, set their duties at nought in order to enrich themselves, and taught others to do evil, by showing them that they could easily escape punishment with money. It was this which caused Gabinius to be acquitted; in the sequel, brought to trial for having carried off from his province more than 100,000,000 drachmas, he was condemned.” (Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 55.)

[690] Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 43.

[691] Cicero, Epist. ad Quint., II. 8.

[692] See the Index Legum of Baiter, 181.

[693] Josephus, XIV. 48.

[694] Josephus, XIV. 11.

[695] Cicero, Ep. ad Atticum, IV. 18.

[696] Cicero, Ep. ad Quintum, IV. 15.

[697] Schol. Bob. Pro Sextio, 297.—Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, IV. 16; Epist. Familiar., XIII. 19.

[698] “CÆsar has written to me from Britain a letter dated on the Calends of September (28th of August), which I received on the 4th of the Calends of October (23rd of September). His mourning had prevented my replying and congratulating him.” (Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, III. 1.)

[699] “In CÆsar’s affliction, I dare not write to him, but I write to Balbus.” (Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VII. 9.)—“How kind and affecting is CÆsar’s letter! There is in what he writes a charm which increases my sympathy for the misfortune which afflicts him.” (Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, III. 1.)

[700] Plutarch, Pompey, 4.

[701] Suetonius, CÆsar, 27.

[702] Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, IV. 17.—Suetonius, CÆsar, 36.

[703] Pliny, Hist. Nat., XXXVI. 15.

[704] Appian, De Bel. Civil., II. 102.

[705] “Have you any other protÉgÉ to send me? I take charge of him.” (Letter of CÆsar cited by Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VII. 5.)—“I say not a word, I take not a step in CÆsar’s interest, but he immediately testifies in high terms that he attaches to it a value which assures me of his affection.” (Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VII. 5.)

[706] “I dispose, as though they were my own, of his credit, which is preponderant, and of his resources, which, you know, are immense.” (Epist. Familiar., I. 9.)—A few years later, when Cicero foresaw the civil war, he wrote to Atticus: “There is, however, an affair of which I shall not cease speaking as long as I write to you at Rome: it is CÆsar’s credit. Free me, before leaving, I implore you.” (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, V. 6.)

[707] Epist. ad Quintum, II. 15; III. 1.

[708] Epist. Familiar., I. 9.

[709] “I have undertaken his defense (that of Crassus) in the Senate, as high recommendations and my own engagement made it imperative for me.” (Epist. Familiar., I. 9.)

[710] Cicero, Pro Rabirio Postumo, 15, 16.

[711] Cicero, Pro Cn. Plancio, 39. (A.U.C. 700.)

[712] Cicero, Orat. in L. Calpurnium Pisonem, 33. (A.U.C. 700.)

[713] Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, III. 1.

[714] Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, IV. 15; Epist. Familiar., VII. 5; Epist. ad Quintum, II. 15.

[715] “Pompey is all for Gutta, and he is confident of obtaining from CÆsar an active intervention.” (Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, III. 8.)

[716] Dio Cassius, XL. 45.

[717] Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, III. 4.

[718] Cicero, Epist. ad Quintum, III. 8.

[719] Plutarch, CÆsar, 31.

[720] Plutarch, Pompey, 57.

[721] Plutarch, CÆsar, 31.

[722] “Ut via illa nostra, quÆ per Macedoniam est usque ad Hellespontum militaris.” (Cicero, Orat. de Provinciis Consularibus, 2.—Strabo, VII. vii. 268.)

[723] Plutarch, Crassus, 17.

[724] On the left bank of the Tigris, opposite Seleucia.

[725] Plutarch, Crassus, 24.

[726] The ancient authors name him Augar, Abgaros, or Ariamnes.

[727] Zeugma, according to Dio Cassius. This town is on the right bank of the Euphrates, opposite Biradjik.

[728] According to Drumann, the course of the river could not always be followed, as Plutarch says, because there existed a canal which joined the Euphrates with the Tigris. (Pliny, VI. 30.—Ammianus Marcellinus, XXIV. 2.)

[729] “There are among them few infantry. These are only chosen among the weakest men. From the tenderest age the Parthians are accustomed to handle the bow and the horse. Their country, which forms almost entirely one plain, is very favourable for breeding horses, and for courses of cavalry.” (Dio Cassius, XL. 15.)—“Equis omni tempore vectantur; illis bella, illis convivia, illis publica ac privata officia obeunt.” (Justin, XLI. 8.)

[730] “Munimentum ipsis equisque loricÆ plumatÆ sunt, quÆ utrumque toto corpore tegunt.” (Justin, XLI. 2.)

[731] “Signum in prÆlio non tuba, sed tympano datur.” (Justin, XLI. 2.)

[732] “Fidentemque fuga Parthum versisque sagittis.” (Virgil, Georg., III., line 31.

[733] “The Osroenes, placed behind the Romans, who had their backs turned to them, struck them where their unprotected limbs were exposed, and rendered more easy their destruction by the Parthians.” (Dio Cassius, XL. 22.)

[734] The army was composed of seven legions, but some troops had been left at CarrhÆ. The square was composed of forty-eight cohorts, or nearly five legions; the rest was probably in reserve in the square. The 4,000 cavalry and 4,000 light infantry were probably divided half to the right and half to the left of the great square, the sides of which must have been about 1,000 mÈtres long.

[735] Plutarch, Crassus, 28.

[736] Q. CÆcilius Metellus Scipio was the son of P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica, and of Licinia, daughter of Crassus. He had been adopted by Q. CÆcilius Metellus Pius.

[737] Plutarch, Cato, 55.

[738] All that follows is taken almost entirely from Asconius, the most ancient commentator on Cicero, and is derived, it is believed, from the Acta Diurna. (See the Argument of the Oration of Cicero for Milo, edit. Orelli, p. 31.)

[739] Nine years after the sacrilege committed on the day of the festival of the Bona Dea, Clodius was slain by Milo before the gate of the temple of the Bona Dea, near BovillÆ. (Cicero, Orat. pro Milone, 31.)

[740] RomphÆa. (Asconius, Argument of the Orat. of Cicero pro Milone, p. 32, edit. Orelli.)

[741] Cicero, Orat. pro Milone 10.—Dio Cassius, XL. 48.—Appian, Civil Wars, II. 21.—(Asconius, Argument of the Oration of Cicero pro Milone, p. 31, et seq.)

[742] Lectus libitinÆ. (Asconius, p. 34.)—The sense of this word is given by Acro, a scholiast on Horace (see Scholia Horatiana, edit. Pauly, tom. I., p. 360). It corresponds with our word corbillard, a hearse. We know the custom of the Romans of carrying at interments the images of the ancestors of the dead with the ensigns of their dignities. The fasces must have been numerous in the Clodian family.

[743] Dio Cassius, XL. 50.

[744] Dio Cassius, XL. 49.

[745] Dio Cassius, XL. 49.

[746] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 22.

[747] Dio Cassius, XL. 50.

[748] “The Senate and Bibulus, who was first to state his opinion, forestalled the thoughtless resolutions of the multitude by conferring the consulship on Pompey, in order that he might not be proclaimed dictator; and in conferring it upon him alone, in order that he might not have CÆsar for his colleague.” (Dio Cassius, XL. 2.)

[749] Plutarch, Cato, 47.

[750] Plutarch, Pompey, 57.

[751] Dio Cassius, XL. 50.

[752] Dio Cassius, XL. 52.—Cicero, Brutus, 94; Epist. ad Atticum, XIII 49.—Tacitus, Dialog. de Oratoribus, 38.

[753] This was the historian. He had been the paramour of Milo’s wife. Surprised by him in the very act, he had been cruelly beaten, and compelled to pay, without pity.

[754] Velleius Paterculus, II. 47.

[755] All this account is taken from the argument by Asconius Servius, serving as an introduction to his Commentary on the Oration for Milo. (See the edit. of Orelli, pp. 41, 42.—Dio Cassius, XL. 53.)

[756] Dio Cassius, XL. 54.

[757] Velleius Paterculus, II. 68.

[758] Plutarch, Pompey, 58.

[759] Dio Cassius, XL. 53.

[760] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 24.

[761] Dio Cassius, XL. 52.

[762] Plutarch, Pompey, 59.

[763] Dio Cassius, XL. 56; comp. 30.

[764] Tacitus, Annales, III. 28.

[765] “Shall I pronounce against CÆsar? But what then becomes of that faith sworn, when, for this same privilege which he demands, I myself, at his prayer at Ravenna, went to solicit Coelius, the tribune of the people? What do I say, at this prayer! at the prayer of Pompey himself, then invested with his third consulship, of eternal memory.” (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 1.

[766] “It is he, Pompey, who has absolutely willed that the ten tribunes should propose the decree which permitted CÆsar to ask for the consulship without coming to Rome.” (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VIII. 3.—Dio Cassius, XL. 56.—Suetonius, CÆsar, 28.)

[767] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 25.

[768] Plutarch, Pompey, 55.—Valerius Maximus, IX. 5.—Appian, Civil Wars, II. 23, 24.

[769] Dio Cassius, XL. 57.

[770] “ ... He (Vercingetorix) reckoned on persuading all Gaul to take arms while they were preparing at Rome a revolt against CÆsar. If the chief of the Gauls had deferred his enterprise until CÆsar had the civil war to contend with, he would have struck all Italy with no less terror than was caused in former days by the Cimbri and the Teutones.” (Plutarch, CÆsar, 28.)

[771] “In all Gaul there are only two classes of men who count and are considered (the Druids and the knights), for the people have hardly any other rank than that of slaves.” (De Bello Gallico, VI. 13.)

[772] Dio Cassius, XL. 50.

[773] De Bello Gallico, VI. 12.

[774] De Bello Gallico, VI. 15.

[775] De Bello Gallico, VI. 4.

[776] De Bello Gallico, VI. 12.

[777] De Bello Gallico, VI. 4.

[778] De Bello Gallico, VII. 76.

[779] De Bello Gallico, V. 27.

[780] De Bello Gallico, V. 25, 54.

[781] De Bello Gallico, IV. 21.

[782] De Bello Gallico, V. 4.

[783] De Bello Gallico, VII. 33.

[784] “In the beginning of spring he convoked, according to custom, the assembly of Gaul.” (De Bello Gallico, VI. 3.)

[785] Cicero appears to fear for his wife and daughter in thinking that CÆsar’s army was filled with barbarians. (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 13, A.U.C. 705.) He wrote to Atticus that, according to Matius, the Gauls offered CÆsar 10,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry, which they would entertain at their own expense for ten years. (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, IX, xii. 2.)

[786] “All this,” Coelius writes to Cicero, “is not said in public, but in secret, in the little circle which you know well, sed inter paucos quos tu nosti palam secreto narrantur.” (Coelius to Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VIII. 1.)

[787] Dio Cassius, XL. 59.

[788] Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VIII. 10.

[789] Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, V. 18.

[790] Cicero to Coelius, Epist. Familiar., II. 8.

[791] “I station myself for some days near Issus, on the very site of the camp of Alexander, who was a rather better general than you and I.” (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, V. 20.)—“How ill this mission agrees with my habits, and how just is the saying, Every one to his trade!” (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, V. x. 18.)

[792] Cicero had two legions, but very incomplete.

[793] Asconius, In Pisonem, 3.—Apian, Civil Wars, II. 26.

[794] Strabo, V. 177.

[795] Suetonius, CÆsar, 28.

[796] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 26.

[797] Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VI. 1.

[798] In speaking of Pompey’s party, Cicero exclaims: “Men who all, with the exception of a very small number, breathed nothing but pillage, and discourses such as made one tremble, the more as victory might convert them into reality: not a person of rank who was not crippled with debts: there was absolutely nothing beautiful except the cause which they served.” (Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VII. 8.)—“They all agree, and Crassipes with them, that yonder there are nothing but imprecations, but threats of hatred to the rich, of war against the municipia (admire their prudence!), but proscriptions in mass; they are nothing but Syllas; and you must see the tone of Lucceius, and all that train of Greeks, and that Theophanes! Yet this is the hope of the Republic! A Scipio, a Faustus, a Libo, with their troops of creditors at their heels, of what enormities are not such people capable? What excesses against their fellow-citizens will such conquerors refuse?” (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, IX. 11.)

[799] Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VI. 1.

[800] “The Salaminians sought to borrow money at Rome to pay their taxes, but, as the law Gabinia prohibited it, the friends of Brutus, who offered to lend it them at four per cent. a month, demanded a senatus-consultus for their safety, which Brutus obtained for them.” (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, V. 21.)

[801] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 25.

[802] Suetonius, CÆsar, 30.

[803] Coelius to Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VIII. 14.

[804] Dio Cassius, XLI. 6.

[805] In our opinion, Professor A.W. Zumpt (Studia Romana, Berlin, 1859) is the only one who has cleared up this question; and we shall borrow of him the greatest part of his arguments. As to M. Th. Mommsen, in a special dissertation, entitled The Question of Right between CÆsar and the Senate, he proves that we must distinguish in the proconsulship between the provincia and the imperium. According to him, the provincia being given at the same time with the consulship, it could be taken possession of, according to the law Sempronia, only on the Calends of the month of January of the following year; the imperium, or military command, was added to it two months later, on the Calends of March. The provincia was given by a senatus-consultus, and counted from January to January; the imperium was given by a curiate law, and went from March to March: the imperium followed the rules of the military service; a year commenced was reputed finished, as for the campaigns of the soldiers, and thus the two first months of 705 might count for a complete year. The learned professor concludes that, if the Senate had the right to deprive CÆsar of his imperium, it could not take from him the command of the province before the end of the year 705, and that then CÆsar would find himself in the same position as all the proconsuls who, during the interval between the 1st of January, the commencement of their proconsulship, and the 1st of March, the time when they received the imperium, had the potestas, and not the military command. This system, we see, rests upon hypotheses which it is difficult to admit.

[807] The question became complicated through the difference of origin of the powers given for each of the two Gauls. The Senate had the power of taking away from CÆsar’s command Ulterior Gaul, which was given to him by a senatus-consultus, but it could not deprive him of Citerior Gaul, given by a plebiscitum, and yet it was the contrary opinion that Cicero sustained in 698. In fact, he exclaimed then, in his Oration on the Consular Provinces: “He separates the part of the province on which there can be no opposition (because it has been given by a senatus-consultus), and does not touch that which can be easily attacked; and, at the same time that he dares not take away that which has been given by the people, he is in haste to take away all, senator as he is, that which has been given by the Senate.” (Cicero, Orat. de Provinc. Consular., 15.—Velleius Paterculus, II. 44.—Suetonius, CÆsar, 20.—Appian, Civil Wars, II. 13.—Dio Cassius, XXXVIII. 8.)

[808] The 1st of March was the commencement of the ancient Roman year, the period at which the generals entered into campaign.

[809] P. Servilius, who was consul in 675, took possession of his province a short time after he entered upon his duties as consul; he returned in 679. Cicero (Orat. III. in Verrem, 90) says that he held the command during five years. This number can only be explained by admitting that the years 675 and 679 were reckoned as complete. L. Piso, who was consul in 696, quitted Rome at the end of his consulship, and returned thither in the summer of 699. Now, he was considered as having exercised the command during three years. (Cicero, In Pisonem, 35, 40.) They must, therefore, have counted as one year of the proconsulship the few months of 695. (See Mommsen, The Question of Right between CÆsar and the Senate, p. 28.)

[810] At all times the assemblies have been seen striving to shorten the duration of the powers given by the people to a man whose sympathies were not with them. Here is an example. The Constitution of 1848 decided that the President of the French Republic should be named for four years. The Prince Louis Napoleon was elected on the 10th of December, 1848, and proclaimed on the 20th of the same month. His powers ought to have ended on the 20th of December, 1852. Now, the Constituent Assembly, which foresaw the election of Prince Louis Napoleon, fixed the termination of the presidency to the second Sunday of the Month of May, 1852, thus robbing him of seven months.

[811] De Bello Gallico, VIII. 39.

[812] Dio Cassius, XL. 59.

[813] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 4.

[814] “Quid ergo? exercitum retinentis, quum legis dies transierit, rationem haberi placet? Mihi vero ne absentis quidem.” (Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 7.)

[815] Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 9.

[816] “Absenti sibi, quandocumque imperii tempus expleri coepisset.” (Suetonius, CÆsar, 26.—Cicero, Epist. Famil., XIII. 11.)

[817] CÆsar, De Bello Civili, I. 5.

[818] “I have contended that regard should be had to CÆsar for his absence. It was not to favour him; it is for the honour of a decision of the people, promoted by the consul himself.” (Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VI. 6.)

[819] Titus Livius, Epitome, CVIII.

[820] “Sed quum id datum est, illud una datum est.” (Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 7.)

[821] “Doluisse se, quod populi Romani beneficium sibi per contumeliam ab inimicus extorqueretur, erepto semestri imperio in urbem retraheretur.” (CÆsar, De Bello Civili, I. 9.)

[822] See, on the period of the comitia, Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, III. 13; Epist. Familiar., VIII. 4.

[823] Although all the facts prove that the term of the power was to cease in 707, Plutarch (Pompey, 55) reckons four years of prolongation, and Dio Cassius (XL. 44, 46) five, which shows the difference in the estimation of dates. (Zumpt, Studia Romana, 85.)

[824] “I believe certainly in Pompey’s intention of starting for Spain, and it is what I by no means approve. I have easily demonstrated to Theophanes that the best policy was not to go away. I am more uneasy for the Republic since I see by your letters that our friend Pompey is going to Spain.” (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, V. 11.)

[825] Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VIII. 4.

[826] “But at last, after several successive adjournments, and the certainty well acquired that Pompey consented to consider the recall of CÆsar on the Calends of March, the senatus-consultus was passed, which I send you.” (Coelius to Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VIII. 8.)

[827] Coelius to Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VIII. 8.

[828] Coelius to Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VIII. 8.

[829] Coelius to Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VIII. 8, §§ 3, 4.

[830] “But the consuls, who fear being obliged, by a decree of the Senate, to leave for the war, and who feel at the same time how disgraceful it will be to them if this commission fall on any other but them, will absolutely not allow the Senate to assemble; they carry it so far as to make people suspect them of want of zeal for the Republic: there is no knowing if it be negligence, or cowardice, or the fear of which I have just spoken; but what is concealed under this appearance of reserve is, that they will not have that province.” (Coelius to Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VIII. 10.)

[831] “With the succour of Dejotarus, the enemies may be held at bay till the arrival of Pompey, who sends me word that they intend him for this war.” (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VI. 1.)—“At this news of the passage of the Euphrates, every one offers to give his advice: this man would have them send Pompey; the other CÆsar and his army.” (Coelius to Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VIII. 10.)

[832] Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, V. 20

[833] He kept this title until the moment the civil war broke out.

[834] Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VIII. 4.

[835] Coelius to Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VIII. 10.

[836] “Ingeniosissime nequam.”

[837] Cicero to Curio, Epist. Familiar., II. 7.

[838] Cicero, Brutus, lx. 218.

[839] Suetonius, CÆsar, 49.

[840] Plutarch, Antony, 2.—Cicero, Philippica, II. xix. 48.

[841] See his biography in Appendix D.

[842] Cicero, Philippica, II. xx. 49.

[843] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 26.—Yet Cicero, who never spared his adversaries, makes no mention of this act of corruption; and Velleius Paterculus (II. 48) expresses himself as follows: “Did Curio, as has been said, sell himself? It is a question we cannot venture to decide.”

[844] “Æmilius Paulus built, they say, with this money the famous basilica which bears his name.” (Appian, Civil Wars, II. 26.)

[845] “It was said of him that there was no man so low but he thought him worth the trouble of gaining.” (Cicero, Ad Div., VIII. 22.)

[846] A villa near Aricia. (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VI. 1.)

[847] “Curio, in his ill humour at not having obtained the intercalation, has thrown himself, with unequalled levity, into the party of the people, and began to speak on CÆsar’s side.” (Coelius to Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VIII. 6.)

[848] See Appendix A.

[849] Dio Cassius, XL. 62.

[850] Coelius to Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VIII. 6.

[851] Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VI. 1; Ad Div., VIII. vi. 5.—Appian, Civil Wars, II. 27.

[852] The following letter explains the nature of this tax: “This man of importance (P. Vedius) met me with two chariots, a chaise, a litter, and so great a number of valets, that, if Curio’s law passes, Vedius will surely be taxed at 100,000 sestertii. He had, moreover, a cynocephalus in one of his chariots, and wild asses in his equipage. I never saw a man so ridiculous.” (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VI. i. 22.)

[853] Dio Cassius, XL. 63.

[854] Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VIII. 14.

[855] De Bello Gallico, VIII. 50, 51, 52.

[856] De Bello Gallico, VIII. 52.

[857] “Pompey appears to agree with the Senate in requiring absolutely the return of CÆsar on the Ides of Novembre. Curio is decided to do everything rather than suffer this: the rest he cares little about. Our party—you know them well—do not dare to undertake a deadly combat. This is how things stand now. Pompey, who, without attacking CÆsar, will accord nothing to him but what is just, accuses Curio of being an agent of discord. At the bottom, he will not allow that CÆsar be designated consul before he has given up his army and his province, and his great fear is that that may happen. He is by no means spared by Curio, who throws continually his second consulate in his teeth. I will tell you what will come to pass: if they do not use discretion with Curio, CÆsar will gain a defender in him. With the fear which they show of the opposition of a tribune, they will do so much that CÆsar will remain indefinitely master in Gaul.” Cicero, Epist. ad Familiar. VIII. 11.)

[858] Dio Cassius, XL. 41.—Appian, Civil Wars, II. 27.

[859] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 27.

[860] Coelius to Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VIII. 13.

[861] “It is his custom to speak in one way and to think in another; but he has not head enough to prevent people from seeing through him.” (Coelius to Cicero, Epist. ad Familiar., VIII. 1.)

[862] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 28.

[863] Plutarch, CÆsar, 34.

[864] Plutarch, Pompey, 61.

[865] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 29.—Plutarch, CÆsar, 32.

[866] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 29.—This officer (Appius) affected to undervalue the exploits which had been accomplished in that country (Gaul), and to spread rumours injurious to CÆsar. “Pompey,” said he, “must have known very little his strength and reputation, otherwise would he, in order to measure himself with CÆsar, seek other troops than those which were at his disposal? He would conquer him with the very legions of his enemy, as soon as he appeared, so much did the soldiers hate CÆsar, and desire to see Pompey again.” (Plutarch, Pompey, 61.)

[867] “I should like to come nearer to you; but, I regret to say, I dare not trust myself to the two legions.... The two legions must not be exposed in the presence of CÆsar without the cohorts from Picenum.” (Letter from Pompey to Domitius, Proconsul.—Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VIII. 12.)—“All my resources are reduced to two legions, which Pompey has retained in an odious manner, and of which he is no more sure than of foreigners.” (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 13.)

[868] Plutarch, Pompey, 61.

[869] Plutarch, CÆsar, 33.

[870] “Do you approve that Labienus and Mamurra should have amassed immense riches?” (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 7.)

[871] Dio Cassius, XL. 63, 64.

[872] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 30.—Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VIII. 4.

[873] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 31.—Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VI. 9; VII. 1.

[874] Dio Cassius, XL. 64.

[875] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 31.

[876] Coelius to Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VIII. 14.

[877] Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 3.

[878] Cicero landed at Brundusium on the 7th of the Calends of December, 704. (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 2.)

[879] “I receive flattering letters from CÆsar; Balbus writes me as many in his name. I am firmly determined not to flinch a finger’s length from the road of honour; but you know how much I am under obligation to CÆsar. Do you think that I have not to fear that they will reproach me my debt, if I vote even quietly in his favour, and, if I speak strongly, that they will ask it loudly from me? What am I to do? Pay it, you will say. Well! I will borrow from Coelius. But think of it, I beg of you, for I expect, if I happen to speak firmly in the Senate, your good friend from Tartessus will at once tell me: You, pay what you owe!” (Year 704, 9th December. Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 3.)

[880] “What will become of us? I have a good mind to shut myself up in the citadel of Athens, whence I write you this note.” (Year 704. Epist. ad Atticum, VI. 9.)—“Consequently, leaving to the fools the initiative of speech, I think that I shall do well to endeavour to obtain this triumph, were it only to have a reason not to be in Rome; but they are sure to find a means to come to wrest my opinion from me. You will laugh at me. How I wish I had remained in my province!” (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 1.)

[881] “He has borne witness, which I did not ask him, to my integrity, my equity, and my kindness, and he has refused me what I expected from him. You should see how CÆsar, in the letter in which he congratulates me and promises me everything, knows how to make the most of this abominable ingratitude of Cato! But this same Cato has caused twenty days to be granted to Bibulus. You must excuse me being spiteful; but this is a thing which I cannot bear, and which I will never forgive him.” (Year 704, November. Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 2.)

[882] Year 704, December. Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 7.—The words entire order of the knights are not in the text, but they result from what CÆsar says in the same letter.

[883] Year 704, December. Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 3.

[884] Year 704, December. Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 7.

[885] Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 4.

[886] “The situation of the Republic inspires me every day with more uneasiness. Honest people do not agree so well as is thought. How many Roman knights, how many senators, have I not heard inveighing against Pompey, particularly on account of this unfortunate journey! What we want is peace. All victory will be fatal, and cause a tyrant to rise up. Yes, I am one of those who think that it is better to grant all he (CÆsar) asks than to appeal to arms. It is now too late to resist him, when for the last ten years we have done nothing else but to give him strength against us.” (Year 704, December. Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 5.)

[887] Year 704, December. Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 8.

[888] “Senatus frequens in alia transiit.” (De Bello Gallico, VIII. 43.)

[889] “Neque senatu interveniente.” (De Bello Gallico, VIII. 4.)

[890] Suetonius, CÆsar, 30.

[891] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 22.—Plutarch, CÆsar, 41; Pompey, 85.

[892] De Bello Gallico, VIII. 54.

[893] It ended before the consular year.

[894] Drumann is of opinion that the “Commentaries” are in error in mentioning Fabius.

[895] Plutarch, Pompey, 59.—Appian, Civil Wars, II. 32.

[896] Velleius Paterculus, II. 49.

[897] Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 9.

[898] Plutarch, Pompey, 63.

[899] Plutarch (Pompey, 59) pretends even that they read it before the people.

[900] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 32.

[901] CÆsar, De Bello Civili, I. 1.

[902] Cicero, Epist. Familiar., VIII. 8.

[903] CÆsar, De Bello Civili, I. 3.

[904] The Sibylline books had predicted the empire of Rome to three Cornelii: L. Cornelius Cinna had been consul; Sylla, dictator; Cornelius Lentulus was in hopes of being the third.

[905] Cicero, Epist. Familiar., XVI. 12.

[906] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 34.

[907] Cicero, Epist. Familiar., XVI. 2.—Philippica, II. 21, 22.

[908] Plutarch, Antony, 7.—Dio Cassius, XLI. 2, 3.

[909] Plutarch, Antony, 7.—Appian, Civil Wars, II. 33.

[910] Cicero, Epist. Familiar., XVI. 12.

[911] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 34.

[912] Cicero, Epist. Familiar., XVI. 11.

[913] Florus, IV. 11.

[914] CÆsar, De Bello Civili, I. 15.—Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 23.

[915] CÆsar, De Bello Civili, I. 7.—Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 13.

[916] CÆsar, De Bello Civili, I. 12.—Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 3.—Lucan, Pharsalia, II., line 463.

[917] CÆsar, De Bello Civili, I. 6, 30.—Cicero, Epist. Familiar., V. 20; XVI. 12; Epist. ad Atticum, X. 16.—Suetonius, CÆsar, 34.

[918] Cicero, Epist. Familiar., XV. 11.—Appian, Civil Wars, II. 34.—CÆsar, De Bello Civili, I. 7.

[919] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 36.

[920] The “Commentaries,” it is true, say that the tribunes of the people rejoined CÆsar at Rimini: but it was more probably at Ravenna, as reported by Appian (II. 33), or in his camp between Ravenna and Rimini.

[921] The words of the proclamation of the Emperor Napoleon on landing in the gulf of Juan in 1815.

[922] Suetonius, CÆsar, 68.

[923] Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 12.

[924] “CÆsar has received a terrible blow: T. Labienus, who had so much influence in his army, has refused to become his accomplice: he has left him and has joined us. This example will have numerous imitators.” (Cicero, Epist. Familiar., XVI. 12.)—“Labienus considers CÆsar as utterly unable to maintain the struggle.” (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 16.)

[925] “Is that honourable ... (in CÆsar) to think of nothing but abolition of debts, calling back exiles, and so many other outrages?” (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VII. 11.)

[926] “A power after the manner of Sylla, that is what Pompey desires, and what all those wish who surround him.” (Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, VIII. 11.)

[927] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 35.—Plutarch, CÆsar, 35.

[928] Lucan, Pharsalia, I., line 526.

[929] Suetonius, CÆsar, 7.—Plutarch, CÆsar, 37.

[930] Suetonius, CÆsar, 32.

[931] De la Nauze refers this opposition to the 17th of April following (AcadÉmie des Inscriptions, tom. XXVI. 244). His calculation is incorrect.

[932] De la Nauze, influenced by his wrong calculation of the opposition of Jupiter, insists that these events took place at the approach of spring. He overlooks the particle jam. Ideler suppresses it from the German text.

[933] According to the system of Ideler, the Helvetii only started on the Julian 16th of April. On that reckoning, we cannot find room for the numerous events which occurred before the wheat was ripe. (CÆsar, De Bello Gallico, I. 16.)

[934] The system of Ideler (see Korb, in Orelli, Onomasticum Tullianum, tom. I., p. 170), according to whom the 6th of the Calends of October fell on the Julian 30th of August, is manifestly in the wrong. CÆsar, who, in the preceding year, saw no objection to pass into Britain at the end of August, would not have troubled himself about the equinox when it was still 27 days’ distant.

[936] Suetonius had written: “CÆsar placed, for this time, two more months between November and December, so that the year had fifteen months, including the one to be intercalated, which, following the usage, had fallen in this same year.” Censorinus, adopting this view, finds that CÆsar intercalated 90 days in the year 708. But Suetonius has bequeathed us other errors. Dio Cassius, consul for the second time in the year 229 after Christ, had drawn from authentic sources; it is better to hold to his system, which restores the astronomical concordance for the equinox in the year 700, whereas, with the system of Censorinus, it has been sought in vain what CÆsar’s intention could have been.