In the Senate Pompey proposed that Caesar be awarded the new command of Illyricum and the Gallic provinces. The sad, broken remnants of the aristocratic élite still prepared to show up for senatorial meetings duly granted it. If they had refused, the people’s assembly would have given it to him anyway; by granting the command to Caesar themselves, they saved face and gave the impression, at least, of retaining some power over the people’s assembly.10
But even in their gloom, the traditionalists could find something to raise a meagre cheer. By the time Caesar left for Gaul, he had alienated not just the entire Senate, but even some of the people too. His legislation had not benefited all sections of the plebs, and some were now asking if his methods were not just as corrupt as those of the discredited aristocrats from whom he said he was liberating Rome. ‘The truth is,’ wrote the senator Cicero at the time, ‘the present regime is the most infamous, most disgraceful, most uniformly odious to all sorts and classes and ages of men that ever was . . . Those “populist” politicians have taught even quiet folk to hiss!’11 Above all, however, Caesar had successfully galvanized one gritty, single-minded enemy in particular: Cato.
The dour, tenacious senator remained utterly determined to stop Caesar’s accumulation of power, and now he believed he had the weapon with which to do it. Cato assured his allies that he had grounds for prosecuting Caesar in a court of law over the illegalities perpetrated during his consulship. Yes, it was true that while Caesar was still in office, Cato could not touch him. But as soon as the term of his commands in Gaul came to an end and he returned to Rome, Caesar would be taken to court like a common criminal.
Nonetheless, Cato’s plans for revenge lay a long way off in the future. When Caesar rode off to Gaul in the spring of 58 BC, he and his ally Pompey seemed untouchable. The consuls and tribunes elected for that year were their loyal friends, and in this way they made sure that all the legislation they had enacted would not be undone. The two men had also sealed their alliance in an old-fashioned and aristocratic manner. Caesar had offered Pompey the hand of his only daughter, Julia, in marriage, and in the spring of 59 BC the ageing general had duly wed his charming young bride.
And yet the supreme alliance between the two men was now about to be tested to the limit. For while Pompey remained behind in Rome surrounded by enemies baying for his blood, Caesar was about to win unimaginable glory. And with that glory would come unimaginable power.
THE BALANCE OF POWER
The status of the small Roman province of Gallia Transalpina, in what is now the south of France, is reflected in its modern name: Provence. The Romans called the northern territory beyond it ‘Long-haired Gaul’ because of the horrendous, unkempt specimens of barbarity said to live there. The simple fact was that although the Roman Senate had made some leaders of the more powerful tribes official ‘Friends of the Roman People’, and although pioneering Roman merchants had penetrated along the rivers of the Rhone and Garonne to ply a roaring trade in wine, the dank and cold woods of the north were regarded by most civilized Romans as a threatening unknown. Worse, to many minds the region represented the greatest source of danger to Roman rule.12
What prompted such fear? In 390 BC, savage hordes of barbarian warriors from Gaul had achieved what even the great Carthaginian Hannibal had not. Rampaging their way through Italy, they had successfully sacked the city of Rome. More recently, those ancient Roman fears were painfully revived when, in 102 and 101 BC, it took the might of Marius’s well-drilled, highly organized legions to defend Italy from another fierce invasion of Gallic and Germanic tribes. But with the governorship of Julius Caesar, the legendary fear in which Gaul was held was about to come to a permanent end.
When Caesar arrived in Gaul he had no instructions or legal authority to wage war. Indeed, just the year before a law had been passed curbing the arbitrary actions of Roman provincial governors. Caesar would have known all about this. It was none other than he, as consul, who had devised and proposed the bill. And yet even regarding his own populist laws, Caesar was meticulous in calculating the moment to break them. In 58 BC the tribe of the Helvetii migrated from their home in present-day Switzerland and passed close to the doorstep of Caesar’s province. In response, the proconsul deliberately stationed his army 16 kilometres (10 miles) outside the boundaries of his province, directly in their path. Falling into his trap, the Helvetii attacked the Roman army. To the Roman commander this was a gift. Caesar quickly exploited a time-honoured legal loophole: he was, he said, defending the Roman republic from aggression and repairing the injury done to his dignity.13
Caesar called together his three legions stationed at Aquileia in northern Italy, raised two more legions in Cisalpine Gaul, and promptly taught the Helvetii a harsh lesson in battle. There was uproar in the Senate, Cato’s being the loudest voice. Caesar, he said, was simply doing as he pleased: illegally instigating wars with independent tribes not subject to Rome; illegally levying troops and filling up his legions with non-Roman citizens; and illegally granting them citizenship. He was becoming, cried Cato, his own self-appointed judge and jury, heaping crime upon crime against the republic!
The reality was that in the war against the Helvetii Caesar had declared in unambiguous terms his true intention as governor in Gaul. On whatever grounds, on whatever pretext, however flimsy, he was going to single- mindedly pursue a series of wars with the Gallic tribes beyond his province until the whole of Gaul, the sprawling and unknown tracts of that dark, sinister northern land, had been completely pacified and brought under Roman rule. Over the course of the next eight years Caesar set about honouring that intention with seemingly limitless confidence and ambition.
In 57 BC he demonstrated to the Gauls the extraordinary might of his legions by defeating the tribe of the Belgae. They were widely considered to have been the hardiest and bravest of the Gauls because they lived in the north ‘furthest away from the culture and civilization of the Province’.14 When, in 55 BC, two Germanic tribes, the Usipetes and the Tencteri, crossed the Rhine and attacked the Romans, Caesar did not simply lead his army in battle, cutting the 400,000-strong enemy to pieces. He used the survivors’ retreat into Germany to stage perhaps the most daring action of his command.
Across the 350-metre (1155-feet) width of the Rhine’s swelling rapids, Caesar ordered his army engineers to build a bridge. Such a feat of engineering had never before been contemplated, let alone attempted. But as the Romans drove great piles of wood into the river bed to yoke the river, it was almost as though they could control Mother Nature herself. The bridge complete, Caesar then crossed the river with his army and invaded the alien country. The Germanic tribes of the Suevi and Sugambri, who had never seen a bridge before, were so awestruck by the outlandish feat that they retreated into the deep forests and hid. Caesar then burnt and ravaged the nearby lands, and told all those who remained to pass on to the German tribes one very clear message: never again make an enemy of Rome. Then, as quickly as they had come, he and his army disappeared and returned to Gaul, dismantling the bridge en route. The entire exploit had taken a mere twenty-eight days.