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% Holmes' commentary on Caesar's De Bello Gallico.
% Prefatory material.
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% Contributor: Konrad Schroder <
[email protected]>
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% Original publication data:
% Holmes, T. Rice. _C._Iuli_Caesaris_Comantarii_Rerum_in_
% _Gallia_Gestarum_VII_A._Hirti_Commentarius_VIII._
% Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1914.
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% Version: 0.02 (Beta), 22 July 1993
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% This file is in the Public Domain.
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\greekfollows
\centerline{PREFACE}
\bigskip
T{\sc HIS} edition is intended not only for teachers and pupils, but also
for general readers who may wish to become acquainted with Caesar's
masterpiece and for scholars who have not time or inclination to read my
larger books. The critical notes are printed along with the others at the
foot of the text, where they will be more easily understood than if they
were relegated to a critical appendix; and the references which they
contain will enable any one who may wish to specialize to pursue his
researches further. I have taken account of all the relevant works that
have appeared in England and America and on the Continent since the
completion of the second edition of my {\it Caesar's Conquest of Gaul;} and
in a few cases I have modified or supplemented statements which I made
there.
There is no more interesting Latin book for boys than Caesar's account of
the Gallic war, provided that they will give their minds to it and that
they have the help of a good teacher, who realizes the obligation of
keeping far ahead of his class. Young pupils, it is true, can read so
little at one time that interest in the story, as such, can hardly,
unaided, be sustained. Even Macaulay's {\it Essays} might be dull if they
were read by a foreigner, with a dictionary, at the rate of a single
paragraph a day. But the difficulty is only apparent. Before the study of
this book, or of any of the separate editions which I have prepared of each
{\it Commentary,} is begun, I would recommend teachers to make their pupils
read Part~I of my {\it Caesar's Conquest of Gaul} and the Sixth and Seventh
Chapters of my {\it Ancient Britain,} or, if this should be impracticable,
to read them aloud themselves. I feel less diffidence in making this
suggestion because it has been made already by well-known critics as well
as by the Curricula Committee of the Classical Association, and because the
books which I have named have been in part translated into German for the
use of schools. If, before a boy begins to grapple with Caesar's Latin, he
has got a general notion of the whole story, he will work with far more
heart.
The principle to which I have adhered in writing my notes has been to avoid
giving any information which the learner can easily acquire for himself
through the medium of grammar, dictionary, or such other books as he may
fairly be supposed to have. My aim has been not to save him the labour---if
I had done so he would only have been bored---but to let him feel the
pleasure of thinking; and I have therefore tried, as far as was possible
with due regard to space, to appeal to his reason,---not only to state
results, but to enable him to follow the steps by which they were attained.
Merely inform a pupil that Alesia was situated on Mont Auxois, and you will
profit him little, for cut-and-dried information is indigestible; but make
him understand that it was there and that to suppose that it was anywhere
else involves absurdities, and you will set his intellect to work. I desire
indeed to appeal not only to the learner's reason but also to his
scepticism and his latent critical acumen. I should be glad to hear that he
had tried to pick holes in my arguments; for I do not wish him to accept
them until he is convinced that they are sound. For the benefit of any one
who may be disposed to test them, I have given at the end of various notes
references to my larger books; and I hope that some readers may feel moved
to gain such a mastery of the subject as is unattainable with a succinct
commentary. The High Master of St.~Paul's School, to whom I am grateful,
has lead nearly all my manuscript; and, after considering his suggestions,
I wrote some additional notes, struck out one or two, and modified a few
others; but he is not responsible for anything which this book contains.
I have thought it right to confine myself in the notes to explaining
Caesar's text. Various historical comments and other remarks which may be
helpful, but which would have been out of place in an edition of the
Commentaries, are to be found in Part I of my {\it Caesar's Conquest of
Gaul} (second edition) and of {\it Ancient Britain.}
Some readers may perhaps find opportunities of exploring the scenes of
Caesar's more important operations; for when one finds oneself, say, at
Martigny or upon the plateau of Alesia, the chapters in which Caesar
describes what happened there become more vivid than even the best maps and
plans can make them. I have given on pages 447--8 directions as to the best
way of reaching the various places which I have in mind.
It is now usual in English schools to read the classics in snippets,
partly, I suppose, in order that boys may become acquainted with many
authors before they leave school. But by following this plan they cannot
become intimate with any. One may read Macaulay's essay on Clive with
profit even if one ignores all the others; but to read the ninth chapter
only of his {\it History of England} would not be wise. Moreover, there is
no reason, apart from the consideration of what subjects are most
remunerative, why Caesar should only be used as an elementary text-book. It
cannot be read with the maximum of profit by a young boy, and it ought to
be read rapidly through, at least once, by the highest form in the school.
In saying this I have the support of the late High Master of St. Paul's,
who told me that when he was High Master of Manchester Grammar School he
read the whole work with his best pupils. Apart from the mere
interpretation of the Latin, which requires far more scholarship than is
commonly supposed, the book demands, for its full comprehension, at least
such an elementary knowledge of Roman history as may be acquired from the
late Professor Pelham's masterly {\it Outlines.} Furthermore, it demands
intelligence sufficiently developed to understand the exposition of
ethnological, social, religious, and political questions; and this demand
can hardly be satisfied by the Fourth Form.
In conclusion let me translate an extract from a letter relating to Caesar,
which Mommsen wrote in 1894 to Dr.~Heinrich Meusel:--- `The noble work
deserves all the labour that can be spent upon it. The enormous difference
between these Commentaries and everything else that is called Roman History
cannot he adequately realized.'
\bigskip
{\obeylines
11 D{\sc OURO} P{\sc LACE},
\quad K{\sc ENSINGTON}, W.
\quad\quad {\it November} 13, 1913.}
\vfill\eject
\centerline{LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS}
\bigskip
{\it A.~B.} = Rice Holmes's {\it Ancient Britain and the Invasions of
Julius Caesar,} 1907.
{\it A.~C.~S.} = A. Holder's {\it Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz.}
{\it A.~J.} = {\it Archaeological Journal.}
{\it B.~ph.~W.} = {\it Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift.}
{\it C.~G.} = Rice Holmes's {\it Caesar's Conquest of Gaul} 2nd ed., 1911.
{\it C.~I.~L.} = {\it Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum.}
{\it C.~J.} = {\it Classical Journal} (Chicago).
{\it Cl.~Ph.} = {\it Classical Philology} (Chicago).
{\it C.~Q.} = {\it Classical Quarterly.}
{\it C.~R.} = {\it Classical Review.}
{\it C.~S.} = A. Klotz's {\it C\"asarstudien.}
{\it D.~R.~R.} = G. Long's {\it Decline of the Roman Republic.}
{\it D.~S.} = Daremberg and Saglio's {\it Dictionniaire des antiquit\'es
grecques et romaines.}
{\it G.~C.} = Stoffel's {\it Histoire de Jules C\'esar,---Guerre civile.}
{\it G.~K.} = A. von G\"oler's {\it Caesars Gallischer Krieg,} 2nd ed.,
1880.
{\it H.~G.} = C. Jullian's {\it Histoire de la Gaule.}
{\it H.~R.} = Th. Mommsen's {\it History of Rome.}
{\it J.~B.} = {\it Jahresberichte des philologischen Vereins zu Berlin.}
{\it L.~C.} = H. Meusel's {\it Lexicon Caesarianum.}
{\it N.~J.} = {\it Neue Jahrb\"ucher f\"ur Philologie,} \&c.
{\it N.~Ph.~R.} = {\it Neue philologische Runschau.}
{\it Ph. } = {\it Philologus.}
{\it Ph.~Suppl.} = {\it Philologus, Supplementband.}
{\it P.~S.~A.} = {\it Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London.}
{\it R.~E.~A.} = {\it Revue des \'etudes anciennes.}
{\it Rh.~M.} = {\it Rheinisches Museum.}
{\it S.~P.~A.} = {\it Sitzungsberichte der k\"oniglich preussischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften.}
{\it Th.~l.~L} = {\it Thesaurus linguae Latinae.}
{\it Tr.} = Rice Holmes's {\it Caesar's Commentaries .~.~. translated into
English.}
{\it W. kl. Ph.} = {\it Wochenschrift f\"ur klassiche Philologie.}
{\it Z.G.} = {\it Zeitschrift f\"ur das Gymnasailwesen.}
{\it Z.~\"o.~Gy.} = {\it Zeitschrift f\"ur die \"osterreichischen
Gymnasien.}
\vfill\eject
\centerline{HOW AND WHEN CAESAR WROTE}
\centerline{THE \it COMMENTARIES}
\bigskip
T{\sc HE} {\it Commentaries on the Gallic War} were published not later
that 46 {\sc B.C.}, for Cicero notices them with admiration in his {\it
Brutus} (75, \S 262), which appeared in that year. Most probably indeed
they were both written and published several years earlier; for it is more
than unlikely that Caesar would have had time for literary composition
during the intense labour of the civil war, and moreover, as Mommsen says
({\it Hist. of Rome,} v, 1894, p.~499), the book was doubtless intended [at
least in part] to justify before the Roman public what Caesar had done in
Gaul. I will explain this in discussing the trustworthiness of the
narrative.
There are two main theories about the way in which Caesar composed his
book. Some critics believe that he wrote each commentary year by year,
after the campaign which it described: others that he wrote the whole
seven---for it must be remembered that the eighth was written by his
friend, Aulus Hirtius---in the winter of 52--51 {\sc B.C.} or in the year
50. The latter view is supported by Hirtius, who says (Praef., \S 6), {\it
ceteri enim quam bene atque emendate, nos etiam quam facile atque celeriter
eos perfecerit scimus} (`others know the flawless excellence of his work; I
know more---how easily and rapidly it was done'). If this remark is no
absolutely inconsistent with the position that each commentary was written
in the winter that followed the campaign which it described, the natural
meaning is that the whole was the result of one continuous effort. The
statement of Hirtius, who was one of Caesar's most intimate friends, and
probably also his literary secretary, is the only original testimony that
we have, and must be accepted unless it can be shown to be inconsistent
with facts. Some critics think that it is. In ii, 28, \S 1 we read that
`the Nervian people .~.~. was brought to the verge of extinction', whereas
in v, 39--42 we are told that they vigorously attacked Quintus Cicero and
in vii, 75, \S 3 Caesar says that they were called upon to contribute 6,000
men to the army which attempted to relieve Vercingetorix. Again, in vi, 2,
\S 3 Caesar affirms that `all the Cisrhenane Germans, who included the
Segni and Condrusi, were in arms against him: in vi, 31, \S\S 1--2 he
implies that these two tribes proved their innocence. But many of the
Nervians who fought against Cicero had doubtless been too young to fight
three years before; the statement that the tribe was wellnigh exterminated
may have been only a rhetorical flourish, based upon misleading reports,
which Caesar or his secretary had not had time or inclination to sift; and
the inconsistency between vi, 2 and vi, 31 only proves that he did not
thoroughly revise his work. Even real inconsistencies, which are very few,
can be accounted for by hasty use of discordant materials, lapse of memory,
or mere carelessness.
It may be regarded, then, as certain that Caesar wrote the Commentaries
after the campaign of 52 {\sc B.C.}; and the only question is whether he
wrote them in the winter following that campaign or later. I am not sure
that he would have had time to write them in the winter; for from the very
beginning of 51 he was hard at work, campaigning against the Bituriges and
other tribes. Mommsen, indeed, argues (Hist. of Rome, v, 1895, p.~499,
n.~1) that the book must have been not only written but published before
the end of 51, because in vii, 6, \S 1 Caesar `approves the exceptional
laws [passed under the influence of Pompey] of 702' (52 {\sc B.C.}), and he
could not have done this after his rupture with Pompey, when he reversed
certain judgements which were based upon those laws. But why should not the
publication have taken place in 50 {\sc B.C.},---the year before that in
which the civil war began? It seems to me most probable that it did, for
this was the only year between Caesar's first consulship and the last year
of his life in which he was not fighting; and, as far as we know, he was
then comparatively at leisure (Caesar's Conquest of Gaul, pp.~202--10). See
p.~436.
\vfill\eject
\centerline{THE TEXT OF THE COMMENTARIES}
\bigskip
E{\sc VERY} one who can read the Commentaries with interest will want to
know how far the manuscripts in which they have been handed down to us
correspond with what Caesar wrote; for if he will think, he will see that
none of them correspond with it exactly, and that although scholars have
been trying ever since 1469, when the first printed edition was published,
to remove the errors, many must still and always will remain. The oldest of
the extant manuscripts was written fully 900 years after the book was first
put into circulation. Now, however careful a scribe may be, he can hardly
avoid making some mistakes in copying out a written book; the scribe who
copies his copy will make more; and so on. Even contemporary copies of
Caesar's original manuscript doubtless contained mistakes.
Cicero\footnote{$^1$}
{Q., fr., iii, 5--6, \S 6.}
complains that books sold by the booksellers of Rome had been carelessly
copied; and, notwithstanding all the care of proofreaders, few modern books
are entirely free from printers' errors. Besides, a manuscript might pass
into the hands of a reader who would make notes on the margin; and if
another copy were to be made from the one which contained these notes, the
copyist might be misled into incorporating them in the text. Thus two kinds
of mistakes would gradually find their way in. An example of the latter
kind---{\it nocte intermissa}---will be found in i. 27, \S 4. An example of
the other shows how even a very careful copyist might go astray. In viii,
32, \S 2 the famous stronghold, Uxellodunum, is mentioned for the first
time. {\it Uxellodunum} was only written by the copyist in two of the good
manuscripts: the rest have {\it auxilio dunum,} which, as every one will
see, is nonsense. Can you imagine how this curious blunder was made? In
this way. In some manuscript a reader wrote either in the margin or above
{\it uxellodunum} (not {\it Uxellodunum,} for even proper names were
written with small initial letters) the words {\it a.~uxillodunum,} and by
{\it a.,} which was an abbreviation, he meant {\it aliter,} `otherwise'. He
wished to show that besides {\it uxellodunum} there was another spelling
{\it uxillodunum.} This manuscript passed into the hands of a copyist who
misunderstood the abbreviation {\it a.} and wrote {\it auxillo dunum,} and
as {\it l} might easily be mistaken for {\it i}, somebody else wrote {\it
auxilio dunum}.
A great many manuscripts of Caesar exist; but only nine or ten of them are
now considered good. They are divided into two groups, known as $\alpha$
and $\beta$, and generally believed to be derived from a common original,
or archetype, which is called {\it X.} Each manuscript is called by a
letter, which is here prefixed to the full name:---
{\it A} = codex Bongarsianus (or Amstelodamensis 81) of the ninth or tenth
century.
{\it B} = Parisinus I (Paris, Biblioth\`eque nationale, 5763, ninth or
tenth century).
{\it M} = Vaticanus (Vatican, 3864, tenth century).
{\it Q} = Moysiacensis (Paris, Bibl. nat., 5056, twelfth century)
{\it S} = Ashburnhamianus (Bibl. Laurent. R. 33, tenth century).
{\it a} = Parisinus II or Thuaneus (Paris, Bibl. nat., 5764, eleventh
century).
{\it f} = Vindobonensis I (Bibl. Vindob. [Vienna], 95, twelfth century).
{\it h} = Ursinianus (Vatican, 3324, eleventh century).
{\it l} = Riccardianus (Bibl. Riccard. [Florence], 541, eleventh or twelfth
century).
H. Meusel traces the pedigree of these MSS. as follows:
\centerline{[figure: page xii]}
To $\phi$ may be added the best manuscript in the British Museum (Add. {\sc
MSS.} 10,084), which is known as Lovaniensis and referred to as {\it L.} I
have published a collation of this manuscript in the Classical Quarterly of
July, 1911, and Meusel has estimated its value in {\it Jahresberichte des
philologischen Vereins zu Berlin,} 1912, pp. 15--18.
Professor A. Klotz ({\it Rhenisches Museum,} 1910, pp. 224--34) thinks that
the foregoing pedigree, which has been generally accepted, is incorrect. He
believes, with Professor B. K\"ubler, that the archetype of all the extant
{\sc MSS}. was a copy belonging to $\beta$, and that $\alpha$ is descended
from a copy belonging to the same group, in which readings from a
manuscript of the sixth century, published by two editors---Julius Celsus
Constantinus and Flavius Licerius Firminus Lupicinus---were inserted.
Accordingly Klotz has constructed this pedigree, which, in the Opinion of
Meusel ({\it Jahresberichte des Philologischen Vereins zu Berlin,} 1912,
pp. 18--21), may possibly be right:---
\centerline{[figure: page xiii]}
The two groups, $\alpha$ and $\beta$, differ from each other about 1,500
times; and an editor cannot do without either. But when they differ and
neither is obviously wrong, how is he to decide between them? Simply, in
most cases, by considering the context or by carefully noting Caesar's use
of language in passages in which the two groups agree. This laborious task
has been performed by various critics, notably by three German scholars,
Rudolf Schneider, Meusel, and Alfred Klotz. Let me give one or two
examples. In v, 35, \S 5 $\alpha$ has (cum a prima luce ad horam octavam)
{\it pugnaretur;} $\beta$ has {\it pugnassent.} The former is preferable
because Caesar in describing the duration of a battle almost always uses
the passive. In vii, 64, \S 2 $\alpha$ {\it h} have (peditatu quem ante)
habuerat (se fore contentum dicit); while the rest of the $\beta$ {\sc
MSS}. have {\it habuerit,} which is certainly right, because the relative
clause is part of what Vercingetorix said, and therefore the subjunctive is
necessary. But in some cases the claims of $\alpha$ and $\beta$ appear to
be equally balanced; and here, for reasons which I have given in the {\it
Classical Review} of 1901 (p.~175), I follow with Meusel the reading of
$\alpha$. There is also a considerable number of passages in which, though
all the manuscripts agree, the text is obviously wrong, and has been
corrected with more or less success. Some of these emendations are
certainly right. For instance, in i, 40, \S 9 the {\sc MS}. reading is (cui
rationi contra homines barbaros .~.~. locus fuisset) {\it ac} (ne ipsum
quidem sperare nostros exercitus capi posse); and the obvious correction,
{\it hac,} appeared just four centuries ago in the Aldine edition. Again,
in vii, 3, \S 2 the {\sc MSS}. have (Nam) ubique (maior atque inlustrior
incidit res, clamore .~.~. significant): the emendation {\it ubi quae} is
self-evident. Other emendations are highly probable; and fortunately those
doubtful or corrupt passages which are important for history are very few.
In this book it would be useless to give a list of the various readings of
the manuscripts, or to explain in all cases the reasons that have led me to
adopt one reading\footnote{$^2$}
{Teachers and other readers who may be interested in textual
questions will find a full {\it apparatus criticus} in H.
Meusel's edition of 1894, which is supplemented by an article
contributed by the present editor to the Classical Quarterly of
July, 1911. A list of articles which may be consulted with profit
will be found in {\it Caesar's Conquest of Gaul,} p.~202; and
others will be referred to in my foot-notes. Every one who wishes
to make a special study of the Commentaries from the linguistic
point of view should read Meusel's paper in {\it Jahresberichte
des philologischen Vereins zu Berlin,} 1894, pp, 214--398, and
Professor Postgate's in the {\it Classical Review,} 1903, pp.
441--6.}
in preference to another. I have briefly discussed in foot-notes all the
more important passages in which the text is uncertain; but in regard to
comparatively unimportant variations, where I have either been convinced by
Meusel's arguments or those of other scholars, or have independently come
to the same conclusion, I have not here stated the reasons: they are to be
found in articles to which I refer below.\footnote{$^3$}
{See the preceding note. In the {\it Classical Review} 1901,
p.~176, I have given reasons for preferring in many places the
reading of $\beta$. Nipperdey rated this group very low, partly
perhaps because he was ignorant of {\it h} and {\it l} and in his
time $\alpha$ had not been accurately collated; but even he was
often obliged to have recourse to $\beta$. It must not, however,
be imagined that those scholars who have vindicated the
independent worth of $\beta$ undervalue $\alpha$.}
Readers of the critical notes will see that when I enclose a word or a
passage in the text in square brackets, I do not necessarily mean more than
that I regard it as open to suspicion, though some bracketed words are
certainly spurious. The obvious emendations, of which I have already given
two examples, and which, as a rule, I have adopted silently, will be found
in Meusel's critical edition. The principle to which I have adhered is
never to incorporate an emendation in the text, even when I am inclined to
believe that it represents what Caesar wrote, unless the {\sc MS}. reading
or readings seem indefensible. When, for instance, one finds that in vii,
10, \S 1 {\it expugnatis} is used in a sense which the verb has nowhere
else in Caesar, and never in Cicero or in Sallust, one feels the necessity
of caution.
\medskip
N{\sc OTE}.---When I quote readings adopted by Meusel which are not in his
text of 1894, they are to be found in the reissue of his school edition
(1908) unless I state that he has adopted them since.
\vfill\eject
\centerline{THE CREDIBILITY OF CAESAR'S}
\centerline{NARRATIVE}
\bigskip
F{\sc OR} the history of the first seven years of Caesar's conquest of Gaul
our principal authority is Caesar himself. It is, indeed, impossible to
grasp the full meaning of his narrative without the help of the modern
scholars who have contributed so much to the task of solving the problems
which the Commentaries present. It is true, moreover, that Cicero's
writings illustrate certain phases of the war, and that later writers, such
as Suetonius, Plutarch, and Dion Cassius, make certain statements, true or
false, which are not to be found in Caesar. But Caesar is the authority;
and thoughtful readers will want to know how far his narrative is
trustworthy According to Suetonius,\footnote{$^1$}
{{\it Diuus Iulius,} 56.}
Pollio, who served under Caesar in the civil war, thought that the
Commentaries were written carelessly and with little regard for truth; that
Caesar had accepted without due inquiry the reports of his officers; and
that, either intentionally or from failure of memory, he was inaccurate in
describing what he had done himself. Now it is almost certain that Pollio
was referring to Caesar's Commentaries on the Civil War, with which we are
not here concerned;\footnote{$^2$}
{According to Suetonius, Pollio thought that Caesar would have
rewritten and corrected his narrative if he had had an
opportunity ({\it existimatque rescriptorum et correcturum
fuisse}). A.~Klotz ({\it Rh.~M.,} 1911, p.~81) remarks that
Pollio could hardly have said this in regard to the {\it
Commentaries on the Gallic War,} which were published by Caesar
himself.}
but suppose that he had the same opinion of the Gallic War. If so, as he
did not serve in Gaul, he could only have repeated what he had heard from
others; and their opinions would have been of no value except about what
they had seen themselves. As I have learned from conversation with men who
had taken part in Sir Charles Napier's conquest of Sind and in the Indian
Mutiny, and from letters which they wrote to me, how mistakes in military
histories arise, I believe that I can form a tolerably just idea of the
meaning of Pollio's criticism. Caesar inevitably made mistakes; and Pollio
may have conversed with eyewitnesses who pointed out these mistakes, who
were perhaps aggrieved by them, and who, exaggerating their importance, as
men who have no sense of historical proportion will always do, shrugged
their shoulders and exclaimed, `Such is history.' Caesar's accuracy has
been confirmed, on various points, by modern investigations. Every one who
has seen the places which he described will admit that he was gifted with
the faculty of observation. Most of the operations which are pictured in
his narrative were performed under his own eye: he had opportunities for
observing what happened in a battle or a siege which a modern general,
whose operations extend over a vast area, cannot have; and he very rarely
indulges in that sort of detailed description which gives rise to most of
the mistakes that are made in modern military histories. This is a point
which I could not make perfectly clear to a `general reader' unless he
would listen attentively while I explained to him the labour which I have
myself undergone in writing an account of a modern battle and the process
by which I have been enabled to correct mistakes which had crept into my
original draft. But all who have tried to write military history from
original sources will understand what I mean. As a rule Caesar gives us
only the outline of a battle,---he tells us just so much as may enable us
to understand the moves, and no more. He sent dispatches to the Senate,
and it may be assumed that he kept copies of them: his generals sent
reports to him; and he finished his book within a year after the close of
the war. His account, therefore, was a contemporary account by the
eyewitness who had the best eyes, the most favourable point of view, and
the most trustworthy information.
As for the speeches which he puts into the mouths of Vercingetorix and
others, nearly all are very short and written, like many reports in
newspapers of speeches, in {\it Oratio Obliqua,} which shows that he only
professed to give the gist of what was said. Almost the only one which is
at all open to suspicion is the comparatively long speech in the
seventy-seventh chapter of the {\it Seventh Commentary,} which he
attributes to Critognatus. Departing from his custom, he wrote this speech
in the form of {\it Oratio Recta;} and as there was certainly no shorthand
writer present when Critognatus was speaking, the words were of course
Caesar's own. But we may reasonably suppose that he was informed of the
drift of Critognatus's arguments by some one who had listened to
them---perhaps by Vercingetorix himself---for he made at least 60,000
prisoners after the fall of Alesia.\footnote{$^3$}
{Cf. vii, 71, \S 3 with 89, \S 5 and 90, \S 3, and see the note
on the first of these passages.}
Serious charges have, however, been brought against the general tone of
Caesar's narrative. They may be grouped in two classes, according to the
motives which his accusers have imputed to him. These motives are, first,
a desire to justify unconstitutional, illegal, or unrighteous acts, and
secondly, a desire to magnify his own exploits, to obtain for himself the
credit of certain exploits of his officers, and to conceal everything that
might damage his reputation as a general. I shall examine in foot-notes
those of his statements which I believe to be either inaccurate or
misleading; but in this little book it would of course be out of place to
notice all the charges---or even all that are worth noticing---which have
been brought against him; and I have done so already in two other
works.\footnote{$^4$}
{{\it Caesar's Conquest of Gaul,} 1899, pp. 173--244, and the
second edition of the same, 1911, pp. 211--56; {\it Ancient
Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar,} 1907, pp. 666--72.}
Good judges have accepted the conclusion which I reached,---that under
close scrutiny nearly all the charges break down. As an acute critic has
remarked, Caesar took pains to justify his first two campaigns---those
which he conducted against the Helvetii and Ariovistus---because in
crossing the frontier of the Roman Province he had acted without the
sanction of the Senate; but he knew that if he could convince his readers
that he had done right in 58 {\sc B.C.} all would be well, for the other
campaigns followed as a matter of course. And his self-justification was
sound. Naturally he made out the best case that he could, but he did not
falsify facts: he only emphasized, as he had a right to do, the fact that
he had acted for his country's good. So far as I am aware, no great
writer, no great historian, no great statesman or general has ever thrown
serious discredit upon the Commentaries. Of course they are not absolutely
true: no history is. Caesar was sometimes either uncritical or careless in
using the reports of his generals: he may have thought it discreet to
withhold some valuable information: he doubtless sometimes exaggerated,
probably because he was misinformed, the numbers of his enemies and the
losses which he or his officers had inflicted upon them; he may have
concocted an excuse for the one defeat---the defeat at Gergovia---which he
himself suffered; and I am willing to believe that his memoirs leave upon
the mind an impression of his prowess, if not of his character, more
favourable than would have been produced by the narrative of an impartial
historian. But on the whole he could afford to tell the truth. He did
full justice to his lieutenants; he wrote most generously of his
enemies;\footnote{$^5$}
{See ii, 27, \S 5 and vii, 30, \S 3.}
and I see no reason for believing that he was ashamed of anything that he
had done. `On ne peut contester', says the Duc d'Aumale, `que ses r\'ecits
respirent la sinc\'erit\'e';\footnote{$^6$}
{{\it Rev. des Deux Mondes,} 2$^e$ p\'er., xv, 1858, p.~119.}
and Montaigne, in a note written on the margin of his copy of the
Commentaries, called the author `le plus net, le plus disert, et le plus
sinc\`ere historien qui fut jamais.'\footnote{$^7$}
{{\it Ib.,} p.~118.}
Perhaps we shall hit the exact truth if we add the comment of the Duc
d'Aumale,---`le plus sinc\`ere de ceux qui ont \'ecrit leur propre
histoire.'\footnote{$^8$}
{\it Ib.}
\vfill\eject
\centerline{THE ETHNOLOGY OF GAUL}
\bigskip
E{\sc VERYBODY} knows the three sentences with which Caesar's narrative of
the Gallic war begins: `Gaul, taken as a whole, is divided into three
parts, one of which is inhabited by the Belgae, another by the Aquitani,
and the third by a people who call themselves Celts and whom we call Gauls.
These peoples differ from one another in language, institutions, and laws.
The Gauls are separated from the Aquitani by the Garonne, from the Belgae
by the Marne and the Seine.' This information was enough for Caesar's
Italian readers: he did not trouble himself or them about the races which
had inhabited Gaul long before Gauls and Belgae arrived, and whose
descendants lived there still; and if we had to depend upon him alone, we
should know no more about the ethnology of Gaul than the man in the street
knows about the ethnology of Britain, where the descendants of Huguenots,
Flemings, Jews, Normans, Danes, Saxons, Celts, and aborigines are living
now under the common name of Englishmen. A century ago the most learned men
knew very little more than what Caesar told them. But within the last
generation or two a great deal more has been ascertained,---mostly from
evidence which was not to be found in books. Here I need only give a short
explanation of the way in which the information has been acquired and a
short statement of the results.
The information has been derived from four different sources,---the
evidence of Caesar and other ancient writers and the three sciences, which
are steadily growing, called physical anthropology, archaeology, and
philology. The anthropologists have worked in two different ways: they have
carefully measured skeletons or skulls found in caverns, in ancient graves,
and elsewhere, and belonging to men who were living in Gaul not only after
the Celtic invasion (see p. xlvii) but many hundreds or thousands of years
before Caesar set foot in the country, and have classified them in various
groups, not forgetting to note the surroundings in which they ~ ere found;
they have also taken very numerous observation.s of the height, hair, eyes
and complexion, and skull-form of living Frenchmen, Belgians, and others,
in the hope that the results would help them to give a true account of the
population of ancient Gaul. The archaeologists have collected, arranged,
and described the tools, weapons, and ornaments which were found with or
apart from the skeletons, and have thereby been able to fix the period of
Gallic history or the prehistoric period to which this or that skeleton or
group of skeletons belonged. Thus some skeletons have been found interred
with stone knives, others with bronze daggers, others with iron swords,
bronze brooches, chariot-wheels, and horse-trappings of various kinds. The
philologists have endeavoured to learn from names of tribes and places and
from the scanty remains of the Iberian and Ligurian languages whether the
Iberians and Ligurians, whom Caesar ignored, inhabited other parts of Gaul
besides those which ancient writers assigned to them, and have also used
the remains of the old Celtic languages in order to find out whether the
Celtae all spoke the same language or formed two groups which spoke two
dialects, how they were related to the Belgae, and how both were related to
the Germans.
Before I proceed let me ask the reader to bear in mind two things. First,
Caesar uses the words `Celts' (Celtae) and `Gauls' (Galli) in a restricted
sense. As we shall see presently, the Belgae were Gauls and Celts as well
as the Celtae: there had been Celts in Germany before he came to Gaul;
there were Celts in Britain and in Spain; the Gauls who beat the Romans in
the battle of the Allia\footnote{$^1$}
{{See p. xxxix.}}
were Celts. Secondly, Belgae, Celtae, and Aquitani were all, more or less,
mixed. No pure race exists.
Let us begin at the beginning. The oldest human fossils that have been
found in Gaul belong to the Palaeolithic Age. Not only Gaul, but also
Belgium and Central Europe as far east as Croatia were then inhabited by
hunters belonging to what is generally called the Neanderthal race, after a
skull which was found about fifty years ago in the valley of the Neander in
Rhenish Prussia As far as we can tell from the bones that have been
discovered, they were short, sturdy men, with very low receding foreheads,
huge projecting brow ridges, and certain ape-like features,---for instance,
extremely defective chins These people, although they manufactured flint
tools with considerable skill, were certainly much inferior in mental power
to others of a different type who were their contemporaries; and towards
the end of the Palaeolithic Age there dwelt in South-Western Gaul a people
who, as we may infer not only from their beautifully formed heads, but from
the wonderful works of art which I have mentioned in the Introduction, were
as intelligent as modern Europeans Skulls of this type were discovered at
Laugerie-Basse and Chancelade in the valley of the Loz\`ere; and nearly
related to the race which they represent were people remarkable for great
stature, some of whose skeletons have been unearthed from caves near
Mentone, and who are generally called after a specimen that was found
beneath the rock-shelter of Cro-Magnon in P\'erigord.
Thus even in the Old Stone Age the inhabitants of Gaul belonged to several
different types Some ethnologists believe that the Neanderthal race became
extinct; but descendants of the other groups were living in Caesar's time;
and their descendants are living now.
So much for the Palaeolithic Age. Of the Neolithic Age, which followed it,
we of course know much more The skeletons that have been found belong for
the most part to two groups Both were short or of middle height, and both,
as we may infer from the complexion of their modern descendants, were dark;
but the shorter, who are called after Grenelle, near Paris, where six
typical specimens were discovered, were sturdily built and had short round
heads; while the others, the most famous representatives of whom belonged
to the caverns of l'Homme Mort and Baumes-Chaudes in the department of the
Loz\`ere, were generally slender and had well-formed oval heads. Probably
the latter were descended from the palaeolithic race which is represented
by the skeletons of Chancelade and Laugerie-Basse; but the round-headed
people, as would appear from the places in which their remains were most
numerous, migrated into Gaul by two routes,---through Belgium and Savoy.
People who resembled the long-heads of the Loz\`ere dwelt in the Neolithic
Age in our own island and in various parts of Central and Southern Europe:
the round-heads were rare in Britain, but numerous on the Continent, as
they are still.
It must not, however, be supposed that all the neolithic inhabitants of
Gaul belonged to one or the other of these two main types. Here and there
long-headed individuals were tall; and in some places skeletons of divers
kinds have been found jumbled together. But although the two principal
groups gradually intermingled, they were certainly at first distinct; for
of 140 interments 55 contained only long skulls, and 20 only short ones;
while every one of the skulls---64 in all---that were taken from the
caverns of l'Homme Mort and Baumes-Chaudes were long.
Invaders different from the people who have just been described may have
settled in Gaul in the Bronze Age; but we cannot be sure, for in that
period the dead were more often cremated than interred. At a later time,
when iron weapons were beginning to be used instead of bronze, a tall race,
which, as far as we can judge from skeletons, resembled the Celts, occupied
the eastern departments of the Jura and the Doubs; and they were most
probably new-comers.
In Switzerland---the original home of the Helvetii---the long-headed and
the round-headed group were both represented.
I must now say a few words about the Ligurians and the Iberians, who
inhabited Gaul before the Celts arrived. Before 500 {\sc B.C.} the Ligurians
possessed South-Eastern Gaul, east of the Rh\^one and at least as far north
as Bellegarde in the department of the Ain; and at that time or not long
afterwards they were mingled, west of the Rh\^one, with Iberians. So much w
e learn from historians and geographers: but there is some reason to
believe that Ligurians occupied the whole eastern region of Gaul as far
north as the Marne; for certain suffixes, or endings of place-names, namely
-asca, -asco, -osca, -osco, -usca and -usco, which are found very
frequently in Piedmont, where Ligurians were the primitive inhabitants,
also occur in twenty-five of the eastern departments\footnote{$^2$}
{Alpes-Mar\-i\-times, Var, Bouches-du-Rh\^one, Gard, Herault,
Basses-Alpes, Vaucluse, Hautes-Alpes, Dr\^ome, Ard\`eche, Savoie,
Is\`ere, Ain, Rh\^one, Jura, Sa\^one-et-Loire, C\^ote-d'Or,
Doubs, Haute-Sa\^one, Yonne, Aube, Marne, Haute-Loire, Aveyron,
and Ari\`ege.}
of France, and these departments form one unbroken tract. Indeed it is not
improbable that Ligurians, even in Caesar's time, inhabited Aquitania; for
there were five tribes in Liguria proper\footnote{$^3$}
{The Deciates, Desuviates, Ednates, Nantuates, and Quariates.}
and sixteen or seventeen in Aquitania\footnote{$^4$}
{The Cocosates, Elusates, Glatcs, Sibusates, Sotiates, Tarusates,
and ten or eleven others mentioned by Pliny ({\it N.H.,} iv, 19,
\S 108).}
whose names ended in -ates; and such names are to be found nowhere else in
Gaul.\footnote{$^5$}
{The Belgic Atrebates are perhaps only an apparent exception. It
must, however, be admitted that no Aquitanian names in -asca,
\&c., have been cited.}
The Iberians probably migrated into Southern Gaul from Spain; for Iberians
occupied the whole eastern region of the Spanish peninsula, though the name
`Iberian' was perhaps applied originally only to a people who dwelt between
the river Ebro and the Pyrenees. It is generally believed, though some
scholars are of a different opinion, that Basque, which is still spoken in
the south-western corner of France and the adjacent part of Spain, is
closely related to the language, of which there were doubtless several
dialects, that was spoken by the Iberians. Several place-names are quoted
to prove this, especially Iliberris, which occurs, in various forms, both
in Spain and in Southern Gaul. There was an Illiberris in Roussillon, an
Elimberri in Auch, and an Illiberri in Granada. The word iri in Basque
means `town' and berri means `new'; so that Iliberris, like the Celtic
Noviodunum,\footnote{$^6$}
{{\it B. G.,} ii, 12, \S 1; vii, 12, \S 2; 55, \S 1}
would have meant `New Town'. This word, however, has given rise to a great
deal of discussion, about which I can say nothing here, but of which I have
given a short account in {\it Caesar's Conquest of Gaul} (pages 290--8)
There is another fact which makes the Iberian question complicated and
difficult. Certain inscriptions, called Iberian, have been found in Spain.
Some of them are written in Roman letters; other in letters adapted from
the Phoenician alphabet, from right to left; others again in the same
letters from left to right. Nobody has yet been able to translate them; but
a French scholar who has devoted his life to the study of Basque denies
that any trace of Basque is to be found in them. Moreover, the great
majority of the place-names in the Spanish peninsula and in Southern Gaul
which we find in the ancient roadbooks\footnote{$^7$}
{See p.~403.}
and in the writings of the ancient geographers cannot be explained from
Basque. Perhaps the problem may be solved by supposing that Basques
inhabited Spain before the Iberians invaded it; that they were the founders
of Iliberris, of Elimberri, and of Illiberri; and that before the time of
Caesar they had been driven by the Iberians, who probably spoke the
languages of the inscriptions, into the region where Basque is still
spoken.
The Greek geographer, Strabo, says that the Aquitanians resembled the
Iberians (by whom he means the mass of the inhabitants of the entire
Spanish peninsula, not merely of the part which belonged to Iberians
properly so called) rather than the Gauls, and spoke a language akin to
that of the former. What is certain is that, except Aquitania, the region
inhabited by Iberians and Ligurians was subdued, long before the time of
Caesar, by Celts.
It is now time to speak of the Galli, or, as they called themselves,
Celtae, and of the Belgae. I have said enough to show that each of these
two groups was a mixture of various races,---that the Celtic and Belgic
invaders had given their names to a population which comprised descendants
of palaeolithic and neolithic races, and of later invaders. Several
questions have to be answered. When did the invaders who gave their name
to the mixed population called Celtae first enter Gaul? Did they introduce
the language which we call Celtic, or was it spoken in Gaul before they
arrived? Did they all speak the same language? Were they kinsmen of the
Belgae, and did the Celtae and the Belgae speak the same language? Were any
of the Belgic tribes German? Were the Celtae and the Belgae, when they
invaded Gaul, nearly related to the Germans? Before I attempt to answer
these questions I will ask the reader to bear in mind that Caesar uses the
word Galli in two senses: sometimes he means the people between the Seine
or the Marne and the Garonne, sometimes he means both them and the Belgae.
According to the historical evidence, the first Celtic invasion of Gaul
cannot be dated earlier than the seventh century before Christ; but, as we
have already seen, the tall men whose skeletons have been found in Eastern
France in graves of a somewhat older period may have belonged to the first
group of Celtic invaders. If we may trust Caesar, the Gauls in general,
including the Belgae, were conspicuously tall: `the Gauls,' he says, `as a
rule, despise our short stature, contrasting it with their own great
height';\footnote{$^8$}
{B. G., ii, 30, \S 4.}
and all the ancient writers who describe the Gauls say much the same, most
of them adding that the Gauls were fair. Now any observant person who has
travelled much in France must have noticed that tall blonde people are
rare, and that, with comparatively few exceptions, they are only to be seen
in the north eastern departments, where many of the inhabitants are
descended from German invaders. How are we to account for the contrast
between modern Frenchmen and the Gauls whom Caesar and other ancient
writers described? To begin with, we may be sure that even in Caesar's day
tall fair men formed only a minority of the population; for, as we have
seen, the people who were in possession when the Celts arrived were for the
most part short and dark, and we may be sure that even the Celtic invaders
were not all of the same type when untrained observers enter a strange
country they notice the individuals whose physical features are unfamiliar
and ignore the rest. Thus a modern English traveller hastily remarks that
Scotsmen have red hair and red beards; while a trained obselver, having
entered in his note-book all the observations that he has been able to
make, reports that in certain districts most Scotsmen are dark, while in
that part of Scotland in which fairness is most conspicuous, not more than
eleven per cent of the people have red hair. Still, the proportion of
blonde people in Gaul was certainly much greater than in modern France; and
we have to account for the difference. First, it must be remembered that a
great many Gauls perished in Caesar's wars or were sold into slavery; and
of those who were thus lost to the country a number disproportionately
large probably belonged to the dominant race, by whose great stature he was
so impressed. Secondly, except in comparatively cold climates, the tall
fair type is less successful in the struggle for existence than the dark.
Thirdly, there is reason to believe that the fair type is less able than
the dark to resist the unhealthy conditions of the slums in crowded cities.
Fourthly, in families of which one parent is fair and the other dark, the
proportion of dark children is generally greater than the proportion of
fair. Lastly, a mixed population tends to revert to the type which was at
the beginning that of the majority. There is little doubt, then, that since
the time of Caesar, although France has been invaded by Franks, Visigoths,
Alani, Saxons, Burgundians, and Normans, among all of whom fairness and
tall stature were conspicuous, the dark type has been gaining ground upon
the fair. No observant person who knows the outlines of English history
will be surprised at this. The Saxons, Angles, and Jutes who conquered
Britain were at least as fair as the Celts; they settled among a people of
whom the dominant element in Caesar's time had been, as it was in Gaul,
Celtic; and they killed a good many of them. Afterwards they were
themselves conquered by Danes and Normans, among whom fairness was also
common. But the dark element, which had existed in prehistoric Britain as
in prehistoric Gaul, reasserted itself. Except in certain parts of
Scotland, where the descendants of Scandinavians are numerous, and in
certain rural districts where the population has remained comparatively
pure, fair people are more or less rare; and darkness is gradually
increasing.
It is generally taken for granted that the Celts hrought the language which
is called Celtic into Gaul, and that it gradually became universal except
in Aquitania. One or two well-known writers, however, believe that the
Celtic invaders, when they entered Gaul, spoke German, and learned Celtic
from the people among whom they settled. Thus Professor Ridgeway, speaking
of the British Isles, but perhaps thinking also of Gaul, argues that even
when `conquerors bring with them some women of their own race', they are
generally `liable to drop their own language and practically adopt that of
the natives'; and, remarking that both Gaelic and Welsh are still spoken in
the British Isles, he says that it is absurd to suppose that the earlier
inhabitants of Britain became `completely Celticized' in speech in the few
centuries that elapsed between the Celtic invasions and the time of Caesar.
Now it is quite true that in many instances conquerors have adopted the
language of the people whom they conquered; but in these cases the
conquerors, besides being far inferior in number, were also either less
civilized or not much more civilized than the conquered. The Celtic
conquerors of Gaul and Britain did bring with them not only `some women'
but all their women; for this was the regular practice both of the Celts
and of the Germans.\footnote{$^9$}
{See {\it B.~G.,} i, 29, \S 1; 51, \S 3; iv, 14, \S 5.}
The time in which, according to Professor Ridgeway, it is incredible that
the Celtic language became dominant in Britain and in Gaul was considerably
longer than that in which, as he admits, the language of a small minority
of English settlers became dominant in Ireland. Remember how quickly the
language of Rome took root in Britain,\footnote{$^{10}$}
{See Prof. F. J Haverfield's {\it The Romanization of Roman
Britain,} 2nd ed., 1912, pp. 24--9.}
Gaul, and Spain. If we were to suppose that the Celtic conquerers of Gaul
learned Celtic from the natives whom they conquered, we should have to
admit first, that the language which the Celts found spoken not only in
Gaul and Britain, but also in Switzerland and Spain, was Celtic; secondly,
that Celtic was spoken by the aborigines of the Stone Age in Gaul and
Britain, Switzerland and Spain, for if it was not, some invaders must have
imposed it; and, lastly, that if the aborigines of the British Isles and of
Gaul spoke Celtic, Celtic must have branched off from the primitive
`Indo-European' language, from which the languages of Persia, Afghanistan,
and Northern Hindostan, as well as most of the languages of Europe, are
descended, in the Palaeolithic Age! Besides, if the aborigines of the
British Isles spoke Gaelic, why did not the Brythons, who conquered them,
and whose language was the ancestor of Welsh, learn Gaelic from them? If
the Celts did not speak Celtic when they invaded Gaul and Britain, how are
the numerous Celtic place-names in Germany to be accounted for? Do they not
prove that the Celts spoke Celtic before they crossed the Rhine ? Every one
admits that the language of the Belgae was Celtic: they certainly did not
learn it from the Gauls whom they found in possession, for Caesar says that
they expelled them;\footnote{$^{11}$}
{{\it B.~G.,} ii, 4, \S 1. No doubt Caesar's words are not to be
taken literally; but, admitting this, all analogy is opposed to
the assumption that the Belgae did not speak Celtic before they
crossed the Rhine.}
therefore they must have spoken it when they invaded Gaul. Surely we may
infer that the Celts who had already conquered the rest of Gaul did the
same.
Celtic was spoken in two of the three divisions of Gaul,---those which were
inhabited by the Celtae and the Belgae respectively. But was the language
everywhere the same, or were there two dialects, as there are in the Celtic
regions of Great Britain,---Wales and the Scottish Highlands? It is certain
that in Caesar's time the Belgae and most of the Celtae, as well as the
bulk of the Britons who dwelt south of the Cheviot Hills, spoke the
language which is called Brythonic, and from which are descended the
languages which are now spoken in Wales and part of Brittany. The people
who spoke this language are called `P~Celts', because they had changed the
original souns {\it qu} into {\it p.} Thus the original form of {\it
Parisii} would have been {\it Qarisii.} The same change took place in other
languages; for instance, the Greek equivalent of equus is {\greek <'ippos}.
But there is some reason to believe that in certain parts of Gaul a Celtic
dialect was spoken in which the sound {\it qu} was retained. This dialect
is called Goidelic, and it was the ancestor of Gaelic, which is still
spoken in the western parts of Ireland and in the highlands of Scotland.
Those who believe that it was spoken in Gaul in Caesar's time point to the
words {\it Sequana} and {\it Sequani,} the ancient name of the river Seine
and the name of the tribe whose chief town was Vesontio (Besan\c{c}on). But
some Celtic scholars believe that these names were not Celtic, but
Ligurian,---a language of which we know hardly anything. All that we can be
sure of is that if a Goidelic dialect had been spoken by the earlier Celtic
invaders, it had been superseded, except perhaps in certain districts, by
Gallo-Brythonic. The Belgae, then, and the Celtae spoke the same language;
their physical features are described by ancient writers in terms which are
virtually identical; and they were closely related in blood and had a
common civilization.
But we must not forget that Caesar says that, according to the ambassadors
who came to him from the Remi, `most of the Belgae were of German origin'
({\it plerosque Belgas esse ortos a Germanis}).\footnote{$^{12}$}
{{\it B.~G.,} ii, 4, \S\S 1--2.}
He does not, however, endorse the statement of the ambassadors; and the
fact that he himself, rightly or wrongly, specifies five Belgic
tribes---the Eburones, Caerosi, Paemani, Segni, and Condrusi---as
German,\footnote{$^{13}$}
{{\it Ib.,} \S 10; vi, 32, \S 1.}
perhaps implies that he had reason to believe that the rest of the Belgae
were not. Tacitus\footnote{$^{14}$}
{{\it Germania,} 28.}
regards only the Triboci, the Nemetes, and the Vangiones as `undoubtedly
German tribes' ({\it haud dubie Germanorum populi}); and none of the three
were Belgae at all. The Treveri (who were Celtae, not Belgae) and the
Nervii, according to Tacitus, wished to be considered Germans; but, if he
was rightly informed, this very fact would appear to show that they were
not what they professed to be. Strabo says that the Nelvii were Germans;
but the nannes of Nervian and Treveran individuals, as well as the
geographical names of both tribes, were Celtic. So also were the names of
the Ebulones and their two kings,---Ambiorix and Catuvolcus. Hirtius, the
author of the {\it Eighth Commentary,} while he notes the resemblance of
the Treveri to the Germans in manners and customs, says that it was due to
the fact that the Treveri were neighbours of the Germans.\footnote{$^{15}$}
{{\it B.~G.,} viii, 25, \S 2.}
Perhaps there were Ceiticized Germans among the Nervii and the Treveri; but
unless we know what the Roman ambassadors meant by the word Germani, their
statement that the Belgae `were of German origin' proves nothing; and it
would be very rash to assume that they meant a Teutonic people who spoke a
Teutonic language. My own belief is that they only meant that the Belgae
were descendants of a people who had once dwelt on the east of the Rhine.
But what of the five tribes---the Eburones, Caerosi, Paemani, Segni, and
Condrusi---whom Caesar himself calls Germans? A famous scholar, Karl
M\"ullenhoff, argues that they too were Celts; for, he observes, their
tribal names, the names of individuals among them---Ambiorix and
Catuvolcus---and the ancient names of rivers and places within their
territory are Celtic. This is true; but it does not settle the question.
The prevalence of Celtic names might be accounted for by supposing that
German invaders had mingled with an older Celtic population Celtic
place-names existed in Germany long after the time of Caesar, and this
proves that people who spoke Celtic once lived in Germany; but at the time
of the conquest of Gaul, if any Celts remained in Germany; they had been
absorbed in the German population. {\it Kent} is a Celtic name; but that
does not prove that the present inhabitants of Kent are Celts. Still, I
believe that in the main M\"ullenhoff was right. Probably the Roman
ambassadors or Caesar's informants, whoever they were, only meant that
these five tribes, like the other Belgae, were descended from people who
had dwelt east of the Rhine; and if Caesar called them {\it Germani} in a
special sense, as distinct from the rest of the Belgle, the explanation may
be that they were the latest immigrants. It seems unlikely that they, alone
among the Belgic tribes, learned Celtic in Gaul. If they did, they must
have learned it from Celts whom they conquered or among whom they settled;
and if so, they must have been unaccompanied by women (see p.~xxviii) and
inferior in numbers to the Celtic peoples whom they subdued, and who, with
them, formed the `Cisrhenane Germans'.\footnote{$^{16}$}
{{\it B.~G.,} vi, 2, \S 3.}
The Atuatuci, indeed, were really of German origin if, as is generally
believed, the Cimbri and Teutoni, from whom they were
descended,\footnote{$^{17}$}
{{\it Ib.,} ii, 29, \S 4.}
were Germans; but their ancestors were apparently left in Gaul without
women.
And now we have come to our final question,---the relationship between the
Celts and the Germans. The reader will understand that by `the Celts' I
mean not only the invaders who had conquered the country between the Seine
and the Garonne but also the Belgae. We have seen that when the Celts
invaded Gaul they already spoke Celtic; but there is good reason to believe
that their predominant physical type differed little, if at all, from that
of the Germans. The ancient writers unanimously describe the two peoples in
terms which are virtually the same. The Germans, like the Gauls, were tall
and fair: that is the sum and substance of their evidence. The Germans whom
they described were, moreover, like the Celts, a long-headed race. I am,
indeed, inclined to believe that in the time of Caesar the purest Celts and
the purest Germans, although both were tall and fair and long-headed,
differed from one another; and my reasons are these. Among our
Celtic-speaking fellow citizens are to be found numerous specimens of a
type which also exists in those parts of Brittany that were colonized by
invaders from Britain and in those parts of Gaul in which the Celtic
invaders appear to have settled most thickly, as well as in Northern Italy,
which was once occupied by Gauls; and this type, even among the most blonde
representatives of it, is strikingly different from that of the purest
representatives of the ancient Germans. Put a Perthshire Highlander side by
side with a Sussex farmer. Both will be fair: but the red hair and beard of
the Scotsman will be in marked contrast with the fair hair of the
Englishman; and their features will differ still more. I remember seeing
two gamekeepers in a railway carriage running from Inverness to Lairg. They
were tall, athletic, fair men, evidently belonging to the Scandinavian type
which is so common in the extreme north of Scotland; but they were utterly
different from the tall fair Highlanders whom I had seen in Perthshire.
There was not a trace of red in their hair, their long beards being
absolutely yellow. The prevalence of red among the Celtic-speaking peoples
is most remarkable. Not only do we find in Perthshire 11 men in every 100
whose hair is absolutely red, but underlying the blacks and the dark browns
the same tint is everywhere to be discerned. In France, again, the
proportion of red-haired individuals is greatest not in Normandy or the
north-eastern departments, where the proportion of German immigrants was
greatest, but in Finist\`ere, where many of the Celtic invaders from
Britain landed. I think that what I have said is enough to establish at
least a probability that the Celts and the Germans, notwithstanding their
general resemblance, differed from one another; and some years ago the late
Dr.~Beddoe, a renowned anthropologist, told me that he was strongly
inclined to adhere to my view. But after all the most that I have succeeded
in proving is that the Celts had become different from the Germans some
centuries after they had parted from them; and what we want to learn is
whether any difference had arisen when they first entered Gaul. The tall
Gaul and the tall German were undoubtedly descended from a common
fair-haired stock; and it is very likely that in so far as the Celts of
Gaul differed in Caesar's time from the Germans, the difference was due to
intermarriage with Ligurians and dark descendants of the prehistoric races.
I must not forget the Britons; for Caesar invaded Britain as well as Gaul.
As we have seen, the latest pre-Roman invaders were Celts. Towards the
close of the Palaeolithic Age the earlier inhabitants were perhaps joined
by immigrants akin to the people of Chancelade and Laugerie-Basse; at all
events in Derbyshire there has been found a bone engraved with the figure
of a horse's head, which reminds one of the spirited designs of the artists
of the Dordogne. The neolithic inhabitants of Britain, so far as we know,
belonged for the most part to the same stock as the long-headed neolithic
people of Gaul; but towards the end of the Neolithic Age immigrants, of
whom I have already spoken, like the roundheads of the Grenelle type, began
to appear, some probably coming from Gaul, others, as we may infer from the
pottery which they brought with them, from the Netherlands and the valley
of the Rhine. During the earlier part of the Bronze Age invaders of a very
different kind came in successive hordes. They too were broad-headed, but
in a less degree; they had rugged features and overhanging brows; and they
were taller and more powerfully built than the older population. Probably
they came from Denmark or Danish islands, where skeletons like theirs have
been unearthed; and possibly also from the Scandinavian peninsula. The
first Brythonic settlers apparently inaugurated the Iron Age in this
country, and they were succeeded by the Belgae, who began to appear in the
third century before Christ.
Enough has been said to enable the general reader to understand Caesar's
narrative; but any one who may wish to study the subject more closely will
find abundant information in {\it Caesar's Conquest of Gaul,} pages
257--340, and {\it Ancient Britain,} pages 375--461. See also in regard to
the people of the Neolithic Age in France {\it L'Anthropologie,} 1912,
pages 53--91.
\vfill\eject
\centerline{HOW SOME OF CAESAR'S CAMPS AND}
\centerline{OTHER EARTHWORKS HAVE}
\centerline{BEEN DISCOVERED}
\bigskip
T{\sc HE} late Colonel Stoffel contributed much to our knowledge of the
history of the Gallic war by excavations, which he carried out on behalf of
Napoleon~III. In 1899 he described to me his method in a letter which I
have printed in {\it Caesar's Conquest of Gaul} (1899, pages xvi--xxx;
1911, pages xxiv--xxvii), and of part of which I here give a free
translation. This method was identical with that which is followed by
Professor Haverfield and other well-known investigators.
The colonel begins by remarking that land on which an entrenched camp can
be constructed always has an upper layer of productive soil ({\it terre
v\'eg\'etale}), varying from one or two to five feet thick, below which
lies the subsoil ({\it sous-sol} or {\it sol vierge}),---marl, limestone,
or other, according to the locality. `When,' he continues, `after a battle
or a siege, the Roman army quitted its camp, the people of the country
would demolish the entrenchments, in order to be able to resume
cultivation; and they shovelled the earth of which the rampart was composed
into the ditch ({\it fosse}). The ditch was thus filled with mixed soil,
composed partly of productive soil, partly of subsoil, and often containing
objects which the soldiers bad left on the rampart, such as broken weapons,
sling-bullets, coins, bones, \&c. For some time the upper part of the
ditch which had been so filled up presented the [slightly convex] form {\sc
A~B} because the earth which had been thrown in did not pack closely; but
in course of time and owing to yearly cultivation, the ground settled down
to the level of the surrounding land; and thus all apparent traces of
Caesar's camps have disappeared. The earth with which the ditches are
filled is loose and never recovers the consistency of virgin soil, so that
even now, after the lapse of 2,000 years, it easily breaks under the blows
of the pick. This is what enables one to discover the ditches, when one
knows how to determine the probable position of a camp. That, as you very
truly say, is the essential condition. First of all, then, one must study
the country where one supposes the camp to have been situated; and to do
this requires a thorough knowledge of Caesar's Commentaries and also
special military knowledge.' I may remark that the camp would be
constructed, if possible, on an easily accessible and yet defensible
position, that is, on gently sloping ground: it would have to be near
pasturage for the horses, running water, and timber, which was needed both
for fortification and for firewood.
`The following', continues Colonel Stoffel, `is the method which I have
always adopted in order to discover the ditches of a camp. Let {\sc
A~B~C~D} represent an area within which I believed that the camp of which I
was in search was to be found; and let us assume that the layer of
productive soil is 70 centimetres [about 2 feet 3$ 1\over 2$ inches] thick.
I placed the workmen, with their picks and shovels, in several rows {\it
fff~.~.~.}, at right angles to one of the supposed sides of the camp. Each
of them had to turn up the layer of productive soil along a space two feet
wide. If, after turning up the layer to a depth of 70 centimetres, they
felt their picks strike unyielding ground, that showed that the ground had
never been disturbed and that they were not on the Roman ditch. The
workmen then continued to move forward. But when they unmistakably reached
the ditch at {\it x~y}, the case was different. Then, after turning up the
soil to the depth of 70 centimetres, they no longer found themselves, as
before, on unyielding ground: on the contrary, they met with loose soil,
which broke easily,---a sign that it had formerly been disturbed. I then
enlarged the ``trench'' ({\it tranch\'ee})--the space that was to be
excavated---giving it a width of six feet ({\it c~d\/}) instead of two ({\it
x~y\/}), to enable the men to work more easily; and they dug out the
``trench'' till they came to the bedrock. One could soon tell, for another
reason, whether one was on the Roman ditch or not; for, if one was really
there, one could make out without difficulty on the two edges, {\it e~c}
and {\it f~d}, of the ``trench'' the outline of the ditch, which was
recognizable by the colour of the mixed earth---that of the old
rampart---contrasted with the colour of the virgin soil that surrounded
it.
`I have never seen anything more curious than the outlines of the little
ditches of the small camp which I discovered on the hill of the
Roche-Blanche [at Gergovia (see p.~305)]. There the layer of productive
soil, at the most 50 or 60 centimetres thick (if my memory is good), lies
upon a calcareous subsoil as hard and white as chalk: the ditches of the
camp, filled with a mixture of productive soil and chalk, presented
outlines which stood out against the earth by which they were surrounded,
as sharply as the annexed triangle {\sc A~B~C}, on the white paper.'
\vfill\eject
\centerline{INTRODUCTION}
\bigskip
T{\sc HREE} centuries before the birth of Caesar, while patrician was still
struggling with plebeian, while both were still contending with rival
peoples for supremacy, the Gauls first encountered their destined
conquerors. For a generation or more, the Celtic wanderers, whose kinsmen
had already overflowed Gaul, crossed the Pyrenees, and passed into Britain
and into Ireland, had been pouring, in a resistless stream, down the passes
of the Alps. They spread over Lombardy. They drove the Etruscans from their
strongholds in the north. They crossed the Po, and pushed further and
further southward into Etruria itself. At length they overthrew a Roman
army in the battle of the Allia, and marched unopposed through the Colline
Gate. The story of the sack and burning of the city was noised throughout
the civilized world; yet the disaster itself, though it was never
forgotten, hardly affected the history of Rome. It probably tended to rivet
the bonds of union between her and the other cities of Latium, and to
strengthen her claim to supremacy in Italy. From time to time during the
next century the Gauls returned to plunder: but their incursions were
repelled; and the champion of Italian civilization was Rome.
But the Roman dread of the Gauls long remained; and more than once Rome's
enemies enlisted their services against her. In the last Samnite war
Samnites, Etruscans, and Gauls made a desperate effort to crush the rising
power; and after this attempt had been frustrated, the Etruscans once again
rose in revolt, and their Gallic mercenaries destroyed a Roman army under
the walls of Arretium. It was not until the Senones had in their turn been
defeated and expelled from Italy, and the Boi, who hastened to avenge them,
had been crushed near the Lake of Vadimo, that the republic was finally
released from the fear of Gallic invasion.
Years passed away. Rome became mistress of the peninsula, and determined
to vindicate her natural right to the rich plain on her own side of the
Alpine barrier The Gauls offered a strenuous resistance, and even assumed
the offensive. Reinforced by a swarm of freelances from the valley of the
upper Rh\^one, they boldly crossed the Apennines and plundered Etruria. The
Romans were taken by surprise: but in the great battle of Telamon they
checked the invasion; and within two years they fought their way to the
right bank of the Po. The Insubres on the northern side still held out: but
before the outbreak of the second Punic war Mediolanum, or Milan, their
chief stronghold, was captured; and the fortresses of Placentia and Cremona
were founded.
But the work of conquest was only half completed when Hannibal descended
into the plain, and the exasperated Gauls rallied round him. When Rome
emerged, victorious, from her great struggle, they knew what was in store
for them, and made a last attempt to win back their liberty. Placentia was
sacked, and Cremona was invested. The Roman army which marched to its
relief gained a victory, but was in its turn almost annihilated by the
Insubres. The Gauls, however, could never long act together: their
countrymen beyond the Alps gave them no help: the league of the northern
tribes was rent by discord and treachery; and the Insubres and Cenomani
were compelled to accept a peace, which allowed them indeed to retain their
constitution, but forbade them to acquire the Roman citizenship. South of
the Po the Boi strove frantically to hold their own: but in a series of
battles their fighting men were wellnigh exterminated: the Romans insisted
upon the cession of half their territory; and on both sides of the river
the survivors were gradually lost among Italian settlers.
Eastward and southward and westward the empire of the Romans spread. They
conquered Greece. They conquered Carthage. They conquered Spain. But
between the central and the western peninsula they had no means of
communication by land save what was afforded by the Greek colony of
Massilia. It was an entreaty from the Massiliots for protection that gave
occasion to the wars which resulted in the formation of the Province of
Transalpine Gaul; and the natural willingness of the Senate to support
their most faithful allies was doubtless stimulated by the desire to secure
possession of the indispensable strip of coast between the Alps and the
Pyrenees, partly also perhaps by the idea of creating a Greater Italy for
the growing Italian population. In 155 {\sc B.C.} the Romans stepped forward as
the champions of Massilia against the Ligurian tribes between the Maritime
Alps and the Rh\^one. The highlanders who inhabited the mountains above the
Riviera were crushed in a single campaign; after an interval of thirty
years their western neighbours, the Salyes, were forced to submit; and
their Seaboard, like that of the other tribes, was given to the Massiliots.
But the Romans had come to stay. The Aedui, who dwelt in the Nivernais and
western Burgundy, calculated that the support of the republic would help
them to secure ascendancy over their rivals; and by a treaty, fraught with
unforeseen issues, they were recognized as Friends and Allies of the Roman
people. The Allobroges, on the other hand, whose home was between the Lake
of Geneva, the Rh\^one, and the Is\`ere, refused to surrender the king of
the Salyes, who had claimed their protection; and Bituitus, King of the
Arverni, with all the hosts of his dependent tribes, marched to support
them. Just twenty years before the birth of Caesar a great battle was
fought at the confluence of the Rh\^one and the Is\`ere.\footnote{$^1$}
{M.~Jullian (H.~G., iii, 17, n.~4), rejecting the tradition,
argues that the battle took place on the Rh\^one at Pont-St.
Esprit.}
The Gauls were beaten; and the bridges over the Rh\^one broke down beneath
the multitude of the fugitives.
This victory was, in the strictest sense, decisive. The Romans were now
masters of the lower Rh\^one; and if they were ever to penetrate into
Further Gaul, their base could be advanced some hundreds of miles. The
Arverni, whose power had extended to the Rhine and the Mediterranean, had
received a blow from which they never recovered.
The Province which was now formed stretched from the Maritime Alps to the
Rh\^one; but the frontier was rapidly extended until it ran along the
Cevennes and the river Tarn down into the centre of the Pyrenees. The
Gallic tribes were obliged to pay tribute and to furnish troops; and,
although, in accordance with Roman principles, they were permitted to
retain their own forms of government, their subjection was assured by the
construction of roads and fortresses. The heavy exactions of the
conquerors provoked frequent insurrections; but year by year the
Provincials became steadily Romanized. Roman nobles acquired estates in
the Province, and sent their stewards to manage them. Roman merchants
built warehouses and counting-houses in the towns; and the language and
civilization of Rome began to take root. Narbo with its spacious harbour
was not only a powerful military station, but in commerce the rival of
Massilia. Nor was the activity of the Romans confined to the Province
itself. Catamantaloedis, King of the Sequani, whose territory lay north of
the Allobroges, received from the Senate the title of Friend; and the same
honour was bestowed upon an Aquitanian noble and upon Ollovico, King of the
Nitiobroges, who ruled the upper valley of the Garonne. These distinctions
were doubtless prized as much by the Gallic chieftains as the title of
Knight Commander of the Star of India by an Indian prince of our own time.
For what services they were conferred, we do not know; but events were
already paving the way for the conquest of the great country that stretched
beyond the Rh\^one and the Cevennes to the Rhine and the Atlantic Ocean.
The aspect of the region was, of course, very different from that of the
beautiful France with which we are familiar. The land of gay cities, of
picturesque old towns dominated by awful cathedrals, of cornfields and
vineyards and sunny hamlets and smiling chateaux, was then covered in many
places by dreary swamps and darkened by huge forests. Gaul extended far
beyond the limits of modern France, including a large part of Switzerland,
Alsace, Lorraine, and the Rhenish Provinces, Belgium, and Southern Holland.
The people were divided into three groups, differing, so Caesar tells us,
in race, language, manners, and institutions. Between the Garonne and the
Pyrenees were the Aquitani. Northeast of the Seine and the Marne, in the
plains of Picardy, Artois, and Champagne, on the mist-laden flats of the
Scheldt and the lower Rhine and in the vast forest of the Ardennes, dwelt
the Belgae, who may have partially mixed and were continually at war with
their German neighbors. The lowlands of Switzerland, Alsace, Lorraine, and
part of the Rhenish Provinces, the great plains and the uplands of central
France, and the Atlantic seaboard, were occupied by the Celtae.
Modern science, however, has established a more precise classification.
During the last fifty years the classical texts, which were once the only
source of knowledge, have been supplemented by geological, archaeological,
and anthropological research; and it has become possible to reconstruct the
prehistory, the very existence of which had hardly been suspected, of every
European land. Skeletons have yielded information about the physical
characters of the people: their implements and weapons, their clothing and
ornaments, their art, and even their religion, have been revealed by relics
extracted from the hill-forts, and buried hoards. The Celts were but the
latest invaders of Gaul; and their life was profoundly influences by the
Ligurians, the Iberians, and the nameless tribes who, during countless
millenniums, had dwelt in Gaul before them. The earliest belonged to the
Quaternary Period, which included the Great Ice Age; and the time,
incalculably long, during which they and their fellows in Britain and on
the Continent existed, is known as the Palaeolithic, or Old Stone, Age.
They saw the volcanoes of Auvergne, which during countless centuries have
slumbered, belching forth flame and discharging lava; mammoths and
rhinoceroses, lions, bears, and hyenas, bisons, gluttons, wolves were their
fellows; and over the vast expanse of the forest-cumbered land, where they
roamed in quest of food, there was no sign, save their rude handiwork, that
they would rise superior to the beasts which the primitive savage regards
with mingled fear and veneration. Yet they buried their dead with
scrupulous care, sometimes placing tools beside them; and we may perhaps
infer that they fancied that the soul would still endure. These ancient
hunters were not all of one type. Men with low brutish foreheads and huge
beetling brows ranged over the whole country between Croatia and the river
Dordogne; gigantic skeletons have been found in the department of the
Dordogne and in the caves of Mentone; and before the end of the Quaternary
Period there were living in the caves of Laugerie-Basse and Chancelade a
people who, if we may judge from their well-formed and capacious skulls,
possessed an intellectual capacity not inferior to that of their modern
descendants. They have indeed left evidence of their powers; for late in
the Palaeolithic Age appeared the dawn of pictorial art. From the caves of
the Tarn-et-Garonne and the Dordogne have been recovered bones and antlers,
engraved or carved with likenesses of mammoths, reindeer, and other
animals, of fishes, and of men. Specimens of their work, which are
recognized by modern artists as true works of art, are preserved in the
museums of France; and reproductions have been published of frescoes with
which, by the dim light of their rude lamps, they covered the walls of
Pyrenean caves. The palaeolithic races had one feature in common: their
heads were long in proportion to their breadth; and the same characteristic
is found in the skulls of the slender stunted people of l'Homme Mort and
Baumes-Chaudes in the department of the Loz\`ere, who, though they were
descended from the older inhabitants, belonged to the Neolithic Age. These
peoples, who are called after the caverns in which the first specimens were
found, appear to have been diffused over the length and breadth of Gaul.
But as the new epoch advanced, new races began to appear; and the invaders,
who came from the east, and gradually mingled with the aborigines, were a
short but sturdy folk, characterized by great breadth of skull. The
palaeolithic hunters had been forced to wander in search of game: their
successors domesticated cattle and ultimately learned to till the soil.
Among them were some whose chiefs erected dolmens, or vast structures of
stone, to cover the sepulchres of their dead. Some are of enormous size,
and could only have been erected by the toil of multitudes, controlled and
organized by chiefs whose motive was to propitiate the spirits that they
believed to survive. At P\'erotte, in the department of the Charente, a
stone was set up which weighed forty tons and had been quarried twenty
miles away: the tumulus of Mont St.~Michel in the Morbihan is a veritable
hill, and contains more than forty thousand cubic yards of stone. The era
in which these monuments were constructed was marked by considerable
commercial activity; for some of them have yielded ornaments of a mineral
resembling turquoise, which must have been imported; amber beads had
already been conveyed from the Baltic by way of the Elbe, the Moldau, and
the Danube; and flint from the factory of the Grand-Pressigny in the
Indre-et-Loire was diffused as far as Switzerland.
Slowly, insensibly, civilization moved onward. There is evidence to show
that the Neolithic Age set in nearly ten millenniums before our era; the
Bronze Age, which succeeded it, began about 2000 {\sc B.~C.}; and it was
not until more than a thousand years had passed that the culture which
derives its name from the Tyrolese settlement of Hallstatt, and in which
bronze, as material for tools and weapons, gradually gave place to iron,
spread westward across the Rhine. The knowledge of metals penetrated into
Gaul by two routes, of which the starting-point was in the Aegean.
South-Eastern Gaul was served by a route that led through Central Europe;
Western Gaul borrowed from Spain. Although the memory of intertribal war is
preserved by earthworks and stone forts which, even in the Neolithic Age,
had been erected upon the hills, commerce, internal and external, advanced
with rapid strides. Forests were gradually cleared; and trackways were laid
out from village to village. Caravans began to cross the Alps from the
valley of the Po. Gold crescent-shaped ornaments, intended to be worn round
the neck, and fancifully decorated with geometrical figures, were brought
from Ireland; comparison of the types of pottery, of knives and axes,
razors and swords, of bracelets, pins, and brooches, shows that many were
derived from Italy and Germany; and before the end of the Hallstatt period
trade was established with the Greeks, while wine was imported and
distributed by the merchants of Massilia.
The earliest inhabitants of Gaul about whom history has anything to tell
were the Ligurians and Iberians, neither of whom are mentioned by Caesar.
According to the ancient geographers, the land which originally belonged to
the Ligurians was the mountainous tract between the Rh\^one, the Durance,
and the Cottian and Maritime Alps: but by the fifth century before Christ
they were mingled with Iberians on the west of the Rh\^one; and from the
evidence of certain geographical names as well as of archaeology, it would
seem that they once possessed the whole of Eastern Gaul as far north as the
Marne. The culture of this region in the Bronze Age differed from that of
the west, but closely resembled that of Northern Italy, where we know that
Ligurians lived. The vast number of sickles which have been discovered in
the south-east show that the Ligurians were industrious tillers of the
soil; and they may have been descended, at least in part, from Swiss
lake-dwellers of the Stone Age, who probably introduced cereals and
domestic animals into Gaul. The origin of the Iberians remains uncertain:
but when they came under the notice of the Greeks they occupied the eastern
part of Spain as well as the country between the Pyrenees and the Rh\^one;
and it should seem that they had crossed the Pyrenees and made conquests in
Aquitania as well as on the Mediterranean coast. There can be little doubt
that in the land which belonged to them, in Spain as well as in Southern
Gaul, there once existed, besides Celtic, at least two forms of
speech,---Basque and a language or languages, still undeciphered, in which
were engraven the so-called Iberian inscriptions. But if the Iberians were
not one race, the bulk of them were small and dark, and not unlike the
neolithic people of l'Homme Mort. In Caesar's time Liguria, as well as the
land of the Iberians, was also peopled by the descendants of Celtic
invaders. It was about the seventh century before the Christian era that
the tall fair Celts began to cross the Rhine, accompanied doubtless by the
descendants of aliens who had joined them during their long sojourn in
Germany. Successive swarms spread over the land, partly subduing and
mingling with the descendants of the palaeolithic peoples and of their
neolithic conquerors, partly perhaps driving them into the mountainous
tracts. Physically, they resembled the Germans whom Caesar and Tacitus
describe; but they differed from them in character and customs as well as
in speech. The Belgic Celts were the latest comers; and if Caesar was
rightly informed, the languages of the Belgae and the Celtae were distinct.
Of the modern Celtic dialects, Gaelic, which is spoken in the Highlands of
Scotland, Manx, and Erse, which is spoken in the west of Ireland, are
descended from an old Celtic language, called Goidelic; while Welsh and
Breton are traceable to the British language called Brythonic, which was
closely akin to Gaulish or Gallo-Brythonic. The difference between the
languages of the Belgae and the Celtae was probably slight; for if a
Goidelic dialect was spoken anywhere in Gaul, the vestiges of Gallic that
remain belong, for the most part, to the Brythonic branch of the Celtic
tongue. In Aquitania the natives remained comparatively pure, and formed a
separate group, which, in Caesar's time, stood politically apart from the
Celtae as well as from the Belgae. They are generally spoken of as an
Iberian people; but the name is misleading. The conquering Celts, as we may
infer from proper names, had advanced, though probably in small numbers,
beyond the Garonne; and evidence supplied by recent measurements of living
inhabitants appears to show that in certain parts of Aquitania the old
broad-headed element was considerable. But it is certain that the Celtic
language was not generally spoken in Aquitania; and the Iberian type was
sufficiently conspicuous to give some support to the popular theory.
Thus when Caesar entered Gaul, the groups whom he called Belgae, Celtae,
and Aquitani were each a medley of different races. The Belgae were the
purest and the least civilized of the three; and both in Belgic and in
Celtican Gaul the Celtic conquerors had imposed their language upon the
conquered peoples. Even in a political sense, the Belgae and the Celtae
were not separated by a hard and fast line; for the Celtican tribe of the
Carnutes was among the dependents of the Belgic Remi, while on the other
hand the Celtican Aedui claimed supremacy over the Belgic Bellovaci. But if
not scientifically complete, the grouping adopted by Caesar was sufficient
for the purpose of his narrative. Just as a modern conqueror, without
troubling himself about questions of ethnology, might say that the people
of Great Britain were composed of Englishmen, Scotsmen, and Welsh, so
Caesar divided the people of Gaul into Belgae, Celtae, and Aquitani.
Setting aside the Aquitani, of whom he had little to tell, the medley of
peoples whom he called `Galli' had probably so far coalesced that they had
acquired certain common traits of character. Perhaps when he described the
features of the Gallic temperament which had most impressed him in the
course of the war, he took little note of the lowest class, the cultivators
and the shepherds, who had not much to do with political life: but we can
hardly suppose that his remarks applied only to the ruling class or to the
purer Celts;\footnote{$^2$}
{See especially {\it B. G.,} ii, 1, \S 3; iii, 19, \S 6; iv, 5,
\S\S 2--3, 13, \S 3; vii, 20--1.}
and, guided by his observations, we cannot go far astray. The Gauls were an
interesting people, enthusiastic, impulsive, quick-witted, versatile,
vainglorious and ostentatious, childishly inquisitive and childishly
credulous, rash, sanguine, and inconstant, arrogant in victory and
despondent in defeat, submissive as women to their priests, impatient of
law and discipline, yet capable of loyalty to a strong and sympathetic
ruler.
The notices which Caesar and other writers have left of their civilization
have been supplemented by the evidence of archaeology. Five centuries
before the birth of Christ the culture of Hallstatt had given place to that
which takes its name from the village of La T\`ene, at the northern end of
the lake of Neuchatel, where, some sixty years ago, was discovered a
precious series of antiquities. The art, essentially Celtic, characterized
by the tasteful use of curves, which was practised in the design and
decoration of these objects, was in part an outgrowth of that of Hallstatt,
but also owed much to classical and even to oriental influences. Imported
into Britain by the Brythonic invaders, it there shook itself free from all
trammels, and attained an even higher level than in Gaul, culminating in
the graceful and exquisitely decorated shield of bronze and red enamel
which adorns the Central Saloon of our National Museum. Specialists have
determined three periods, known as La T\`ene I, II, and III, of which the
last began about forty years before the proconsulship of Caesar. By that
time the Gallic peoples had all risen far above the condition of
barbarians; while the Celticans of the interior had attained a certain
degree of civilization and even of luxury. Their trousers, from which the
Province took its name of Gallia Braccata, and their many-coloured tartan
shirts and cloaks excited the astonishment of their conquerors. The chiefs
wore rings and bracelets and necklaces of gold; and when those tall
fair-haired warriors rode forth to battle with their helmets wrought in the
shape of some fierce beast's head and surmounted by nodding plumes, their
chain armour, their long bucklers, and their clanking swords, they made a
splendid show. About fifty years before Caesar's time, war-chariots, which
had excited the astonishment of the Romans in the battle of Telamon, and
which were still used in Britain, had fallen into disuse, probably because
the wealthy natives had begun to import horses powerful enough for a charge
of cavalry; but from the older graves of the department of the Marne, which
have yielded numerous remains of these cars, bronze horse-trappings of most
delicate open-work and bronze flagons which had been fetched from Greece
have been unearthed. The arts of building and of fortification had made a
considerable advance. Walled towns or large villages, the strongholds of
the various tribes, were conspicuous on numerous hills. The plains were
dotted by scores of open hamlets. The houses, built of timber and
wattle-work, were large and well thatched. Tweezers and ornamented mirrors
of bronze lay on the tables of Gallic dames. Painted pottery, decorated
with spirals or symmetrical curves, was used everywhere, except,
apparently, in the remote north-western peninsula. The fields in summer
were yellow with corn. The vine was not yet cultivated: but the merchants
of Massilia imported wine from Italy; and wealthy Gauls would eagerly
barter a slave for a jar. Roads, suitable for wheeled traffic, ran from
town to town. Rude bridges spanned the rivers; and barges, laden with
merchandise, floated along them. Ships, clumsy indeed but larger than many
that were seen on the Mediterranean, braved the storms of the Bay of Biscay
and carried cargoes between the ports of Brittany and the coast of Britain.
Tolls were exacted on the goods which were transported on the great
water-ways; and it was from the farming of these dues that the nobles
derived a large part of their wealth. The Aeduans were familiar with the
art of enamelling. The miners of Aquitaine, of Auvergne, and of the Berri
were celebrated for their skill. Every tribe had its coinage; and the
knowledge of writing, in Greek and in Roman characters, was not confined to
the priests. Diodorus Siculus\footnote{$^3$}
{v, 28, \S 6.}
remarks that the Gauls threw letters, addressed to the dead, on to funeral
piles; and Caesar, after he had defeated the Helvetii, found in their
encampment a schedule, on which were recorded in Greek characters the names
of individuals, the number of emigrants capable of bearing arms, and the
numbers of old men, women, and children. It would seem, indeed, that some
knowledge of Latin had penetrated even to the rudest tribe of the
Belgae.\footnote{$^4$}
{On the other hand, it must be remembered that Caesar conversed
with Diviciacus through an interpreter ({\it B. G.,} i, 19, \S
3).}
When Caesar was marching to relieve Quintus Cicero, who was besieged by the
Nervii, he wrote to him in Greek characters, for fear the letter might be
intercepted and read. At an earlier time there were natives, at least in
the Province, who acquired a smattering of Greek. Rich enthusiasts resorted
to Massilia as a school of learning, and became so enamoured of Greek
culture that they wrote contracts in the language of their teachers. Indeed
in all that belonged to outward prosperity the peoples of Gaul had made
great strides since their kinsmen first came in contact with Rome; and the
enormous fortunes which Caesar and his staff amassed are evidence of their
wealth.
The coins which have just been mentioned require special notice; for none
of the antiquities of the Later Iron Age have thrown more light upon the
culture of the Gauls. The oldest were copied in the earlier half of the
third century before Christ from gold coins of Philip of Macedon, which had
been introduced through Massilia. For some time they bore no inscription,
except the name of Philip, more or less deformed; but about the middle of
the following century---more than a hundred years before the same change
was made in our island---they began to be stamped with the names of the
rulers by whom they were issued, among whom are to be recognized some who
have been commemorated by Caesar,---notably the great Vercingetorix, whose
coins are worth about fifty times their weight in gold. Greek characters
are sometimes quaintly jumbled with Latin, which gradually became familiar
after the Romans had established their footing in the land. Many Roman
coins, indeed, must have been circulated in Gaul after the colonization of
Narbo; and Roman influence is apparent on many Gallic coins, for example in
a figure of Pegasus, which appears on one that bears the name of Tasgetius,
King of the Carnutes. For many years gold coins were the only medium of
exchange; but, as commercial needs increased, silver and bronze passed
gradually into use, the coins of the latter metal being imitated from those
of Massilia, and, in the case of certain Belgic specimens, even from those
of Campania. The coins, indeed, illustrate not only the commerce of the
Gauls, but also their intertribal relations, their manners and customs, and
perhaps occasionally their religion. Thus, while the extreme rarity of
Arvernian coins in the great mart of Bibracte may perhaps be explained by
the traditional enmity between the Arverni and the Aedui, the discoveries
of British coins in Gaul and of Gallic coins in Britain attest the maritime
trade which Caesar notices; coins of Central Europe found as far west as
Saintonge and Gallic coins found in the Bohemian stronghold of Stradoni\'e
prove that the Gauls had intercourse with the valley of the Danube;
Massilian coins found in various parts of Gaul bear witness to the
enterprise of the Greek colony; and numerous hoards of silver coins of one
type, all of which have been found in the basin of the Garonne, confirm the
impression which we derive from the {\it Commentaries} that the relations
of Aquitania were mainly with Spain. Again, when we notice that horses and
swine are figured on Gallic coins more frequently than any other animals,
we are reminded of the passage\footnote{$^5$}
{{\it B.G.,} iv, 2, \S 2.}
in which Caesar observes that the Gauls imported well-bred horses at great
cost, and of the passage in which Strabo\footnote{$^6$}
{iv, 3, \S 2; 4, \S 3.}
speaks of the hams which the Sequani exported to Italy. Shields and
trumpets remind us of Diodorus's\footnote{$^7$}
{v, 30, \S\S 2--4.}
description of Gallic arms; and the lyre, which is figured on certain
coins, may represent the instrument with which the bards accompanied their
songs. It is remarkable that all the coins which have been found in the
great strongholds are of late date---not earlier than about a hundred years
before the Christian era---which tends to show that none had been founded
more than half a century before Caesar entered Gaul. Probably Avaricum,
Bibracte, Lutecia, and the other towns which he mentions were fortified
during the invasion of the Cimbri and Teutoni, which devastated Gaul
between 113 and 109 {\sc B.C.}
Of all these towns the one which is best known to us was Bibracte,
described by Caesar as `by far the wealthiest and most important town of
the Aedui', which stood upon Mont Beuvray, a few miles west of Autun. If
Cicero had visited it he might perhaps have spoken with less disdain of the
urban life of the Gauls.\footnote{$^8$}
{See Cicero's speech, {\it De prov. cons.,} 12, \S 29,}
Streets, workshops, ramparts have been revealed by excavation. Fifteen
hundred coins, nine-tenths of which belonged to the period of independence,
testify to the manifold commercial relations of the inhabitants. The houses
show that the round conical wooden huts which Strabo described were only
the more primitive productions of Gaulish domestic architecture. Like them,
indeed, the houses at Bibracte were partly subterranean, this form having
been adopted as a precaution against cold on such a high altitude, and
probably, like the modern cottages of the Morvan, they were thatched with
straw; but their Shape was rectangular, they were built of stone compacted
with clay, and they were entered by an interior staircase. The crucibles,
moulds, and polishing-stones of enamel-workers, broken tools, brooches, and
pottery, all belong, like the coins, to the latest period of the Celtic
Iron Age. Besides these relics of native workmanship were painted vases,
imported from Italy, which Gallic artificers soon learned to imitate.
But the growth of material prosperity had not been matched by true national
progress. The Aquitani, indeed, the maritime tribes, and the Belgae were
untouched by foreign influences; but the Celticans of the interior had been
enfeebled by contact with Roman civilization. Much nonsense has been
written about the enervating effect of luxury. Its effect, however, when it
is suddenly introduced among a half-civilized people, is quite different
from its effect when it is a natural growth. The Gauls had lost the
strength of barbarism, and had not gained the strength of civilization.
They had once, as Caesar remarked,\footnote{$^9$}
{{\it B.G.,} vi, 24, \S 1.}
been more than a match for the Germans; but enervated by imported luxury,
and cowed by a succession of defeats, they no longer pretended to be able
to cope with them.
The reader will have gathered from the foregoing pages that neither the
Belgae, nor the Celtae, nor the Aquitani formed one state or even a
confederation: each of the three was a group of tribes, which Caesar called
{\it civitates.} The tribe was generally an aggregate, more or less
compact, of communities to which he gave the name of {\it pagi,} the
members of which had originally been related by blood or by near
neighbourhood; but it would seem that some of the smaller tribes consisted
each of one {\it pagus} only. Each {\it pagus,} under its own magistrate,
appears to have enjoyed a certain measure of independence, and to have
contributed its separate contingent to the tribal host. Each tribe had its
council, which Caesar called a senate, and had once had its king: but when
Caesar came to Gaul revolutionary forces were at work to which there were
analogies in the earlier history of Greece and Rome. Many of the states had
expelled their kings, whose authority had passed in some cases into the
hands of annually elected magistrates, while in others perhaps the council
kept the government to itself. A rule which prevailed among the Aedui
illustrates the anxiety which was felt lest monarchical power should
revive. In that state the chief magistrate, who was known as the Vergobret,
was forbidden to stir beyond the frontiers of the country, from which it
may be inferred that it was not lawful for him to command the host. The
executive was generally weak. Some of the smaller communities of which a
tribe was composed occasionally acted on their own account, in opposition
to the rest or to the policy of the tribal authorities. Like the
Anglo-Saxon thanes and the Norman barons, the nobles surrounded themselves
with retainers,---loyal followers or enslaved debtors; and none but those
who became their dependents could be sure of protection. On the other hand,
none but those who were strong enough to protect could be sure of
obedience. The oligarchies were no more secure than the monarchs whom they
had supplanted. These men or their descendants sullenly plotted for the
restoration of their dynasties, and, reckless of the common weal, they were
in the mood to court the aid even of a foreign conqueror, and to reign as
his nominees. Here and there some wealthy noble, like Pisistratus in
Athens, armed his retainers, hired a band of mercenaries, won the support
of the populace by eloquence and largess, and, overthrowing the feeble
oligarchy, usurped supreme power. Thus the oligarchies lived in perpetual
unrest: if no one noble was conspicuously strong, there was intestine
strife; if one could make himself supreme, the government was overthrown.
The populace were perhaps beginning to have some consciousness of their own
latent strength; but there is no evidence that anywhere they had any
definite political rights. The Druids and the nobles, or, as Caesar called
them, the knights, enjoyed a monopoly of power and consideration: the bulk
of the poorer freemen, ground down by taxation and strangled with debt, had
no choice but to become serfs.
And if in individual tribes there was anarchy, want of unity was the bane
of them all. It was not only that Belgian and Aquitanian and Celtican were
naturally distinct: the evil was more deeply seated. It is of course true
that disunion is the normal condition of half-civilized peoples. The Old
English tribes showed no genius for combination: it was the strong hand of
an Egbert, an Edgar, an Athelstan, that laid the foundations of the English
kingdom. Nor was the kingdom united, except in the loosest sense, even on
the eve of the Norman Conquest. If Harold was formally king over all
England, his subjects felt themselves Yorkshiremen or men of Kent rather
than Englishmen. Moreover, the circumstances of the Gauls were peculiarly
unfortunate. Their patriotism, if it was latent, was real: they were proud
of what their fathers had achieved in war; and the sense of nationality was
stirring in their hearts. Caesar himself allows that some of the tribes
were comparatively well governed;\footnote{$^{10}$}
{{\it B.G.,} vi, 20.}
and even clientship, which after all harassed our own government until
Henry the Seventh stamped it out, had its noble side. Who does not respect
the `six hundred devoted followers' of Adiatunnus,\footnote{$^{11}$}
{{\it Ib.} iii, 22.}
the four squires whom neither fear nor favour could induce to betray
Ambiorix,\footnote{$^{12}$}
{{\it Ib.} vi, 43, \S 6.}
and those attendants of Litaviccus who remembered that 'Gallic custom
brands it as shameful for retainers to desert their lords even when all is
lost'?\footnote{$^{13}$}
{{\it B.G.,} vii, 40, \S 7}
`If the Gauls had been unmolested or had been exposed to attack only from a
single enemy, it seems probable that, in the fullness of time, some great
ruler might have welded them into a united nation. But menaced as they were
by the Germans on one side and by the Romans on another, their tendency to
disunion was increased. And, though it is foolish to pass sweeping
judgements upon a people of whom, except during the few years that preceded
the loss of their independence, we have only the scantiest knowledge, it
would be a great mistake to leap to the conclusion that, in political
capacity, one race is as good as another. No one would deny that the Greeks
were endowed with a genius for art and literature which their environment
doubtless helped to develop; and it may be that the Celts were but poorly
endowed with political talent, and that circumstances had helped to stunt
its growth. The important fact is, explain it as we may, that the tribal
rulers of Gaul had not achieved even that first step towards unity which
the kings of Wessex achieved when they swallowed up the petty kingdoms of
the Heptarchy. Or perhaps it would be more true to say that, when the
Romans first established themselves on the west of the Alps, the Arvernian
king had achieved that step; but that first his defeat on the banks of the
Rh\^one, and afterwards the revolution which subverted the royal power, had
broken the ascendancy of his house and dealt a fatal blow to the political
development of Gaul. There, as in Latium, the downfall of the monarch
inevitably weakened the power of the tribe; and the oligarchies, if they
had the power, were not granted the time to work out their own salvation.
Individual tribes, such as the Aedui and the Arverni, did indeed achieve
some sort of supremacy over their weaker neighbours; and in certain cases
two tribes, for example the Senones and the Parisii, formed one state.
There were leagues of the Belgae, the Aquitani, and the maritime tribes.
But supremacy had not hardened into sovereignty; and the leagues were
loose, occasional, and uncertain. If some powerful baron, stimulated by
ambition or impressed by the evils of disunion, succeeded in clutching the
power of a Bretwalda,\footnote{$^{14}$}
{The king of one of the seven principal kingdoms of early English
history, if he was strong enough, exercised over the other kings
`an acknowledged, though probably not a very well-defined
supremacy'. See E. A. Freeman's {\it Norman Conquest of England,}
i, 1870, p.~27, 542--8.}
he was forthwith suspected by his brother nobles of a design to revive the
detested monarchy, and was lucky if he escaped the stake. The country
swarmed with outlawed criminals, who had fled from justice, and exiled
adventurers, who had failed to execute {\it coups d'etat.} Nobles and their
clients lived sword in hand; and hardly a year passed without some petty
war. Every tribe, every hamlet, nay, every household was riven by faction.
One was for the Romans and another for the Helvetii; one for the Aedui and
another for the Arverni; one for a Diviciacus and another for a Dumnorix;
one for the constitutional oligarchy and another for the lawless
adventurer. All, in short, were for a party; and none was for the state.
Yet, besides the memory of their glorious past, which, as Caesar once
remarked,\footnote{$^{15}$}
{{\it B.G.,} v, 54, \S 5.}
both saddened the Gauls and spurred them to desperate enterprises, there
were certain influences which tended to make every man feel that he and his
fellows belonged to one nation. If the French are the most united of all
peoples, they owe this fortune to their country, whose unifying tendency
has ever been the same. France, says Vidal de la Blache,\footnote{$^{16}$}
{E. Lavisse, {\it Hist. de la France,} t.~i, 1 (by P.~Vidal de la
Blache), pp.~49, 51--2; {\it Bull. de g\'eogr. hist et descr.,}
1902, pp.~119, 124.}
who of all geographers knows best how to make his readers feel the tie
between motherland and people,---France is a country whose regions are
naturally connected, and whose inhabitants learned early to mingle with and
to know one another. No country of equal extent comprises such diversities;
but they pass off into each other by insensible gradations. `There is ',
says this writer, `a beneficent force---a genius loci---which has guided
our national life,---an indefinable power which, without obliterating
varieties, has blended them in a harmonious whole.' The wayfarer who roams
from the sand-hills of the Channel to the mountains of Auvergne, from the
uplands of the Morvan to the plain of the Berri, conversing with peasant
and townsman in turn, who is touched by the spirit of prehistoric life
wafted from the rude stone monuments of Brittany and by the spirit of
imperial Rome which broods over the mediaeval glories of Bourges and over
that ancient town\footnote{$^{17}$}
{Alesia.}
which is being revealed by the excavator on Mont Auxois---who feels how one
influenced the other and both survive in our Mechanical Age---will
comprehend what the geographer means; and for him the tale which Caesar
told will become real.
And in Gaul, as in England before the Norman Conquest, there was another
influence which in some measure counteracted disunion,---community of
religious ideas, controlled by one ecclesiastical organization. Local
deities of course abounded: but the great gods whom Caesar noticed, however
variously they may have been conceived by various tribes, were common to
Gaul; while every rite and every sacrifice was recognized and regulated by
Druidism.\footnote{$^{18}$}
{See the notes on vi, 13--14, 17--18.}
But though religion might perhaps foster the idea, it could not supply the
instant need of political union. Over the vast wooded plains of Germany
fierce hordes were roaming, looking with hungry eyes towards the rich prize
that lay beyond the Rhine. Moreover, the danger of Gaul was the danger of
Italy. The invader who had been attracted by `the pleasant land of France'
would soon look southward over the cornfields, the vineyards, and the
olive-gardens of Lombardy. When Caesar was entering public life, men who
were not yet old could remember the terror which had been inspired by the
Cimbri and Teutoni,---those fair-haired giants who had come down, like an
avalanche, from the unknown lands that bordered on the northern sea. They
descended into the valley of the Danube. They overthrew a Roman consul in
Carinthia; crossed the Rhine and threaded the passes of the Jura; and
overran the whole of Celtican Gaul. Four years after their first victory
they defeated another consul in the Province. Then they vanished: but four
years later they reappeared; and two more armies were routed on the banks
of the Rh\^one. The panic-stricken Italians dreaded another Allia: but,
while Italy lay at their mercy, the Cimbri turned aside; and when, after
three years' wandering in Spain and Gaul, they rejoined the Teutoni, and
the two swarms headed for the south, Marius was waiting for them on the
Rh\^one, and his brother consul in Cisalpine Gaul. Once more the host
divided; and while the Teutoni encountered Marius, the Cimbri threaded the
Brenner Pass, and descended the valley of the Adige. The Teutoni were
destroyed in the neighbourhood of Aix; the Cimbri at Vercellae, near the
confluence of the Sesia and the Po.
But if this danger had been averted, the movements of the other German
peoples might well cause anxiety. A bitter enmity had for many years
existed between the Aedui and the Arverni, each of whom were overlords of a
group of tribes. The Arverni, in conjunction with the Sequani, hired the
aid of a German chieftain, Ariovistus, who crossed the Rhine with fifteen
thousand men. They were enchanted with the country, its abundance, and its
comparative civilization; and fresh swarms were attracted by the good news.
After a long struggle the Aedui were decisively beaten, and had to cede
territory and give hostages to the Sequani, who apparently usurped the
supremacy which had been exercised by the Arverni. One of the leading
Aeduans, the famous Druid, Diviciacus, went to Rome and implored the Senate
for help. His aim was not merely to get rid of Ariovistus and to free his
country from the yoke of the Sequani, but also to regain his own influence,
which had been eclipsed by that of his younger brother, Dumnorix. He was
treated with marked distinction, made the acquaintance of Caesar, and
discussed religion and philosophy with Cicero; but the Senate did not see
their way to interfere on his behalf. All that they did was to pass a vague
decree that whoever might at any time be Governor of the Province should,
as far as might be consistent with his duty to the republic, make it his
business to protect the Aedui and the other allies of the Roman
people.'\footnote{$^{19}$}
{I agree with Long ({\it D.R.R.,} iii, 477) that the senatorial
decree was aimed against Ariovistus, for there is no evidence
that the Helvetii entered Gaul before 60 {\sc B.C.}}
Meanwhile the Sequani had found that their ally was their master. He was
not going to return to the wilds of Germany when he could get a rich
territory for the asking. He compelled the Sequani to cede to him the
fertile plain of Alsace. At length they and their Gallic allies, including,
as it should seem, even the Aedui, mustered all their forces and made a
desperate effort to throw off the yoke: but they sustained a crushing
defeat; and their conqueror was evidently determined to found a German
kingdom in Gaul.
Meanwhile the Allobroges, who had never yet fairly accepted their dependent
condition, had risen in revolt. They were still embittered by defeat when
the Roman agents in the Province were alarmed by the appearance of bands of
marauders on the right bank of the Rh\^one. They had been sent by the
Helvetii, a warlike Celtic people, who dwelt in that part of Switzerland
which lies between the Rhine, the Jura, the Lake of Geneva, and the Upper
Rh\^one. The Romans had already felt the weight of their arms. A generation
before, the Tigurini, one of the four Helvetian tribes, had thrown in their
lot with the Cimbri. They had spread desolation along the valley of the
Rh\^one, defeated a consular army, and compelled the survivors to pass
under the yoke. Now, in their turn, they were hard pressed by the Germans;
they had reason to fear that the victorious host of Ariovistus would sever
them from their Celtic kinsmen; and they had formed the resolution of
abandoning their country and seeking a new home in the fertile land of
Gaul.
The author of the movement was Orgetorix, the head of the Helvetian
baronage. His story throws a vivid light upon the condition of the Gallic
tribes. He persuaded his brother nobles that they would be able to win the
mastery over Gaul, and undertook a diplomatic mission to the leading
Transalpine states. Two chiefs were ready to listen to him, Casticus, whose
father had been the last king of the Sequani, and Dumnorix, brother of
Diviciacus, who was at that time the most powerful chieftain of the Aedui.
If Diviciacus saw the salvation of his country in dependence upon Rome, his
brother regarded the connexion with abhorrence. He was able, ambitious, and
rich; and the common people adored him. Orgetorix urged him and Casticus to
seize the royal power in their respective states, as he intended to do in
his, and promised them armed support. The three entered into a formal
compact for the conquest and partition of Gaul; and, if they had any aim
beyond their own aggrandizement, they may have hoped that their success
would not only checkmate Ariovistus, but stop the anarchy which paralysed
their country and avert the encroachments of Rome. Their purpose threatened
the republic with a twofold danger. Once they had gone, the lands which
they left vacant would be overrun by the Germans, who would then be in
dangerous proximity to Italy; and there was no telling what mischief they
might do in Gaul. Above the din of party strife at Rome the note of warning
was heard. Men talked anxiously of the prospects of war; and the Senate
sent commissioners to dissuade the Gallic peoples from joining the
invaders. But the ambitious triumvirate had still to reckon with the
Helvetii. They heard that their envoy had broken his trust, and immediately
recalled him to answer for his conduct. He knew that if he were found
guilty, he would be burned alive; and accordingly, when he appeared before
his judges, he was followed by his retainers and slaves, numbering over ten
thousand men. The magistrates, determined to bring him to justice, called
the militia to arms; but in the meantime the adventurer died, perhaps by
his own hand.
But the idea which he had conceived did not die. The Helvetii had no
intention of abandoning their enterprise, nor Dumnorix of abandoning his.
He had married a daughter of Orgetorix; and he was quite ready to help them
if they would make it worth his while. They resolved to spend two years in
preparing for their emigration; bought up wagons and draught cattle; and
laid in large supplies of corn. But in Italy there was a statesman ready to
checkmate them.
One of the consuls for the year 59 was Julius Caesar. About the time of the
election Ariovistus, who had already paid court to Caesar's predecessor,
Metellus, made overtures for an alliance with Rome; and doubtless with the
object of securing his neutrality in view of the threatened Helvetian
invasion, the Senate conferred upon him the title of Friend of the Roman
People. They had already half promised to protect their Gallic allies. They
now practically guaranteed to the conqueror of those allies the security of
his conquest. And in this latter policy Caesar, if we may believe his own
word,\footnote{$^{20}$}
{{\it B.G.,} i, 33, \S 1; 35, \S 1; 43, \S 4.}
fully concurred. He must have seen the impending troubles. But he was not
yet free to encounter them; and he doubtless approved of any expedient for
keeping the barbarian chief inactive until he could go forth in person to
confront him. That time was at hand. In the year of his consulship Caesar
was made Governor of Illyricum, or Dalmatia, and of Gaul, that is to say of
Gallia Cisalpina, or Piedmont and the Plain of Lombardy, and of Gallia
Braccata, or, as it was usually called, the Province. If
Suetonius\footnote{$^{21}$}
{{\it Divus Iulius,} 22.}
was rightly informed, his commission gave him the right to include Gallia
Comata---`the land of the long-haired Gauls'---that is to say the whole of
independent Gaul north of the Province, within his sphere of
action.\footnote{$^{22}$}
{It has been objected (Athenaeum, Jan. 13, 1900, p. 42) that `in
another passage (Gram., c. 3) Suetonius applies the expression
``Gallia Comata'' to a portion [only] of Transalpine Gaul'.
Suetonius (ed. C.~L.~Roth, p. 289, l. 23) there says that
`Munatius Plancus, when he was governor of Gallia Comata, founded
Lugdunum ({\it Munatius Plancus, cum Galliam regeret Comatam,
Lugdunum condidit}), which surely does not prove that the
Province could properly be called Gallia Comata. Still Suetonius
may have used the expression incorrectly.}
As he assumed the responsibility of invading Britain also, it may be well
to say a few words about the people whom he found there. The primitive life
of Britain, in its main features, though more backward, was not very
different from that of Gaul; and from an early period there was intercourse
between the two. Britain, like Gaul, had its Stone Age, its Bronze Age, its
Early Iron Age. Its earlier inhabitants, like those of Gaul, were conquered
by Celts, the latest hordes of whom were Belgae. Druidism flourished in
Britain: the Britons worshipped gods who were also Gallic; and we have seen
that trade was carried on across the Channel. But even in Caesar's time the
Britons lagged behind their continental kinsmen. Though in the social and
the political conditions, the manners and customs of the two countries
there were many points of resemblance, in Britain there is no sign that
either oligarchy or tyranny had yet anywhere supplanted monarchy.
Caesar's appointment carried with it the command of an army consisting of
four legions, perhaps about twenty thousand men. One of them was quartered
in the Province: the other three were at Aquileia, near the site of the
modern Trieste. He could also command the services of slingers from the
Balearic Isles, of archers from Numidia and Crete, and of cavalry from
Spain; but, as his own narrative will show, he raised the bulk of his
cavalry year by year in Gaul itself. The number of the auxiliary infantry
was perhaps generally about one-tenth of that of the regulars; the number
of the cavalry varied greatly, but four hundred for each legion was near
the average. Various military reforms had keen introduced by Marius; and
the legions of Caesar were, in many respects, different from those which
had fought against Hannibal. They were no longer a militia, but an army of
professional soldiers. Each legion consisted of ten cohorts; and the
cohort, formed of three maniples or six centuries, had replaced the maniple
as the tactical Unit of the legion. From the earliest times the legion had
been commanded by an officer called a military tribune. Six were assigned
to each legion; and each one of the number held command in turn. But they
now often owed their appointments to interest rather than to merit; and no
tribune in Caesar's army was ever placed at the head of a legion. They
still had administrative duties to perform, and exercised subordinate
commands. But the principal officers were the {\it legati}, who might
loosely be called generals of division. Their powers were not strictly
defined, but varied according to circumstances and to the confidence which
they deserved. A {\it legatus} might he entrusted with the command of a
legion or of an army corps; he might even, in the absence of his chief, be
entrusted with the command of the entire army. But he was not yet, as such,
the permanent commander of a legion. The officers upon whom the efficiency
of the troops mainly depended were the centurions. They were chosen from
the ranks; and their position has been roughly compared with that of our
own non-commissioned officers. But their duties were, in some respects, at
least as responsible as those of a captain: the centurions of the first
cohort were regularly summoned to councils of war; and the chief centurion
of a legion was actually in a position to offer respectful suggestions to
the legate himself. Every legion included in its ranks a number of skilled
artisans, called {\it fabri,} who have been likened to the engineers in a
modern army; but they were not permanently enrolled in a separate corps.
They fought in the ranks like other soldiers; but when their special
services were required, they were directed by staff-officers called {\it
praefecti fabrum.} It was their duty to execute repairs of every kind, to
superintend the construction of permanent camps, and to plan fortifications
and bridges; and it should seem that they also had charge of the
artillery,---the {\it ballistae} and catapults, which hurled heavy stones
and shot arrows against the defences and the defenders of a besieged town.
The legionary wore a sleeveless woollen shirt, a leathern tunic protected
across breast and back by bands of metal, strips of cloth wound round the
thighs and legs, hobnailed shoes, and, in cold or wet weather, a kind of
blanket or military cloak. His defensive armour consisted of helmet,
shield, and greaves: his weapons were a short, two-edged, cut-and-thrust
sword and a javelin, the blade of which, behind the hardened point, was
made of soft iron, so that, when it struck home, it might bend and not be
available for return. These, however, formed only a part of the load which
he carried on the march. Over his left shoulder he bore a pole, to which
were fastened in a bundle his ration of grain, his cooking vessel, saw,
basket, hatchet, and spade. For it was necessary that he should be a
woodman and navvy as well as a soldier. No Roman army ever halted for the
night without constructing a camp fortified with trench, rampart, and
palisade.
The column was of course accompanied by a host of non-combatants. Each
legion required at least five or six hundred horses and mules to carry its
baggage;\footnote{$^{23}$}
{Caesar nowhere mentions that he used wagons or carts during the
Gallic war, though it seems certain that he must have used some,
to carry artillery and material for mantlets and the like. See
{\it Bell. Afr.,} 9, \S 1; {\it B.C.,} iii, 42, \S 4. The larger
pieces of artillery were of course not conveyed entire, but in
parts, which were put together as occasion required.}
and the drivers, with the slaves who waited on the officers, formed a
numerous body. Among the camp-followers were also dealers who supplied the
wants of the army, and were ready to buy booty of every
kind.\footnote{$^{24}$}
{There is no evidence that there was any medical staff in
Caesar's army or under the republic at all, though it may perhaps
be inferred from a passage in Suetonius ({\it Divus Augustus,}
11) that wealthy officer were attended by their private surgeons.
Moreover, as Long remarks ({\it D.R.R.,} ii, 19), `it is hardly
possible that there were no surgeons or physicians in a Roman
army [in Caesar's time] when they were employed to look after the
health and wounds of gladiators.'}
What line of policy Caesar intended to follow, he has not told us. While he
was going forth to govern a distant land, the government of his own was
lapsing into anarchy. He must have seen that the Germans would soon overrun
Gaul unless the Romans prevented them; and that the presence of the Germans
would revive the peril from which Marius had delivered Rome. We may feel
sure that he had determined to teach them, by a rough lesson if necessary,
that they must advance no further into Gaul, nor venture to cross the
boundaries of the Province or of Italy. Confident in himself and supported
by his fellow triumvirs, Pompey and Crassus, he was prepared to act without
waiting for senatorial sanction; and it can hardly be doubted that he
dreamed of adding a new province to the empire, which should round off its
frontier and add to its wealth. But whether he had definitely resolved to
attempt a conquest of such magnitude, or merely intended to follow, as they
appeared, the indications of fortune, it would be idle to conjecture. The
greatest statesman is, in a sense, an opportunist. When Caesar should find
himself in Gaul, he would know best how to shape his ends.
\bye
