seven months, for Pompeius lacked resolution to quell it. At last in August the faction of Milo had gained the ascendency, the tribes could meet and deliberate, and the recall of Cicero was voted with acclamations. The patriot's return was likened to a triumphal procession. From the moment of his landing at Brundisium to his entering the gates of Rome he was received with unbounded rejoicings. All Italy came out, as he tells us, to meet him. The citizens redoubled the cries with which they had hailed him before as the father of his country. He had been, however, seventeen months in exile, and the weakness of his character had been revealed, perhaps even to himself, by the unmanly dejection to which he had succumbed. In the overthrow of his own greatness he had forgotten the degradation of his country; he had shown in the hour of trial that Rome was only the second object of his thoughts, and himself the first. Nor could he disguise from himself that he had been made, and must still continue to be, the sport of men far his inferiors in ability and honesty. His dream of conciliating public interests and classes had vanished. The free state was evidently doomed to perish, and he had saved it only for the moment. The signal exploit of his own career was destined after all to be cited thereafter as no better than a splendid failure. CHAPTER XLI. Cæsar in Gaul.-His campaigns in the east, the west, the north, and the south. His advance into Germany, and two invasions of Britain, B.C. 58-54.-Pompeius obtains an extraordinary commission for supplying the city.-Question of restoring Ptolemæus to Egypt with an armed force.Pompeius baffled by the Senate.-Cæsar's intrigues at Lucca.-Pompeius and Crassus consuls for B. c. 55.-They extend Cæsar's government for a term of five years.-Tumults in the city.-Danger of Pompeius.-Alarm and death of Julia.-Cæsar's administration in Gaul.-Revolt in the northeast, and subjugation of the Remi, the Treviri, and the Nervii, B.C. 53.-Revolt of the central states.-Affair of Alesia and surrender of Vercingetorix.-Conquest of Gaul completed B.C. 51.-Cæsar organizes the country in his own interest. His popularity with his soldiers. (B.c. 58-51.) CESAR had entered his province in the spring of the year 58, and during the following years was intently occupied in subjugatU.C. 696. ing the tribes of Gaul from the Rhone to the Seine, the B.C. 58. Rhine, and the Atlantic. He had forbidden the restless Helvetii to cross the Rhone where that river issues from the lake Lemannus, and pour themselves into the Roman Province. With CHAP. XLI. CÆSAR IN GAUL. 321 a chain of earthworks he had barred the passage, and driven them to take the right bank of the stream, and so effect their purpose of moving westward. He had quickly followed them on their track, routed them first on the banks of the Saone, and pursued them to the neighborhood of Bibracte, among the upper waters of the Seine, where he had finally crushed them. From thence he had turned his arms against the Suevi, a German tribe who, under their chief Ariovistus, had crossed the Rhine and approached Vesontio. He drove these invaders back into their own country; and, having relieved the more settled communities of Gaul from both their assailants, set himself to form alliances with some, and sow discord among others, so as to prepare the way, after the usual fashion of the Roman conquerors, for the eventual subjugation of all. The Edui and Arverni in the centre of Gaul, the Remi in the northcast, were disposed, each with selfish views of their own, to assist in the ruin of their common country, and the apprehensions they had begun to entertain of the Germans allowed the invader to offer himself as the protector of Gaul. In the following year .c.697. Cæsar broke the confederacy of the Belgic tribes in the U.c. 698. northeast. In his next campaign he worsted at sea the naval power of the Veneti in Armorica, and reduced for the most part the northwestern districts. At the same time his lieutenants were occupied in a successful attack upon the tribes of the southwest, which was known by the general name of Aquitania. Gaul was now for the most part pacified, but it became 1.0.55. necessary to keep the legions in constant exercise, and to satiate their officers with fresh plunder. In B.C. 55 Cæsar advanced beyond the frontiers of his enormous province, throwing a bridge over the Rhine, and penetrating for an instant into the German forests. In the autumn of the same year he crossed into Britain with an army hastily equipped on the shores of the German Ocean, and pretended at least to have effected his object in a short incursion of a fortnight only. Having perhaps beaten the natives in some slight encounters, and suffered much injury to his vessels by a high tide and tempest, he withdrew into B.0.54. Gaul for the winter. Again he attacked the islanders in the succeeding summer, landing on each occasion on the coast of Kent, but whether to the east or west of Dover is to this day keenly disputed. He made in this second campaign a rapid march into the interior, forced the passage of the Thames at a ford above London, and defeated the chief of the Trinobantes, the most powerful of the southern tribes, before his stockade in Hertfordshire. But his success was not such as to encourage him to leave a garrison in the country, or effect a permanent lodgment there. He was satisfied with the promise of a slender tribute, which probably was U.C. 699. U.C. 700. never paid after the return of his legions. He had occupied his troops, he had amused the people at Rome, who listened with delight to their hero's despatches, and he had allowed affairs at home to ripen for the grave crisis to which, through his partisans, he was gradually urging them. During the progress of his campaigns the proconsul's vigilance had never been entirely diverted from the march of events in the city. Year after year he had repaired, when the season for military operations had closed, to the baths of Lucca, on the southern limit of his province-for the laws did not suffer an imperator to enter Italy while retaining his command-and there concerted with his friends, who flocked to him in large numbers from Rome, the measures most conducive to their interests and his own. During his absence the bands of the triumvirate had already sensibly relaxed. Pompeius and Crassus were pursuing their own private objects, each hastening, as he thought, to the occupation of supreme power. Cicero had given his adhesion to Pompeius; and a scarcity of corn occurring, he had moved that to him an extraordinary commission should be intrusted for supplying it. The republic was now familiarized with these monopolies of power. The consuls assented, and for the third time Pompeius was placed above the laws. He was authorized to demand supplies from any part of the empire, the prices to be fixed at his own discretion. The U.o. 697. officers employed were to be of his own appointment; B.O. 57. his powers were to be continued for five years. Cicero himself accepted a place on the commission. The whole scheme was a mere pretence for putting the conqueror of the East at the helm of state, which four years before he had unwarily abandoned. Nevertheless, whether from indolence or mismanagement, Pompeius seems to have gained no accession of strength from the powers thus placed in his hands. With ample means of providing for his friends and adherents, he found himself more than ever exposed to the intrigues of the nobles and the violence of the mob. He was defeated in an attempt to get a further appointment, which now offered itself as a prize for contending factions. The republic seems to have postponed the acceptance of the king of Egypt's legacy. The story of this legacy is, indeed, obscure and doubtful. It seems that at this moment the reigning sovereign, Ptolemæus Auletes, had been expelled by his subjects, and the Senate proposed to restore him by force. The public man to whom this business should be committed would require the command of an army, and doubtless he would obtain fame, power, and emolument. The government proposed to send one of their own party. The consular Lentulus, the tribunes in the interest of Pompeius, interposed, and alleged an oracle of the Sibyl, to the effect that the CHAP. XLI. CESAR'S INTRIGUES AT LUCCA. 323 king must not be restored "with a multitude," a phrase which was deemed to forbid the employment of an armed force. Lentulus was baffled; but when Pompeius through his greatness sought the appointment for himself he could succeed no better. The increasing turbulence of the popular demagogues rendered any decision impossible. The city became once more a prey to internal tumults; the nobles began again to put their trust in the violence of their champion Milo. The statue of Jupiter on the Alban Mount was struck with lightning, and caused general consternation as a presage of impending revolution. Clodius seems to have sown dissension between Pompeius and Crassus, and even alarmed Pom U.C. 698. peius with apprehension of foul treatment from his col- .c. 56. league. At the same time the Senate were emboldened to talk of recalling Cæsar from his province, and exposing him unarmed to impeachment and exile or even death. With the approach of winter, Cæsar, as in the previous year, had repaired to his station at Lucca, and intrigued in self-defence to support the demagogues against the nobles, and to secure the consulship for Pompeius and Crassus. To Lucca consulars and officials of every rank flocked from the city. A hundred and twenty lictors, it was said, might sometimes be counted at his door, while two hundred senators, nearly one half of the order, paid their court at his receptions. They returned to Rome, both senators and knights, full of satisfaction at his affable manners and his fullhanded generosity. They were coming rapidly to the conclusion that the reign of equal law was approaching its end, to be succeeded by the ascendency of an individual hero. The fatal crisis had, indeed, almost arrived. The machinery of the free state could no longer work. The consuls and the tribunes, the Senate and the people, mutually checked each other's movements, and paralyzed the action of the body politic. The election for the ensuing year was impeded, the consuls interposing under pretence of adverse auspices, and forbidding the tribes to assemble. Meanwhile they abstained themselves from all the duties of their office, clad themselves in mourning, refrained from the spectacles and from the solemn festival on the Alban Mount, as men under constraint of the mob and deprived of their legitimate power. When at last the curule chairs were become vacant the impatient candidates disregarded the legal forms of an interregnum, and induced the tribunes to convene the people irregularly. While the nobles employed bribery for their nominee Domitius, young Crassus arrived from Gaul with a detachment of Cæsar's veterans, and overbore all opposition. The new consuls, Pompeius and Crassus, having thus obtained their appointment by open violence, secured the other offices for their friends by similar outrage. M. Cato, who 1.0.55. U.O. 699. sued for the prætorship, was mortified by a rejection, which was rendered doubly vexatious by the infamy of Vatinius, whom the triumvir exalted over his head. Cæsar had effected a hollow reconciliation between his colleagues at his conference with them at Lucca. He next secured for them, through the action of the tribune Trebonius, the important provinces of Spain and Syria, with unusual powers for making war. In return he obtained, through their assistance, the extension of his own government for a second period of five years. His province, they could urge, was only half-pacified, and required to be organized by the same strong hand which had so rapidly subdued it. But Cæsar himself looked forward to confirming his influence over his own legions, and seeing the authority of his rivals wane, during the further interval that was now allowed him, and deliberately calculated the period when the empire would drop into his hands. The resistance which the Optimates had made to this fatal concession had been petulant rather than determined. It was not Lucullus and Servilius and Cicero that now appeared as formerly at their head, and Catulus was already dead. Cato, who had lost much of his authority by daily collision with violence and vulgarity, and Favonius, a party brawler rather than a political chief, were the most active of their champions. These men tried to defeat the resolution by the length of their angry invectives, but could only retard the decision by one day. The tribunes on different sides engaged in the petty warfare of obstructing public ways and locking the doors of public buildings. Cato got himself lifted on men's shoulders in order to force his way into the place of meeting, and used the stale trick of declaring that the auspices were adverse. He was answered by the brandishing of clubs and by showers of stones; swords and daggers were drawn in the affray, and the friends of the Optimates were driven from the arena not without bloodshed. Such were the tumultuous proceedings by which the desperate policy of the triumvir was ratiU.C. 699. fied. It was in one of these scenes of violence that the B.C. 55. robe of Pompeius became sprinkled with blood. On his return home thus disfigured he was met by his youthful wife, Julia, who was alarmed for his safety. Horrified at the sight, she was seized with premature labor, and died from its effects shortly afterwards. In the first year of his command Cæsar had delivered Gaul from the invasions of the Helvetii and Suevi, and he had effected the subjugation of the South. In the second he had imposed his yoke upon the fiercest nations of the North; in the third he had subdued the West. The campaigns of the fourth and fifth years had daunted the Germans and the Britons on their own soil, and closed |