A Brief History of the Private Lives of the Roman Emperors (12 page)

At thirty-four he was given a command in Spain but until the campaigns in Gaul he was better known in Rome as a demagogue than as a soldier. In the last years of the Republic a man who aimed for
the top of the greasy pole of politics needed an army to hoist him there and keep him there. For an army he needed a command and a campaign. The Roman army nearly always won. The failure of Crassus
in Parthia,
²⁰
graveyard of greater military reputations, was exceptional. A general with legions in a provincial command which could always be extended had
more power, for a longer term, than a consul who stayed in Rome. He could make or break kings and chieftains, conclude treaties, determine frontiers, raise and pocket taxes, extort protection money
(a favourite of the Duke of Marlborough) and make a fortune from the sale into slavery of prisoners-of-war – his personal perquisite. Roman generals frequently exceeded their brief, though
communications between them and the Senate were quite as efficient as those between Chatham and his generals, or Pitt the Younger and his admirals in the eighteenth century. Once
en
poste,
a Roman general might decide it was in the best interests of the Senate and People of Rome to turn on tribes hitherto recognized as ‘Friends and Allies’
– an official designation – and to cross frontiers in pursuit of more territory and loot; for if the Romans believed that as the only civilized power they had the right to conquer,
their more basic motives were immediate treasure and continued tribute. A successful campaign would be sanctified by the erection of a temple in the Campus Martius containing the trophies (body
armour) of the defeated enemy, and the general’s ego satisfied by his being acclaimed
imperator
by his troops and by his Triumph, in whose associated fun (and games) the plebs would
also share.

In the Vatican Museum is a larger-than-life statue of a captured Gallic chieftain. He is bearded, with heavy moustaches, clad in baggy breeches and leggings, a cloak over his shoulders secured
by a giant silver clasp on his left breast; his head is lowered and he has an expression of bafflement and great sadness on his face – not surprising since his hands, held in
front of him, are bound at the wrists. (Such was the affectation of the
nouveaux riches
in Rome that this ruined prince might have ended up as a cook.) In the past Gauls had
mounted their own expeditions, sacking Rome in 390
BC
. The Belgae had invaded and settled south-east England three centuries later. The exploits and characteristics of these
barbarians were recorded by historians and would have been known to Caesar.

‘Gaul,’ as every young Latin scholar knows, ‘is divided into three parts . . .’ This sentence begins Julius Caesar’s account of his conquest in
De Bello
Gallico
and often concludes the knowledge many people have of the ancient world, but the quotation is worth continuing because it is an excellent précis of the geography and demography
of the country he had decided to subdue, and an example of the general’s clear, clipped style. (One can see that he was not cut out to be a lawyer.)

Gaul, like much of northern Europe in 58
BC
, was a forest (Latin:
foris est
– is outside) so until the Romans built
roads, troop movements, without maps or compasses, were tricky, especially at night, one of Caesar’s favourite resources. Further, communications between armies depended on one swift
horseman, who might, as we shall see, not always get through. Then, too, nature had not been tamed – consider the modern motorway, impervious to natural hazards save earthquakes, floods and
hurricanes – and soldiers were often as fearful of the landscape as the enemy.

The outcome of a battle depended both on the discipline and determination of the men and the skill of the commander. Crucial in the Roman army was the centurion. A good old pro – and there
were few instances of bad centurions – could dispose personally of twenty barbarians and, by his example, change the course of battle, so it did not signify if the Romans were outnumbered on
the field as they usually were. When a young military tribune was killed, from a family known to Caesar (which was why he was there), he was sad, but when a centurion fell, Caesar wept. Often in
his account he refers to them by name (they only ever had two) and gives them loving, long citations, observing how much better they fought when he was watching them, though he was often in the
thick of the battle himself and once ordered his horses away so that he could retreat. As the historian of his own actions, he was fair and uncompetitive, not skating over his mistakes,
acknowledging the skill and even the eloquence of his enemies, though of course
De Bello Gallico
was designed as party political propaganda – the party being himself.

His first campaign was against the Helvetii, which entire people was on the march, quitting the Swiss fastnesses for ‘the good land and high standard of life of the Rhone valley’.
Outnumbered two to one, he forced them to give battle near
the site of Autun, a city later founded by his great-nephew Augustus, where there are still Roman remains. (It was
here that he dismissed the horses.) He routed the Helvetii and was particularly proud of the victory because one of their tribes, the Tigurini, had fifty years before killed a Roman general, Lucius
Piso, who had been the grandfather of his father-in-law, another Lucius Piso; so ‘Caesar was able to avenge a private injury as well as that done to his country.’

He then moved in 55
BC
to the Rhine to crush two German tribes whose chiefs had come to confer with him in his camp. He treacherously locked them up and massacred their
leaderless armies, justifying this action, which was deplored in the Senate by Cato and co., by saying that the Germans were such a serious threat to Gaul and the safety of Rome itself that normal
behaviour did not apply. The principle of ‘divide and rule’ was more of a political idea than a reality, for the Romans, unlike the British in India, had to work hard to sustain their
hegemony, which depended on a system of alliances and client kings. They were obliged, therefore, to protect their allies. The Sugambri, in the north-east, had been harassing the Ubii, allies of
Rome who lived a little further up the Rhine – which Caesar called ‘the limit of Roman sovereignty’ but which he had to cross in order to teach them a lesson. ‘A crossing by
means of boats was both too risky and beneath the dignity of a Roman Commander,’ he wrote – a very Caesarean sentiment and turn of phrase – so he built a bridge just outside
modern Coblenz.

A model of this bridge, constructed by the Italian School of Military Engineers, is on display in the Museum of Roman Civilization in Eur, a bleak high-tech town without pedestrians, outside
Rome. Caesar was proud of his bridge which he describes in such detail that it was easy for the descendants of his engineers to reproduce it. (‘. . . the whole
structure
was so rigid that, in accordance with the laws of physics, the greater the force of the current the more tightly were the piles held in position.’) He crossed the bridge, built in ten days,
burned the villages, farms and crops of the offending Sugambri, recrossed the bridge, destroying it behind him, and considered, having spent a total of eighteen days behind the Rhine, ‘that
he had done all that honour or interest required’. When one reflects on the palaver about crossing the Rhine in the Second World War this is quite a classy comment.

The Roman soldier was trained to be flexible; he was first a navvy, breaking stones and building roads being the principal occupation of the ordinary recruit, but he might specialize in
operating engines of war, like the battering ram, whose business end was indeed a mass of iron in the shape of a ram’s head, or the gigantic catapult, which Caesar designed himself, or the
portable siege tower, or the harpoon which he used in a sea battle against the Veneti, a tribe on the Atlantic coast of Brittany who had dared to kill his ambassadors. Their tall ships with sails
and rigging out-manoeuvred the Romans in their oar-powered flat-bottomed boats but in the middle of the battle the wind dropped – Caesar’s luck – and as Caesar commented
‘after that it was a soldiers’ battle’ which the Romans won. The punishment he meted out was severe; their leaders were executed and the entire population sold into slavery.

Caesar used the same ships to invade Britain in 55
BC
. The Brits heard him coming and offered hostages, usually a ploy to gain time. He sent Commius, whom he had made
King of the Atrebates, and who, like the Belgae, occupied territory on both sides of the channel (the ‘ocean’ as the Romans called it), roughly Normandy, and Wilts and Berks, to
announce his imminence. He landed at Dover. Caesar wrote in
De Bello
Gallico:
‘The natives sent in their cavalry and chariots, which frightened the Romans
who were quite unaccustomed to this kind of fighting.’ (How odd to hear Caesar crying ‘foul’.) But the Romans’ oar-powered boats, which
they
had not seen, frightened
the Britons even more. Then Commius returned with a message that the opposition to Caesar’s disembarkation had all been a terrible mistake, the fault of the common people, who had now all
been sent home to tend to their fields. Peace was proposed and hostages offered. Like Genghis Khan, Caesar often conquered through his advancing reputation, so much more economic than troops.
Caesar returned to Gaul having experienced difficulties with the unfamiliar high tides, so different from the Mediterranean, dealt with the Morini (Pas-de-Calais), who had thought to profit from
his reported problems, and sent a suitable despatch to the Senate, who decreed a holiday of twenty days. In fact the expedition had been a failure; only two of the tribes ever sent hostages.

Next year’s invasion was better arranged. In 54
BC
, with five legions and 2,000 cavalry, he landed at Deal and found a worthy opponent in Cassivellaunus
(Cadwallader?), King of Herts, Essex and Middlesex, who had been elected to command – the British were then democratically organized. Again Caesar complains that the British deployed their
chariots in an ‘unfamiliar, daring and unnerving’ manner. In retaliation the Roman soldiers plodded on, burning the countryside, while their leader concluded deals with the odd
dissident chieftain, until both sides had had enough. Cassivellaunus promised hostages and tribute and Caesar withdrew.

Why had he gone there in the first place?

His army had been large enough to conquer a country a fifth the size of Gaul, but again he had retreated. Perhaps he had been put off by the woad, the curious marital habits and
the appalling Druidic customs – including human sacrifice – of the native Britons, apart from being unnerved by their charioteers. The conquest of Britain was abandoned for
a century.

Besides, Caesar had to hurry back to deal with Ambiorix, chief of ‘an obscure and insignificant’ tribe in Picardy, but acknowledged by Caesar to be an eloquent and ingenious fellow.
His general Sabinus, his tribunes and first-grade centurions had agreed to a parley outside their camp, a foolish move one might have thought, in retrospect, when they were overwhelmed and
massacred. The standard-bearer threw his eagle over the ramparts and fought to the death, survivors crept back into the camp and committed suicide. It was the worst defeat in Gaul. Caesar had not
been there. Worse followed. Encouraged by this unexpected success against the invincible Romans, Ambiorix raised the flag for a general revolt and besieged the winter camp of Cicero. Still Caesar
was not there. Messengers sent to him were captured and tortured in front of the besieged Roman soldiers. Finally a Gaul who had deserted to Cicero persuaded his slave, ‘by the promise of
freedom and a large reward’, to carry a despatch to Caesar, on receipt of which Caesar told his
quaestor
Crassus to march through the night to relieve Cicero, sending him a message (in
Greek) via a javelin which stuck unnoticed in the ramparts for two days.

The Gauls were 60,000 strong, the Romans 7,000. Through feints Caesar manoeuvred the enemy into a disadvantageous position on the wrong side of a valley, then he struck. The Gauls panicked and
fled, throwing away their arms. At the post mortem Caesar blamed Sabinus but praised Cicero – though one can sense him saying something sharp under his breath; one must remember that the
Gallic campaign, though long and arduous, was part of his design to gather enough political clout (and money) to bid for supreme power in
Rome, and he would have avoided in his
despatch any offense to another politician, the other Cicero. The Gallic tribes were so restless that Caesar decided he could not risk spending the winter, as was his habit, in northern Italy,
attending to the assizes and less solemn pursuits.