THIRD COMMENTARY
56 BCE
“All Gaul was pacified.” The year 56 would prove the limitations of Caesar’s peace across the northern provinces where he had been successful in 57—but the action all takes place elsewhere.
The first half-dozen paragraphs of his account of this year really belong to the narrative of the preceding year, whose story extended into late November. They are postponed for rhetorical effect, to allow that narrative of the second commentary to conclude with victory and thanksgiving. These events occurred after the campaign year ended for Caesar with his departure for Italy, and they flow seamlessly into the story of 56. The legate Galba whose close call is here recounted would reappear as one of the conspirators against Caesar in 44.
The two consuls for 56, Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus and L. Marcius Philippus, were both restive and obstructionist toward the influence of the three generalissimos. Marcellinus took steps to try to limit Caesar’s governorship and install a successor by 54, while resisting a deal that would install Crassus and Pompey as consuls for 55. Philippus, though married to Caesar’s niece and thus stepfather to the small boy who would become Caesar Augustus, supported Marcellinus. The resistant faction looked to Domitius Ahenobarbus as a prospective consul for 55 and successor to Caesar in Gaul in 54.
Caesar himself began the year with a rare visit to his provincial territory of Illyricum on the Adriatic, and then returned to Aquileia at the very head of the Adriatic, throughout Roman times the most important city at the crossroads between Italy and the Balkans, before eventually yielding that role to Venice. While at Aquileia, Caesar “heard that elections for lower offices had gone badly for him and that Ahenobarbus was campaigning hard to supplant him. Cicero, meanwhile, was feeling his oats again and as late as the first of April was supporting those who still wanted to overturn Caesar’s consular acts, in particular his land law, even as the Senate voted 40 million sesterces for Pompey to expend on the grain supply. Content with that for himself, Pompey dined with Cicero in early April and showed no signs of unhappiness with Cicero’s alignment with the anti-Caesar faction.
What Cicero did not know when he dined with Pompey was that Pompey’s departure a day or two later on a trip to Sardinia was to be detoured north along the coast to the town of Lucca just beyond Pisa. A few days before that dinner, Crassus had gone to Ravenna to meet with Caesar to begin making strategy and, incidentally, to tell Caesar that Cicero had been acting very badly. Caesar and Crassus made their way to Lucca, there to meet Pompey. The later historians Appian and Plutarch make this into a grand summit meeting, quoting numbers of 200 senators and 120 lictors supposedly in attendance. Some were there, but those numbers seem to be inflated: testimony to the high importance of the meeting and its effect on what would happen in the years to come.
The meeting was held on about the seventeenth of April and a deal was quickly done. First, the consular election for 55 must be carried successfully for Pompey and Crassus, and so Caesar would release some of his men to come down to Rome in the winter to offer their votes and their intimidating presence in support of the chosen candidates. In return, Caesar’s command would be extended another five years, after which he could stand for election to be consul again in 48. Both Pompey and Crassus would have extended governorships of their own coming out of their next consular year. (Pompey took Spain, with no intention of actually going there, while Crassus accepted Syria as a base of operations for what he expected would be his own great military adventure against the Parthians.) This was likely also when Crassus prevailed on Pompey to give up his idea of a grand campaign to Egypt to establish Roman sway once for all. Ptolemy was still working to deliver a submissive puppet state; not until Caesar went to Egypt during the civil war did Rome’s interests there advance. During the time in Lucca, Caesar also saw Appius Claudius Pulcher, Clodius’ elder brother, on his way out to govern Sardinia, and used the opportunity to tell him to encourage Clodius to persist in his latest flip-flop to support Pompey and Caesar.
After the meeting, Caesar left immediately for Gaul (early June) to settle an uprising among the Veneti. Pompey on his way to Sardinia sent messages to Cicero by two routes (one being Cicero’s brother Quintus) with strict instructions to let go of the Campanian land question.
Cicero accordingly avoided the meeting of the senate that was set to discuss that issue and soon turned his coat completely to stand in support of the generalissimos. In a letter of this period, Cicero speaks of this as singing his “palinode,” the literary term for a recantation or change of heart. He supports, perhaps even proposes, the decree to give Caesar state funds to pay for his four new legions as well as the right to appoint ten legates of his own choosing to serve him instead of the usual three. In early July, he gives a substantial and elaborate speech in support of the Lucca arrangements, published as De provinciis consularibus (On the Consular Provinces). He defends the campaign as the first actively positive Roman venture in Gaul after too many efforts simply to deter invaders from there, and he plumps up hoary tales of Gallic hordes. “I see that Caesar’s plan was very different. He meant to make war not only on those who took arms against Rome but to reduce all Gaul under our authority.” Cicero knows in at least some detail the story of the battles with the Helvetians and Germans. “No one in his right mind about our republic, as far back as you go, thought of Gaul as anything but a great threat to our rule.”
Cicero also lent his services as barrister to defending Caesar’s senior staff member Balbus (so senior that he shared with Caesar and one other lieutenant a secret code for communicating with one another) on a trumped-up charge concerning his citizenship, which he in fact owed to Pompey. Cicero had finally figured out that while grave and reverend senators may have had votes, Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar had armies and that times had changed. From this moment in 56 moderns speak of the three as “triumvirs” in honor of their blatant bargain to hold and share power.
The decision to allow Caesar to pay for his legions occasioned a comedy in its own right, when a rogue tribune tried to resist supporting Caesar by summoning him for trial on accusations rooted in his actions as consul in 59. With the generalissimos aligned and Cicero now on board the effort was pointless.
So now Pompey and Crassus were free to step forward and suborn a friendly tribune into preventing the holding of consular elections at the normal time, postponing them until after the hostile consuls were out of office on the first of January. (When the year began consul-less, an interrex—“regent,” from which we get “interregnum”—was appointed to administer affairs but on the understanding that he would not make substantive decisions.) That gave Caesar the opportunity to send some troops from Gaul to Rome on furlough to meddle in the elections.
The year ended with a modicum of control for the three generalissimos. Cicero, clearly abashed by his decision to cave in to their pressure and by the loss of his political autonomy (a loss he would partly redress only after Caesar’s death, by attacking Antony) retreated to his villa outside Rome and wrote and published De oratore (On the Orator), his great work on the nature of oratory and its place in public life. It is a dialogue set almost forty years earlier in the years between the dominant periods of Marius and Sulla, a time not unlike the moment at which Cicero wrote. Cicero believed that the virtuous and educated man who could hold a crowd with his words was the ideal leader for Roman society, and he wrote this and several other books on that theme in just the years when it was becoming clear that he was completely and entirely wrong. A decade later, as Caesar was at his peak of power, Cicero retreated again, this time to write his main philosophical works with a greater air of detachment.
Caesar noticed Cicero’s book and had time to think about it and to prepare his De analogia (On Analogy) by way of reply in the midst of his many other activities.
For he was somewhat busy in the field in the summer of 56. The nations of Brittany and Normandy that he had subdued the previous year were now back in revolt. An ancient source thinks they were eager to preserve their role as leading traders with Britain. The real action against the rebels waited for late summer, when Decimus Brutus could bring a fleet of ships to bear, after which speedy resolution was achieved.
The end of the campaigning season then saw him back to the other northern theater of operations from the previous year, now to stifle a revolt among the Menapii. One of the mild inconsistencies that encourages us to think these commentaries were written and sent off originally one at a time can be seen in the way he treats the Menapii here in the third commentary as an isolated people defending their prerogatives, then speaks of them in the fourth commentary as deeply in cahoots with other nations.
So now Caesar might well think he had done the important work. Aquitania, the third part of Gaul he identified on his opening page, still lay behind him unvisited, but it was quiet and could be reserved for another day. As he returned in November to Cisalpine Gaul and sent troops on ahead to meddle in the consular elections at the end of 56, he might well take a deep breath and think of wider horizons.
IN THE CONSULSHIP OF LENTULUS MARCELLINUS AND PHILIPPUS
1. When Caesar left for Italy, he sent Galba with the twelfth legion and some cavalry to the Nantuates, Veragri, and Seduni, who extend from the Allobroges border, lake Geneva, and the Rhone to the crest of the Alps. He wanted the road through the Alps kept open, where merchants passed at great risk, paying high tolls. He let Galba settle the legion to winter there if he thought it necessary. Galba, fighting a few good skirmishes and seizing several forts, received ambassadors and hostages from all sides and made peace. He settled on placing two cohorts among the Nantuates, while he with the other cohorts of that legion would winter in a village of the Veragri called Octodurus.1 The village sits in a small valley with its plain hemmed in all around by high mountains. Since it was divided in two by a river, he let the Gauls have one part of the village and assigned the part they left empty to his cohorts. He fortified the site with rampart and trench.
2. When some days had passed in camp and he had ordered grain brought in, suddenly he heard from scouts that the Gauls in the part of town left to them had all departed by night and the overhanging mountains were held by a great crowd of Seduni and Veragri. There were several reasons for the Gauls to plot suddenly to restart war and overwhelm the legion. First, they thought little of a legion below full strength, with two cohorts removed and others absent and scattered securing provisions; second, they thought their first onrush would be unstoppable because the land was not level and they would be rushing down from mountains to valley hurling weapons. More, they were unhappy because their children had been taken as hostages and they were convinced the Romans were trying to take the Alpine summits not just for passage but to keep permanently and to join this territory to the neighboring province.
3. Galba heard the news with his winter quarters and fortifications still unfinished and nowhere near enough grain and other supplies provided, because after the surrender and hostage-taking he thought he had nothing to fear from attack. He quickly gathered his counselors and sought advice. In such sudden and unexpected danger, with armed men seen filling the high ground, no help on the way, no supplies at hand, and the roads cut off: despairing of safety, many in his council urged abandoning the baggage and breaking out along the same roads by which they had come, and struggling to safety. The majority wanted to hold that plan for the worst case and now to try their luck and defend the camps.
4. They had barely enough time to deploy and settle on a plan, when soon the enemy on a signal ran down from all sides throwing stones and Gallic javelins at the rampart from below. At first our men fought back hard with full strength and threw no weapon from the rampart that missed its mark. Whatever part of camp seemed pressed and short of defenders, others went to help. But we were outmatched: as fighting went on enemy troops wearied in battle left and others came up with their full strength, while our side could not do likewise because we were too few. Not only could the weary not leave battle, but even the wounded had no chance to withdraw from where they had stood and fall back.
5. When the fighting had gone more than six hours straight and strength and weapons were failing our men, as the enemy pressed harder, beginning to hack the rampart and fill the trench as our side wearied, things came to a crisis. Sextius Baculus, the first spear centurion we described as exhausted by wounds when fighting the Nervii, and Volusenus, military tribune and a man of great intelligence and courage, ran to Galba and showed him that the one hope of safety, their last recourse, was to try to break out. So he gathered the centurions and quickly alerted the soldiers to break off fighting gradually, just deflecting weapons flung at them, and rest from their effort. Then when the sign was given they would break out of camp and put all their hope for safety in their courage.
6. They did as ordered, erupting suddenly from every gate, leaving the enemy no way of knowing what was happening or of regrouping. Luck changed: they cut off and cut down men who had come hoping to seize the camp. Of the more than 30,000 men—the number of barbarians known to be there— more than a third were killed and the rest were hurled terrified into flight, not even able to make a stand on the heights. When the enemy were all routed and stripped of weapons, our men withdrew into the fort. After this battle, Galba did not want to tempt fortune again. He remembered he had come to winter quarters with one idea but found a very different state of affairs. Concerned over grain shortage, next day he burned all the village farmhouses and made for the province. No enemy checked or slowed their journey, so he brought the legion safe to the Nantuates and then to the Allobroges. There they wintered.
7. After this, since Caesar thought Gaul was now at peace, he left for Illyricum in early winter to visit and get to know those peoples and lands. War broke out suddenly in Gaul: here is why. The young Crassus was wintering near the ocean among the Andes people with the seventh legion. Because there was a shortage of grain there, he sent numerous prefects and tribunes to neighboring nations to seek provisions. Among them Terrasidius was sent to the Esuvii, Trebius Gallus to the Coriosolites, and Velanius with Silius to the Veneti.
8. This nation was far the most influential on the whole seacoast in that area, for the Veneti have many ships accustomed to sailing to Britain and they excel the others in knowledge and experience of sailing. The sea spreads roughly there, while the Veneti hold the few ports, so almost all who use those waters pay them taxes. They started to detain Silius and Vela-nius and anyone else they could catch, thinking they could thereby recover hostages they had given Crassus.
The neighboring nations were inspired by their example— Gauls are sudden and abrupt in their strategems—to hold Trebius and Terrasidius for the same reason. Sending messengers swiftly, their leaders swear to each other to act only by common strategy and together accept fortune’s outcome. They encouraged other nations to persist in the liberty they inherited from their elders rather than endure Roman slavery. The whole coast is quickly brought to agreement and they send a single embassy to Crassus: if he wants to recover his men, he should return the hostages.
9. When Caesar, while still far away, had report from Crassus, he ordered longboats be built on the Loire (which flows to the ocean), oarsmen recruited from the province, and sailors and pilots found. Settling this quickly, as soon as the season allowed he headed for the army.2 The Veneti and the rest heard of Caesar’s coming and realizing at once how great a misdeed they had committed started to prepare for a dangerous war, beginning especially to gather things needed for ships. Their hope grew stronger because they knew the lay of the land. Land routes were interrupted by estuaries; sailing was hard for those who did not know the area, and there were few ports. They were sure our troops could not remain there long because of grain shortage. Should all go against them, they had their sea power and the Romans had no naval capacity and did not know the shoals, ports, and islands where they would fight. And of course sailing the vast and spreading ocean was very different from a narrow sea. Settling their plan, they fortified towns, brought grain from fields to towns, and brought as many boats as possible to the Veneti, where it was clear Caesar would fight first. They enlisted the Osismi, Lexovii, Namnetes, Ambiliati, Morini, Diablintes, and Menapii as allies and sent for support from Britain, which is opposite those shores.
10. We’ve shown how difficult fighting would be, but much still encouraged Caesar to fight that war: the offence of detaining Roman knights, rebellion after surrender, betrayal after giving hostages, so many nations plotting—and chiefly he wanted to keep other nations from thinking they could do the same if he let this pass. He knew most Gauls loved uprisings and were easily and quickly roused to fight, while all men naturally pursue liberty and hate a slave’s lot, so he decided to divide and distribute his army widely before more nations could join the plot.
11. So he sent the legate Labienus with cavalry to the Treveri, near the Rhine, commanding him to approach the Remi and the rest of Belgae and keep them in line. If Germans, reportedly invited to support the Belgae, tried to force the river in boats, he should stop them. He ordered Crassus to head for Aquitaine with twelve legionary cohorts3 and a large number of cavalry, to keep them from sending help to Gaul and linking up such nations. He sent the legate Titurius Sabinus with three legions to the Venelli, Coriosolites, and Lexovii, to keep that force at a distance. Young Brutus he put in charge of his fleet and of the Gallic boats he had ordered the Pictones, Santones and other peaceful areas to bring, and told him to set out for the Veneti at once. Caesar made his way with foot soldiers.
12. Their towns were set mostly at the end of tongues of land and promontories with no approach on foot when the tide drove in from the deep, which happens every twelve hours, nor by boat when the tide lessened and ships were driven onto shoals. Attacking these towns either way was hindered. When they were overcome by our huge siegeworks—pushing back the sea with earthworks and ramps as high as the town walls— they despaired of their chances and drew up a great many ships, something they did superbly. Loading aboard all their possessions they escaped to neighboring towns, there to protect themselves again with the advantages of the site. They did this the more easily much of the summer because our boats were held back by storms and sailing was extremely difficult on the vast and open sea with high tides and almost no ports at hand.
13. This is how their ships are built and armed: the bottoms are flatter than on our ships, to take the shallows and low tides more easily; bows and sterns are higher, to face storms and high waves; the ships were all made of oak to handle whatever assault and blows; crossbars of boards a foot high were fastened with iron nails as thick as a man’s thumb; anchors were lashed with iron chains instead of rope; skins and lightweight leather were used for sails, whether because they had no linen and didn’t know its use or more likely because they thought ocean storms and wind blasts could not be endured or such heavy ships controlled well enough by sails.
14. After taking several towns, Caesar realized the effort was going nowhere. The enemy couldn’t be harmed or kept from escaping towns we captured. He decided to wait for his fleet. When it arrived4 and the enemy saw it, some 220 of their ships, fully armed and ready, set out from port against ours. Neither Brutus, leading the fleet, nor the centurions and military tribunes piloting individual ships knew what to do or how to press the fight. They knew their prows would do no harm: platforms built on our decks were overtopped by the poops of the barbarian ships. Weapons couldn’t easily be hurled from below and the ones launched by Gauls would fall heavily. Our men had one very useful device ready, sharpened hooks attached to poles, like the ones for attacking city walls. They grabbed and dragged the ropes linking masts and yards, tearing them apart when our men leaned on their oars. With the ropes cut, the yards had to fall. Since the Gauls relied heavily on sails and rigging, when those were taken away, they lost all control of the ships at once. The rest of the fight depended on courage, where our soldiers were easily better, especially when the fight was waged in sight of Caesar and the whole army. No brave act, however modest, could go unnoticed, for all the hills and high ground close by from which you could look down on the sea were held by the army.
15. When the yards were down and two or three ships surrounded each of ours, our soldiers made every effort to board the enemy ships. After the barbarians realized this and many of their ships were taken, with no help to be found, they sought safety in flight. As they turned their ships with the wind, such a calm and lull set in suddenly that they could not move from where they were. This was a great chance to end the business. Our ships chased them down and defeated them one by one, with only a few of their fleet reaching land by nightfall, after fighting from the fourth hour to sunset.
16. With that battle, the war with the Veneti and the whole coast was done. They had brought all their young men, all their elders with any standing or wisdom, and all the ships they had anywhere to that one place. Losing them, the rest had nowhere to retreat and no way to defend their towns. So they surrendered themselves and all they had to Caesar. Caesar decided to punish them severely so barbarians in future would respect the rights of ambassadors. The whole of their senate was killed and the rest of them sold into slavery.
17. While this was going on among the Veneti, Titurius Sabinus and the forces he had from Caesar reached the land of the Venelli.5 Viridovix ruled there and held supreme command of all the nations in revolt: he had raised an army from them. In a few days the Aulerci, Eburovices, and Lexovii (who put their senate to death for refusing to stand for war) closed their gates and joined Viridovix. A mass of lowlifes and brigands from all Gaul came together, hoping for booty and eager for war, fleeing the daily grind of farming. Sabinus stayed camped in a well-chosen place, while Viridovix set down against him a couple of miles away and brought his troops out ready to fight every day. Not only did Sabinus face enemy scorn, but criticism was heard from our own soldiers. He gave the impression of fear so strongly that the enemy ventured to come right up to the camp walls. He acted thus because with so many enemy before him, he judged he should not fight in the absence of the supreme commander unless on a fair field or if a favorable chance arose.
18. Sure the rumor of his cowardice was strong, Sabinus chose an able and clever Gaul from the support troops and convinced him with great prizes and promises to go to the enemy and told him what he wanted done. When he reached them posing as a refugee, he reported on Roman fear and how hard pressed Caesar was by the Veneti. Sabinus was all but ready that night to lead his army secretly from camp to bring help to Caesar. Hearing this, the Gauls exclaimed that this chance of accomplishing their business must not be lost—they should go for the camp. Many things encouraged them in this plan: Sabinus’ hesitation the preceding days, confirmed by the refugee, shortage of foodstuffs (which they looked after too carelessly), the hope for the Venetic war—and of course men easily believe what they want to believe. Drawn in by these things, they wouldn’t let Viridovix and the other generals leave council before they agreed to take up arms and make for our camp. Delighted in this agreement as if victory were assured, they gathered brush and branches to fill the Roman ditches and headed for our camp.
19. The camp was on high ground most of a mile uphill from the valley. They made a great run for this, to give the Romans too little time to arm and gather, and arrived breathless. Sabinus roused his men and gave the signal they wanted. While the enemy was slowed by the loads they carried, he ordered a sudden breakout from two gates. With the advantageous position, the inexperience and fatigue of the enemy, and the courage of our soldiers and their experience in other battles, they couldn’t resist even one attack from us and immediately turned tail. Our fresh soldiers pursued their burdened ones and killed many; our cavalry chased the rest, leaving few who actually escaped.
At one moment, Sabinus heard of the naval battle and Caesar heard of Sabinus’ victory, as all the nations surrendered at once to Sabinus. The Gallic spirit is eager and ready to fight, but their minds are weak and unable to endure disaster.
20. When Crassus arrived then in Aquitaine, he realized he would have to fight where a few years before the legate Valerius Praeconinus was killed and the army beaten, when the proconsul Manlius had abandoned his baggage and fled.6 So he knew he needed to move with not a little care. Looking after provisions, gathering auxiliaries and cavalry, and individually summoning proven fighters from Tolouse and Carcasonne and Narbonne, the Gallic nations closest to our province, he led his army into Sotiates territory. Hearing of their coming the Sotiates gathered a large army and cavalry (they are strong in horsemen) and attacked our line on the march. They engaged first a cavalry battle and then when their horse were beaten back and our troops were in pursuit, suddenly they revealed foot soldiers placed in ambush in a nearby valley. These attacked our men in disarray and renewed battle.
21. They fought long and hard. The Sotiates, heartened by earlier victories, thought the safety of all Aquitaine depended on their courage; our men wanted to show what they could do without a general, without other legions, with a very young commander. Wearied and wounded at last, the enemy turned and ran. Killing many, Crassus turned aside to attack the Sotiates’ town. Facing strong resistance, he built sheds and turrets. They tried a breakout on one side, then on another tunneled under our sheds and ramp. (The Aquitani are adept at this because there are many copper mines among them.) When they realized they could not win this way because our men were so persistent, they sent ambassadors to Crassus to negotiate surrender.
22. When the surrender was accepted, they handed over their weapons as ordered. While all our men were occupied there, Adiatunnus, their supreme commander, appeared from another part of the town with 600 loyal men they call soldurii. They share life’s goods with others to whom they vow their friendship. If any violence befalls them, either they endure the same fate together or commit suicide. In the memory of men there has been no man who refused to die himself when someone to whose friendship he was pledged was killed. Adiatunnus tried to break out with them, when with a shout from that part of our defenses, our men ran to arms. The fight was strenuous. Driven back into the town, Adiatunnus still won from Crassus the same terms of surrender.
23. Accepting the weapons and hostages, Crassus left for the land of the Vocates and Tarusates.7 Hearing we had taken a town fortified by nature and man a few days after we arrived, the barbarians were alarmed, sending ambassadors every which way, conspiring, exchanging hostages, gathering forces. Ambassadors were sent to the Spanish cities nearest to Aquitaine, summoning troops and leaders, on whose arrival they set out to wage war with a huge force and great confidence. As leaders, men were chosen who had been with Sertorius all his years and were thought to have the highest military expertise. Following Roman practice, they set out to choose their sites, fortify camps, and cut our men off from supplies. When Crassus found this out and knew his own limited forces could not easily be divided, while the enemy could roam and block roads and leave guards enough in camp, he realized that grain and provisions could not easily be supplied, while the number of enemy grew daily. He thought he should not wait to give battle. Reporting this to his council and finding that all agreed, he decided to fight the next day.
24. At dawn all our forces came out drawn up double file, auxiliaries in the middle, all waiting on the enemy’s plan. They thought it safe to fight, since their force was huge, their reputation in war venerable, and our forces few, but still they thought it safer to block the passes and shut off supplies to gain victory without injuries. If the Romans began to retreat because supplies were short, they planned to attack them marching with their baggage. Their leaders approved this plan and stayed in camp when the Roman forces came out. Crassus saw this. The enemy’s hesitation and reputation for cowardice made our men more eager to fight and everyone was heard saying that we must not wait longer but go for their camp, so he harangued his men and made for the enemy camp amid general enthusiasm.8
25. There some filled the ditches, others, hurling many spears, drove defenders from the wall and ramparts, and the auxiliaries—Crassus didn’t much trust them—supplied stones and spears for fighting and brought turf for a ramp, making it look as if they were fighting. At the same time the enemy fought firmly and not fearfully and weapons thrown down from above did not miss their marks. Our cavalry reported to Crassus after circling the enemy camp that it was not so carefully fortified at the gate on the back: approach there was easy.
26. Crassus encouraged the cavalry prefects to arouse their men with great prizes and promises, showing them what he wanted. As ordered, they led out the cohorts that had been left to guard the camp, still unwearied, and took them a long way around so they couldn’t be seen from the enemy camp with all eyes and minds fixed on battle. Quickly reaching the rear defenses we mentioned, they pulled them down and took their stand in the enemy camp before they could be clearly seen, before the enemy could know what was going on. Hearing shouts from there, our men were reinvigorated and began to fight more fiercely, as often happens with hope of victory. The enemy, on all sides surrounded, despairing of everything, burst out from the ramparts and tried to find safety in flight. Our cavalry chased them down on open field, with scarcely a quarter left of the 50,000 that had gathered from Aquitaine and Spain, then came back to camp late at night.
27. On news of this battle, most of Aquitaine submitted to Crassus and sent hostages voluntarily. This included the Tarbelli, Bigerriones, Ptianii, Vocates, Tarusates, Elusates, Gates, Ausci, Garumni, Sibusates, and Cocosates. A few remote nations failed to do so, counting on the season, for winter was near.
28. Summer was almost done, Gaul was all at peace—except for the Morini and Menapii, who were up in arms and never sent Caesar ambassadors for peace. Caesar thought this war could be quickly finished and took his army there. They set out to wage war very differently from other Gauls. Realizing that great nations had fought battles and been beaten and overcome, while they had spreading woods and swamps around them,9 that’s where they took themselves and all their possessions. Caesar reached the forest edge, starting to fortify camp and not yet seeing the enemy. While our men were scattered at work suddenly they flew out of the woods on all sides and attacked us. Our men snatched up arms and drove them back into the woods. Killing many of them and following them farther into tangled places, we lost a few of our own.
29. The next days, Caesar had the woods cut down. To prevent flank attacks when his soldiers were unarmed and unwary, he placed the lumber they cut before the enemy and piled it up as a rampart on both sides. With huge space cleared incredibly quickly in a few days, with our men holding their cattle and the remnants of their baggage, they went deeper into the forest. Such storms arose that we were forced to stop work: under constant rain our soldiers could stay no longer in tents. And so, wasting their fields and burning their villages and farmhouses, Caesar led his army away and set them in winter camp among the Aulerci and Lexovii and other nations that had most recently made war on him.10
1 Likely modern Martigny, at the head of the valley stretching SSE from the east end of Lake Geneva toward the Great Saint Bernard Pass.
2 Caesar was likely still in northern Italy, perhaps Ravenna, perhaps Lucca. “As soon as the season allowed” veils the political reason for delay.
3 Twelve cohorts rather than the usual ten of a single legion.
4 We seem to be now in the bay of Quiberon. The Roman fleet has been struggling north with the unfamiliar ocean to get there from the mouth of the Loire.
5 In Normandy, perhaps 150 miles ENE from the scene of Caesar’s sea battle.
6 The earlier defeat occurred in 78/77, on the periphery of the campaign to overthrow the rogue rule of Sertorius in Spain (who lasted from 82 to 70).
7 This extends Crassus’ intervention in Aquitaine farther to the west, away from the peoples he knew he could count on when he came.
8 This is the only case of Caesar’s forces attacking a protected Gallic encampment.
9 Now we are at the other end of Gaul, in the region of Dunkirk and Bruges, indeed swampy until the seventeenth century.
10 He moves now west into Normandy, wintering there to be readier for the next year’s expedition to Britain.