Caesar’s Gallic War and the aftermath

In 59 BC Gaius Julius Caesar became governor of Illyricutn and Gallia Cisalpina as well as Gallia Narbonensis for a term of five years. With this post came the command of three legions. All the events of the subsequent years of war in Gaul are recorded only in Caesar’s accounts. The obvious bias of information on the conquered provided by the conqueror is not unproblematic and the numbers of people involved in the conflicts may not be reliable, but the sequence of events may be generally accurate. Since the borders of Gallia Narbonensis touched the limits of territory controlled by other Gallic tribes, the Aedui, Sequani and Helvetii, serious trouble breiving between these three was seen as a danger to the Roman state. It was also a welcome opportunity for Caesar to pursue his own personal ambitions under the guise of acting as the saviour of‘his’ part of the Empire. In addition, the Germanic search for land in Gaul contributed to the fear of upheaval, a fear that proved to be warranted. In their desire to gain control over the Aedui, the Sequani had engaged German tribes under the Suebian king Ariovistus as mercenaries. In 62 BC, the Aedui were defeated, but Ariovistus turned against the Sequani and demanded one third of their territory in return. In response to this, the Sequani called upon the Romans to assist them in driving out the Germans. The Suebi had already made incursions into Gaul before this, forcing the Helvetii into a compact territory between the Alps and the Rhine. In 58 the Helvetii decided to leave the confines of their lands and migrate further west into Gaul. They burnt all their settlements and took enough provisions with them for the march they were to embark upon through Gallia Narbonensis. The Helvetii persuaded the Sequani to let them pass through their lands, and by the time Caesar appeared on the scene with the necessary number of troops, the Helvetii were already in the territory of the Aedui, pillaging and raiding where they went. In a battle near Bibracte, the Helvetii were routed and forced by the Romans to return to their homes with their allies, the Rauraci, Latobrigi and Tulingi. They were ordered to reoccupy their lands and rebuild their settlements, so as not to leave a dangerous vacuum into which German tribes could slip and gain a further foothold in Gaul. The death toll for the Helvetit and their allies was high. Of the original 368,000 men, women and children who had begun the march, only 110,000 returned. The events following this encounter are summarily described below to illustrate the extent of upheaval in Gaul. They are the events as recorded by Caesar.

Caesar next turned his attention to Ariovistus’ army ofSeubi, Harudes, Marcomanni, Triboci, Vangjones, Nemetes and Sedusii. Engaging the Suebi and their allies near Vesontio/Be&inqon, the capital of the Sequani, the Romans defeated them soundly, driving the remaining survivors of the battle across the Rhine.

In 57 the Belgic tribes and west-bank Germans, fearing that they would be next on Caesar’s list, joined forces for battle. This alliance consisted of the Bcllovaci, Suessiones, Nervii, Atrebates, Ambiani, Morini, Menapii, Caleti, Veliocasses, Viromandui, Aduatuci, Condrusi, Eburones, Caerosi and Paemani, some 246,000 men. One by one, the tribes were forced to surrender to the six Roman legions and Treveran auxiliary troops, but the Nervii, Atrebates and Viromandui held out the longest. In a fierce battle, the Nervii were defeated, bringing ‘the name and nation of the Nervii almost to utter destruction’ {Caesar, De Bello Callico 2,28). The Aduatuci were beaten into submission, with 4000 killed and 53,000 sold into slavery.

After defeating the coastal Veneti in 56, Caesar marched against the Morini and Menapii, but it was not until the following year that they surrendered. In the winter of 55, it was again the Suebi who caused disruption east of the Rhine, driving out the Usipetes and Tencteri who fled to Menapian, Eburonean and Condrusian territories. Somewhere near the Maas a battle took place in which the Romans drove the 430,000 Usipetes and Tencteri back to the Rhine, large numbers of the enemy being killed or drowning in the river. The rest withdrew to the east bank of the Rhine to join the Sugambri. When told to surrender, the Sugambri replied that the Rhine marked the limit of the Roman Empire and that Caesar had no claim to imperial power across the Rhine. Although Caesar crossed the Rhine to hunt down the Sugambri, they retreated to their forests and robbed him of a victory.

After two expeditions to Britain in 55 and 54, Caesar returned to northern Gaul to find that the Eburones had declared war on Rome. Led in battle by Ambiorix and Catuvolcus, the Eburones destroyed one-and-a-half Roman legions. With the Roman forces reduced, the anti-Roman faction of the Treveri gathered allies around them, but the east-bank Germans did not join in. The Romans succeeded in putting down this revolt, leaving Gaul ‘somewhat more tranquil’ by the end of 54 (De Bello Callico 5.58).

The next year the Treveri, Nervii, Aduatuci, Menapii and all east-bank Germans took up arms again. After subduing the Menapii and routing the Treveri, Caesar crossed the Rhine to seek out potential troublemakers, notably the Suebi, and give assistance to Rome’s allies, the Ubii, against them. The whole operation was ineffective, since the Suebi retreated to the forests. His next encounter against the Eburones in 53, however, was very much more successful. Caesar’s army scattered the population throughout the countryside and enticed the Sugambri to plunder and raid Eburonean lands, thus further weakening them. With his large force, Caesar set fire to every village and farmstead, drove

Off cattle and destroyed corn crops. It was not until 51, however, that the Eburones were finally annihilated, after Caesar had successfully fought against a coalition of Gaulish tribes led by the Arvernian Vercingetorix at Alcsia in 52. The Roman army killed or captured a large number of the Eburonean population, set fire to and pillaged their land again. After various mopping-up operations against the Treveri and other Gaulish tribes, Caesar returned to Italy in 50, confident that he had left behind a Gaul which would not readily take up war again. '

After eight years of war, Gaul was exhausted. Monetary resources were spent, many rebellious tribes had been killed or sold into slavery, some of the oppida and casleila abandoned and rural settlements burnt and plundered. Caesar’s departure and the subsequent civil war in Italy, however, hindered Rome for years from annexing and reorganising Gaul,

How are the events of the historical sources reflected in the archaeological evidence? The names of some of the hardest hit tribes in Gaul, particularly the Eburones and Aduatud, were never heard again. Eburonean settlements, such as those at Niederzier, Eschweiler-Laurenzberg and Euskirchen-Kreuzweingarten, were permanently abandoned according to the excavated evidence. A very few farmsteads in former Eburonean territory west of the Cologne basin are known at which timber-aisled houses and granaries were built in the Germanic tradition, but these do not predate the end of the first century BC, suggesting that whatever percentage of the population had survived the Gallic war, they only very slowly recovered from the devastation. In contrast, continuity of occupation in post-Caesarian times is everywhere in evidence in Treveran territory. Some of the large oppida, the Titclbcrg for example, reached their greatest density of occupation and wealth after the war. Rural farmsteads like that at Mayen north of the Moselle continued to be inhabited throughout the second half of the first century BC, later being converted to a Roman-style villa. Within the territory of the Mediomatrid, farmsteads and accompanying burials from the period between 50 and 10 BC at Spaeyer, as well as a fortified village at Westheim (see 3), built after the Gallic war, indicate that life went on in the middle Rhine valley. The Rauraci rebuilt their oppidum in Basel after 58 BC, but the archaeological evidence indicates that the location of it shifted from Basel-Gasfabrik to the Munsterhiige]. The Hclvetii did the same, relocating their pre-Caesarian oppidum at Mont Vully to the Bois de Chatel, and on the north shore of Lake Geneva at Lausanne a trading settlement developed in the last decades of the first century BC.

Only in the part of Gaul nearest to the province of Gallia Narbonensis were new Roman colonics established. Augst was founded in 44 BC in the territory of the Rauraci on the upper Rhine, and Nyon in Helvetian lands on Lake Geneva in 45. Both were located at geographically strategic ptoints on routes giving access to the rest of Gaul. It was left to Augustus to reorganise Gaul and create a functioning administration.

Despite the destruction of the war, however, not all was quiet in Gaul after Caesar’s departure. Recurring incursions of Suebi between the Rhine and the Moselle led M. Vipsanius Agrippa, the governor of Gaul from 39-37 BC, to cross the Rhine as a demonstration ofRoman power. Elbe-Germanic material not indigenous to the Neuwied basin has been found in graves between that area and Krefeld-Gellep to the north, suggesting the presence of east Germanic groups, presumably the Suebi, at this time. In 29, further disruption, in which the Treveri were involved, was caused by the Suebi in eastern Gaul. During Agrippa’s second period of office in 19, German attacks had to be repelled yet again, and in 17/16 Marcus Lollius and the 5th Legion were soundly defeated by groups of east-bank Sugambri, Usipetes and Tencteri who had crossed the Rhine. At the same time, Alpine tribes took up arms, which action in Roman sources was characteristically referred to as a ‘revolt’ (Cassius Dio, Historia Romana 54.20). Thus Augustus left the capital in 16 to go to Gaul, where he stayed until 13. to settle territorial disputes and plan the invasion of Germany.