Caesar’s intentions in his proconsulate were anything but pacific. As Sallust puts it in the description of Caesar noted above and set a few years before his consulship, ‘‘He longed for a great military command, an army, and a new war where his virtus could shine’’ (Cat. 54.4). That new war, however, Caesar initially expected to wage in Illyria. The lex Vatinia of 59 that gave Caesar his proconsular command seems originally to have encompassed only that province along with Cisalpine Gaul. Gallia Transalpina was added only following the death of its governor (see chapter 3, p. 34). Illyria had been a praetorian province shortly before 59 while early in 58 we find three veteran legions encamped at Aquileia, in the far northeastern corner of Italy. The area to the east was clearly not pacified, for in 53 and 52 raids on Italy originated there (Brennan 2000: 425). So Caesar may at first have seen his best opportunity for conquest in the Balkans; Transalpine Gaul had been quiet in recent years. Only when the migration of the Helvetii drew his attention to the west and offered prospects of a quick victory does he seem to have changed his plans.
This shift was fully in accord with the principles governing generals’ pursuit of the senate’s foreign policy goals. Generals had always enjoyed wide latitude in their diplomatic and military operations (Eckstein 1987). Rarely were the senate’s instructions to one of its commanders very specific. The slowness of communications simply did not permit it to exercise close supervision of a general’s conduct in his province, for the situation in the field could change rapidly and render his original instructions irrelevant. Rather, generals were given a broad mandate to protect the majesty of the Roman people and pursue the best interests of the Republic as they saw fit. A few laws imposed restrictions, such as the prohibition against a governor leaving his province. But Caesar’s abandoning operations in Illyria to campaign in Gaul was completely in keeping with this mandate to protect Rome’s interests, as he is at pains to stress in the early chapters of the Bellum Gallicum.
Still, many scholars have judged, not without reason, that his pursuit and destruction of the migrating Helvetii were nothing less than a brazen effort to provoke a war on the flimsiest of pretexts in order to reap the glory that victory would bring. But the Romans’ world was very different from our own, and Caesar very much a product of it. Most readers of the Bellum Gallicum would have seen nothing morally objectionable about his aggressive pursuit of conquests in Gaul, as Caesar’s plainspo-ken account of them amply demonstrates, and his justifications of them are highly revealing of the mindset, not only of the man who undertook them, but of Roman attitudes towards war and empire. Caesar advances several reasons for his various campaigns. Often, they sprang from the imperative to defend the Republic’s friends. Soon after the defeat of the Helvetii in 58, for example, Caesar learned that the Aedui, a Gallic tribe long friendly to Rome, were being oppressed by a large German war-band led by their king, Ariovistus, and accordingly he marched against them. Also important in his judgment was fear that these Germans, if not checked, would not only overrun all of Gaul but break into Italy itself, as the Cimbri and Teutones had done half a century earlier (BG 1.33). This claim that conquest was in fact a defensive act appears elsewhere. In the following year reports reached Caesar that the Belgae, a group of powerful tribes in northeastern Gaul, were gathering their forces against him, which impelled him to strike first. Moreover, the Belgae if left unconquered would have constituted a source of military manpower that dissident Gallic chiefs might use to resist Roman rule or further their political ambitions within their tribes (BG 2.1). Again and again Caesar claims that his conquests required further military action in order to protect the gains he had already won. So he justified his bridging of the Rhine and foray into Germany in 56 by the need to deter German tribes from intervening in Gallic affairs, either on their own initiative or at the invitation of Gauls seeking to enlist their aid in resisting Roman rule (BG 4.16). Similarly his expedition to Britain in the same year arose from a need to cut off a source of support for Gallic resistance to Roman rule. (BG 4.20) And finally, for Caesar it went without saying that any act of rebellion on the part of Gallic tribes once they had submitted had to be vigorously suppressed (BG 3.10).
All of these explanations are very much in keeping with the logic of their empire as the Romans saw it. The international scene in antiquity, as Eckstein has aptly described it, was an anarchy, a world without laws or authority capable of preventing war between states (Eckstein 2006b). He stresses that the threat of aggression was unrelenting, and the consequences of defeat could be truly terrible: wholesale slaughter, rape, torture, mutilation, or sale into slavery. This harsh reality forced every state to prepare for war, to maximize its military potential, and to attack rather than risk being caught unawares. The Roman Republic had been born into this harsh, Darwinian world and had had little choice but to fight for its survival. It responded by building up its military strength in two ways. Culturally, a strong ethos of service to the Republic developed, particularly among the aristocracy, as noted above, that manifested itself in a thirst for military glory. In addition, soldiers and their officers understood that with victory could come substantial material rewards for themselves as well as the Republic (Harris 1979: 9-53). So there were real incentives to go to war (as well as some significant deterrents). But in this the Romans differed little from other ancient peoples. Where they were exceptional was in their success at both increasing the size of their citizenry and in creating a hegemonic system of alliances. Both gave Rome enormous reserves of military manpower. Yet having allies - those with treaties as well as informal ‘‘friends’’ of Rome - also entailed frequent obligations to deploy that military power, for with hegemony came the need to protect those subject to it. Any lack of resolution on Rome’s part, any failure to respond to provocation or refusal to avenge swiftly and fully injuries done to itself or its friends would have been taken as signs of weakness, not only by those across the frontiers but by Rome’s subjects. And weakness invited either aggression or revolt. The logic of empire therefore made it incumbent on Rome to project an image of strength, although the Romans themselves would not have put it in quite those terms. They would have couched matters in the language of morality and honor - upholding the majesty of Rome, punishing arrogance, humbling the proud, protecting the weak, and defending the Republic’s friends (Rosenstein 2006b).
Caesar’s dealings with the Gallic and German tribes he encountered are in complete accord with these principles. Ariovistus’ oppression of the Aedui, for example, Caesar felt to be ‘‘a terrible disgrace to himself and to the Republic, considering the magnitude of its empire’’ (BG 1.33). It mattered not at all in his appraisal of the situation that he was injecting himself into what was simply a power struggle among two important Gallic tribes and Ariovistus. Indeed, Ariovistus, in Caesar’s telling, offers what often strikes modern readers as a rather strong defense ofhis actions and a reasonable demand that Caesar mind his own business (BG 1.44). But the logic of empire in an anarchic world meant that there could be no compromise for Caesar and Rome: once the Aedui had appealed to Caesar, if he did not defend them, if he did not prove that Rome had the power to make its orders obeyed and show its promises of protection to be credible, he would only have been inviting further aggression by Ariovistus or someone else against the Republic’s friends and ultimately against Rome itself. Nor, of course, had Caesar’s thirst for glory and booty been slaked by his destruction of the Helvetii. His aggressive stance towards Ariovistus sprang as much from his enormous personal ambition as from the dictates of imperial policy. The two marched in step. But it does allow us to see Caesar’s policy in Gaul as something more than simply a smash-and-grab operation on a gigantic scale.1
Rome’s friends were more than simply a pretext for aggression, however. They were vital to Caesar’s ability to wage war. He expected and received substantial assistance from his Gallic allies in his campaigns. They were the source of grain and other supplies for his army. They were a depot for stockpiles of equipment and food as well as a stronghold where Caesar could intern the many hostages he took to secure the loyalty of those who submitted to him and the enormous sums of money and loot his victories yielded. His soldiers, too, cached their heavy baggage and booty in friendly towns (BG 5.47). And Gallic troops, especially aristocratic cavalry, constituted a crucial component of Caesar’s strike force. To secure their cooperation therefore Caesar supported friendly tribes like the Aedui, placing others under their jurisdiction and increasing their honor (BG4.13). Equally important, Caesar built up particular aristocrats within these tribes to ensure their loyalty and thus increase his ability to conquer and hold Gaul. Gallic society was sharply divided between commoners and the elite, of whom the former counted for little and were attached as dependents to the latter. Securing the allegiance of a tribe, therefore, in practice meant winning the allegiance of the men in it who counted, and this Caesar did assiduously, rewarding them handsomely with wealth and honors and seeing to it that their political rivals were suppressed or in some cases destroyed (e. g. BG 7.32). Creating an empire in Gaul involved Caesar not simply in managing the diplomatic relations among the tribes but in creating advantageous political conditions within them.
World History
