Characters

"I came, I saw, I conquered."

Gaius Julius Caesar arrived in Gaul in 58 BC as a politician in desperate need of military glory and money. He was 41, deeply in debt to Crassus, and the governorship of what the Romans called Gallia Transalpina — the part of Gaul south of the Alps that Rome already controlled — was a consolation prize after he had originally wanted Spain. What he found in Gaul was an opportunity of historic dimensions. Caesar possessed military talents of the very highest order: the ability to read terrain instantly, to improvise under pressure, to drive men beyond what they believed they could endure, and above all the tactical imagination to see what an enemy would never expect. At the Sambre he personally steadied a breaking line. At Alesia he built 35 kilometers of fortifications in weeks while simultaneously fighting off a relief army. He crossed the Rhine twice on bridges his engineers built in ten days, then demolished them — a psychological statement as much as an engineering one. He invaded Britain not once but twice, becoming the first Roman to cross Ocean and return. But the Gallic Wars were also an act of extraordinary brutality. Caesar killed or enslaved an estimated one million people in eight years. He executed prisoners wholesale, mutilated the survivors of Uxellodunum, and massacred the population of Avaricum. His *Commentarii de Bello Gallico* — written for a Roman audience and published year by year — is one of history's great works of military literature and political propaganda simultaneously, presenting systematic genocide in the calm, third-person prose of inevitable civilization. Gaul made him. The wealth funded his political machine in Rome. The veterans of Alesia were the men who followed him across the Rubicon. The administration of a conquered province taught him what imperial power actually felt like. He returned to Rome in 49 BC not as a governor completing his term but as a revolutionary.

"I did not undertake the war for private ends, but in the cause of national liberty."

Vercingetorix was perhaps the only Gallic leader who truly understood what Caesar was doing and possessed both the political skill and military talent to stop him — almost. The son of an Arvernian nobleman who had been executed for aspiring to kingship, he was perhaps 20 years old when the revolt of 52 BC began, and he achieved in weeks what no Gallic leader had managed in six years: the unification of nearly all Gallic tribes into a single military command under his personal leadership. His strategic vision was the opposite of the Gallic tradition of individual tribal pride and pitched battle. He adopted scorched earth — ordering towns burned before Caesar could provision from them, positioning his cavalry to harass Roman supply lines, and refusing the set-piece battles where Roman discipline was decisive. At Gergovia he turned Caesar's own tactics against him and inflicted the only significant Roman defeat of the entire war. Had the Bituriges obeyed his order to burn Avaricum, Caesar might have been starved back to the Roman province. Alesia was the trap that closed on him. Forced into the oppidum by the cavalry defeat in the plains, he called the whole of Gaul to his relief — a coalition army possibly 250,000 strong — and coordinated a simultaneous assault from inside and outside. For three days the plan nearly worked. On the final assault, the outer Roman line broke under the pressure of the attack led by his cousin Vercassivellaunus. Caesar personally led the reserve that plugged the breach. Vercingetorix dressed in his finest armor, rode down from Alesia, and threw his weapons at Caesar's feet. Caesar kept him as a prize for six years, then displayed him in chains in his Gallic triumph in Rome in 46 BC, and had him strangled in the Tullianum prison. He was perhaps 26 years old when he surrendered; he died at approximately 26 years in Roman captivity.

"A soldier's duty is not to die for his country but to make the enemy die for his."

Titus Labienus was Caesar's most trusted and most talented legate throughout the Gallic Wars, the man Caesar consistently assigned to independent command when the army divided. He had served with Caesar since before Gaul — the two had been allies in Rome's treacherous political world — and Caesar's confidence in him was absolute, an unusual thing in a commander who normally kept tight personal control of every operation. Labienus's independent campaigns were consistently brilliant. He pacified large sections of northern Gaul, handled the complex political relationship with the Belgic tribes, and during the crisis of 52 BC — when Caesar was losing at Gergovia — Labienus held the north with four legions against the general revolt, defeated the Parisii at Lutetia, and marched south to rejoin Caesar in time for Alesia. His crossing of the Seine under hostile fire and his night retreat that wrong-footed Camulogenus showed a tactical intelligence equal to Caesar's own. The tragedy of Labienus's career came in 49 BC, when Caesar crossed the Rubicon. Labienus alone among Caesar's senior officers deserted to Pompey — perhaps from genuine Republican conviction, perhaps from a calculation that Pompey's side would win, perhaps from a personal break with Caesar that the *Commentarii* do not record. He commanded Pompeian forces at Pharsalus, escaped to Africa, fought at Thapsus, escaped again to Spain, and died in 45 BC at the Battle of Munda — the last of Pompey's generals, killed by the men he had trained.

"Caesar's will shall be read in the Forum. Let Romans hear what Caesar left them."

Marcus Antonius — Mark Antony — came to Gaul as a young tribune in 54 BC and served through 50 BC, learning generalship under the greatest military commander of the age. He was 29 when he first saw the Gallic campaigns; by the time he returned to Rome he had his own battle experience, his own relationship with Caesar's legions, and Caesar's personal trust in a way that would define the rest of his life. In Gaul, Antony served as quaestor in 51 BC and as Caesar's political representative in Rome when Caesar was in the field. He was present for the final year of the pacification campaigns and witnessed Caesar's administration of a conquered province — a set of experiences that shaped his own approach to governing the East after Caesar's assassination. He saw how Caesar combined military ruthlessness with political clemency, how he managed the veterans, how he used distribution of loot to bind soldiers to personal loyalty rather than to the state. After Caesar's assassination in 44 BC, Antony delivered the funeral oration that turned Roman popular opinion against the conspirators — a speech so politically devastating that Brutus and Cassius fled within days. He formed the Second Triumvirate with Octavian and Lepidus, administered the East, fell under the political and personal influence of Cleopatra VII, and was ultimately defeated by Octavian at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. He and Cleopatra committed suicide in 30 BC. Caesar's Gallic campaigns had taught him to be a general; they had not taught him to be a politician on Caesar's level.

"No danger shall make me forget that I am a Roman officer and the legate of Gaius Caesar."

Quintus Tullius Cicero — younger brother of the famous orator Marcus Tullius Cicero — served as one of Caesar's legates in Gaul and is remembered for one of the most dramatic episodes of the entire campaign: the defense of his winter camp against the revolt of Ambiorix in 54 BC. After the annihilation of Sabinus and Cotta's force at Atuatuca, Ambiorix turned immediately on Quintus Cicero's camp nearby. Cicero refused to negotiate despite repeated Gallic envoys offering safe conduct out of the territory, insisting that it was not Roman custom to accept terms from an armed enemy. The camp was besieged by a Gallic force that, crucially, had learned from Gallic nobles who had served in Roman armies how to build earthworks, towers, and testudo formations — Romans besieging a Roman camp using Roman techniques. For approximately five weeks, Cicero's exhausted garrison of one full legion held the camp against continuous assault. Every man was wounded; the huts burned; the earthworks had to be rebuilt each morning. Cicero himself was ill but refused to leave the walls. He sent desperate messages to Caesar by Gallic runners (who had to fight through the besieging army) until one finally got through. Caesar force-marched 25 miles in one day and used a tactical deception to draw off the Gallic army before relieving the camp. Caesar later praised Quintus Cicero's defense in terms he used for almost no one else.

"He warns us as a friend: a great Germanic storm is coming. Better to retreat to safety now than be trapped here."

Ambiorix of the Eburones was the most cunning of Caesar's Gallic opponents before Vercingetorix — a king who had been Caesar's client and personal beneficiary, had received gifts and had his tribe's tribute remitted, and who used this relationship to engineer the most devastating ambush of the entire Gallic Wars. His strategy against Sabinus and Cotta in 54 BC was a masterpiece of psychological manipulation. He warned the Roman commanders of a fabricated Germanic invasion, offered them safe passage through his territory, and positioned his warriors in the precise forest terrain where Roman formations were useless. The destruction of fifteen cohorts — virtually all of them — triggered a general Belgic uprising that came close to destroying Caesar's position in the north entirely. Caesar's vengeance was total and systematic. In 53 BC he ordered the complete destruction of the Eburones — not just their army but their entire population. He invited neighboring tribes to come and plunder them freely. He refused to name the Eburones in his dispatches 'lest anyone should think their name worthy of being immortalized.' The tribe was effectively erased from history. Caesar searched for Ambiorix for two full seasons; he was never found. He escaped across the Rhine and disappeared. His ultimate fate is unknown. His statue in Tongeren (the modern city built on Eburones territory) makes him a Belgian national symbol — the man who outwitted the Romans before being destroyed by them.

"I will never again set eyes on any Roman face."

Commius of the Atrebates had a stranger relationship with Caesar than almost any other Gallic leader: he was Caesar's most trusted Gallic ambassador, sent on diplomatic missions to Britain before both invasions, rewarded with the kingship of his tribe at Caesar's gift, and then — after learning that Caesar had secretly ordered him assassinated — became one of the most implacable enemies of Rome in the final years of the Gallic Wars. The assassination attempt came in 53 BC, during a Roman reconciliation conference. Caesar's legate Volusenus was tasked with killing Commius while shaking his hand — a sword blow to the head that nearly worked. Commius survived with a serious wound, swore he would never again see a Roman face, and joined the revolt of 52 BC. He commanded the Gallic cavalry at Alesia — the vast relief army's most mobile force — and nearly broke Caesar's outer ring in the final assault. After Alesia's fall he continued resistance in the north with the Bellovaci tribe until 51 BC, when he negotiated a remarkable surrender: he would submit to Rome on condition that he never be required to appear before any Roman officer in person. Caesar, apparently respecting the terms of someone he had tried to murder, accepted. Commius subsequently crossed to Britain, where he had made political friends during Caesar's invasions, and founded a dynasty that ruled parts of southern Britain for decades. His sons appear on coins minted in southern Britain into the early Roman period — an extraordinary survival for a man Rome had tried to assassinate.

"All Gaul is divided into two factions. The Aedui lead one, the Arverni lead the other."

Diviciacus of the Aedui was Caesar's most important Gallic ally — the man who educated Caesar about Gallic politics, provided the intelligence network that made the early campaigns possible, and served as the bridge between the Roman Proconsul and the fractious world of tribal alliances he needed to navigate. He was also a druid, which made him the only druid recorded by name in any Roman source. His relationship with Caesar was personal as well as political. When his brother Dumnorix — an Aeduan nobleman who opposed the Roman alliance — was discovered conspiring against Caesar, Diviciacus pleaded in tears for his brother's life, invoking their family connection and his own loyal service. Caesar pardoned Dumnorix on Diviciacus's intercession, an act of clemency that Caesar notes was unusual for him. Diviciacus traveled to Rome in 61 BC, before the Gallic Wars began, to seek help against the Germanic encroachment and the Helvetian pressure on Aeduan territory — which is how Caesar met him. He appears throughout the early books of Caesar's account and then simply disappears from the narrative around 54-53 BC, presumably having died. His absence from the account of 52 BC — when his nation defected to Vercingetorix — suggests he was no longer alive to hold the Aeduan alliance together.

"I am a free man of a free people. I will not go to Britain."

Dumnorix was the most formidable internal Gallic opponent Caesar faced before Vercingetorix — and the most complicated, because his opposition was embedded within Caesar's most important allied tribe. The younger brother of the pro-Roman druid Diviciacus, Dumnorix was everything his brother was not: ambitious, charismatic, deeply anti-Roman, and willing to use the power of the Aeduan tribal network to undermine Caesar's position. He had built a personal empire within Aeduan politics: he controlled the Aeduan cavalry, collected toll revenues from bridges and ferries, distributed the proceeds to client tribes, and had married into the Helvetian nobility before the war began — which gave him connections across tribal lines that made him a potential center of anti-Roman resistance. Caesar discovered in 58 BC that Dumnorix had been warning the Belgic tribes of Caesar's march, had deliberately failed to perform his cavalry duties at the Battle of the Vosges, and had bribed Aeduan officers to abandon the Roman cavalry line. Only his brother's tearful intercession saved him from execution. Caesar kept him under observation rather than destroying him — watching a dangerous man was more useful than making him a martyr. By 54 BC, preparing to take the second expedition to Britain, Caesar decided to bring Dumnorix with him rather than leave him free in Gaul. Dumnorix refused to embark, claiming religious reasons and a personal horror of the sea. When Caesar ordered him taken by force, Dumnorix broke away, shouting that he was a free man of a free people. Caesar's cavalry rode him down and killed him.