History of Julius Caesar Vol. 2 of 2

The retrenchments of this tête-du-pont, especially the side parallel to the Aisne, are still visible at Berry-au-Bac. The gardens of several of the inhabitants are made upon the rampart itself, and the fosse appears at the outside of the village in the form of a cistern. The excavations have displayed distinctly the profile of the fosse.

246

The excavations undertaken in 1862, by bringing to light the fosses of the camp, showed that they were 18 feet wide, with a depth of 9 or 10. (See Plates 8 and 9.) If, then, we admit that the platform of earth of the parapet was 10 feet wide, it would have measured 8 feet in height, which, with the palisade of 4 feet, would give the crest of the parapet a command of 22 feet above the bottom of the fosse.

247

The following localities have been suggested for Bibrax: Bièvre, Bruyères, Neufchâtel, Beaurieux, and the mountain called Vieux-Laon. Now that the camp of Cæsar has been discovered on the hill of Mauchamp, there is only room to hesitate between Beaurieux and Vieux-Laon, as they are the only localities among those just mentioned which, as the text requires, are eight miles distant from the Roman camp. But Beaurieux will not suit, for the reason that even if the Aisne had passed, at the time of the Gallic war, at the foot of the heights on which the town is situated, we cannot understand how the re-enforcements sent by Cæsar could have crossed the river and penetrated into the place, which the Belgian army must certainly have invested on all sides. This fact is, on the contrary, easily understood when we apply it to the mountain of Vieux-Laon, which presents towards the south impregnable escarpments. The Belgæ would have surrounded it on all parts except on the south, and it was no doubt by that side that, during the night, Cæsar’s re-enforcements would enter the town.

248

De Bello Gallico, II. 7. – (Plate 9 gives the plan of the camp, which has been found entire, and that of the redoubts with the fosses, as they have been exposed to view by the excavations; but we have found it impossible to explain the outline of the redoubts.)

249

De Bello Gallico, II. 12. – Sabinus evidently commanded on both sides the river.

250

De Bello Gallico II. 12. – Sabinus evidently commanded on both sides the river.

251

See the biographies of Cæsar’s lieutenants, Appendix D.

252

De Bello Gallico, II. 11.

253

The vineæ were small huts constructed of light timber work covered with hurdles and hides of animals. (Vegetius, Lib. IV. c. 16.) See the figures on Trajan column.

In a regular siege the vineæ were constructed out of reach of the missiles, and they were then pushed in file one behind the other up to the wall of the place attacked, a process which was termed agere vineas; they thus formed long covered galleries which, sometimes placed at right angles to the wall and sometimes parallel, performed the same part as the branches and parallels in modern sieges.

254

The terrace (agger) was an embankment, made of any materials, for the purpose of establishing either platforms to command the ramparts of a besieged town, or viaducts to conduct the towers and machines against the walls, when the approaches to the place presented slopes which were too difficult to climb. These terraces were used also sometimes to fill up the fosse. The agger was most commonly made of trunks of trees, crossed and heaped up like the timber in a funeral pile. – (Thucydides, Siege of Platæa. – Lucan, Pharsalia. – Vitruvius, book XI., Trajan Column.)

255

Antiquaries hesitate between Beauvais, Montdidier, or Breteuil. We adopt Breteuil as the most probable, according to the dissertation on Bratuspantium, by M. l’Abbé Devic, cure of Mouchy-le-Châtel. In fact, the distance from Breteuil to Amiens is just twenty-five miles, as indicated in the “Commentaries.” We must add, however, that M. l’Abbé Devic does not place Bratuspantium at Breteuil itself, but close to that town, in the space now comprised between the communes of Vaudeuil, Caply, Beauvoir, and their dependencies. – Paris, 1843, and Arras, 1865.

256

De Bello Gallico, II. 15.

257

De Bello Gallico, II. 14, 15, 16. Mons is, in fact, seated on a hill completely surrounded by low meadows, traversed by the sinuous courses of the Haine and the Trouille.

258

According to scholars, the frontier between the Nervii and the Ambiani lay towards Fins and Bapaume. Supposing the three days’ march of the Roman army to be reckoned from this point, it would have arrived, in three days, of twenty-five kilomètres each, at Bavay.

259

If Cæsar had arrived on the right bank of the Sambre, as several authors have pretended, he would already have found that river at Landrecies, and would have had no need to learn, on the third day of this march, that he was only fifteen kilomètres from it.

260

It is worthy of remark, that still at the present day the fields in the neighbourhood of the Sambre are surrounded with hedges very similar to those here described. Strabo (II., p. 161) also mentions these hedges.

261

De Bello Gallico, II. 17.

262

“The signal for battle is a purple mantle, which is displayed before the general’s tent.” (Plutarch, Fabius Maximus, 24.)

263

Signum dare, “to give the word of order.” In fact, we read in Suetonius: “Primo etiam imperii die signum excubanti tribuno dedit: Optimam matrem.” (Nero, 9; Caligula, 56. – Tacitus, Histor., III. 22.)

264

The soldiers wore either the skins of wild beasts, or plumes or other ornaments, to mark their grades. “Excussit cristas galeis.” (Lucan, Pharsalia, line 158.)

265

Except the Treviran cavalry, who had withdrawn.

266

According to Titus Livius (Epitome, CIV.), 1,000 armed men succeeded in escaping.

267

De Bello Gallico, II. 28.

268

According to the researches which have been carried on by the Commandant Locquessye in the country supposed to have been formerly occupied by the Aduatuci, two localities only, Mount Falhize and the part of the mountain of Namur on which the citadel is built, appear to agree with the site of the oppidum of the Aduatuci. But Mount Falhize is not surrounded with rocks on all sides, as the Latin text requires. The countervallation would have had a development of more than 15,000 feet, and it would have twice crossed the Meuse, which is difficult to admit. We therefore adopt, as the site of the oppidum of the Aduatuci, the citadel of Namur.

Another locality, Sautour, near Philippeville, would answer completely to Cæsar’s description, but the compass of Sautour, which includes only three hectares, is too small to have contained 60,000 individuals. The site of the citadel of Namur is already in our eyes very small.

269

We translate quindecim millium by 15,000 feet; the word pedum, employed in the preceding sentence, being understood in the text. When Cæsar intends to speak of paces, he almost always uses the word passus.

270

De Bello Gallico, II. 33.

271

De Bello Gallico, II. 35. – Plutarch, Cæsar, 20. – Cicero, Epist. Famil., I. 9, 17, 18.

272

This passage has generally been wrongly interpreted. The text has, Quæ civitates propinquæ his locis erant ubi bellum gesserat. (De Bello Gallico, II. 35.) We must add the name of Crassus, overlooked by the copyists; for if Anjou and Touraine are near Brittany and Normandy, where Crassus had been fighting, they are very far from the Sambre and the Meuse, where Cæsar had carried the war.

[273] De Bello Gallico, III. 6

273

Some manuscripts read Esuvios, but we adopt Unellos, because the geographical position of the country of the Unelli agrees better with the relation of the campaign.

274

They leagued with the Osismii (the people of the department of Finistère), the Lexovii (department of Calvados), the Namnetes (Loire-Inférieure), the Ambiliates (on the left bank of the Loire, to the south of Angers), the Morini (the Boulonnais and bishopric of Saint-Omer), the Diablintes (Western Maine), and the Menapii (between the Rhine and the mouths of the Scheldt). (De Bello Gallico, III. 9.)

275

Orosius (VI. 8) confirms this fact as stated in the Commentaries.

276

“The Veneti fought at sea against Cæsar; they had made their dispositions to prevent his passage, into the isle of Britain, because they were in possession of the commerce of that country.” (Strabo, IV. iv., p. 162, edit. Didot.)

277

We must not confound him with M. Junius Brutus, the assassin of Cæsar. Decimus Junius Brutus was the adopted son of A. Postumius Albinus. (See Drumann, IV. 9, and Appendix D.)

278

Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 40.

279

We suppose, in this enumeration, that the legion of Galba, cantoned the preceding winter among the Allobroges, had rejoined the army.

280

I borrow this interpretation of the Roman works from the very instructive book of General de Gœler.

281

De Bello Gallico, III. 13. – Strabo, IV., p. 162.

282

The fleet of the Veneti, superior to that of the Romans in number, in the magnitude of their vessels, and in their rigging and sails, must have issued from the river Auray by the Morbihan entrance to the gulf, and met Brutus to fight him, instead of waiting for him at the head of the bay, where retreat would be impossible. This follows from Cæsar’s account: ex portu profectæ, nostris adversæ constiterunt. According to the memoir by M. le Comte de Grandpré, a post-captain, inserted in the Recueil de la Société des Antiquaires de France, tom. II., 1820, the wind must have been east or north-east, for it was towards the end of the summer. It appears that these winds usually prevail at that period, and that, when they have blown during the morning, there is a dead calm towards the middle of the day: it is just what happened in this combat; the calm came, probably, towards midday. It was necessary, indeed, that the wind should be between the north and the east, to allow, on one hand the Roman fleet to leave the Loire and sail towards the Point Saint-Jacques, and, on the other, to permit the fleet of the Veneti to quit the river Auray. These latter, in this position, could, in case of defeat, take refuge in the Bay of Quiberon, or fly to the open sea, where the Romans would not have dared to follow them.

With winds blowing from below, it matters not from what point, the Romans could not have gone in search of their enemies, or the latter come to meet them. Supposing that, in one tide, the Roman fleet had arrived at the mouth of the Loire towards five o’clock in the morning; it might have been towards ten o’clock, the moment when the battle commenced, between Haedik and Sarzeau. Supposing similarly that, as early as five o’clock in the morning, the movement of the Roman fleet had been announced to the Veneti, they could, in five hours, have issued from the river Auray, defiled by the entrance of the Morbihan, rallied and advanced in order of battle to meet the Romans in the part of the sea above described.

As to the place where Cæsar encamped, it is very probable, as we have said, that it was on the heights of Saint-Gildas; for from thence he could see the dispositions of the enemy, and perceive far off the approach of his fleet. In case of check, the Roman galleys found, under his protection, a place of refuge in the Vilaine. Thus, he had his rear secured; rested upon the towns of the coast which he had taken; could recall to him, if necessary, Titurius Sabinus; and lastly, could cross the Vilaine, to place that river between him and his enemies. Placed, on the contrary, on the other side of the Bay of Quiberon, he would have been too much enclosed in an enemy’s country, and would have had none of the advantages offered by the position of Saint-Gildas.

283

Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 41.

284

We see, in fact, in Vegetius, that the word falces was applied to the head of a battering ram, armed with a point, and with a hook to detach the stones from the walls. “Quæ (trabes) aut adunco præfigitur ferro, et falx vocatur ab eo quod incurva est, ut de muro extrahat lapides.” (Vegetius, IV. 14.)

285

De Bello Gallico, III. 17.

286

This position is at the distance of seven kilomètres to the east of Avranches. The vestiges still visible of Chastellier are probably those of a camp made at a later period than this Gallic war, but we think that Sabinus had established his camp on the same site.

287

De Bello Gallico, III. 19.

288

Cæsar, after having said, in the first book of his “Commentaries”, that Aquitaine was one of the three parts of Gaul, states here that it formed the third part by its extent and population, which is not correct.

289

Nicholas of Damascus (in Athenæus, Deipn., VI. 249) writes in this manner the name of King Adiatomus, and adds that the soldurii were clothed in royal vestments.

290

This combat is remarkable as being the only one in the whole war in Gaul in which the Romans attack a fortified Gaulish camp.

291

Of this number were the Tarbelli, The Bigerriones, The Ptiani, the Vasates, the Tarusates, the Elusates, the Gaites, the Ausci, the Garumni, the Sibusates, and the Cocosates.

292

De Bello Gallico, III. 27.

293

Pliny, Hist. Nat., III. x. 6.

294

Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 44.

295

Cæsar never entirely subjugated the north-west of Gaul. (See Sallust, cited by Ammianus Marcellinus, XV., 15.) Still, under the reign of Augustus, in 724 and 726, there were triumphs over the Morini.

296

De Bello Gallico, III. 29.

297

“In praetura, in consulatu præfectum fabrum detulit.” (Cicero, Orat. pro Balbo, 28.)

298

Mamurra, a Roman knight, born at Formiæ. (Pliny, Hist. Nat., XXXVI. 7.)

299

From Xanten to Nimeguen, for a length of fifty kilomètres, extends a line of heights which form a barrier along the left bank of the Rhine. All appearances would lead us to believe that the river flowed, in Cæsar’s time, close at the foot of these heights; but now it has removed from them, and at Emmerich, for instance, is at a distance of eight kilomètres. This chain, the eastern slope of which is scarped, presents only two passes; one by a large opening at Xanten itself, to the north of the mountain called the Furstenberg; the other by a gorge of easy access, opening at Qualburg, near Cleves. These two passes were so well defined as the entries to Gaul in these regions, that, after the conquest, the Romans closed them by fortifying the Furstenberg (Castra vetera), and founding, on the two islands formed by the Rhine opposite these entries, Colonia Trajana, now Xanten, and Quadriburgium, now Qualburg. The existence of these isles facilitated at that time the passage of the Rhine, and, in all probability, it was opposite these two localities just named that the Usipetes and Tencteri crossed the river to penetrate into Gaul.

300

The account of this campaign is very obscure in the “Commentaries.” Florus and Dio Cassius add to the obscurities: the first, by placing the scene of the defeat of the Usipetes and Tencteri towards the confluence of the Moselle and the Rhine; the second, by writing that Cæsar came up with the Germans in the country of the Treviri. Several authors have given to the account of these two historians more credit than to that of Cæsar himself, and they give of this campaign an explanation quite different from ours. General de Gœler, among others, supposes that the whole emigration of the Germans had advanced as far as the country of the Condrusi, where Cæsar came up with them, and that he had driven them from west to east, into the angle formed by the Moselle and the Rhine. From researches which were kindly undertaken by M. de Cohausen, major in the Prussian army, and which have given the same result as those of MM. Stoffel and De Locqueyssie, we consider this explanation of the campaign as inadmissible. It would be enough, to justify this assertion, to consider that the country situated between the Meuse and the Rhine, to the south of Aix-la-Chapelle, is too much broken and too barren to have allowed the German emigration, composed of 430,000 individuals, men, women, and children, with wagons, to move and subsist in it. Moreover, it contains no trace of ancient roads; and if Cæsar had taken this direction, he must necessarily have crossed the forest of the Ardennes, a circumstance of which he would not have failed to inform us. Besides, is it not more probable that, on the news of the approach of Cæsar, instead of directing their march towards the Ubii, who were not favourable to them, the Germans, at first spread over a vast territory, would have concentrated themselves towards the most distant part of the fertile country on which they had seized – that of the Menapii?

301

The Ambivariti were established on the left bank of the Meuse, to the west of Ruremonde, and to the south of the marshes of Peel.

302

De Bello Gallico, IV. 13.

303

“Acie triplici instituta.” Some authors have translated these words by “the army was formed in three columns;” but Cæsar, operating in a country which was totally uncovered and flat, and aiming at surprising a great mass of enemies, must have marched in order of battle, which did not prevent each cohort from being in column.

304

Attacked unexpectedly in the afternoon, while they were sleeping. (Dio Cassius, XXXIX. 48.)

305

The study of the deserted beds of the Rhine leads us to believe that the confluence of the Waal and the Meuse, which is at present near Gorkum, was then much more to the east, towards Fort Saint-André. In that case, Cæsar made no mistake in reckoning eighty miles from the junction of the Waal and the Meuse to the mouth of the latter river.

306

De Bello Gallico, IV. 14, 15.

307

The following reasons have led us to adopt Bonn as the point where Cæsar crossed the Rhine: —

We learn from the “Commentaries” that in 699 he debouched in the country of the Ubii, and that two years later it was a little above (paulum supra) the first bridge that he established another, which joined the territory of the Treviri with that of the Ubii. Now everything leads to the belief that, in the first passage as in the second, the bridge was thrown across between the frontiers of the same peoples; for we cannot admit, with some authors, that the words paulum supra apply to a distance of several leagues. As to those who suppose that the passage was effected at Andernach, because, changing with Florus the Meuse (Mosa) into Moselle, they placed the scene of the defeat of the Germans at the confluence of the Moselle and the Rhine, we have given the reasons for rejecting this opinion. We have endeavoured to prove, in fact, that the battle against the Usipetes and the Tencteri had for its theatre the confluence of the Meuse and the Rhine; and since, in crossing this latter river, Cæsar passed from the country of the Treviri into that of the Ubii, we must perceive that after his victory he must necessarily have proceeded up the valley of the Rhine to go from the territory of the Menapii to the Treviri, as far up as the territory of the Ubii, established on the right bank.

This being admitted, it remains to fix, within the limits assigned to these two last peoples, the most probable point of passage. Hitherto, Cologne has been adopted; but, to answer to the data of the “Commentaries,” Cologne appears to us to be much too far to the north. In fact, in the campaign of 701, Cæsar, having started from the banks of the Rhine, traversed the forest of the Ardennes from east to west, passed near the Segni and the Condrusi, since they implored him to spare their territory, and directed his march upon Tongres. If he had started from Cologne, he would not have crossed the countries in question. Moreover, in this same year, 2,000 Sicambrian cavalry crossed the Rhine thirty miles below the bridge of the Roman army. Now, if this bridge had been constructed at Cologne, the point of passage of the Sicambri, thirty miles below, would have been at a very great distance from Tongres, where, nevertheless, they seem to have arrived very quickly.

On the contrary, everything is explained if we adopt Bonn as the point of passage. To go from Bonn to Tongres, Cæsar proceeded, as the text has it, across the forest of the Ardennes; he passed through the country of the Segni and Condrusi, or very near them; and the Sicambri, crossing the Rhine thirty miles below Bonn, took the shortest line from the Rhine to Tongres. Moreover, we cannot place Cæsar’s point of passage either lower or higher than Bonn. Lower, that is, towards the north, the different incidents related in the “Commentaries” are without possible application to the theatre of the events; higher, towards the south, the Rhine flows upon a rocky bed, where the piles could not have been driven in, and presents, between the mountains which border it, no favourable point of passage. We may add that Cæsar would have been much too far removed from the country of the Sicambri, the chastisement of whom was the avowed motive of his expedition.

Another fact deserves to be taken into consideration: that, less than fifty years after Cæsar’s campaigns, Drusus, in order to proceed against the Sicambri – that is, against the same people whom Cæsar intended to combat – crossed the Rhine at Bonn. (Florus, IV. 12.)

308

The following passage has given room for different interpretations: —

“Hæc utraque insuper bipedalibus trabibus immissis, quantum eorum tignorum junctura distabat, binis utrimque fibulis ab extrema parte distinebantur; quibus disclusis atque in contrariam partem revinctis, tanta erat operis firmitudo atque ea rerum natura, ut, quo major vis aquæ se incitavisset, hoc arctius illigata tenerentur.” (De Bello Gallico, IV. 17.)

It has not been hitherto observed that the words hæc utraque relate to the two couples of one row of piles, and not to the two piles of the same couple. Moreover, the words quibus disclusis, &c., relate to these same two couples, and not, as has been supposed, to fibulis.