Second Coalition of Pompeius, Crassus, and Caesar
But the more the democracy could not but desire to open up for itself this path, which offered not so much the most favourable as the only prospect of real successes, the more certainly it might reckon on the resolute resistance of its political opponents. Everything depended on whom it found opposed to it in this matter. The aristocracy isolated was not formidable; but it had just been rendered evident in the Catilinarian affair that it could certainly still exert some influence, where it was more or less openly supported by the men of material interests and by the adherents of Pompeius. It had several times frustrated Catilina's candidature for the consulship, and that it would attempt the like against Caesar was sufficiently certain. But, even though Caesar should perhaps be chosen in spite of it, his election alone did not suffice. He needed at least some years of undisturbed working out of Italy, in order to gain a firm military position; and the nobility assuredly would leave no means untried to thwart his plans during this time of preparation. The idea naturally occurred, whether the aristocracy might not be again successfully isolated as in 683-684, and an alliance firmly based on mutual advantage might not be established between the democrats with their ally Crassus on the one side and Pompeius and the great capitalists on the other. For Pompeius such a coalition was certainly a political suicide. His weight hitherto in the state rested on the fact, that he was the only party-leader who at the same time disposed of legions— which, though now dissolved, were still in a certain sense at his disposal. The plan of the democracy was directed to the very object of depriving him of this preponderance, and of placing by his side in their own chief a military rival. Never could he consent to this, and least of all personally help to a post of supreme command a man like Caesar, who already as a mere political agitator had given him trouble enough and had just furnished the most brilliant proofs also of military capacity in Spain. But on the other hand, in consequence of the cavilling opposition of the senate and the indifference of the multitude to Pompeius and Pompeius' wishes, his position, particularly with reference to his old soldiers, had become so painful and so humiliating, that people might well expect from his character to gain him for such a coalition at the price of releasing him from that disagreeable situation. And as to the so-called equestrian party, it was to be found on whatever side the power lay; and as a matter of course it would not let itself be long waited for, if it saw Pompeius and the democracy combining anew in earnest. It happened moreover, that on account of Cato's severity— otherwise very laudable—towards the lessees of the taxes, the great capitalists were just at this time once more at vehement variance with the senate.
Change in the Position of Caesar
So the second coalition was concluded in the summer of 694. Caesar was assured of the consulship for the following year and a governorship in due course; to Pompeius was promised the ratification of his arrangements made in the east, and an assignation of lands for the soldiers of the Asiatic army; to the equites Caesar likewise promised to procure for them by means of the burgesses what the senate had refused; Crassus in fine—the inevitable—was allowed at least to join the league, although without obtaining definite promises for an accession which he could not refuse. It was exactly the same elements, and indeed the same persons, who concluded the league with one another in the autumn of 683 and in the summer of 694; but how entirely different was the position of the parties then and now! Then the democracy was nothing but a political party, while its allies were victorious generals at the head of their armies; now the leader of the democracy was himself an Imperator crowned with victory and full of magnificent military schemes, while his allies were retired generals without any army. Then the democracy conquered in questions of principle, and in return for that victory conceded the highest offices of state to its two confederates; now it had become more practical and grasped the supreme civil and military power for itself, while concessions were made to its allies only in subordinate points and, significantly enough, not even the old demand of Pompeius for a second consulship was attended to. Then the democracy sacrificed itself to its allies; now these had to entrust themselves to it. All the circumstances were completely changed, most of all, however, the character of the democracy itself. No doubt it had, ever since it existed at all, contained at its very core a monarchic element; but the ideal of a constitution, which floated in more or less clear outline before its best intellects, was always that of a civil commonwealth, a Periclean organization of the state, in which the power of the prince rested on the fact that he represented the burgesses in the noblest and most accomplished manner, and the most accomplished and noblest part of the burgesses recognized him as the man in whom they thoroughly confided. Caesar too set out with such views; but they were simply ideals, which might have some influence on realities, but could not be directly realized. Neither the simple civil power, as Gaius Gracchus possessed it, nor the arming of the democratic party, such as Cinna though in a very inadequate fashion had attempted, was able to maintain a permanent superiority in the Roman commonwealth; the military machine fighting not for a party but for a general, the rude force of the condottieri—after having first appeared on the stage in the service of the restoration—soon showed itself absolutely superior to all political parties. Caesar could not but acquire a conviction of this amidst the practical workings of party, and accordingly he matured the momentous resolution of making this military machine itself serviceable to his ideals, and of erecting such a commonwealth, as he had in his view, by the power of condottieri. With this design he concluded in 683 the league with the generals of the opposite party, which, notwithstanding that they had accepted the democratic programme, yet brought the democracy and Caesar himself to the brink of destruction. With the same design he himself came forward eleven years afterwards as a condottiere. It was done in both cases with a certain naivete—with good faith in the possibility of his being able to found a free commonwealth, if not by the swords of others, at any rate by his own. We perceive without difficulty that this faith was fallacious, and that no one takes an evil spirit into his service without becoming himself enslaved to it; but the greatest men are not those who err the least. If we still after so many centuries bow in reverence before what Caesar willed and did, it is not because he desired and gained a crown (to do which is, abstractly, as little of a great thing as the crown itself) but because his mighty ideal—of a free commonwealth under one ruler—never forsook him, and preserved him even when monarch from sinking into vulgar royalty.
Caesar Consul
The election of Caesar as consul for 695 was carried without difficulty by the united parties. The aristocracy had to rest content with giving to him—by means of a bribery, for which the whole order of lords contributed the funds, and which excited surprise even in that period of deepest corruption—a colleague in the person of Marcus Bibulus, whose narrow-minded obstinacy was regarded in their circles as conservative energy, and whose good intentions at least were not at fault if the genteel lords did not get a fit return for their patriotic expenditure.
Caesar's Agrarian Law
As consul Caesar first submitted to discussion the requests of his confederates, among which the assignation of land to the veterans of the Asiatic army was by far the most important. The agrarian law projected for this purpose by Caesar adhered in general to the principles set forth in the project of law, which was introduced in the previous year at the suggestion of Pompeius but not carried.(5) There was destined for distribution only the Italian domain-land, that is to say, substantially, the territory of Capua, and, if this should not suffice, other Italian estates were to be purchased out of the revenue of the new eastern provinces at the taxable value recorded in the censorial rolls; all existing rights of property and heritable possession thus remained unaffected. The individual allotments were small. The receivers of land were to be poor burgesses, fathers of at least three children; the dangerous principle, that the rendering of military service gave a claim to landed estate, was not laid down, but, as was reasonable and had been done at all times, the old soldiers as well as the temporary lessees to be ejected were simply recommended to the special consideration of the land-distributors. The execution of the measure was entrusted to a commission of twenty men, into which Caesar distinctly declared that he did not wish to be himself elected.
Opposition of the Aristocracy
The opposition had a difficult task in resisting this proposal. It could not rationally be denied, that the state-finances ought after the erection of the provinces of Pontus and Syria to be in a position to dispense with the moneys from the Campanian leases; that it was unwarrantable to withhold one of the finest districts of Italy, and one peculiarly fitted for small holdings, from private enterprise; and, lastly, that it was as unjust as it was ridiculous, after the extension of the franchise to all Italy, still to withhold municipal rights from the township of Capua. The whole proposal bore the stamp of moderation, honesty, and solidity, with which a democratic party-character was very dexterously combined; for in substance it amounted to the re-establishment of the Capuan colony founded in the time of Marius and again done away by Sulla.(6) In form too Caesar observed all possible consideration. He laid the project of the agrarian law, as well as the proposal to ratify collectively the ordinances issued by Pompeius in the east, and the petition of the farmers of the taxes for remission of a third of the sums payable by them, in the first instance before the senate for approval, and declared himself ready to entertain and discuss proposals for alterations. The corporation had now opportunity of convincing itself how foolishly it had acted in driving Pompeius and the equites into the arms of the adversary by refusing these requests. Perhaps it was the secret sense of this, that drove the high-born lords to the most vehement opposition, which contrasted ill with the calm demeanour of Caesar. The agrarian law was rejected by them nakedly and even without discussion. The decree as to the arrangements of Pompeius in Asia found quite as little favour in their eyes. Cato attempted, in accordance with the disreputable custom of Roman parliamentary debate, to kill the proposal regarding the farmers of the taxes by speaking, that is, to prolong his speech up to the legal hour for closing the sitting; when Caesar threatened to have the stubborn man arrested, this proposal too was at length rejected.
Proposals before the Burgesses
Of course all the proposals were now brought before the burgesses. Without deviating far from the truth, Caesar could tell the multitude that the senate had scornfully rejected most rational and most necessary proposals submitted to it in the most respectful form, simply because they came from the democratic consul. When he added that the aristocrats had contrived a plot to procure the rejection of the proposals, and summoned the burgesses, and more especially Pompeius himself and his old soldiers, to stand by him against fraud and force, this too was by no means a mere invention. The aristocracy, with the obstinate weak creature Bibulus and the unbending dogmatical fool Cato at their head, in reality intended to push the matter to open violence. Pompeius, instigated by Caesar to proclaim his position with reference to the pending question, declared bluntly, as was not his wont on other occasions, that if any one should venture to draw the sword, he too would grasp his, and in that case would not leave the shield at home; Crassus expressed himself to the same effect The old soldiers of Pompeius were directed to appear on the day of the vote— which in fact primarily concerned them—in great numbers, and with arms under their dress, at the place of voting.
The nobility however left no means untried to frustrate the proposals of Caesar. On each day when Caesar appeared before the people, his colleague Bibulus instituted the well-known political observations of the weather which interrupted all public business;(7) Caesar did not trouble himself about the skies, but continued to prosecute his terrestrial occupation. The tribunician veto was interposed; Caesar contented himself with disregarding it. Bibulus and Cato sprang to the rostra, harangued the multitude, and instigated the usual riot; Caesar ordered that they should be led away by lictors from the Forum, and took care that otherwise no harm should befall them—it was for his interest that the political comedy should remain such as it was.
The Agrarian Law CarriedPassive Resistance of the Aristocracy
Notwithstanding all the chicanery and all the blustering of the nobility, the agrarian law, the confirmation of the Asiatic arrangements, and the remission to the lessees of taxes were adopted by the burgesses; and the commission of twenty was elected with Pompeius and Crassus at its head, and installed in office. With all their exertions the aristocracy had gained nothing, save that their blind and spiteful antagonism had drawn the bonds of the coalition still tighter, and their energy, which they were soon to need for matters more important, had exhausted itself on these affairs that were at bottom indifferent. They congratulated each other on the heroic courage which they had displayed; the declaration of Bibulus that he would rather die than yield, the peroration which Cato still continued to deliver when in the hands of the lictors, were great patriotic feats; otherwise they resigned themselves to their fate. The consul Bibulus shut himself up for the remainder of the year in his house, while he at the same time intimated by public placard that he had the pious intention of watching the signs of the sky on all the days appropriate for public assemblies during that year. His colleagues once more admired the great man who, as Ennius had said of the old Fabius, "saved the state by wise delay," and they followed his example; most of them, Cato included, no longer appeared in the senate, but within their four walls helped their consul to fret over the fact that the history of the world went on in spite of political astronomy. To the public this passive attitude of the consul as well as of the aristocracy in general appeared, as it fairly might, a political abdication; and the coalition were naturally very well content that they were left to take their farther steps almost undisturbed.
Caesar Governor of the Two Gauls
The most important of these steps was the regulating of the future position of Caesar. Constitutionally it devolved on the senate to fix the functions of the second consular year of office before the election of the consuls took place; accordingly it had, in prospect of the election of Caesar, selected with that view for 696 two provinces in which the governor should find no other employment than the construction of roads and other such works of utility. Of course the matter could not so remain; it was determined among the confederates, that Caesar should obtain by decree of the people an extraordinary command formed on the model of the Gabinio-Manilian laws. Caesar however had publicly declared that he would introduce no proposal in his own favour; the tribune of the people Publius Vatinius therefore undertook to submit the proposal to the burgesses, who naturally gave their unconditional assent. By this means Caesar obtained the governorship of Cisalpine Gaul and the supreme command of the three legions which were stationed there and were already experienced in border warfare under Lucius Afranius, along with the same rank of propraetor for his adjutants which those of Pompeius had enjoyed; this office was secured to him for five years—a longer period than had ever before been assigned to any general whose appointment was limited to a definite time at all. The Transpadanes, who for years had in hope of the franchise been the clients of the democratic party in Rome and of Caesar in particular,(8) formed the main portion of his province. His jurisdiction extended south as far as the Arnus and the Rubico, and included Luca and Ravenna. Subsequently there was added to Caesar's official district the province of Narbo with the one legion stationed there—a resolution adopted by the senate on the proposal of Pompeius, that it might at least not see this command also pass to Caesar by extraordinary decree of the burgesses. What was wished was thus attained. As no troops could constitutionally be stationed in Italy proper,(9) the commander of the legions of northern Italy and Gaul dominated at the same time Italy and Rome for the next five years; and he who was master for five years was master for life. The consulship of Caesar had attained its object. As a matter of course, the new holders of power did not neglect withal to keep the multitude in good humour by games and amusements of all sorts, and they embraced every opportunity of filling their exchequer; in the case of the king of Egypt, for instance, the decree of the people, which recognized him as legitimate ruler,(10) was sold to him by the coalition at a high price, and in like manner other dynasts and communities acquired charters and privileges on this occasion.
Measures Adopted by the Allies for Their Security
The permanence of the arrangements made seemed also sufficiently secured. The consulship was, at least for the next year, entrusted to safe hands. The public believed at first, that it was destined for Pompeius and Crassus themselves; the holders of power however preferred to procure the election of two subordinate but trustworth men of their party—Aulus Gabinius, the best among Pompeius' adjutants, and Lucius Piso, who was less important but was Caesar's father-in-law— as consuls for 696. Pompeius personally undertook to watch over Italy, where at the head of the commission of twenty he prosecuted the execution of the agrarian law and furnished nearly 20,000 burgesses, in great part old soldiers from his army, with land in the territory of Capua. Caesar's north-Italian legions served to back him against the opposition in the capital. There existed no prospect, immediately at least, of a rupture among the holders of power themselves. The laws issued by Caesar as consul, in the maintenance of which Pompeius was at least as much interested as Caesar, formed a guarantee for the continuance of the breach between Pompeius and the aristocracy—whose heads, and Cato in particular, continued to treat these laws as null—and thereby a guarantee for the subsistence of the coalition. Moreover, the personal bonds of connection between its chiefs were drawn closer. Caesar had honestly and faithfully kept his word to his confederates without curtailing or cheating them of what he had promised, and in particular had fought to secure the agrarian law proposed in the interest of Pompeius, just as if the case had been his own, with dexterity and energy; Pompeius was not insensible to upright dealing and good faith, and was kindly disposed towards the man who had helped him to get quit at a blow of the sorry part of a suppliant which he had been playing for three years. Frequent and familiar intercourse with a man of the irresistible amiableness of Caesar did what was farther requisite to convert the alliance of interests into an alliance of friendship. The result and the pledge of this friendship—at the same time, doubtless, a public announcement which could hardly be misunderstood of the newly established conjoint rule—was the marriage of Pompeius with Caesar's only daughter, three-and-twenty years of age. Julia, who had inherited the charm of her father, lived in the happiest domestic relations with her husband, who was nearly twice as old; and the burgesses longing for rest and order after so many troubles and crises, saw in this nuptial alliance the guarantee of a peaceful and prosperous future.
Situation of the Aristocracy
The more firmly and closely the alliance was thus cemented between Pompeius and Caesar, the more hopeless grew the cause of the aristocracy. They felt the sword suspended over their head and knew Caesar sufficiently to have no doubt that he would, if necessary, use it without hesitation. "On all sides," wrote one of them, "we are checkmated; we have already through fear of death or of banishment despaired of 'freedom'; every one sighs, no one ventures to speak." More the confederates could not desire. But though the majority of the aristocracy was in this desirable frame of mind, there was, of course, no lack of Hotspurs among this party. Hardly had Caesar laid down the consulship, when some of the most violent aristocrats, Lucius Domitius and Gaius Memmius, proposed in a full senate the annulling of the Julian laws. This indeed was simply a piece of folly, which redounded only to the benefit of the coalition; for, when Caesar now himself insisted that the senate should investigate the validity of the laws assailed, the latter could not but formally recognize their legality. But, as may readily be conceived, the holders of power found in this a new call to make an example of some of the most notable and noisiest of their opponents, and thereby to assure themselves that the remainder would adhere to that fitting policy of sighing and silence. At first there had been a hope that the clause of the agrarian law, which as usual required all the senators to take an oath to the new law on pain of forfeiting their political rights, would induce its most vehement opponents to banish themselves, after the example of Metellus Numidicus,(11) by refusing the oath. But these did not show themselves so complaisant; even the rigid Cato submitted to the oath, and his Sanchos followed him. A second, far from honourable, attempt to threaten the heads of the aristocracy with criminal impeachments on account of an alleged plot for the murder of Pompeius, and so to drive them into exile, was frustrated by the incapacity of the instruments; the informer, one Vettius, exaggerated and contradicted himself so grossly, and the tribune Vatinius, who directed the foul scheme, showed his complicity with that Vettius so clearly, that it was found advisable to strangle the latter in prison and to let the whole matter drop. On this occasion however they had obtained sufficient evidence of the total disorganization of the aristocracy and the boundless alarm of the genteel lords: even a man like Lucius Lucullus had thrown himself in person at Caesar's feet and publicly declared that he found himself compelled by reason of his great age to withdraw from public life.
Cato and Cicero Removed
Ultimately therefore they were content with a few isolated victims. It was of primary importance to remove Cato, who made no secret of his conviction as to the nullity of all the Julian laws, and who was a man to act as he thought. Such a man Marcus Cicero was certainly not, and they did not give themselves the trouble to fear him. But the democratic party, which played the leading part in the coalition, could not possibly after its victory leave unpunished the judicial murder of the 5th December 691, which it had so loudly and so justly censured. Had they wished to bring to account the real authors of the fatal decree, they ought to have seized not on the pusillanimous consul, but on the section of the strict aristocracy which had urged the timorous man to that execution. But in formal law it was certainly not the advisers of the consul, but the consul himself, that was responsible for it, and it was above all the gentler course to call the consul alone to account and to leave the senatorial college wholly out of the case; for which reason in the grounds of the proposal directed against Cicero the decree of the senate, in virtue of which he ordered the execution, was directly described as supposititious. Even against Cicero the holders of power would gladly have avoided steps that attracted attention; but he could not prevail on himself either to give to those in power the guarantees which they required, or to banish himself from Rome under one of the feasible pretexts on several occasions offered to him, or even to keep silence. With the utmost desire to avoid any offence and the most sincere alarm, he yet had not self-control enough to be prudent; the word had to come out, when a petulant witticism stung him, or when his self- conceit almost rendered crazy by the praise of so many noble lords gave vent to the well-cadenced periods of the plebeian advocate.
Clodius
The execution of the measures resolved on against Cato and Cicero was committed to the loose and dissolute, but clever and pre- eminently audacious Publius Clodius, who had lived for years in the bitterest enmity with Cicero, and, with the view of satisfying that enmity and playing a part as demagogue, had got himself converted under the consulship of Caesar by a hasty adoption from a patrician into a plebeian, and then chosen as tribune of the people for the year 696. To support Clodius, the proconsul Caesar remained in the immediate vicinity of the capital till the blow was struck against the two victims. Agreeably to the instructions which he had received, Clodius proposed to the burgesses to entrust Cato with the regulation of the complicated municipal affairs of the Byzantines and with the annexation of the kingdom of Cyprus, which as well as Egypt had fallen to the Romans by the testament of Alexander II, but had not like Egypt bought off the Roman annexation, and the king of which, moreover, had formerly given personal offence to Clodius. As to Cicero, Clodius brought in a project of law which characterized the execution of a burgess without trial and sentence as a crime to be punished with banishment. Cato was thus removed by an honourable mission, while Cicero was visited at least with the gentlest possible punishment and, besides, was not designated by name in the proposal. But they did not refuse themselves the pleasure, on the one hand, of punishing a man notoriously timid and belonging to the class of political weathercocks for the conservative energy which he displayed, and, on the other hand, of investing the bitter opponent of all interferences of the burgesses in administration and of all extraordinary commands with such a command conferred by decree of the burgesses themselves; and with similar humour the proposal respecting Cato was based on the ground of the abnormal virtue of the man, which made him appear pre-eminently qualified to execute so delicate a commission, as was the confiscation of the considerable crown treasure of Cyprus, without embezzlement. Both proposals bear generally the same character of respectful deference and cool irony, which marks throughout the bearing of Caesar in reference to the senate. They met with no resistance. It was naturally of no avail, that the majority of the senate, with the view of protesting in some way against the mockery and censure of their decree in the matter of Catilina, publicly put on mourning, and that Cicero himself, now when it was too late, fell on his knees and besought mercy from Pompeius; he had to banish himself even before the passing of the law which debarred him from his native land (April 696). Cato likewise did not venture to provoke sharper measures by declining the commission which he had received, but accepted itand embarked for the east.(12) What was most immediately necessary was done; Caesar too might leave Italy to devote himself to more serious tasks.
The Subjugation of the West
The Romanizing of the West
When the course of history turns from the miserable monotony of the political selfishness, which fought its battles in the senate-house and in the streets of the capital, to matters of greater importance than the question whether the first monarch of Rome should be called Gnaeus, Gaius, or Marcus, we may well be allowed—on the threshold of an event, the effects of which still at the present day influence the destinies of the world—to look round us for a moment, and to indicate the point of view under which the conquest of what is now France by the Romans, and their first contact with the inhabitants of Germany and of Great Britain, are to be apprehended in their bearing on the general history of the world.
By virtue of the law, that a people which has grown into a state absorbs its neighbours who are in political nonage, and a civilized people absorbs its neighbours who are in intellectual nonage— by virtue of this law, which is as universally valid and as much a law of nature as the law of gravity—the Italian nation (the only one in antiquity which was able to combine a superior political development and a superior civilization, though it presented the latter only in an imperfect and external manner) was entitled to reduce to subjection the Greek states of the east which were ripe for destruction, and to dispossess the peoples of lower grades of culture in the west—Libyans, Iberians, Celts, Germans—by means of its settlers; just as England with equal right has in Asia reduced to subjection a civilization of rival standing but politically impotent, and in America and Australia has marked and ennobled, and still continues to mark and ennoble, extensive barbarian countries with the impress of its nationality. The Roman aristocracy had accomplished the preliminary condition required for this task— the union of Italy; the task itself it never solved, but always regarded the extra-Italian conquests either as simply a necessary evil, or as a fiscal possession virtually beyond the pale of the state. It is the imperishable glory of the Roman democracy or monarchy—for the two coincide—to have correctly apprehended and vigorously realized this its highest destination. What the irresistible force of circumstances had paved the way for, through the senate establishing against its will the foundations of the future Roman dominion in the west as in the east; what thereafter the Roman emigration to the provinces—which came as a public calamity, no doubt, but also in the western regions at any rate as a pioneer of a higher culture—pursued as matter of instinct; the creator of the Roman democracy, Gaius Gracchus, grasped and began to carry out with statesmanlike clearness and decision. The two fundamental ideas of the new policy—to reunite the territories under the power of Rome, so far as they were Hellenic, and to colonize them, so far as they were not Hellenic—had already in the Gracchan age been practically recognized by the annexation of the kingdom of Attalus and by the Transalpine conquests of Flaccus: but the prevailing reaction once more arrested their application. The Roman state remained a chaotic mass of countries without thorough occupation and without proper limits. Spain and the Graeco-Asiatic possessions were separated from the mother country by wide territories, of which barely the borders along the coast were subject to the Romans; on the north coast of Africa the domains of Carthage and Cyrene alone were occupied like oases; large tracts even of the subject territory, especially in Spain, were but nominally subject to the Romans. Absolutely nothing was done on the part of the government towards concentrating and rounding off their dominion, and the decay of the fleet seemed at length to dissolve the last bond of connection between the distant possessions. The democracy no doubt attempted, so soon as it again raised its head, to shape its external policy in the spirit of Gracchus—Marius in particular cherished such ideas—but as it did not for any length of time attain the helm, its projects were left unfulfilled. It was not till the democracy practically took in hand the government on the overthrow of the Sullan constitution in 684, that a revolution in this respect occurred. First of all their sovereignty on the Mediterranean was restored—the most vital question for a state like that of Rome. Towards the east, moreover, the boundary of the Euphrates was secured by the annexation of the provinces of Pontus and Syria. But there still remained beyond the Alps the task of at once rounding off the Roman territory towards the north and west, and of gaining a fresh virgin soil there for Hellenic civilization and for the yet unbroken vigour of the Italic race.
Historical Significance of the Conquests of Caesar
This task Gaius Caesar undertook. It is more than an error, it is an outrage upon the sacred spirit dominant in history, to regard Gaul solely as the parade ground on which Caesar exercised himself and his legions for the impending civil war. Though the subjugation of the west was for Caesar so far a means to an end that he laid the foundations of his later height of power in the Transalpine wars, it is the especial privilege of a statesman of genius that his means themselves are ends in their turn. Caesar needed no doubt for his party aims a military power, but he did not conquer Gaul as a partisan. There was a direct political necessity for Rome to meet the perpetually threatened invasion of the Germans thus early beyond the Alps, and to construct a rampart there which should secure the peace of the Roman world. But even this important object was not the highest and ultimate reason for which Gaul was conquered by Caesar. When the old home had become too narrow for the Roman burgesses and they were in danger of decay, the senate's policy of Italian conquest saved them from ruin. Now the Italian home had become in its turn too narrow; once more the state languished under the same social evils repeating themselves in similar fashion only on a greater scale. It was a brilliant idea, a grand hope, which led Caesar over the Alps—the idea and the confident expectation that he should gain there for his fellow-burgesses a new boundless home, and regenerate the state a second time by placing it on a broader basis.
Caesar in Spain
The campaign which Caesar undertook in 693 in Further Spain, may be in some sense included among the enterprises which aimed at the subjugation of the west. Long as Spain had obeyed the Romans, its western shore had remained substantially independent of them even after the expedition of Decimus Brutus against the Callaeci(1), and they had not even set foot on the northern coast; while the predatory raids, to which the subject provinces found themselves continually exposed from those quarters, did no small injury to the civilization and Romanizing of Spain. Against these the expedition of Caesar along the west coast was directed. He crossed the chain of the Herminian mountains (Sierra de Estrella) bounding the Tagus on the north; after having conquered their inhabitants and transplanted them in part to the plain, he reduced the country on both sides of the Douro and arrived at the northwest point of the peninsula, where with the aid of a flotilla brought up from Gades he occupied Brigantium (Corunna). By this means the peoples adjoining the Atlantic Ocean, Lusitanians and Callaecians, were forced to acknowledge the Roman supremacy, while the conqueror was at the same time careful to render the position of the subjects generally more tolerable by reducing the tribute to be paid to Rome and regulating the financial affairs of the communities.
But, although in this military and administrative debut of the great general and statesman the same talents and the same leading ideas are discernible which he afterwards evinced on a greater stage, his agency in the Iberian peninsula was much too transient to have any deep effect; the more especially as, owing to its physical and national peculiarities, nothing but action steadily continued for a considerable time could exert any durable influence there.
Gaul
A more important part in the Romanic development of the west was reserved by destiny for the country which stretches between the Pyrenees and the Rhine, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean, and which since the Augustan age has been especially designated by the name of the land of the Celts—Gallia—although strictly speaking the land of the Celts was partly narrower, partly much more extensive, and the country so called never formed a national unity, and did not form a political unity before Augustus. For this very reason it is not easy to present a clear picture of the very heterogeneous state of things which Caesar encountered on his arrival there in 696.
The Roman ProvinceWars and Revolts There
In the region on the Mediterranean, which, embracing approximately Languedoc on the west of the Rhone, on the east Dauphine and Provence, had been for sixty years a Roman province, the Roman arms had seldom been at rest since the Cimbrian invasion which had swept over it. In 664 Gaius Caelius had fought with the Salyes about Aquae Sextiae, and in 674 Gaius Flaccus,(2) on his march to Spain, with other Celtic nations. When in the Sertorian war the governor Lucius Manlius, compelled to hasten to the aid of his colleagues beyond the Pyrenees, returned defeated from Ilerda (Lerida) and on his way home was vanquished a second time by the western neighbours of the Roman province, the Aquitani (about 676;(3)), this seems to have provoked a general rising of the provincials between the Pyrenees and the Rhone, perhaps even of those between the Rhone and Alps. Pompeius had to make his way with the sword through the insurgent Gaul to Spain,(4) and by way of penalty for their rebellion gave the territories of the Volcae-Arecomici and the Helvii (dep. Gard and Ardeche) over to the Massiliots; the governor Manius Fonteius (678-680) carried out these arrangements and restored tranquillity in the province by subduing the Vocontii (dep. Drome), protecting Massilia from the insurgents, and liberating the Roman capital Narbo which they invested. Despair, however, and the financial embarrassment which the participation in the sufferings of the Spanish war(5) and generally the official and non-official exactions of the Romans brought upon the Gallic provinces, did not allow them to be tranquil; and in particular the canton of the Allobroges, the most remote from Narbo, was in a perpetual ferment, which was attested by the "pacification" that Gaius Piso undertook there in 688 as well as by the behaviour of the Allobrogian embassy in Rome on occasion of the anarchist plot in 691,(6) and which soon afterwards (693) broke into open revolt Catugnatus the leader of the Allobroges in this war of despair, who had at first fought not unsuccessfully, was conquered at Solonium after a glorious resistance by the governor Gaius Pomptinus.
BoundsRelations to Rome
Notwithstanding all these conflicts the bounds of the Roman territory were not materially advanced; Lugudunum Convenarum, where Pompeius had settled the remnant of the Sertorian army,(7) Tolosa, Vienna and Genava were still the most remote Roman townships towards the west and north. But at the same time the importance of these Gallic possessions for the mother country was continually on the increase. The glorious climate, akin to that of Italy, the favourable nature of the soil, the large and rich region lying behind so advantageous for commerce with its mercantile routes reaching as far as Britain, the easy intercourse by land and sea with the mother country, rapidly gave to southern Gaul an economic importance for Italy, which much older possessions, such as those in Spain, had not acquired in the course of centuries; and as the Romans who had suffered political shipwreck at this period sought an asylum especially in Massilia, and there found once more Italian culture and Italian luxury, voluntary emigrants from Italy also were attracted more and more to the Rhone and the Garonne. "The province of Gaul," it was said in a sketch drawn ten years before Caesar's arrival, "is full of merchants; it swarms with Roman burgesses. No native of Gaul transacts a piece of business without the intervention of a Roman; every penny, that passes from one hand to another in Gaul, goes through the account books of the Roman burgesses." From the same description it appears that in addition to the colonists of Narbo there were Romans cultivating land and rearing cattle, resident in great numbers in Gaul; as to which, however, it must not be overlooked that most of the provincial land possessed by Romans, just like the greater part of the English possessions in the earliest times in America, was in the hands of the high nobility living in Italy, and those farmers and graziers consisted for the most part of their stewards—slaves or freedmen.
Incipient Romanizing
It is easy to understand how under such circumstances civilization and Romanizing rapidly spread among the natives. These Celts were not fond of agriculture; but their new masters compelled them to exchange the sword for the plough, and it is very credible that the embittered resistance of the Allobroges was provoked in part by some such injunctions. In earlier times Hellenism had also to a certain degree dominated those regions; the elements of a higher culture, the stimulus to the cultivation of the vine and the olive,(8) to the use of writing(9) and to the coining of money, came to them from Massilia. The Hellenic culture was in this case far from being set aside by the Romans; Massilia gained through them more influence than it lost; and even in the Roman period Greek physicians and rhetoricians were publicly employed in the Gallic cantons. But, as may readily be conceived, Hellenism in southern Gaul acquired through the agency of the Romans the same character as in Italy; the distinctively Hellenic civilization gave place to the Latino-Greek mixed culture, which soon made proselytes here in great numbers. The "Gauls in the breeches," as the inhabitants of southern Gaul were called by way of contrast to the "Gauls in the toga" of northern Italy, were not indeed like the latter already completely Romanized, but they were even now very perceptibly distinguished from the "longhaired Gauls" of the northern regions still unsubdued. The semiculture becoming naturalized among them furnished, doubtless, materials enough for ridicule of their barbarous Latin, and people did not fail to suggest to any one suspected of Celtic descent his "relationship with the breeches"; but this bad Latin was yet sufficient to enable even the remote Allobroges to transact business with the Roman authorities, and even to give testimony in the Roman courts without an interpreter.
While the Celtic and Ligurian population of these regions was thus in the course of losing its nationality, and was languishing and pining withal under a political and economic oppression, the intolerable nature of which is sufficiently attested by their hopeless insurrections, the decline of the native population here went hand in hand with the naturalizing of the same higher culture which we find at this period in Italy. Aquae Sextiae and still more Narbo were considerable townships, which might probably be named by the side of Beneventum and Capua; and Massilia, the best organized, most free, most capable of self-defence, and most powerful of all the Greek cities dependent on Rome, under its rigorous aristocratic government to which the Roman conservatives probably pointed as the model of a good urban constitution, in possession of an important territory which had been considerably enlarged by the Romans and of an extensive trade, stood by the side of those Latin towns as Rhegium and Neapolis stood in Italy by the side of Beneventum and Capua.
Free Gaul
Matters wore a different aspect, when one crossed the Roman frontier. The great Celtic nation, which in the southern districts already began to be crushed by the Italian immigration, still moved to the north of the Cevennes in its time-hallowed freedom. It is not the first time that we meet it: the Italians had already fought with the offsets and advanced posts of this vast stock on the Tiber and on the Po, in the mountains of Castile and Carinthia, and even in the heart of Asia Minor; but it was here that the main stock was first assailed at its very core by their attacks. The Celtic race had on its settlement in central Europe diffused itself chiefly over the rich river-valleys and the pleasant hill-country of the present France, including the western districts of Germany and Switzerland, and from thence had occupied at least the southern part of England, perhaps even at this time all Great Britain and Ireland;(10) it formed here more than anywhere else a broad, geographically compact, mass of peoples. In spite of the differences in language and manners which naturally were to be found within this wide territory, a close mutual intercourse, an innate sense of fellowship, seems to have knit together the tribes from the Rhone and Garonne to the Rhine and the Thames; whereas, although these doubtless were in a certain measure locally connected with the Celts in Spain and in the modern Austria, the mighty mountain barriers of the Pyrenees and the Alps on the one hand, and the encroachments of the Romans and the Germans which also operated here on the other, interrupted the intercourse and the intrinsic connection of the cognate peoples far otherwise than the narrow arm of the sea interrupted the relations of the continental and the British Celts. Unhappily we are not permitted to trace stage by stage the history of the internal development of this remarkable people in these its chief seats; we must be content with presenting at least some outline of its historical culture and political condition, as it here meets us in the time of Caesar.
PopulationAgriculture and the Rearing of Cattle
Gaul was, according to the reports of the ancients, comparatively well peopled. Certain statements lead us to infer that in the Belgic districts there were some 200 persons to the square mile— a proportion such as nearly holds at present for Wales and for Livonia—in the Helvetic canton about 245;(11) it is probable that in the districts which were more cultivated than the Belgic and less mountainous than the Helvetian, as among the Bituriges, Arverni, Haedui, the number rose still higher. Agriculture was no doubt practised in Gaul—for even the contemporaries of Caesar were surprised in the region of the Rhine by the custom of manuring with marl,(12) and the primitive Celtic custom of preparing beer (-cervesia-) from barley is likewise an evidence of the early and wide diffusion of the culture of grain—but it was not held in estimation. Even in the more civilized south it was reckoned not becoming for the free Celts to handle the plough. In far higher estimation among the Celts stood pastoral husbandry, for which the Roman landholders of this epoch very gladly availed themselves both of the Celtic breed of cattle, and of the brave Celtic slaves skilled in riding and familiar with the rearing of animals.(13) Particularly in the northern Celtic districts pastoral husbandry was thoroughly predominant. Brittany was in Caesar's time a country poor in corn. In the north-east dense forests, attaching themselves to the heart of the Ardennes, stretched almost without interruption from the German Ocean to the Rhine; and on the plains of Flanders and Lorraine, now so fertile, the Menapian and Treverian herdsman then fed his half-wild swine in the impenetrable oak-forest. Just as in the valley of the Po the Romans made the production of wool and the culture of corn supersede the Celtic feeding of pigs on acorns, so the rearing of sheep and the agriculture in the plains of the Scheldt and the Maas are traceable to their influence. In Britain even the threshing of corn was not yet usual; and in its more northern districts agriculture was not practised, and the rearing of cattle was the only known mode of turning the soil to account. The culture of the olive and vine, which yielded rich produce to the Massiliots, was not yet prosecuted beyond the Cevennes in the time of Caesar.
Urban Life
The Gauls were from the first disposed to settle in groups; there were open villages everywhere, and the Helvetic canton alone numbered in 696 four hundred of these, besides a multitude of single homesteads. But there were not wanting also walled towns, whose walls of alternate layers surprised the Romans both by their suitableness and by the elegant interweaving of timber and stones in their construction; while, it is true, even in the towns of the Allobroges the buildings were erected solely of wood. Of such towns the Helvetii had twelve and the Suessiones an equal number; whereas at all events in the more northern districts, such as among the Nervii, while there were doubtless also towns, the population during war sought protection in the morasses and forests rather than behind their walls, and beyond the Thames the primitive defence of the wooden barricade altogether took the place of towns and was in war the only place of refuge for men and herds.
Intercourse
In close association with the comparatively considerable development of urban life stands the activity of intercourse by land and by water. Everywhere there were roads and bridges. The river-navigation, which streams like the Rhone, Garonne, Loire, and Seine, of themselves invited, was considerable and lucrative. But far more remarkable was the maritime navigation of the Celts. Not only were the Celts, to all appearance, the nation that first regularly navigated the Atlantic ocean, but we find that the art of building and of managing vessels had attained among them a remarkable development. The navigation of the peoples of the Mediterranean had, as may readily be conceived from the nature of the waters traversed by them, for a comparatively long period adhered to the oar; the war-vessels of the Phoenicians, Hellenes, and Romans were at all times oared galleys, in which the sail was applied only as an occasional aid to the oar; the trading vessels alone were in the epoch of developed ancient civilization "sailers" properly so called.(14) On the other hand the Gauls doubtless employed in the Channel in Caesar's time, as for long afterwards, a species of portable leathern skiffs, which seem to have been in the main common oared boats, but on the west coast of Gaul the Santones, the Pictones, and above all the Veneti sailed in large though clumsily built ships, which were not impelled by oars but were provided with leathern sails and iron anchor-chains; and they employed these not only for their traffic with Britain, but also in naval combat. Here therefore we not only meet for the first time with navigation in the open ocean, but we find that here the sailing vessel first fully took the place of the oared boat—an improvement, it is true, which the declining activity of the old world did not know how to turn to account, and the immeasurable results of which our own epoch of renewed culture is employed in gradually reaping.
CommerceManufactures
With this regular maritime intercourse between the British and Gallic coasts, the very close political connection between the inhabitants on both sides of the Channel is as easily explained as the flourishing of transmarine commerce and of fisheries. It was the Celts of Brittany in particular, that brought the tin of the mines of Cornwall from England and carried it by the river and land routes of Gaul to Narbo and Massilia. The statement, that in Caesar's time certain tribes at the mouth of the Rhine subsisted on fish and birds' eggs, may probably refer to the circumstance that marine fishing and the collection of the eggs of sea-birds were prosecuted there on an extensive scale. When we put together and endeavour to fill up the isolated and scanty statements which have reached us regarding the Celtic commerce and intercourse, we come to see why the tolls of the river and maritime ports play a great part in the budgets of certain cantons, such as those of the Haedui and the Veneti, and why the chief god of the nation was regarded by them as the protector of the roads and of commerce, and at the same time as the inventor of manufactures. Accordingly the Celtic industry cannot have been wholly undeveloped; indeed the singular dexterity of the Celts, and their peculiar skill in imitating any model and executing any instructions, are noticed by Caesar. In most branches, however, their handicraft does not appear to have risen above the ordinary level; the manufacture of linen and woollen stuffs, that subsequently flourished in central and northern Gaul, was demonstrably called into existence only by the Romans. The elaboration of metals forms an exception, and so far as we know the only one. The copper implements not unfrequently of excellent workmanship and even now malleable, which are brought to light in the tombs of Gaul, and the carefully adjusted Arvernian gold coins, are still at the present day striking witnesses of the skill of the Celtic workers in copper and gold; and with this the reports of the ancients well accord, that the Romans learned the art of tinning from the Bituriges and that of silvering from the Alesini—inventions, the first of which was naturally suggested by the traffic' in tin, and both of which were probably made in the period of Celtic freedom.
Mining
Hand in hand with dexterity in the elaboration of the metals went the art of procuring them, which had attained, more especially in the iron mines on the Loire, such a degree of professional skill that the miners played an important part in the sieges. The opinion prevalent among the Romans of this period, that Gaul was one of the richest gold countries in the world, is no doubt refuted by the well-known nature of the soil and by the character of the articles found in the Celtic tombs, in which gold appears but sparingly and with far less frequency than in the similar repositories of the true native regions of gold; this conception no doubt had its origin merely from the descriptions which Greek travellers and Roman soldiers, doubtless not without strong exaggeration, gave to their countrymen of the magnificence of the Arvernian kings,(15) and of the treasures of the Tolosan temples.(16) But their stories were not pure fictions. It may well be believed that in and near the rivers which flow from the Alps and the Pyrenees gold-washing and searches for gold, which are unprofitable at the present value of labour, were worked with profit and on a considerable scale in ruder times and with a system of slavery; besides, the commercial relations of Gaul may, as is not unfrequently the case with half-civilized peoples, have favoured the accumulation of a dead stock of the precious metals.
Art and Science
The low state of the arts of design is remarkable, and is the more striking by the side of this mechanical skill in handling the metals. The fondness for parti-coloured and brilliant ornaments shows the want of a proper taste, which is sadly confirmed by the Gallic coins with their representations sometimes exceedingly simple, sometimes odd, but always childish in design, and almost without exception rude beyond parallel in their execution. It is perhaps unexampled that a coinage practised for centuries with a certain technical skill should have essentially limited itself to always imitating two or three Greek dies, and always with increasing deformity. On the other hand the art of poetry was highly valued by the Celts, and intimately blended with the religious and even with the political institutions of the nation; we find religious poetry, as well as that of the court and of the mendicant, flourishing.(17) Natural science and philosophy also found, although subject to the forms and fetters of the theology of the country, a certain amount of attention among the Celts; and Hellenic humanism met with a ready reception wherever and in whatever shape it approached them. The knowledge of writing was general at least among the priests. For the most part in free Gaul the Greek writing was made use of in Caesar's time, as was done among others by the Helvetii; but in its most southern districts even then, in consequence of intercourse with the Romanized Celts, the Latin attained predominance—we meet with it, for instance, on the Arvernian coins of this period.
Political OrganizationCantonal Constitution
The political development of the Celtic nation also presents very remarkable phenomena. The constitution of the state was based in this case, as everywhere, on the clan-canton, with its prince, its council of the elders, and its community of freemen capable of bearing arms; but the peculiarity in this case was that it never got beyond this cantonal constitution. Among the Greeks and Romans the canton was very early superseded by the ring-wall as the basis of political unity; where two cantons found themselves together within the same walls, they amalgamated into one commonwealth; where a body of burgesses assigned to a portion of their fellow- burgesses a new ring-wall, there regularly arose in this way a new state connected with the mother community only by ties of piety and, at most, of clientship. Among the Celts on the other hand the "burgess-body" continued at all times to be the clan; prince and council presided over the canton and not over any town, and the general diet of the canton formed the authority of last resort in the state. The town had, as in the east, merely mercantile and strategic, not political importance; for which reason the Gallic townships, even when walled and very considerable such as Vienna and Genava, were in the view of the Greeks and Romans nothing but villages. In the time of Caesar the original clan-constitution still subsisted substantially unaltered among the insular Celts and in the northern cantons of the mainland; the general assembly held the supreme authority; the prince was in essential questions bound by its decrees; the common council was numerous—it numbered in certain clans six hundred members—but does not appear to have had more importance than the senate under the Roman kings. In the more stirring southern portion of the land, again, one or two generations before Caesar—the children of the last kings were still living in his time—there had occurred, at least among the larger clans, the Arverni, Haedui, Sequani, Helvetii, a revolution which set aside the royal dominion and gave the power into the hands of the nobility.
Development of KnighthoodBreaking Up of the Old Cantonal Constitution
It is simply the reverse side of the total want of urban commonwealths among the Celts just noticed, that the opposite pole of political development, knighthood, so thoroughly preponderates in the Celtic clan-constitution. The Celtic aristocracy was to all appearance a high nobility, for the most part perhaps the members of the royal or formerly royal families; as indeed it is remarkable that the heads of the opposite parties in the same clan very frequently belong to the same house. These great families combined in their hands financial, warlike, and political ascendency. They monopolized the leases of the profitable rights of the state. They compelled the free commons, who were oppressed by the burden of taxation, to borrow from them, and to surrender their freedom first de facto as debtors, then de jure as bondmen. They developed the system of retainers, that is, the privilege of the nobility to surround themselves with a number of hired mounted servants— the -ambacti- as they were called (18)—and thereby to form a state within the state; and, resting on the support of these troops of their own, they defied the legal authorities and the common levy and practically broke up the commonwealth. If in a clan, which numbered about 80,000 men capable of arms, a single noble could appear at the diet with 10,000 retainers, not reckoning the bondmen and the debtors, it is clear that such an one was more an independent dynast than a burgess of his clan. Moreover, the leading families of the different clans were closely connected and through intermarriages and special treaties formed virtually a compact league, in presence of which the single clan was powerless. Therefore the communities were no longer able to maintain the public peace, and the law of the strong arm reigned throughout. The dependent found protection only from his master, whom duty and interest compelled to redress the injury inflicted on his client; the state had no longer the power to protect those who were free, and consequently these gave themselves over in numbers to some powerful man as clients.
Abolition of the Monarchy
The common assembly lost its political importance; and even the power of the prince, which should have checked the encroachments of the nobility, succumbed to it among the Celts as well as in Latium. In place of the king came the "judgment-worker" or -Vergobretus-,(19) who was like the Roman consul nominated only for a year. So far as the canton still held together at all, it was led by the common council, in which naturally the heads of the aristocracy usurped the government. Of course under such circumstances there was agitation in the several clans much in the same way as there had been agitation in Latium for centuries after the expulsion of the kings: while the nobility of the different communities combined to form a separate alliance hostile to the power of the community, the multitude ceased not to desire the restoration of the monarchy; and not unfrequently a prominent nobleman attempted, as Spurius Cassius had done in Rome, with the support of the mass of those belonging to the canton to break down the power of his peers, and to reinstate the crown in its rights for his own special benefit.
Efforts towards National Unity
While the individual cantons were thus irremediably declining, the sense of unity was at the same time powerfully stirring in the nation and seeking in various ways to take shape and hold. That combination of the whole Celtic nobility in contradistinction to the individual canton-unions, while disturbing the existing order of things, awakened and fostered the conception of the collective unity of the nation. The attacks directed against the nation from without, and the continued diminution of its territory in war with its neighbours, operated in the same direction. Like the Hellenes in their wars with the Persians, and the Italians in their wars with the Celts, the Transalpine Gauls seem to have become conscious of the existence and the power of their national unity in the wars against Rome. Amidst the dissensions of rival clans and all their feudal quarrelling there might still be heard the voices of those who were ready to purchase the independence of the nation at the cost of the independence of the several cantons, and even at that of the seignorial rights of the knights. The thorough popularity of the opposition to a foreign yoke was shown by the wars of Caesar, with reference to whom the Celtic patriot party occupied a position entirely similar to that of the German patriots towards Napoleon; its extent and organization are attested, among other things, by the telegraphic rapidity with which news was communicated from one point to another.
Religious Union of the NationDruids
The universality and the strength of the Celtic national feeling would be inexplicable but for the circumstance that, amidst the greatest political disruption, the Celtic nation had for long been centralized in respect of religion and even of theology. The Celtic priesthood or, to use the native name, the corporation of the Druids, certainly embraced the British islands and all Gaul, and perhaps also other Celtic countries, in a common religious- national bond. It possessed a special head elected by the priests themselves; special schools, in which its very comprehensive tradition was transmitted; special privileges, particularly exemption from taxation and military service, which every clan respected; annual councils, which were held near Chartres at the "centre of the Celtic earth"; and above all, a believing people, who in painful piety and blind obedience to their priests seem to have been nowise inferior to the Irish of modern times. It may readily be conceived that such a priesthood attempted to usurp, as it partially did usurp, the secular government; where the annual monarchy subsisted, it conducted the elections in the event of an interregnum; it successfully laid claim to the right of excluding individuals and whole communities from religious, and consequently also from civil, society; it was careful to draw to itself the most important civil causes, especially processes as to boundaries and inheritance; on the ground, apparently, of its right to exclude from the community, and perhaps also of the national custom that criminals should be by preference taken for the usual human sacrifices, it developed an extensive priestly criminal jurisdiction, which was co-ordinate with that of the kings and vergobrets; it even claimed the right of deciding on war and peace. The Gauls were not far removed from an ecclesiastical state with its pope and councils, its immunities, interdicts, and spiritual courts; only this ecclesiastical state did not, like that of recent times, stand aloof from the nations, but was on the contrary pre-eminently national.
Want of Political CentralizationThe Canton-Leagues
But while the sense of mutual relationship was thus vividly awakened among the Celtic tribes, the nation was still precluded from attaining a basis of political centralization such as Italy found in the Roman burgesses, and the Hellenes and Germans in the Macedonian and Frank kings. The Celtic priesthood and likewise the nobility—although both in a certain sense represented and combined the nation—were yet, on the one hand, incapable of uniting it in consequence of their particular class-interests, and, on the other hand, sufficiently powerful to allow no king and no canton to accomplish the work of union. Attempts at this work were not wanting; they followed, as the cantonal constitution suggested, the system of hegemony. A powerful canton induced a weaker to become subordinate, on such a footing that the leading canton acted for the other as well as for itself in its external relations and stipulated for it in state-treaties, while the dependent canton bound itself to render military service and sometimes also to pay a tribute. In this way a series of separate leagues arose; but there was no leading canton for all Gaul—no tie, however loose, combining the nation as a whole.
The Belgic LeagueThe Maritime CantonsThe Leagues of Central Gaul
It has been already mentioned(20) that the Romans at the commencement of their Transalpine conquests found in the north a Britanno-Belgic league under the leadership of the Suessiones, and in central and southern Gaul the confederation of the Arverni, with which latter the Haedui, although having a weaker body of clients, carried on a rivalry. In Caesar's time we find the Belgae in north-eastern Gaul between the Seine and the Rhine still forming such an association, which, however, apparently no longer extends to Britain; by their side there appears, in the modern Normandy and Brittany, the league of the Aremorican or the maritime cantons: in central or proper Gaul two parties as formerly contended for the hegemony, the one headed by the Haedui, the other by the Sequani after the Arvernians weakened by the wars with Rome had retired. These different confederacies subsisted independently side by side; the leading states of central Gaul appear never to have extended their clientship to the north-east nor, seriously, perhaps even to the north-west of Gaul.
Character of Those Leagues
The impulse of the nation towards freedom found doubtless a certain gratification in these cantonal unions; but they were in every respect unsatisfactory. The union was of the loosest kind, constantly fluctuating between alliance and hegemony; the representation of the whole body in peace by the federal diets, in war by the general,(21) was in the highest degree feeble. The Belgian confederacy alone seems to have been bound together somewhat more firmly; the national enthusiasm, from which the successful repulse of the Cimbri proceeded,(22) may have proved beneficial to it. The rivalries for the hegemony made a breach in every league, which time did not close but widened, because the victory of one competitor still left his opponent in possession of political existence, and it always remained open to him, even though he had submitted to clientship, subsequently to renew the struggle. The rivalry among the more powerful cantons not only set these at variance, but spread into every dependent clan, into every village, often indeed into every house, for each individual chose his side according to his personal relations. As Hellas exhausted its strength not so much in the struggle of Athens against Sparta as in the internal strife of the Athenian and Lacedaemonian factions in every dependent community, and even in Athens itself, so the rivalry of the Arverni and Haedui with its repetitions on a smaller and smaller scale destroyed the Celtic people.
The Celtic Military SystemCavalry
The military capability of the nation felt the reflex influence of these political and social relations. The cavalry was throughout the predominant arm; alongside of which among the Belgae, and still more in the British islands, the old national war-chariots appear in remarkable perfection. These equally numerous and efficient bands of combatants on horseback and in chariots were formed from the nobility and its vassals; for the nobles had a genuine knightly delight in dogs and horses, and were at much expense to procure noble horses of foreign breed. It is characteristic of the spirit and the mode of fighting of these nobles that, when the levy was called out, whoever could keep his seat on horseback, even the gray-haired old man, took the field, and that, when on the point of beginning a combat with an enemy of whom they made little account, they swore man by man that they would keep aloof from house and homestead, unless their band should charge at least twice through the enemy's line. Among the hired warriors the free-lance spirit prevailed with all its demoralized and stolid indifference towards their own life and that of others. This is apparent from the stories— however anecdotic their colouring—of the Celtic custom of tilting by way of sport and now and then fighting for life or death at a banquet, and of the usage (which prevailed among the Celts, and outdid even the Roman gladiatorial games) of selling themselves to be killed for a set sum of money or a number of casks of wine, and voluntarily accepting the fatal blow stretched on their shield before the eyes of the whole multitude.
Infantry
By the side of these mounted warriors the infantry fell into the background. In the main it essentially resembled the bands of Celts, with whom the Romans had fought in Italy and Spain. The large shield was, as then, the principal weapon of defence; among the offensive arms, on the other hand, the long thrusting lance now played the chief part in room of the sword. Where several cantons waged war in league, they naturally encamped and fought clan against clan; there is no trace of their giving to the levy of each canton military organization and forming smaller and more regular tactical subdivisions. A long train of waggons still dragged the baggage of the Celtic army; instead of an entrenched camp, such as the Romans pitched every night, the poor substitute of a barricade of waggons still sufficed. In the case of certain cantons, such as the Nervii, the efficiency of their infantry is noticed as exceptional; it is remarkable that these had no cavalry, and perhaps were not even a Celtic but an immigrant German tribe. But in general the Celtic infantry of this period appears as an unwarlike and unwieldy levy en masse; most of all in the more southern provinces, where along with barbarism valour had also disappeared. The Celt, says Caesar, ventures not to face the German in battle. The Roman general passed a censure still more severe than this judgment on the Celtic infantry, seeing that, after having become acquainted with them in his first campaign, he never again employed them in connection with Roman infantry.
Stage of Development of the Celtic Civilization
If we survey the whole condition of the Celts as Caesar found it in the Transalpine regions, there is an unmistakeable advance in civilization, as compared with the stage of culture at which the Celts came before us a century and a half previously in the valley of the Po. Then the militia, excellent of its kind, thoroughly preponderated in their armies;(23) now the cavalry occupies the first place. Then the Celts dwelt in open villages; now well- constructed walls surrounded their townships. The objects too found in the tombs of Lombardy are, especially as respects articles of copper and glass, far inferior to those of northern Gaul. Perhaps the most trustworthy measure of the increase of culture is the sense of a common relationship in the nation; so little of it comes to light in the Celtic battles fought on the soil of what is now Lombardy, while it strikingly appears in the struggles against Caesar. To all appearance the Celtic nation, when Caesar encountered it, had already reached the maximum of the culture allotted to it, and was even now on the decline. The civilization of the Transalpine Celts in Caesar's time presents, even for us who are but very imperfectly informed regarding it, several aspects that are estimable, and yet more that are interesting; in some respects it is more akin to the modern than to the Hellenic-Roman culture, with its sailing vessels, its knighthood, its ecclesiastical constitution, above all with its attempts, however imperfect, to build the state not on the city, but on the tribe and in a higher degree on the nation. But just because we here meet the Celtic nation at the culminating point of its development, its lesser degree of moral endowment or, which is the same thing, its lesser capacity of culture, comes more distinctly into view. It was unable to produce from its own resources either a national art or a national state; it attained at the utmost a national theology and a peculiar type of nobility. The original simple valour was no more; the military courage based on higher morality and judicious organization, which comes in the train of increased civilization, had only made its appearance in a very stunted form among the knights. Barbarism in the strict sense was doubtless outlived; the times had gone by, when in Gaul the fat haunch was assigned to the bravest of the guests, but each of his fellow-guests who thought himself offended thereby was at liberty to challenge the receiver on that score to combat, and when the most faithful retainers of a deceased chief were burnt along with him. But human sacrifices still continued, and the maxim of law, that torture was inadmissible in the case of the free man but allowable in that of the free woman as well as of slaves, throws a far from pleasing light on the position which the female sex held among the Celts even in their period of culture. The Celts had lost the advantages which specially belong to the primitive epoch of nations, but had not acquired those which civilization brings with it when it intimately and thoroughly pervades a people.
External RelationsCelts and Iberians
Such was the internal condition of the Celtic nation. It remains that we set forth their external relations with their neighbours, and describe the part which they sustained at this moment in the mighty rival race and rival struggle of the nations, in which it is everywhere still more difficult to maintain than to acquire. Along the Pyrenees the relations of the peoples had for long been peaceably settled, and the times had long gone by when the Celts there pressed hard on, and to some extent supplanted, the Iberian, that is, the Basque, original population. The valleys of the Pyrenees as well as the mountains of Bearn and Gascony, and also the coast- steppes to the south of the Garonne, were at the time of Caesar in the undisputed possession of the Aquitani, a great number of small tribes of Iberian descent, coming little into contact with each other and still less with the outer world; in this quarter only the mouth of the Garonne with the important port of Burdigala (Bordeaux) was in the hands of a Celtic tribe, the Bituriges-Vivisci.