A Brief History of the Private Lives of the Roman Emperors by Anthony Blond Page A

leader concluded deals with the odd
dissident chieftain, until both sides had had enough. Cassivellaunus promised hostages and tribute and Caesar withdrew.
    Why had he gone there in the first place?
    His army had been large enough to conquer a country a fifth the size of Gaul, but again he had retreated. Perhaps he had been put off by the woad, the curious marital habits andthe appalling Druidic customs – including human sacrifice – of the native Britons, apart from being unnerved by their charioteers. The conquest of Britain was abandoned for
a century.
    Besides, Caesar had to hurry back to deal with Ambiorix, chief of ‘an obscure and insignificant’ tribe in Picardy, but acknowledged by Caesar to be an eloquent and ingenious fellow.
His general Sabinus, his tribunes and first-grade centurions had agreed to a parley outside their camp, a foolish move one might have thought, in retrospect, when they were overwhelmed and
massacred. The standard-bearer threw his eagle over the ramparts and fought to the death, survivors crept back into the camp and committed suicide. It was the worst defeat in Gaul. Caesar had not
been there. Worse followed. Encouraged by this unexpected success against the invincible Romans, Ambiorix raised the flag for a general revolt and besieged the winter camp of Cicero. Still Caesar
was not there. Messengers sent to him were captured and tortured in front of the besieged Roman soldiers. Finally a Gaul who had deserted to Cicero persuaded his slave, ‘by the promise of
freedom and a large reward’, to carry a despatch to Caesar, on receipt of which Caesar told his
quaestor
Crassus to march through the night to relieve Cicero, sending him a message (in
Greek) via a javelin which stuck unnoticed in the ramparts for two days.
    The Gauls were 60,000 strong, the Romans 7,000. Through feints Caesar manoeuvred the enemy into a disadvantageous position on the wrong side of a valley, then he struck. The Gauls panicked and
fled, throwing away their arms. At the post mortem Caesar blamed Sabinus but praised Cicero – though one can sense him saying something sharp under his breath; one must remember that the
Gallic campaign, though long and arduous, was part of his design to gather enough political clout (and money) to bid for supreme power inRome, and he would have avoided in his
despatch any offense to another politician, the other Cicero. The Gallic tribes were so restless that Caesar decided he could not risk spending the winter, as was his habit, in northern Italy,
attending to the assizes and less solemn pursuits.
    De Bello Gallico
is a sparse narrative written with ‘a sharp pen in sharp ink’ and does not of course refer to its author’s extra-marital and extramural activities,
which we know to have been intense from Suetonius’ list of his mistresses, which, in the fashion of the times, included the wives and daughters of his friends. An attractive man of power,
lecherous and susceptible, he must have found ample distraction when not actually on the war-path, as the bawdy ballad sung by his soldiers at his Triumph – ‘lock up your daughters,
Romans, our bald-pated chief is on his way’ – suggests.
    In 53 BC Caesar had dealt with the Treveri (around Trier), but in 52 BC Vercingetorix, destined to become Caesar’s most glamorous and
formidable opponent in Gaul, decided to strike back. He had heard that Caesar was in trouble in Rome. Publius Clodius Pulcher was a bad lad from a grand family (his sister Clodia, mistress of the
poet Catullus, was also a bad girl). He was Caesar’s trusty in the business of political gang warfare, in opposition to Pompey’s man, T. Annius Milo (hostilities had intensified after
the break-up between the two leaders in 54 BC ). Both specialized, in Tammany Hall fashion, in delivering the vote. (Clodius was feminine enough in looks to disguise himself
as a woman and penetrate a party given by the Vestal Virgins. Caesar’s wife had been