the supreme command for five years over the two Gauls (Cisalpine and Transalpine) and Illyricum. This was probably the great object of Cæsar's desires; at all events, it was the best possible thing which could have happened for him and the republic. Master of Gaul, and with an army devoted to his will, he could there mature his power silently and undisturbed, and qualify himself for entering, at the proper period, upon the career for which he was destined, and rescuing, by military force, the ill-governed Empire out of the hands of contending factions.
The condition of affairs in Rome during Cæsar's absence in Gaul was indeed such as to prove the necessity of some radical change in the system of the Commonwealth. All was confusion and violence. Clodius, a profligate relic of the Catilinarian party, having been elected to the tribuneship B. C. 58, procured the banishment of Cicero for his conduct in the affair of the conspiracy. In the following year, however, Clodius having in the meantime made himself generally odious, Cicero was recalled. Pompey and Crassus were elected consuls for the year B. C. 55. Mindful of their connection with Cæsar, who was of course in constant correspondence with them, they procured a prolongation of his command over the Gauls for a second period of five years; at the same time obtaining for themselves—Pompey, the government of Spain for five years; and Crassus that of Syria and adjacent countries for a similar period. In B. C. 55, Crassus set out for the scene of his command, where, soon afterwards, he perished in a fruitless expedition against the Parthians; Pompey remained at home, governing Spain by deputies. During several subsequent years, Rome was in a state of anarchy and misrule—the streets perambulated by armed mobs, partisans on the one hand of Clodius, and on the other of a powerful citizen called Milo, between whom a feud was carried on, as desperate and bloody as any that ever distracted a European town in the middle ages. In one of the numerous scuffles which took place between the contending parties, Clodius was killed; and taking advantage of the opportunity, the tottering government asserted its rights by bringing Milo to trial, and procuring his banishment.
Meanwhile the remedy was preparing. Among the marshes and forests of Gaul, the great Cæsar was accumulating that strength of men and purpose with which he was to descend on Italy and shiver the rotton fabric of the Commonwealth. 'Fain,' says the eloquent Michelet—'fain would I have seen that fair and pale countenance, prematurely aged by the debaucheries of the capital—fain would I have seen that delicate and epileptic man, marching in the rains of Gaul at the head of his legions, and swimming across our rivers, or else on horseback, between the litters in which his secretaries were carried, dictating even six letters at a time, shaking Rome from the extremity of Belgium, sweeping from his path two millions of men, and subduing in ten years Gaul, the Rhine, and the ocean of the north. This barbarous and bellicose chaos of Gaul was a superb material for such a genius. The Gallic tribes were on every side calling in the stranger; Druidism was in its decline; Italy was exhausted; Spain untameable; Gaul was essential to the subjugation of the world.' Cæsar's Gallic wars of themselves form a history. We have an account of them yet remaining from the pen of the conqueror himself, and that of his friend Hirtius. Suffice it to say, that in eight years (B. C. 58-50) Cæsar had conquered all Gaul, including the present France and Belgium; had paid two
