as having been made by Labienus to his troops on this occasion is memorable. "Now," says Labienus, "you have your opportunity. You have got your enemy thoroughly at advantage. That valour which you have so often displayed before the 'Imperator,' Cæsar, display now under my command. Think that Cæsar is present, and that he beholds you." To have written thus of himself Cæsar must have thought of himself as of a god. He tells the story as though it were quite natural that Labienus and the soldiers should so regard him.
After this battle, in which the Treviri are of course slaughtered, Cæsar makes a second bridge over the Rhine, somewhat above the spot at which he had crossed before. He does this, he says, for two reasons,—first, because the Germans had sent assistance to the Nervii; and secondly, lest his great enemy Ambiorix should find shelter among the Suevi. Then he suggests that the opportunity is a good one for saying something to his readers of the different manners of Gaul and of Germany. Among the Gauls, in their tribes, their villages, and even in their families, there are ever two factions, so that one should always balance the other, and neither become superior. Cæsar so tells us at this particular point of his narrative, because he is anxious to go back and explain how it was that he had taken the part of the Ædui, and had first come into conflict with the Germans, driving Ariovistus back across the Rhine for their sake. In eastern Gaul two tribes had long balanced each other, each, of course, striving for mastery,—the Ædui and
