THE COMMENTARIES OF CAESAR.*
"Hurrowv," says Macaulay, "in its ideal perfection is a corn- Pound of of poetry and philosophy," and, if his dictum be true, few students, we imagine, would venture to assert that Caesar's Commentaries are an ideal history. Of philosophy Certainly they contain nothing ; and it would seem at first Bight that their unadorned and formal narrative is not less unpoetical than Wellington's despatches, while the maps and Plans, the sketches of bridges and military engines, the essays on tactics and strategy, which fill our modern editions appear to indicate that the chief value of the book is as a practical text-book for Sandhurst or the Staff College. And yet it would, we hold, be no paradox to affirm that it has in it many elements of poetry, and is deliberately designed to appeal
chiefly to the imagination. As history, doubtless, its import- ance is great, for the conquest of Gaul was an achievement the direct consequences of which are felt to this day throughout Europe, and the record of that conquest, penned by the hand that wielded the victor's sword, must always command an incomparable interest. But none the less in a well-ordered library this volume would hardly find its fitting place among works that are primarily historical; and though to set it, as a German critic does, cheek by jowl with the adventures of Munchausen would be manifestly unfair, for it is full of the most accurately recorded facts, yet a careful student might well hesitate whether to rank it among his political pamphlets, or to poke it timidly next to Homer, as a Roman Iliad written by a consummate master exactly in the style that would best suit a matter-of-fact democracy, and tempt solid burghers to dream that they had among them a new Achilles.
The Commentaries were, in faot, published, and probably written, in the year 51 B.C., exactly when Caesar knew that Le was soon to throw a main for the empire of the world. Por seven years the greatest of her citizens had never been seen in Rome. Yet the tale of his victories was on every lip ; tile gold of Gaul flowed everywhere from his bands ; and behind him was the terror of legions who had never known defeat, and who obeyed only one command. The Imperial s4yi torn to pieces between rival factions, waited for the mixing of one who, as all men knew, would accept no second Place, and was little likely to submit either to the authority of a Senate that was but the shadow of itself, or to the pre- tensions of Pompeiue, who had long " unlearned in peace the ?ta of war." The vast bounds of the Roman world had, as "lean puts it, "no room for two." Between the champion of democracy and the champion of aristocracy a death- struggle was imminent; and it was at this supreme moment that Caesar gave his Commentaries to the world. Face to LiNtt.C,,!.dar'e Commentaries on the Gallic War. Translated by T. Moe Holmes, LO1a01.1.: lacuU,ua and Cu. L•te. (31. net.]
face with the gravest dangers, and threatened with complete ruin, he claimed the ancient right of every Roman and
" challenged the verdict of the people" (Provocatio ad populuon)
by the recital of his deeds. To ignore the political and personal purpose of his work is to ignore the fact that he was a master of strategy, not only in the field, but in the Forum, and could mask his real design equally in both. Nor, indeed, is his skill anywhere better shown than in these so-called "Notes." There is in them apparently no touch of rhetoric; the language is studiously unartistio; and they seem to be written by a plain soldier for plain men. The opening words
—Gallia est omnis dimsa in pares tres—have the ingenuous
charm of a school exercise, while elsewhere the account given of the elks, unicorns, and buffaloes which roam the forests of Germany has the semblance almost of a nursery-tale. But this simplicity is really the product of refined art. Little by little Caesar by his recital of bare, bald facts manages, some- how, "to create an atmosphere" which enwraps us wholly.
We pass with him into a strange land, a land of vast spaces, mighty rivers, and gloomy forests, the home of countless tribes of fierce barbaric warriors. We see their ,huge masses swaying ever to and fro in restless movements, and the "populous North" threatening once again to pour her
devastating hordes on the fair fields of Italy; and although
to-day we can no longer feel the full effect of the narrative, yet each carefully descriptive phrase, each list of uncouth
names, each record of battle, and each enumeration of the Blain must have stirred in every Roman heart bitter memories of the past aud a quick sense that they bad been freed from an ever-present peril by the hand of a great deliverer. Against the background which lie paints with such sure judgment of effect it is the figure of Caesar himself that stands out clear-cut and imposing. Amid all the almost perplexing wealth of detail it is Caesar, the conqueror, the patriot, the saviour of the State, who alone gives unity and meaning to the picture. The artist does not, indeed, produce his effect by belittling others. He has no wish to be a giant among pygmies, and is generous in praising the valour of his troops or the conduct of his officers ; but at every crisis be sets himself in the foremost place, and although a great critic has said that "an absence of egoism is characteristic of the book and of the man," no book, perhaps, was ever more deeply penetrated with it. The first word of the actual narrative is "Caesar," and in Caesar the whole of it centres. Se celeriter eo ',ottani= was the terse message he sent to our forefathers in Britain, and its arrogant " egoism" is only thinly veiled by the artifice of reported speech. And look (II. 25) at that famous sentence—the despair of schoolboys—which, beginning with Caesar, takes fourteen lines in print to reach the main verb processit, and heaps up words to tell how at a supreme moment, when the ranks were breaking, the centurions all wounded or slain, the enemy pressing on from front and flank, the daunt- less leader, snatching a shield from a common soldier, "advanced into the front rank," and restored the fortunes of the combat. Or, again, in the final struggle with Vercingetorix, when Labienus reports that nothing can sustain the foeman's onset, then Caesar appears. Aecelerat Caesar, he writes in five pregnant worth), ut proelio intersit, and when the troops saw the purple cloak which "he was accustomed to wear in battle as a mark of distinction," than defeat at once became victory. Homer, in fact, might envy the cunning with which this prose Iliad is oompoeed by the writer in his own honour, and wonder at the skill with which the digressions and descriptions, even the cipwrela of the other chiefs, all subserve the main purpose of bringing into bolder relief the prowess of the real hero. The work may possibly not delight the fancy, for Caesar knew whom he was addressing, and facts—hard, solid facts—form the stubborn material out of which it is woven. None the less those who fail to find beneath its stiff and formal prose some of those poetic elements the object of which is to excite and impress the imagination will, we think, always fail to understand it.
But whatever judgment the intellect may form about work' so curious and almost unique, our moral judgment must be unhesitating. No book in the world exhibits a more complete want of heart, and, we believe, of honesty. Three years before he entered on his Proconsulate Caesar avowed that "lie wanted two hundred and fifty millions of sesterces to be
worth nothing,"—i.e., even that sum would only just secure his solvency. Cash and credit were indispensable to his ambition, and to secure wealth and honour he almost destroyed a free people. "He encountered," says Plutarch, "three millions of enemies, of whom be slew one million in action and made prisoners of an equal number," and assuredly no more terrible sentence was ever written about any man. It is in vain that Mommsen, the constant apologist of "Caesarism," writes about the "law of nature" which "entitles nations of superior civilization to dispossess peoples of lower grades of culture." We know of no such law, nor, if it existed, could it justify violation of the law of humanity. "The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground" are the words which spring to the lips as we read Caesar's remorseless record of butchery. Of the Nervii, the bravest of the Belgic, tribes, he tells us that "out of men capable of bearing arms from sixty thousand there were left a bare five hundred," and then adds that, "Caesar wishing to establish his character for clemency, was careful to shield the survivors from harm," while to show how he "established this character" be records five chapters later that be sold all the Aduatuci " in one lot," and that the purchasers reported "the number of beads to be fifty-three thousand." Or, again, because the Veneti laid violent hands on officers sent to requisition • grain, he "determined to inflict on them a special punish- ment in order to make the natives respect the right of ambassadors, and accordingly put to death the entire council • and sold the whole population into slavery." No doubt he did wisely, for, as he remarks just before, "all men ' are fond of freedom and hate to be in subjection," so that strong measures were clearly desirable; and his account of the sea-fight in which these foolish folk who "loved freedom" were defeated is a very pretty and instructive piece of writing; but we confess that as we read this volume through our over- mastering feeling is a certain "savage indignation." That Caesar bad genius, courage, and perhaps patriotism we know —few great conquerors have lacked some such virtues—but neither patriotism, courage, nor genius can palliate atrocity and bloodshed, or excuse acts of aggression, most of which, like the wanton invasion of our own island, were dictated largely by the lust of power and the greed for fame. The author, indeed, of this excellent translation bolds that to • mad Caesar through, not in order to learn Latin, but because of the interest of the subject-matter, would be of great service to candidates for the Army, and possibly that is so. But whatever the technical value of the work, we are satisfied that it can never be really estimated rightly without careful consideration of the points to which we have drawn attention, and which are rarely discussed, or even mentioned, by editors.
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