In his Life of Julius Caesar ancient biographer Plutarch describes Caesar’s Gallic campaigns as a beginning for the conqueror—the first and greatest step on his path to power and immortal fame. The subjugation of Gaul showed him superior to Rome’s greatest military commanders. His mettle was tested and proved in nearly 10 years of successful operations in difficult terrain, navigating shifting alliances and counter-alliances, confronting and conciliating savage enemies and perfidious allies, and producing victory repeatedly through determination, imagination, and audacity. He fought more battles and killed more enemies than any of his predecessors. Through battle and siege, he subdued nations, slaying a million men and capturing a million more, bringing vast territory under Rome’s control.
But Gaul was not an end in itself. Although the stage of Caesar’s exploits was beyond the Alps, his audience was Rome. Military service had long been requisite for Roman political office. Successful military command was a potent aid in attaining the highest positions. In the late Republic, it increasingly became the means of acquiring extra-constitutional authority as the sword became the arbiter of power.
Caesar was already involved in this game when he entered Gaul in 58 bce. Two years before he had formed a political alliance with Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus, called the First Triumvirate, that allowed them to control the entire Roman political system. Caesar knew the arrangement could not last forever. He had to prepare for the inevitable showdown. He needed the opportunity to increase his fame and influence as well as cultivate the intense personal loyalty of his troops that would allow him to challenge Pompey. Gaul was his training ground.
To maximize the political benefits of his exploits in Gaul, Caesar wrote his own account. Just as he used the war in Gaul to gain the power and influence necessary to bend Roman politics to his will, he used his narrative to enhance his reputation toward the same end. The , based on his notes, diaries, dispatches, memoranda, and reports tointo three parts inhabited by the Belgae, the Aquitani, and the Gauls. This simple mental map becomes far more complicated as the annual campaigns are narrated. The work ultimately mentions more than 100 tribes Caesar must defeat or pacify. This ethnic diversity overlays a challenging topography marked by rivers, swamps, mountains, and vast, trackless forests magnifying the difficulties of logistics and maneuver—and punctuated by nearly unassailable strongholds. From a Roman perspective, Gaul was tribal, atavistic, chaotic, and dangerous. Its specter of fear haunted for centuries after the Gauls sacked Rome in 390 bce.
