The Battle of Alesia

In 52 BCE, the Gauls had united in a last-ditch effort against the invaders. Any one tribe who stood up to the Romans in recent memory had been utterly defeated, but now there was a new hope. The tribes had convened a council and selected one man to lead the rebel army to victory and restore freedom to their war-torn homeland. And that man's name was Vercingetorix.

Using hit-and-run cavalry tactics while taking refuge in well-defended forts gave this rebel leader a few victories over the Roman army, led by the famous and able Gaius Julius Caesar. In one such engagement, Caesar's 12 legions had attempted to storm his position at Gergovia, Vercingetorix drove them back, killing 700 legionnaires in the process and nearly causing a mass route of the entire army. Caesar was clever, though, and chose from then on to hunt down small detachments of the larger Gallic army, whittling their forces down to a more manageable size. Vercingetorix went with his typical play of strategically withdrawing his troops to a fortified position: the town of Alesia, atop a small hill.

I can only imagine the thoughts that must have consumed this last, best hope for Gaulkind watching helplessly from the city walls as the Romans built their own walls to solidify their defense. He had to witness the slow deaths of the women and children of the city, who starved to death after being expelled from the city and were then forbidden to pass through the Roman camp. He dispatched scout cavalry in an attempt to slow the construction, hoping to last until the relieving Gallic army arrived. The situation was desperate, and his men growing close to insubordinate treachery when a Gallic army of 100,000 arrived to relieve the siege. Hope was in the air that at long last, the Romans would be driven back and they would be free once again.

The Romans were now facing a battle on two fronts, but they had the luxury of their two walls, which kept them very well protected from the combined forces of 180,000. Their own 60,000 legionnaires were disciplined and well-armed; their foreign auxiliaries ready to do their part. After a few skirmishes and one night attack, the Gauls took a few sections of the Roman trench. They prepared for an all-out assault on the weakest point of the fortifications – a section where the two walls met with boulders and other natural hindrances to construction, a place Caesar had attempted to conceal.

The relieving force assaulted first, charging straight into the infantry lines and meeting the Romans steel to steel. Caesar ordered his men to hold the line while riding behind their ranks and cheering them on. He then led a counter-attack which drove off Vercingetorix's besieged men, who had sallied out of Alesia to support their Gallic compatriots. His line, weakened by the men that Caesar took to defend their rear, began to fall back and Gaius had to roll the dice. In a move both brilliant and incredibly risky, he took 6,000 cavalry with him and circled around the massive Gallic horde of 60,000, flanking them and cutting deep into their assault line. The Roman infantry, seeing their commanders risking their necks, were inspired by their bravery and pushed forward, pinching the Gallic line and causing the undisciplined tribal army to rout. Roman cavalry took over from there, hunting the fleeing soldiers down without mercy and laying waste to any hope that Vercingetorix maintained of being freed from this terrible siege.

A few days later, the mighty Gallic warlord surrendered, giving up his sword and armor to Caesar, who gladly accepted. With this defeat, Gaius Julius Caesar would forever solidify Roman domination over the Gauls.

Pax vobiscum

Julius Caesar Part II: The Later Years

When we last left old Gaius Julius Caesar, he had just won Consulship for the year in 59 BCE by a nasty, corrupt election that left no Senator clean, including Caesar's most tireless opponent, the notoriously incorruptible Cato. Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus was elected to serve as the second Consul, but would prove to be an ineffective check against his fellow executive. Supporting Caesar were Crassus, to whom Julius owed his freedom, and Pompey, whom Caesar recruited by promising to support land redistribution, a wedge issue amongst the Senators, and one that Caesar would use to cast the elite into the role of petty oligarchs and himself as the egalitarian savior of Rome.

When Caesar proposed a series of reforms designed to redistribute tracts of land to the poor, Crassus supported it on the Senate floor, while Pompey garrisoned his soldiers inside the city, frightening the moderate Senators into passing the decree. Seeking divine intervention, Bibulus tried to declare foul omens and therefore end the assembly prematurely, but he was chased off by armed supporters of Caesar and a bucket of sewage was thrown onto him as he rushed to his home to remain until the end of his term. The law passed without further delay, and thus was the First Triumvirate born: an alliance of three ambitious and savvy populists who would ultimately turn on each other. Caesar and Bibulus' Consulship was so one-sided that the Romans jokingly referred to the year 59 BCE as the Consulship of Julius and Caesar.

Caesar's father-in-law was elected as Consul during the next term, and it was lucky for Caesar because the Optimate Senators were thirsty for his blood. Instead of being confined to stewardship of a nearby uninhabited forest, Caesar's friends saw to it that he was appointed the governor of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum, in northern Italy and just east of the Adriatic Sea. He was given command over four legions and was now prepared to fight his way out of his ever-increasing debt. He made war on some local tribes which had been arming themselves, and made some money from their spoils. His term as governor was made to be five years instead of the usual one, which was lucky because otherwise his debts would have made him a slave, and he would have faced prosecutions for his quasi-legal activities while serving as Consul.

His campaigns in Gaul led him all the way to Britain, which he invaded under the pretense that they had aided a local Gallic tribe against him, a shaky accusation against anyone other than the Britons, who were mostly Gauls themselves and very similar in culture. His first invasion didn't go well and he had to return to the mainland, but he succeeded following season, securing Roman-allied control over the southern portion of the island.

Meanwhile, back in Rome, Caesar's daughter Julia, whom he had married to Pompey to secure his alliance, died during childbirth in 54 BCE. He offered him his niece Octavia, but Pompey eventually refused. Crassus died the next year while trying to invade Parthia in the east. Pompey weighed his options carefully and chose to marry Cornelia, the daughter of Caesar's enemy Quintus Metellus Scipio. In 52 BCE, political violence in the city got so bad that Pompey was declared the sole Consul, an office very different from Dictator because a Consul is answerable for their actions in office while a Dictator is not. While in office, Pompey blocked an attempt by Caesar to serve as Consul in absentia, though this had been allowed in previous years. The Triumvirate was broken and the two men left would now fight over the real prize: Rome itself.

That same year, there was a massive rebellion in Gaul led by Vercingetorix, a charismatic and capable military leader who defeated the Roman legions on more than one occasion during the war. Eventually, the Gallic forces were defeated by superior technology through the extensive siegeworks in place at the Battle of Alesia and Vercingetorix was forced to surrender. I'd like to go into more detail here, but rest assured, there will be coverage of these battles in upcoming Military Mondays.

In 50 BCE, Pompey and the Senate ordered Caesar to lay down arms, disband his troops and return to Rome. Caesar believed that it was a trap; that Pompey, who had now joined his enemies, would lead the way in prosecuting Caesar for crimes real and fabricated. He was probably not far off, for at one point that year Pompey accused Caesar publicly of insubordination and treason. January 10, 49 BCE, Gaius Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River with one legion and set off the Civil War. When many of the cities in northern Italy surrendered willingly to the invading legion, Pompey and his Senator allies abandoned Rome and sailed for Greece, taking with them every ship in the harbors of southern Italy. And so Caesar, being unable to chase his quarry, set off to challenge Pompey's lieutenants in Iberia, declaring, “I go to fight an army without a leader, so as later I may fight a leader without an army.”

He swept up the remains of forces loyal to Pompey and the Optimates in Iberia and made passage to Greece, where he would square off against his old ally and former son-in-law. At the Battle of Dyrrachium the next year, Pompey's army, which outnumbered Caesar's own legions at least 3 to 1, easily broke through Caesar's battle lines and his army routed. Caesar himself withdrew, and Pompey probably could have ended the entire war then and there, but his years of alliance with Caesar had taught him to be wary of this crafty populist. He feared a trap, and so did not pursue the enemy legions. Even Caesar remarked later that victory had belonged to his enemies, if only one of them would have claimed it.

His forces resupplied and fought the Battle of Pharsalus, in which they won an impressive and decisive victory for Caesar. The Optimates' power now broken, they fled in all directions, while Pompey sailed to Egypt where he believed he might find refuge. Instead he was assassinated, and his head presented to Caesar by Pharaoh Ptolemy XIII, who believed the gift would win him Caesar's favor. It worked in the opposite, however, and Caesar soon cast his support for Ptolemy's sister, Cleopatra VII, helping her to secure the throne of Egypt before he left. Caesar maintained a close relationship with Cleopatra, and there are historical rumors that they had a secret love child. He could have never married the Egyptian queen, however, as she was not a Roman citizen.

There was still work to be done, so Caesar granted immunity to many of his former enemy Senators, while mopping up the remnants of Pompey's forces, defeating all military opposition by 45 BCE. He had been elected Dictator in 48 and again in 47 BCE. In 46 he was appointed as Dictator for an unprecedented 10-year term, which undoubtedly led to his downfall two years later.

On the 15^th of March, 44 BCE, Caesar was attending a session of the Senate. A group of Senators had organized a conspiracy against this perpetual Dictator, calling themselves the Liberatores, or liberators. They lured Caesar into a false state of security by gathering around him to support a bill, and then proceeded to stab him repeatedly until he was dead. As many as 60 Senators participated in the assassination, and declared that Rome was now a free Republic once again.

Ultimately, Caesar's death did nothing to stem the tide of anti-Republican sentiment. In the old days of Rome, citizens were expected to be loyal to the State first, and many of the cautionary fables from the early years involve fathers ordering the executions of their own children if they betrayed the Republic. The shift from Republic to Empire was a gradual one, and as I said last week, Caesar is by no means the first ambitious Senator to have delusions of kingship. However, because the people had come to believe, generation after generation, that the Oligarchical Senators did not have their best interests at heart, they turned to Dictators and Emperors to right the wrongs that their own corrupt and bogged down bureaucracies had either created or failed to counteract. The fall of the Republic, and indeed Caesar's life as a whole, should send shivers down the spine of any government official, elected or otherwise, who fails to care for their citizens.

Pax vobiscum

A Kinder, Gentler Paganism

One of my favorite video games, as many of you have probably guessed, is the Rome: Total War series. In the expansion Barbarian Invasion, the game begins with the announcement that Paganism is the most popular religion in the known world. This always gives me a good chuckle because it is similar to saying that Soccer is the most popular sport in the world. While it is technically true, it doesn't mean that fans of rival teams are united in their love for soccer and agree on everything. The term Paganism is a bit misleading because there were so many different deities and forms of worship that to group the Roman practice of sacrificing bulls to Jupiter or Mars with the Germanic practice of sacrificing people by drowning them in a bog seems a little bit uneven. Thus, even the label Pagan itself becomes somewhat fluid, under the proper microscope.

The Gauls were a constant thorn in Rome's side, always pillaging and competing with the northern Italians for food, water, trade, and money. The Romans never really forgave them for sacking their fair city around 390 BCE after the crushing defeat of their Phalanx at the Battle of the Allia, and many young politicians would cut their teeth by campaigning against the savage barbarians to the north. When they finally conquered most of the Gaul territory, as seen in the image below, they syncretized their religion to match up with the Greco-Roman Pantheon.

Yellow=starting point

Light Green=furthest expansion

Dark Green=areas where languages

descended from Gallic are still spoken

Because we have few written records of the Gallic religion before the Roman conquest in the 50's BCE, it is difficult to assess their exact rituals and procedures. We know they engaged in human sacrifice, and Julius Caesar himself would have us believe that a funeral for a Gallic noble involved his family and slaves being burned with their deceased patriarch inside a large wooden man. However, the Romans are fond of exaggeration, and since they were hostile to the Gauls, we can't completely trust their historians to shoot straight.

We do know that there were some gods who were 'national' in the sense that Gauls from Spain to the Balkans would worship them. These included Toutatis, Esus, and Taranis, who were transformed into Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter after the Roman conquest. However, they also had regional deities and familial patron gods to choose from as well. At its core, this religion was animism, but it evolved over time to include anthropomorphic gods as well, largely thanks to Roman influence.

Taranis Jupiter, holding a Gallic chariot wheel in one hand

and a lighting bolt in the other - syncretastic!

After Rome conquered, the Gauls submitted and ceased their human sacrifices. Druids, the mysterious oracles of the Gallic religion, fled to Germania and Northern Britannia to continue their strange and unrecorded practices. The conquest of the Gauls and the destruction of their religion marked the end of the old days of Western European nomads and the beginning of a more urban, administrative era. At least, until the Eastern tribes migrated toward the Atlantic, bringing with them a similar form of Pagan animism and mysterious ceremonies.

Pax vobiscum