The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete
Sardinians he has transcribed some passages literally into his
Divination. In his delivery he is said to have had a shrill voice, and
his action was animated, but not ungraceful. He has left behind him some
speeches, among which are ranked a few that are not genuine, such as that
on behalf of Quintus Metellus. These Augustus supposes, with reason, to
be rather the production of blundering short-hand writers, who were not
able to keep pace with him in the delivery, than publications of his own.
For I find in some copies that the title is not “For Metellus,” but “What
he wrote to Metellus;” whereas the speech is delivered in the name of
Caesar, vindicating Metellus and himself from the aspersions cast upon
them by their common defamers. The speech addressed “To his soldiers in
Spain,” Augustus considers likewise as spurious. We meet with two under
this title; one made, as is pretended, in the first battle, and the other
in the last; at which time, Asinius Pollio says, he had not leisure to
address the soldiers, on account of the suddenness of the enemy’s attack.
LVI. He has likewise left Commentaries of his own actions both in the
war in Gaul, and in the civil war with Pompey; for the author of the
Alexandrian, African, and Spanish wars is not known with any certainty.
Some think they are the production of Oppius, and some of Hirtius; the
latter of whom composed the last book, which is imperfect, of the Gallic
war. Of Caesar’s Commentaries, Cicero, in his Brutus, speaks thus: “He
wrote his Commentaries in a manner deserving of great approbation: they
are plain, precise, and elegant, without any affectation of rhetorical
ornament. In having thus prepared materials for others who might be
inclined to write his history, he may perhaps have encouraged some silly
creatures to enter upon such a work, who will needs be dressing up his
actions in all the extravagance a (37) bombast; but he has discouraged
wise men from ever attempting the subject.” Hirtius delivers his opinion
of these Commentaries in the following terms: “So great is the
approbation with which they are universally perused, that, instead of
rousing, he seems to have precluded, the efforts of any future historian.
Yet, with respect to this work, we have more reason to admire him than
others; for they only know how well and correctly he has written, but we
know, likewise, how easily and quickly he did it.” Pollio Asinius thinks
that they were not drawn up with much care, or with a due regard to
truth; for he insinuates that Caesar was too hasty of belief in regard to
what was performed by others under his orders; and that, he has not given
a very faithful account of his own acts, either by design, or through
defect of memory; expressing at the same time an opinion that Caesar
intended a new and more correct edition. He has left behind him likewise
two books on Analogy, with the same number under the title of Anti-Cato,
and a poem entitled The Itinerary. Of these books, he composed the first
two in his passage over the Alps, as he was returning to the army after
making his circuit in Hither-Gaul; the second work about the time of the
battle of Munda; and the last during the four-and-twenty days he employed
in his journey from Rome to Farther-Spain. There are extant some letters
of his to the senate, written in a manner never practised by any before
him; for they are distinguished into pages in the form of a memorandum
book whereas the consuls and commanders till then, used constantly in
their letters to continue the line quite across the sheet, without any
folding or distinction of pages. There are extant likewise some letters
from him to Cicero, and others to his friends, concerning his domestic
affairs; in which, if there was occasion for secrecy, he wrote in
cyphers; that is, he used the alphabet in such a manner, that not a
single word could be made out. The way to decipher those epistles was to
substitute the fourth for the first letter, as d for a, and so for the
other letters respectively. Some things likewise pass under his name,
said to have been written by him when a boy, or a very young man; as the
Encomium of Hercules, a tragedy entitled Oedipus, and a collection of
Apophthegms; all which Augustus forbad to be published, in a short and
plain letter to Pompeius Macer, who was employed by him in the
arrangement of his libraries.
(38) LVII. He was perfect in the use of arms, an accomplished rider, and
able to endure fatigue beyond all belief. On a march, he used to go at
the head of his troops, sometimes on horseback, but oftener on foot, with
his head bare in all kinds of weather. He would travel post in a light
carriage [79] without baggage, at the rate of a hundred miles a day; and
if he was stopped by floods in the rivers, he swam across, or floated on
skins inflated with wind, so that he often anticipated intelligence of
his movements. [80]
LVIII. In his expeditions, it is difficult to say whether his caution or
his daring was most conspicuous. He never marched his army by roads
which were exposed to ambuscades, without having previously examined the
nature of the ground by his scouts. Nor did he cross over to Britain,
before he had carefully examined, in person [81], the navigation, the
harbours, and the most convenient point of landing in the island. When
intelligence was brought to him of the siege of his camp in Germany, he
made his way to his troops, through the enemy’s stations, in a Gaulish
dress. He crossed the sea from Brundisium and Dyrrachium, in the winter,
through the midst of the enemy’s fleets; and the troops, under orders to
join him, being slow in their movements, notwithstanding repeated
messages to hurry them, but to no purpose, he at last went privately, and
alone, aboard a small vessel in the night time, with his head muffled up;
nor did he make himself known, or suffer the master to put about,
although the wind blew strong against them, until they were ready to
sink.
LIX. He was never deterred from any enterprise, nor retarded in the
prosecution of it, by superstition [82]. When a victim, which he was
about to offer in sacrifice, made its (39) escape, he did not therefore
defer his expedition against Scipio and Juba. And happening to fall,
upon stepping out of the ship, he gave a lucky turn to the omen, by
exclaiming, “I hold thee fast, Africa.” To chide the prophecies which
were spread abroad, that the name of the Scipios was, by the decrees of
fate, fortunate and invincible in that province, he retained in the camp
a profligate wretch, of the family of the Cornelii, who, on account of
his scandalous life, was surnamed Salutio.
LX. He not only fought pitched battles, but made sudden attacks when an
opportunity offered; often at the end of a march, and sometimes during
the most violent storms, when nobody could imagine he would stir. Nor
was he ever backward in fighting, until towards the end of his life. He
then was of opinion, that the oftener he had been crowned with success,
the less he ought to expose himself to new hazards; and that nothing he
could gain by a victory would compensate for what he might lose by a
miscarriage. He never defeated the enemy without driving them from their
camp; and giving them no time to rally their forces. When the issue of a
battle was doubtful, he sent away all the horses, and his own first, that
having no means of flight, they might be under the greater necessity of
standing their ground.
LXI. He rode a very remarkable horse, with feet almost like those of a
man, the hoofs being divided in such a manner as to have some resemblance
to toes. This horse he had bred himself, and the soothsayers having
interpreted these circumstances into an omen that its owner would be
master of the world, he brought him up with particular care, and broke
him in himself, as the horse would suffer no one else to mount him. A
statue of this horse was afterwards erected by Caesar’s order before the
temple of Venus Genitrix.
LXII. He often rallied his troops, when they were giving way, by his
personal efforts; stopping those who fled, keeping others in their ranks,
and seizing them by their throat turned them towards the enemy; although
numbers were so terrified, that an eagle-bearer [83], thus stopped, made
a thrust at him with (40) the spear-head; and another, upon a similar
occasion, left the standard in his hand.
LXIII. The following instances of his resolution are equally, and even
more remarkable. After the battle of Pharsalia, having sent his troops
before him into Asia, as he was passing the straits of the Hellespont in
a ferry-boat, he met with Lucius Cassius, one of the opposite party, with
ten ships of war; and so far from endeavouring to escape, he went
alongside his ship, and calling upon him to surrender, Cassius humbly
gave him his submission.
LXIV. At Alexandria, in the attack of a bridge, being forced by a sudden
sally of the enemy into a boat, and several others hurrying in with him,
he leaped into the sea, and saved himself by swimming to the next ship,
which lay at the distance of two hundred paces; holding up his left hand
out of the water, for fear of wetting some papers which he held in it;
and pulling his general’s cloak after him with his teeth, lest it should
fall into the hands of the enemy.
LXV. He never valued a soldier for his moral conduct or his means, but
for his courage only; and treated his troops with a mixture of severity
and indulgence; for he did not always keep a strict hand over them, but
only when the enemy was near. Then indeed he was so strict a
disciplinarian, that he would give no notice of a march or a battle until
the moment of action, in order that the troops might hold themselves in
readiness for any sudden movement; and he would frequently draw them out
of the camp without any necessity for it, especially in rainy weather,
and upon holy-days. Sometimes, giving them orders not to lose sight of
him, he would suddenly depart by day or by night, and lengthen the
marches in order to tire them out, as they followed him at a distance.
LXVI. When at any time his troops were dispirited by reports of the
great force of the enemy, he rallied their courage; not by denying the
truth of what was said, or by diminishing the facts, but, on the
contrary, by exaggerating every particular. (41) Accordingly, when his
troops were in great alarm at the expected arrival of king Juba, he
called them together, and said, “I have to inform you that in a very few
days the king will be here, with ten legions, thirty thousand horse, a
hundred thousand light-armed foot, and three hundred elephants. Let none
of you, therefore, presume to make further enquiry, or indulge in
conjectures, but take my word for what I tell you, which I have from
undoubted intelligence; otherwise I shall put them aboard an old crazy
vessel, and leave them exposed to the mercy of the winds, to be
transported to some other country.”
LXVII. He neither noticed all their transgressions, nor punished them
according to strict rule. But for deserters and mutineers he made the
most diligent enquiry, and their punishment was most severe: other
delinquencies he would connive at. Sometimes, after a great battle
ending in victory, he would grant them a relaxation from all kinds of
duty, and leave them to revel at pleasure; being used to boast, “that his
soldiers fought nothing the worse for being well oiled.” In his
speeches, he never addressed them by the title of “Soldiers,” but by the
kinder phrase of “Fellow-soldiers;” and kept them in such splendid order,
that their arms were ornamented with silver and gold, not merely for
parade, but to render the soldiers more resolute to save them in battle,