“Pompey has only one legion guarding Rome,” Domitius said speculatively. Julius glanced at him and Domitius shrugged. “I mean, it could be done if we moved too quickly for him to reinforce. We could be at the walls in a week if we pushed the pace. With four veteran legions against him, he couldn’t hold the city for even a day.”
Mark Antony looked appalled at this and Domitius chuckled as he saw his expression. There was already more light as dawn approached, and they looked at each other guardedly as Domitius continued, raising his hands.
“It could be done, that’s all. One gamble for the whole pot. One throw for Rome.”
“You think you could kill legionaries?” Julius asked him.
Domitius rubbed his face and looked away. “I’m saying it might not come to that. Our soldiers have been hardened in Gaul and we know what they can do. I don’t think Pompey has anything to match us.”
Brutus looked at the man he had followed from childhood. He had swallowed more bitterness in their years than he would ever have believed, and as they sat together, he did not know if Julius even understood what he had been given. His pride, his honor, his youth. Everything. He knew Julius better than any of them and he saw the glitter in his friend’s eyes as he contemplated another war. How many of them would survive his ambition? he wondered. The others looked so trusting, it made Brutus want to close his eyes rather than be sickened. Yet despite it all, he knew Julius could bring him with a word.
Domitius cleared his throat. “It’s your choice, Julius. If you want us to go back to Gaul and lose ourselves, I’m with you. The gods know we’d never be found in some of the places we’ve seen. But if you want to go to Rome and risk it all one last time, I’m still with you.”
“One last throw?” Julius said, and he made it a question for all of them.
One by one, they nodded, until only Brutus remained. Julius raised his eyebrows and smiled gently.
“I can’t do it without you, Brutus. You know that.”
“One last throw, then,” Brutus whispered, before looking away.
As the sun rose, the veteran legions of Gaul crossed the Rubicon and marched on Rome.
HISTORICAL NOTE
As with the previous two books, I think an explanatory note can be useful, especially when the history is sometimes more surprising than the fiction.
I have mentioned Alexander the Great throughout the book as a hero for Julius. Certainly the Greek king’s life would have been well known to all educated Romans, complementing their interest in that culture. Though the setting was Cadiz rather than a deserted Spanish village, the first-century biographer Suetonius provides the detail of Caesar sighing in frustration at the foot of Alexander’s statue. At the age of thirty-one, Julius had achieved nothing in comparison. He could not have known that his greatest victories would come after that point.
Apart from his wives, Julius is reported as having had a number of prominent mistresses, though Suetonius said Servilia was the one he loved most of all. Julius did buy her a pearl valued at one and a half million denarii. Perhaps one of the reasons he invaded Britain may have been to find more of them.
He was quaestor in Spain before he returned as praetor, which I have not gone into for reasons of pace. He was a busier man than any writer can hope to cover, and even a condensed version fills these books to bursting point.
He did stage a gladiatorial combat in solid silver armor and ran huge debts pursuing public fame. It is true that at one point he had to physically leave the city to avoid his creditors. He became consul with Bibilus and chased his colleague out of the forum after a disagreement. In Bibilus’s absence, it became something of a joke in Rome to say a document was signed by Julius and Caesar.
As a minor point, the Falernian wine Julius poured into his family tomb was so expensive that a cup of it cost a week’s salary for a legionary. Unfortunately, the grapes grew on Mount Vesuvius, by Pompeii, and in A.D. 79 the taste was lost forever.
The Catiline conspiracy was as important in its day as the Gunpowder Plot in England. The conspiracy was betrayed when one of them confided in a mistress, who reported what she had heard. Julius was named, probably falsely, as one of the conspirators, as was Crassus. Both men survived the upheaval without stains on their characters. Catiline left the city to take command of the rebel army while his friends were to help create chaos and rioting in the city. Part of the evidence against them showed that a Gallic tribe had been approached for warriors. After a heated debate as to their fate, the lesser conspirators were ritually strangled. Catiline was killed in the field.
The conquests of Gaul and Britain comprise most of the second part of this book. I have followed the main events that began with the migration of the Helvetii and the defeat of Ariovistus. It is worth mentioning that Julius Caesar himself is sometimes the only extant source for the details of this campaign, but he records mistakes and disasters as faithfully as his victories. For example, he tells quite candidly how a mistaken report made him retreat from his own men, believing them to be the enemy. In his commentaries, he puts the number of the Helvetii and allied tribes at 386,000. Only 110,000 were sent home. Against them, he had six legions and auxiliaries-35,000 at most.
His battles were rarely a simple test of strength. He formed alliances with lesser tribes and then came to their aid. He fought by night if necessary, on all terrains, flanking, bribing, and outmaneuvering his enemies. When Ariovistus demanded only cavalry at their meeting, Julius ordered the foot soldiers of the Tenth to mount, which must have been a sight to see.
I did worry that the sheer distances he covered must have been exaggerated until my cousin took part in a sixty-mile trek. She and her husband completed it in twenty-four hours, but soldiers from a Gurkha regiment completed it in nine hours, fifty-seven minutes. Two and a third marathons, nonstop. One must be careful in this modern age where pensioners seem able to ski down Everest, but I think the legions of Gaul could have matched that pace and, like the Gurkhas, have been able to fight at the end.
It was not such a great stretch to suppose that Adàn might have understood the language of the Gauls, or even the dialect of the Britons, to some extent. The original Celts came across Europe from an unknown place of origin-possibly the Caucasus Mountains. They settled Spain, France, Britain, and Germany. England only became predominantly Romano-Saxon much later and of course maintains much of that difference into modern times.
It is difficult to imagine Julius’s view of the world. He was a prolific reader and would have known Strabo’s works. He knew Alexander had traveled east and Gaul was a great deal closer. He would have heard of Britain from the Greeks, after Pytheas traveled there two and a half centuries before: perhaps the world’s first genuine tourist. While we have lost Pytheas’s books, there is no reason why they should not have been available then. Julius would have heard of pearls, tin, and gold to lure him over from Gaul. Geographically, he thought that Britain was due east of Spain rather than to the north, with Ireland in between. It could even have been a continent as big as Africa, for all he could be sure on that first landing.
His first invasion of Britain in 55 B.C. was disastrous. Storms smashed his ships and ferocious resistance from blue-skinned tribes and vicious dogs were almost his undoing. The Tenth literally had to fight their way through the surf. He stayed only three weeks and the following year brought eight hundred ships back, this time forcing his way through to the Thames. Despite this vast fleet, he had stretched himself too far and would not return a third time. As far as we know, they never paid the tribute they promised.