Vercingetorix would hold a similar place in history and legend as King Arthur if he had managed to win his great battle against Julius. He united the tribes and saw that scorching the earth and starving the legions was the only way to defeat them. Even his great host was eventually broken by the legions. The High King of Gaul was taken in chains to Rome and executed.

The exact details of the triumvirate with Crassus and Pompey are not known. Certainly the arrangement benefited all three men, and Julius’s term in Gaul went on for many years after his consular year had ended. Interestingly, when Pompey sent the order for him to return alone after Gaul, Julius had very nearly completed the ten-year hiatus the law demanded between seeking a consul’s post. If Julius had secured a second term at that point, he would have been untouchable, which Pompey must have feared.

Clodius and Milo are not fictional characters. Both men were part of the chaos that almost destroyed Rome while Julius was in Gaul. Street gangs, riots, and murder became all too common, and when Clodius was finally killed, his supporters did indeed cremate him in the Senate house, burning it to the ground in the process. If you go to the forum in Rome today, the Senate house is one they rebuilt after the fire. Pompey was elected sole consul with a mandate to establish order in the city. Even then, the triumvirate agreement might have held if Crassus had not been killed fighting the Parthians with his son. With the news of that death, there was only one man in the world who could have challenged Pompey for power.

Finally, I have made one or two claims in the book that may annoy historians. It is debatable whether the Romans had steel or not, though it is possible to give a harder sheath to soft iron by beating it in charcoal. Steel, after all, is only iron with a fractionally higher carbon content. I do not think this was beyond them.

I did worry that having Artorath, a Gaul, described as close to seven feet tall would be too much for some, but Sir Bevil Grenville (1596-1643) had a bodyguard named Anthony Payne who was seven feet four inches tall. I daresay he could have put Artorath over his shoulder.

There are hundreds more little facts that I could put in here, if there were space. If I have changed history in the book, I hope it has been deliberate rather than simple error. I have certainly tried to be as accurate as I could be. For those who would like to go further than these few pages, I can recommend Caesar’s Legion by Stephen Dando-Collins, which is fascinating, and also The Complete Roman Army by Adrian Goldsworthy, or anything else by that author. The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius should be required reading in every school. My version is the translation by Robert Graves, and apparently which of the emperors you like the most is quite revealing about your own character. Lastly, for those who want more of Julius, you could do no better than to read Christian Meier’s book Caesar.

C. IGGULDEN