(He had to counterbalance his fellow triumvir’s triumphs with something distinctive, something quite new.) Illyricum could wait, while Cisalpine Gaul was quiet enough, and more than useful for manpower in the legions. But north of Narbonese Gaul lay an area of unknown wealth which could provide a singular addition to the empire. It had never figured in history and had been seen by relatively few Romans—merchants and adventurous traders for the most part.

It is evidence of Pompey’s political naivety that, when his fellow triumvir suggested adding Narbonese Gaul to his other proconsular attachments, Pompey was prepared to stand up in the senate and propose that the responsibility for Transalpine Gaul should be added to Caesar’s commands. The senators—even those among them who favored the popular party—were amazed at the idea that this clearly dangerous man should be given even more power, but they were too cowed by the triumvirate to do anything save acquiesce. Only Cato, with his usual intransigence (and his true love of republican principles), was man enough to speak out against the proposal, denouncing Caesar for trading his daughter for the support of Pompey and a further province. He spoke with the voice of an Old Rome that had died with the advent of Empire.

When he left Rome Caesar knew well that his actions both before and during his consulship would provide material for his open enemies—and others—to bring him to book for anything from high treason to graft at all levels. He had endeavored to effect a reconciliation with Cicero by offering him a position as his legate and right-hand man, but Cicero had seen that this would be a betrayal of his principles and his friends and had wisely refused. He did not want to be contaminated, and he knew as well as Caesar that the latter was protected by law only so long as he remained in office. Already there were many signs that the three allies were in very deep trouble: the two consuls whom they had earmarked to represent their interests in the following year were prevented from campaigning for office by the worthy Bibulus, who, as was fully his right, had the consular elections postponed. Caesar could feel the hatred of his enemies closing around him like a net; the city was becoming unsafe for him, and he moved outside the walls where he spent three months engaged in the preparations for his coming campaigns. As the law stood, once outside the walls his future governorship had begun and until it was over he could not be prosecuted for anything that had happened within the city.

Before he left it was essential to deal with his major enemies, as well as to secure a “friend” whose interests coincided with his own. This was the violent and profligate Clodius who was already indebted to him, and whom the triumvirate now managed to get elected as one of the tribunes for the following year. In this position he would serve them well, and he acted in their interests immediately by having Cicero indicted for the leading role he had played in the execution of the Catiline conspirators. Cicero knew well enough that this would mean banishment or worse, and he knew too that Clodius would stop at nothing. He fled abroad to distant Macedonia for safety. That was one great enemy of the triumvirate safely removed, and the next to go was Cato.

Clodius introduced a bill for the annexation of the kingdom of Cyprus to the empire, and Cato was the man chosen to deal with it. Although it is unlikely that he wanted to leave Rome at that moment, with Pompey and Crassus dominating the city and the senate and Clodius in a position of power, yet Cato could hardly refuse to go. It would have been an insult to the Roman people to reject such an offer, and so the crooked schemer had the upright man trapped. With these two enemies out of Rome, Caesar could leave.

His year as consul had enabled him to lay the foundations for his final rise, but he knew that only if he triumphed in Gaul and achieved so great a strength that he was almost unassailable could he ever return to the city. He also knew that he must keep in constant touch with friends in Rome, never making Pompey’s mistake but always keeping a watch over his shoulder. During the years of campaigning that were to follow, years during which the readers of his accounts might think (and were supposed to) that Caesar was totally concerned with fighting the enemy for the greater glory of Rome it was for the greater glory of himself.

He was now forty-three years old and ahead lay eight years of such harsh campaigning as would have taxed the strength of any young man. The youth who had appeared slight and almost delicate had evolved into an adult of such intense energy that he would wear out men far younger than himself, and was capable of an endurance that few in history can match. It is clear too that at the time he himself had no conception of how long he would be away in the field, nor of the extent of the territory into which his campaigns would lead him. After all, Narbonese Gaul had only come under his command as almost an afterthought and there was only one legion stationed in the province, plus the three legions that waited at Aquileia.

Transalpine Gaul had long been an area of concern to the Romans, for the danger to Italy from violent warrior tribes crossing the Alps was real and constant. Those famous opening words of the Gallic War which have haunted or reduced to tears generations of European schoolboys—”All Gaul is divided into three parts”—refer to the three main races who inhabited the area. These were the Gauls themselves, the Belgae and the Aquitani.

J. A. Froude has summarized the areas involved and the people that inhabited them:

 

The Transalpine Gaul of Caesar was the country included between the Rhine, the Ocean, the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean, and the Alps. Within these limits, including Switzerland, there was at this time a population vaguely estimated at six or seven millions. The Roman Province [Narbonese Gaul] stretched along the coast to the Spanish border; it was bounded on the north by the Cevennes mountains, and for some generations by the Isere; but it had been found necessary lately to annex the territory of the Allobroges (Dauphine and Savoy), and the proconsular authority was now extended to within a few miles of Geneva.