laid siege to Gergovia, their capital and the birthplace of
Vercingetorix.

The firmness and the ability of the Gallic chieftain were not inferior to
such a struggle.  He understood from the outset that he could not cope in
the open field with Caesar and the Roman legions; he therefore exerted
himself in getting together a body of cavalry numerous enough to harass
the Romans during their movements, to attack their scattered detachments,
to bear his orders swiftly to all quarters, and to keep up the excitement
amongst the different peoplets with some hope of success.  His plan of
campaign, his repeated instructions, his passionate entreaties to the
confederates were to avoid any general action, to anticipate by their own
ravages those of the Romans, to destroy everywhere, at the approach of
the enemy, stores, springs, bridges, trees, and habitations: he wanted
Caesar to find in his front nothing but ruins and clouds of warriors
relentless in pursuing him without getting within reach.  Frequently he
succeeded in obtaining from the people those painful sacrifices in the
interest of the common safety; as when the Biturigians (inhabitants of
the district of Bourges) burned in one day twenty of their towns or
villages.  Vercingetorix adjured them also to burn Avaricum (Bourges),
their capital; but they refused, and the capture of Avaricum, though
gallantly defended, justified the urgency of Vercingetorix, seeing that
it was an important success for Caesar and a serious blow for the Gauls.
Out of forty thousand combatants within the walls, it is said, scarcely
eight hundred escaped the slaughter and succeeded in joining
Vercingetorix, who had hovered continually in the neighborhood without
being able to offer the besieged any effectual assistance.  Nor was it
only against the Romans that he had to struggle; he had to fight amongst
his own people, against rivalry, mistrust, impatience, and
discouragement; he was accused of desiring, beyond everything, the
mastery; he was even suspected of keeping up, with the view of assuring
his own future, secret relations with Caesar; he was called upon to
attack the enemy in front, and so bring the war to a decisive issue.  It
is all very fine to be summoned by the popular voice to accomplish a
great and arduous work; but you cannot be, with impunity, the most
far-sighted, the most able, and the most in danger, because the most
devoted.  Vercingetorix was bearing the burden of his superiority and
influence, until he should suffer the penalty and pay with his life for
his patriotism and his glory.  He was approaching the happiest moment of
his enterprise and his destiny.  In spite of reverses, in spite of
Caesar's presence and activity, the insurrection was gaining ground and
strength; in the north, west, south-west, on the banks of the Rhine, the
Seine, and the Loire, the idea of Gallic nationality and the hope of
independence were spreading amongst people far removed from the centre of
the movement, and were bringing to Vercingetorix declarations of sympathy
or material re-enforcements.  An event of more importance took place in
the centre itself.  The AEduans, the most ancient allies and clients the
Romans had in Gaul, being divided amongst themselves, and feeling,
besides, the national instinct, ended, after much hesitation, by taking
part in the uprising.  Caesar, for all his care, could neither prevent
nor stifle this defection, which threatened to become contagious, and
detach from Rome the neighboring peoplets that were still faithful.
Caesar, engaged upon the siege of Gergovia, encountered an obstinate
resistance; whilst Vercingetorix, encamped on the heights which
surrounded his birthplace, everywhere embarrassed, sometimes attacked,
and incessantly threatened the Romans.  The eighth legion, drawn on one
day to make an imprudent assault, was repulsed, and lost forty-six of its
bravest centurions.  Caesar determined to raise the siege, and to
transfer the struggle to places where the population could be more safely
depended upon.  It was the first decisive check he had experienced in
Gaul, the first Gallic town he had been unable to take, the first
retrograde movement he had executed in the face of the Gallic insurgents
and their chieftain.  Vercingetorix could not and would not restrain his
joy; it seemed to him that the day had dawned and an excellent chance
arrived for attempting a decisive blow.  He had under his orders, it is
said, eighty thousand men, mostly his own Arvernians, and a numerous
cavalry furnished by the different peoplets his allies.  He followed all
Caesar's movements in retreat towards the Saone, and, on arriving at
Longeau not far from Langres, near a little river called the Vingeanne,
he halted, pitched his camp about nine miles from the Romans, and
assembling the chiefs of his cavalry, said, "Now is the hour of victory;
the Romans are flying to their province and leaving Gaul; that is enough
for our liberty to-day, but too little for the peace and repose of the
future; for they will return with greater armies, and the war will be
without end.  Attack we them amid the difficulties of their march; if
their foot support the cavalry, they will not be able to pursue their
route; if, as I fully trust, they leave their baggage, to provide for
their safety, they will lose both their honor and the supplies whereof
they have need.  None of the enemy's horse will dare to come forth from
their lines.  To give ye courage and aid, I will order forth from the
camp and place in battle array all our troops, and they will strike the
enemy with terror."  The Gallic horsemen cried out that they must all
bind themselves by the most sacred of oaths, and swear that none of them
would come again under roof, or see again wife, or children, or parent,
unless he had twice pierced through the ranks of the enemy.  And all did
take this oath, and so prepared for the attack.  Vercingetorix knew not
that Caesar, with his usual foresight, had summoned and joined to his
legions a great number of horsemen from the German tribes roving over the
banks of the Rhine, with which he had taken care to keep up friendly
relations.  Not only had he promised them pay, plunder, and lands, but,
finding their horses ill-trained, he had taken those of his officers,
even those of the Roman knights and veterans, and distributed them
amongst his barbaric auxiliaries.  The action began between the cavalry
on both sides; a portion of the Gallic had taken up position on the road
followed by the Roman army, to bar its passage; but whilst the fighting
at this point was getting more and more obstinate, the German horse in
Caesar's service gained a neighboring height, drove off the Gallic horse
that were in occupation, and pursued them as far as the river, near which
was Vercingetorix with his infantry.  Disorder took place amongst this
infantry so unexpectedly attacked.  Caesar launched his legions at them,
and there was a general panic and rout among the Gauls.  Vercingetorix
had great trouble in rallying them, and he rallied them only to order a
general retreat, for which they clamored.  Hurriedly striking his camp,
he made for Alesia (Semur in Auxois), a neighboring town and the capital
of the Mandubians, a peoplet in clientship to the AEduans.  Caesar
immediately went in pursuit of the Gauls; killed, he says, three
thousand, made important prisoners, and encamped with his legions before
Alesia the day but one after Vercingetorix, with his fugitive army, had
occupied the place as well as the neighboring hills, and was hard at work
intrenching himself, probably without any clear idea as yet of what he
should do to continue the struggle.

Caesar at once took a resolution as unexpected as it was discreetly bold.
Here was the whole Gallic insurrection, chieftain and soldiery, united
together within or beneath the walls of a town of moderate extent.  He
undertook to keep it there and destroy it on the spot, instead of having
to pursue it everywhere without ever being sure of getting at it.  He had
at his disposal eleven legions, about fifty thousand strong, and five or
six thousand cavalry, of which two thousand were Germans.  He placed them
round about Alesia and the Gallic camp, caused to be dug a circuit of
deep ditches, some filled with water, others bristling with palisades and
snares, and added, from interval to interval, twenty-three little forts,
occupied or guarded night and day by detachments.  The result was a line
of investment about ten miles in extent.  To the rear of the Roman camp,
and for defence against attacks from without, Caesar caused to be dug
similar intrenchments, which formed a line of circumvallation of about
thirteen miles.  The troops had provisions and forage for thirty days.
Vercingetorix made frequent sallies to stop or destroy these works; but
they were repulsed, and only resulted in getting his army more closely
cooped up within the place.  Eighty thousand Gallic insurgents were, as
it were, in prison, guarded by fifty thousand Roman soldiers.
Vercingetorix was one of those who persevere and act in the days of
distress just as in the spring-tide of their hopes.  Before the works of
the Romans were finished, he assembled his horsemen, and ordered them to
sally briskly from Alesia, return each to his own land, and summon the
whole population to arms.  He was obeyed; the Gallic horsemen made their
way, during the night, through the intervals left by the Romans' still
imperfect lines of investment, and dispersed themselves amongst their
various peoplets.  Nearly everywhere irritation and zeal were at their
height.  An assemblage of delegates met at Bibracte (Autun), and fixed
the amount of the contingent to be furnished by each nation, and a point
was assigned at which all those contingents should unite for the purpose
of marching together towards Alesia, and attacking the besiegers.  The
total of the contingents thus levied on forty-three Gallic peoplets
amounted, according to Caesar, to two hundred and eighty-three thousand
men; and two hundred and forty thousand men, it is said, did actually
hurry up to the appointed place.  Mistrust of such enormous numbers has
already been expressed by one who has lived through the greatest European
wars, and has heard the ablest generals reduce to their real strength the
largest armies.  We find in M. Thiers' _History of the Consulate_ and
Empire, that at Austerlitz, on the 2d of December, 1805, Napoleon had but
from sixty-five to seventy thousand men, and the combined Austrians and
Russians but ninety thousand.  At Leipzig, the biggest of modern battles,
when all the French forces on the one side, and the Austrian, Prussian,
Russian, and Swedish on the other, were face to face on the 18th of
October, 1813, they made all together about five hundred thousand men.
How can we believe, then, that nineteen centuries ago, Gaul, so weakly
populated and so slightly organized, suddenly sent two hundred and forty
thousand men to the assistance of eighty thousand Gauls besieged in the
little town of Alesia by fifty or sixty thousand Romans?  But whatever
may be the case with the figures, it is certain that at the very first
moment the national impulse answered the appeal of Vercingetorix, and
that the besiegers of Alesia, Caesar and his legions, found that they
were themselves all at once besieged in their intrenchments by a cloud of
Gauls hurrying up to the defence of their compatriots.  The struggle was
fierce, but short.  Every time that the fresh Gallic army attacked the
besiegers, Vercingetorix and the Gauls of Alesia sallied forth, and
joined in the attack.  Caesar and his legions, on their side, at one time
repulsed these double attacks, at another themselves took the initiative,
and assailed at one and the same time the besieged and the auxiliaries
Gaul had sent them.  The feeling was passionate on both sides: Roman
pride was pitted against Gallic patriotism.  But in four or five days the
strong organization, the disciplined valor of the Roman legions, and the
genius of Caesar carried the day.  The Gallic re-enforcements, beaten and
slaughtered without mercy, dispersed; and Vercingetorix and the besieged
were crowded back within their walls without hope of escape.  We have two
accounts of the last moments of this great Gallic insurrection and its
chief; one, written by Caesar himself, plain, cold, and harsh as its
author; the other, by two later historians, who were neither statesmen
nor warriors, Plutarch and Dion Cassius, has more detail and more
ornament, following either popular tradition or the imagination of the
writers.  It may be well to give both.  "The day after the defeat," says
Caesar, "Vercingetorix convokes the assembly, and shows that he did not
undertake the war for his own personal advantage, but for the general
freedom.  Since submission must be made to fortune, he offers to satisfy
the Romans either by instant death or by being delivered to them alive.
A deputation there anent is sent to Caesar, who orders the arms to be
given up and the chiefs brought to him.  He seats himself on his
tribunal, in the front of his camp.  The chiefs are brought,
Vercingetorix is delivered over; the arms are cast at Caesar's feet.
Except the AEduans and Arvernians, whom Caesar kept for the purpose of
trying to regain their people, he had the prisoners distributed, head by
head, to his army as booty of war."

[Illustration: Vercingetorix surrenders to Caesar----81]

The account of Dion Cassius is more varied and dramatic.  "After the
defeat," says he, "Vercingetorix, who was neither captured nor wounded,
might have fled; but, hoping that the friendship that had once bound him
to Caesar might gain him grace, he repaired to the Roman without previous
demand of peace by the voice of a herald, and appeared suddenly in his
presence, just as Caesar was seating himself upon his tribunal.  The
apparition of the Gallic chieftain inspired no little terror, for he was
of lofty stature, and had an imposing appearance in arms.  There was a
deep silence.  Vercingetorix fell at Caesar's feet, and made supplication
by touch of hand without speaking a word.  The scene moved those present
with pity, remembering the ancient fortunes of Vercingetorix and
comparing them with his present disaster.  Caesar, on the contrary, found
proof of criminality in the very memories relied upon for salvation,
contrasted the late struggle with the friendship appealed to by
Vercingetorix, and so put in a more hideous light the odiousness of his
conduct.  And thus, far from being moved by his misfortunes at the
moment, he threw him in chains forthwith, and subsequently had him put to
death, after keeping him to adorn his triumph."

Another historian, contemporary with Plutarch, Florus, attributes to
Vercingetorix, as he fell down and cast his arms at Caesar's feet, these
words: "Bravest of men, thou hast conquered a brave man."  It is not
necessary to have faith in the rhetorical compliment, or to likewise
reject the mixture of pride and weakness attributed to Vercingetorix in
the account of Dion Cassius.  It would not be the only example of a hero
seeking yet some chance of safety in the extremity of defeat, and abasing
himself for the sake of preserving at any price a life on which fortune
might still smile.  However it be, Vercingetorix vanquished, dragged out,
after ten years' imprisonment, to grace Caesar's triumph, and put to
death immediately afterwards, lives as a glorious patriot in the pages of
that history in which Caesar appears, on this occasion, as a peevish
conqueror who took pleasure in crushing, with cruel disdain, the enemy he
had been at so much pains to conquer.

Alesia taken, and Vercingetorix a prisoner, Gaul was subdued.  Caesar,
however, had in the following year (A. U. C.  703) a campaign to make to
subjugate some peoplets who tried to maintain their local independence.
A year afterwards, again, attempts at insurrection took place in Belgica,
and towards the mouth of the Loire; but they were easily repressed; they
had no national or formidable characteristics; Caesar and his lieutenants
willingly contented themselves with an apparent submission, and in the
year 705 A. U. C.  the Roman legions, after nine years' occupation in the
conquest of Gaul, were able to depart therefrom to Italy and the East for
a plunge into civil war.





CHAPTER V.----GAUL UNDER ROMAN DOMINION.

From the conquest of Gaul by Caesar, to the establishment there of the
Franks under Clovis, she remained for more than five centuries under
Roman dominion; first under the pagan, afterwards under the Christian
empire.  In her primitive state of independence she had struggled for ten
years against the best armies and the greatest man of Rome; after five
centuries of Roman dominion she opposed no resistance to the invasion of
the barbarians, Germans, Goths, Alans, Burgundians, and Franks, who
destroyed bit by bit the Roman empire.  In this humiliation and, one
might say, annihilation of a population so independent, so active, and so
valiant at its first appearance in history, is to be seen the
characteristic of this long epoch.  It is worth while to learn and to
understand how it was.

[Illustration: Gaul subjugated by the Romans----83]

Gaul lived, during those five centuries, under very different rules and
rulers.  They may be summed up under five names, which correspond with
governments very unequal in merit and defect, in good and evil wrought
for their epoch:

1st, the Caesars from Julius to Nero (from 49 B.C. to A.D. 68);
2d, the Flavians, from Vespasian to Domitian (from A.D. 69 to 95);
3d, the Antonines, from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius (from A.D. 96 to 180);
4th, the imperial anarchy, or the thirty-nine emperors and the thirty-one
tyrants, from Commodus to Carinus and Numerian (from A.D. 180 to 284);
5th, Diocletian (from A.D. 284 to 305).

Through all these governments, and in spite of their different results
for their contemporary subjects, the fact already pointed out as the
general and definitive characteristic of that long epoch, to wit, the
moral and social decadence of Gaul as well as of the Roman empire, never
ceased to continue and spread.

On quitting conquered Gaul to become master at Rome, Caesar neglected
nothing to assure his conquest and make it conducive to the establishment
of his empire.  He formed, of all the Gallic districts that he had
subjugated, a special province which received the name of Gallia Comata
(Gaul of the long-hair), whilst the old province was called Gallia Toyata
(Gaul of the toga).  Caesar caused to be enrolled amongst his troops a
multitude of Gauls, Belgians, Arvernians, and Aquitanians, of whose
bravery he had made proof.  He even formed, almost entirely of Gauls, a
special legion called Alauda (lark), because it bore on the helmets a
lark with outspread wings, the symbol of wakefulness.  At the same time
he gave in Gallia Comata, to the towns and families that declared for
him, all kinds of favors, the rights of Roman citizenship, the title of
allies, clients, and friends, even to the extent of the Julian name, a
sign of the most powerful Roman patronage.  He had, however, in the old
Roman province, formidable enemies, especially the town of Marseilles,
which declared against him and for Pompey.  Caesar had the place besieged
by one of his lieutenants, got possession of it, caused to be delivered
over to him its vessels and treasure, and left in it a garrison of two
legions.  He established at Narbonne, Arles, Biterrce (Beziers) three
colonies of veteran legionaries devoted to his cause, and near Antipolis
(Antibes) a maritime colony called Forum Julii, nowadays Frejus, of which
he proposed to make a rival to Marseilles.  Much money was necessary to
meet the expenses of such patronage and to satisfy the troops, old and
new, of the conqueror of Gaul and Rome.  Now there was at Rome an ancient
treasure, founded more than four centuries previously by the Dictator
Camillus, when he had delivered Rome from the Gauls--a treasure reserved
for the expenses of Gallic wars, and guarded with religious respect as
sacred money.  In the midst of all discords and disorders at Rome, none
had touched it.  After his return from Gaul, Caesar one day ascended the
Capitol with his soldiers, and finding, in the temple of Saturn, the door
closed of the place where the treasure was deposited, ordered it to be
forced.  L. Metellus, tribune of the people, made strong opposition,
conjuring Caesar not to bring on the Republic the penalty of such
sacrilege: but "the Republic has nothing to fear," said Caesar; "I have
released it from its oaths by subjugating Gaul.  There are no more
Gauls."  He caused the door to be forced, and the treasure was abstracted
and distributed to the troops, Gallic and Roman.  Whatever Caesar may
have said, there were still Gauls, for at the same time that he was
distributing to such of them as he had turned into his own soldiers the
money reserved for the expense of fighting them, he was imposing upon
Gallia Comata, under the name of stipendium (soldier's pay), a levy of
forty millions of sesterces--a considerable amount for a devastated
country which, according to Plutarch, did not contain at that time more
than three millions of inhabitants, and almost equal to that of the
levies paid by the rest of the Roman provinces.

After Caesar, Augustus, left sole master of the Roman world, assumed in
Gaul, as elsewhere, the part of pacificator, repairer, conservator, and
organizer, whilst taking care, with all his moderation, to remain always
the master.  He divided the provinces into imperial and senatorial,
reserving to himself the entire government of the former, and leaving the
latter under the authority of the senate.  Gaul "of the long hair," all
that Caesar had conquered, was imperial province.  Augustus divided it
into three provinces, Lugdunensian (Lyonese), Belgian, and Aquitanian.
He recognized therein sixty nations or distinct cityships which continued
to have themselves the government of their own affairs, according to their
traditions and manners, whilst conforming to the general laws of the
empire, and abiding under the supervision of imperial governors, charged
with maintaining everywhere, in the words of Pliny the Younger, "the
majesty of Roman peace."  Luydunum (Lyons), which had been up to that
time of small importance and obscure, became the great town, the favorite
cityship and ordinary abiding-place of the emperors when they visited
Gaul.  After having held at Narbonne (27 B.C.) a meeting of
representatives from the different Gallic nations, Augustus went several
times to Lyons, and even lived there, as it appears, a pretty long while,
to superintend, no doubt, from thence, and to get into working order the
new government of Gaul.  After the departure of Augustus, his adopted son
Drusus, who had just fulfilled, in Belgica and on the Rhine, a mission at
the same time military and administrative, called together at Lyons
delegates from the sixty Gallic cityships, to take part (B.C.12 or 10) in
the inauguration of a magnificent monument raised, at the confluence of
the Rhone and Saone, in honor of Rome and Augustus as the tutelary
deities of Gaul.  In the middle of a vast enclosure was placed a huge
altar of white marble, on which were engraved the names of the sixty
cityships "of the long hair."  A colossal statue of the Gauls and sixty
statues of the Gallic cityships occupied the enclosure.  Two columns of
granite, twenty-five feet high, stood close by the altar, and were
surmounted by two colossal Victories, in white marble, ten feet high.
Solemn festivals, gymnastic games, and oratorical and literary
exercitations accompanied the inauguration; and during the ceremony it
was announced, amidst popular acclamation, that a son had just been born
to Drusus at Lyons itself, in the palace of the emperor, where the
child's mother, Antonia, daughter of Marc Antony and Octavia (sister of
Augustus), had been staying for some months.  This child was one day to
be the emperor Claudius.

[Illustration: FROM LA CROIX ROUSSE----86]

The administrative energy of Augustus was not confined to the erection of
monuments and to festivals; he applied himself to the development in Gaul
of the material elements of civilization and social order.  His most
intimate and able adviser, Agrippa, being settled at Lyons as governor of
the Gauls, caused to be opened four great roads, starting from a
milestone placed in the middle of the Lyonnese forum, and going, one
centrewards to Saintes and the ocean, another southwards to Narbonne and
the Pyrenees, the third north-westwards and towards the Channel by Amiens
and Boulogne, and the fourth north-westwards and towards the Rhine.
Agrippa founded several colonies, amongst others Cologne, which bore his
name; and he admitted to Gallic territory bands of Germans who asked for
an establishment there.  Thanks to public security, Romans became
proprietors in the Gallic provinces and introduced to them Italian
cultivation.  The Gallic chieftains, on their side, began to cultivate
lands which had become their personal property.  Towns were built or grew
apace and became encircled by ramparts, under protection of which the
populations came and placed themselves.  The most learned and attentive
observer of nature and Roman society, Pliny the Elder, attests that under
Augustus Gallic agriculture and industry made vast progress.

But side by side with this work in the cause of civilization and
organization, Augustus and his Roman agents were pursuing a work of quite
a contrary tendency.  They labored to extirpate from Gaul the spirit of
nationality, independence, and freedom; they took every pains to efface
everywhere Gallic memories and sentiments.  Gallic towns were losing
their old and receiving Roman names: Augustonemetum, Augusta, and
Augustodunum took the place of Gergovia, Noviodunum, and Bibracte.  The
national Gallic religion, which was Druidism, was attacked as well as the
Gallic fatherland, with the same design and by the same means; at one
time Augustus prohibited this worship amongst the Gauls converted into
Roman citizens, as being contrary to Roman belief; at another Roman
Paganism and Gallic Druidism were fused together in the same temples and
at the same altars, as if to fuse them in the same common indifference;
Roman and Gallic names became applied to the same religious
personification of such and such a fact or such and such an idea; Mars
and Camul were equally the god of war; Belen and Apollo the god of light
and healing; Diana and Arduinna the goddess of the chase.  Everywhere,
whether it was a question of the terrestrial fatherland or of religious
faith, the old moral machinery of the Gauls was broken up or condemned to
rust, and no new moral machinery was allowed to replace it; it was
everywhere Roman and imperial authority that was substituted for the
free, national action of the Gauls.

It is incredible that this hostility on the part of the powers that be
towards moral sentiments, and this absence of freedom, should not have
gravely compromised the material interest of the Gallic population.
Public administration, however extensive its organization and energy, if
it be not under the superintendence and restraint of public freedom and
morality, soon falls into monstrous abuses, which itself is either
ignorant of or wittingly suffers.  Examples of this evil, inherent in
despotism, abound even under the intelligent and watchful sway of
Augustus.  Here is a case in point.  He had appointed as procurator, that
is, financial commissioner, in "long-haired" Gaul, a native who, having
been originally a slave and afterwards set free by Julius Caesar, had
taken the Roman name of Licinius.  This man gave himself up, during his
administration, to a course of the most shameless extortion.  The taxes
were collected monthly; and so, taking advantage of the change of name
which flattery had caused in the two months of July and August, sacred to
Julius Caesar and Augustus respectively, he made his year consist of
fourteen months, so that he might squeeze out fourteen contributions
instead of twelve.  "December," said he, "is surely, as its name
indicates, the tenth month of the year," and he added thereto, in honor
of the emperor, two others which he called the eleventh and twelfth.
During one of the trips which Augustus made into Gaul, strong complaints
were made against Licinius, and his robberies were denounced to the
emperor.  Augustus dared not support him, and seemed upon the point of
deciding to bring him to justice, when Licinius conducted him to the
place where was deposited all the treasure he had extorted, and, "See, my
lord," said he, "what I have laid up for thee and for the Roman people,
for fear lest the Gauls possessing so much gold should employ it against
you both; for thee I have kept it, and to thee I deliver it."  (Thierry,
_Histoire des Gaulois,_ t. iii.  p. 295; Clerjon, _Histoire de Lyon,_
t. i.  p. 178-180.) Augustus accepted the treasure, and Licinius remained
unpunished.  In the case of financial abuses or other acts, absolute
power seldom resists such temptations.

We may hear it said, and we may read in the writings of certain modern
philosophers and scholars, that the victorious despotism of the Roman
empire was a necessary and salutary step in advance, and that it brought
about the unity and enfranchisement of the human race.  Believe it not.
There is mingled good and evil in all the events and governments of this
world, and good often arises side by side with or in the wake of evil,
but it is never from the evil that the good comes; injustice and tyranny
have never produced good fruits.  Be assured that whenever they have the
dominion, whenever the moral rights and personal liberties of men are
trodden under foot by material force, be it barbaric or be it scientific,
there can result only prolonged evils and deplorable obstacles to the
return of moral right and moral force, which, God be thanked, can never
he obliterated from the nature and the history of man.  The despotic
imperial administration upheld for a long while the Roman empire, and not
without renown; but it corrupted, enervated, and impoverished the Roman
populations, and left them, after five centuries, as incapable of
defending themselves as they were of governing.

Tiberius pursued in Gaul, but with less energy and less care for the
provincial administration, the pacific and moderate policy of Augustus.
He had to extinguish in Belgica, and even in the Lyonnese province, two
insurrections kindled by the sparks that remained of national and Druidic
spirit.  He repressed them effectually, and without any violent display
of vengeance.  He made a trip to Gaul, took measures, quite insufficient,
however, for defending the Rhine frontier from the incessantly repeated
incursions of the Germans, and hastened back to Italy to resume the
course of suspicion, perfidy, and cruelty which he pursued against the
republican pride and moral dignity remaining amongst a few remnants of
the Roman senate.  He was succeeded by Germanicus' unworthy son,
Caligula.  After a few days of hypocrisy on the part of the emperor, and
credulous hope on that of the people, they found a madman let loose to
take the place of an unfathomable and gloomy tyrant.  Caligula was much
taken up with Gaul, plundering it and giving free rein in it to his
frenzies, by turns disgusting or ridiculous.  In a short and fruitless
campaign on the banks of the Rhine, he had made too few prisoners for the
pomp of a triumph; he therefore took some Gauls, the tallest he could
find, of triumphal size, as he said, put them in German clothes, made
them learn some Teutonic words, and sent them away to Rome to await in
prison his return and his ovation.  Lyons, where he staid some time, was
the scene of his extortions and strangest freaks.  He was playing at dice
one day with some of his courtiers, and lost; he rose, sent for the
tax-list of the province, marked down for death and confiscation some of
those who were most highly rated, and said to the company, "You people,
you play for a few drachmas; but as for me, I have just won by a single
throw one hundred and fifty millions."  At the rumor of a plot hatched
against him in Italy, by some Roman nobles, he sent for and sold,
publicly, their furniture, jewels, and slaves.  As the sale was a
success, he extended it to the old furniture of his own palaces in Italy:
"I wish to fit out the Gauls," said he; "it is a mark of friendship I owe
to the brave performed the part Roman people."  He himself, at these
sales, performed the part of salesman and auctioneer, telling the history
of each article to enhance the price.  "This belonged to my father,
Germanicus; that comes to me from Agrippa; this vase is Egyptian, it was
Antony's, Augustus took it at the battle of Actium."  The imperial sales
were succeeded by literary games, at which the losers had to pay the
expenses of the prizes, and celebrate, in verse or prose, the praises of
the winners; and if their compositions were pronounced bad, they were
bound to wipe them out with a sponge or even with their tongues, unless
they preferred to be beaten with a rod or soused in the Rhone.  One day,
when Caligula, in the character of Jupiter, was seated at his tribunal
and delivering oracles in the middle of the public thoroughfare, a man of
the people remained motionless in front of him, with eyes of astonishment
fixed upon him.  "What seem I to thee?" asked the emperor, flattered, no
doubt, by this attention of the mob.  "A great monstrosity," answered the
Gaul.  And that, at the end of about four years, was the universal cry:
and against a mad emperor the only resource of the Roman world was at
that time assassination.  The captain of Caligula's guards rid Rome and
the provinces of him.

He did just one sensible and useful thing during the whole of his stay in
Gaul: he had a light-house constructed to illumine the passage between
Gaul and Great Britain.  Some traces of it, they say, have been
discovered.

His successor, Claudius, brother of the great Germanicus, and married to
his own niece, the second Agrippina, was, as has been already stated,
born at Lyons, at the very moment when his father, Drusus, was
celebrating there the erection of an altar to Augustus.  During his whole
reign he showed to the city of his birth the most lively good-will, and
the constant aim as well as principal result of this good-will was to
render the city of Lyons more and more Roman by effacing all Gallic
characteristics and memories.  She was endowed with Roman rights,
monuments, and names, the most important or the most ostentatious; she
became the colony supereminently, the great municipal town of the Gauls,
the Claudian town; but she lost what had remained of her old municipal
government, that is of her administrative and commercial independence.
Nor was she the only one in Gaul to experience the good-will of Claudius.
This emperor, the mark of scorn from his infancy, whom his mother,
Antonia, called "a shadow of a man, an unfinished sketch of nature's
drawing," and of whom his grand-uncle, Augustus, used to say, "We shall
be forever in doubt, without any certainty of knowing whether he be or be
not equal to public duties," Claudius, the most feeble indeed of the
Caesars, in body, mind, and character, was nevertheless he who had
intermittent glimpses of the most elevated ideas and the most righteous
sentiments, and who strove the most sincerely to make them take the form
of deeds.  He undertook to assure to all free men of "long-haired" Gaul
the same Roman privileges that were enjoyed by the inhabitants of Lyons;
and amongst others, that of entering the senate of Rome and holding the
great public offices.  He made a formal proposal to that effect to the
senate, and succeeded, not without difficulty, in getting it adopted.
The speech that he delivered on this occasion has been to a great extent
preserved to us, not only in the summary given by Tacitus, but also in an
inscription on a bronze tablet, which split into many fragments at the
time of the destruction of the building in which it was placed.  The two
principal fragments were discovered at Lyons, in 1528, and they are now
deposited in the Museum of that city.  They fully confirm the most
equitable, and, it may be readily allowed, the most liberal act of policy
that emanated from the earlier Roman emperors.  "Claudius had taken it
into his head," says Seneca, "to see all Greeks, Gauls, Spaniards, and
Britons clad in the toga."  But at the same time he took great care to
spread everywhere the Latin tongue, and to make it take the place of the
different national idioms.  A Roman citizen, originally of Asia Minor,
and sent on a deputation to Rome by his compatriots, could not answer in
Latin the emperor's questions.  Claudius took away his privileges,
saying, "He is no Roman citizen who is ignorant of the language of Rome."

Claudius, however, was neither liberal nor humane towards a notable
portion of the Gallic populations, to wit, the Druids.  During his stay
in Gaul he proscribed them and persecuted them without intermission;
forbidding, under pain of death, their form of worship and every exterior
sign of their ceremonies.  He drove them away and pursued them even into
Great Britain, whither he conducted, A.D. 43, a military expedition,
almost the only one of his reign, save the continued struggle of his
lieutenants on the Rhine against the Germans.  It was evidently amongst
the corporation of Druids and under the influence of religious creeds and
traditions, that there was still pursued and harbored some of the old
Gallic spirit, some passion for national independence, and some hatred of
the Roman yoke.  In proportion as Claudius had been popular in Gaul did
his adopted son and successor, Nero, quickly become hated.  There is
nothing to show that he even went thither, either on the business of
government or to obtain the momentary access of favor always excited in
the mob by the presence and prestige of power.  It was towards Greece and
the East that a tendency was shown in the tastes and trips of Nero,
imperial poet, musician, and actor.  L. Verus, one of the military
commandants in Belgica, had conceived a project of a canal to unite the
Moselle to the Saone, and so the Mediterranean to the ocean; but
intrigues in the province and the palace prevented its execution, and in
the place of public works useful to Gaul, Nero caused a new census to be
made of the population whom he required to squeeze to pay for his
extravagance.  It was in his reign, as is well known, that a fierce fire
consumed a great part of Rome and her monuments.  The majority of
historians accuse Nero of having himself been the cause of it; but at any
rate he looked on with cynical indifference, as if amused at so grand a
spectacle, and taking pleasure in comparing it to the burning of Troy.
He did more: he profited by it so far as to have built for himself, free
of expense, that magnificent palace called "The Palace of Gold," of which
he said, when he saw it completed, "At last I am going to be housed as a
man should be."  Five years before the burning of Rome, Lyons had been a
prey to a similar scourge, and Seneca wrote to his friend Lucilius,
"Lugdunum, which was one of the show-places of Gaul, is sought for in
vain to-day; a single night sufficed for the disappearance of a vast
city; it perished in less time than I take to tell the tale."  Nero gave
upwards of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars towards the
reconstruction of Lyons, a gift that gained him the city's gratitude,
which was manifested, it is said, when his fall became imminent.  It was,
however, J. Vindex, a Gaul of Vienne, governor of the Lyonnese province,
who was the instigator of the insurrection which was fatal to Nero, and
which put Galba in his place.

When Nero was dead there was no other Caesar, no naturally indicated
successor to the empire.  The influence of the name of Caesar had spent
itself in the crimes, madnesses, and incapacity of his descendants.  Then
began a general search for emperors; and the ambition to be created
spread abroad amongst the men of note in the Roman world.  During the
eighteen months that followed the death of Nero, three pretenders--Galba,
Otho, and Vitellius--ran this formidable risk.  Galba was a worthy old
Roman senator, who frankly said, "If the vast body of the empire could be
kept standing in equilibrium without a head, I were worthy of the chief
place in the state."  Otho and Vitellius were two epicures, both indolent
and debauched, the former after an elegant, and the latter after a
beastly fashion.  Galba was raised to the purple by the Lyonnese and
Narbonnese provinces, Vitellius by the legions cantoned in the Belgic
province: to such an extent did Gaul already influence the destinies of
Rome.  All three met disgrace and death within the space of eighteen
months; and the search for an emperor took a turn towards the East, where
the command was held by Vespasian (Titus Flavius Vespasianus, of Rieti in
the duchy of Spoleto), a general sprung from a humble Italian family, who
had won great military distinction, and who, having been proclaimed first
at Alexandria, in Judea, and at Antioch, did not arrive until many
months afterwards at Rome, where he commenced the twenty-six years' reign
of the Flavian family.

Neither Vespasian nor his sons, Titus and Domitian, visited Gaul, as
their predecessors had.  Domitian alone put in a short appearance.  The
eastern provinces of the empire and the wars on the frontier of the
Danube, towards which the invasions of the Germans were at that time
beginning to be directed, absorbed the attention of the new emperors.
Gaul was far, however, from remaining docile and peaceful at this epoch.
At the vacancy that occurred after Nero and amid the claims of various
pretenders, the authority of the Roman name and the pressure of the
imperial power diminished rapidly; and the memory and desire of
independence were reawakened.  In Belgica the German peoplets, who had
been allowed to settle on the left bank of the Rhine, were very
imperfectly subdued, and kept up close communication with the independent
peoplets of the right bank.  The eight Roman legions cantoned in that
province were themselves much changed; many barbarians had been enlisted
amongst them, and did gallant service; but they were indifferent, and
always ready for a new master and a new country.  There were not wanting
symptoms, soon followed by opportunities for action, of this change in
sentiment and fact.  In the very centre of Gaul, between the Loire and
the Allier, a peasant, who has kept in history his Gallic name of Marie
or Maricus, formed a band, and scoured the country, proclaiming national
independence.  He was arrested by the local authorities and handed over
to Vitellius, who had him thrown to the beasts.  But in the northern part
of Belgica, towards the mouths of the Rhine, where a Batavian peoplet
lived, a man of note amongst his compatriots and in the service of the
Romans, amongst whom he had received the name of Claudius Civilis,
embraced first secretly, and afterwards openly, the cause of
insurrection.  He had vengeance to take for Nero's treatment, who had
caused his brother, Julius Paulus, to be beheaded, and himself to be put
in prison, whence he had been liberated by Galba.  He made a vow to let
his hair grow until he was revenged.  He had but one eye, and gloried in
the fact, saying that it had been so with Hannibal and with Sertorius,
and that his highest aspiration was to be like them.  He pronounced first
for Vitellius against Otho, then for Vespasian against Vitellius, and
then for the complete independence of his nation against Vespasian.  He
soon had, amongst the Germans on the two banks of the Rhine and amongst
the Gauls themselves, secret or declared allies.  He was joined by a
young Gaul from the district of Langres, Julius Sabinus, who boasted
that, during the great war with the Gauls, his great-grandmother had
taken the fancy of Julius Caesar, and that he owed his name to him.  News
had just reached Gaul of the burning down, for the second time, of the
Capitol during the disturbances at Rome on the death of Nero.  The Druids
came forth from the retreats where they had hidden since Claudius'
proscription, and reappeared in the towns and country-places, proclaiming
that "the Roman empire was at an end, that the Gallic empire was
beginning, and that the day had come when the possession of all the world
should pass into the hands of the Transalpine nations."  The insurgents
rose in the name of the Gallic empire, and Julius Sabinus assumed the
title of Caesar.  War commenced.  Confusion, hesitation, and actual
desertion reached the colonies and extended positively to the Roman
legions.  Several towns, even Troves and Cologne, submitted or fell into
the hands of the insurgents.  Several legions, yielding to bribery,
persuasion, or intimidation, went over to them, some with a bad grace,
others with the blood of their officers on their hands.  The gravity of
the situation was not misunderstood at Rome.  Petilius Cerealis, a
commander of renown for his campaigns on the Rhine, was sent off to
Belgica with seven fresh legions.  He was as skilful in negotiation and
persuasion as he was in battle.  The struggle that ensued was fierce, but
brief; and nearly all the towns and legions that had been guilty of
defection returned to their Roman allegiance.  Civilis, though not more
than half vanquished, himself asked leave to surrender.  The Batavian
might, as was said at the time, have inundated the country, and drowned
the Roman armies.  Vespasian, therefore, not being inclined to drive men
or matters to extremity, gave Civilis leave to go into retirement and
live in peace amongst the marshes of his own land.  The Gallic chieftains
alone, the projectors of a Gallic empire, were rigorously pursued and
chastised.  There was especially one, Julius Sabinus, the pretended
descendant of Julius Caesar, whose capture was heartily desired.  After
the ruin of his hopes he took refuge in some vaults connected with one of
his country houses.  The way in was known only to two devoted freedmen of
his, who set fire to the buildings, and spread a report that Sabinus had
poisoned himself, and that his dead body had been devoured by the flames.
He had a wife, a young Gaul named Eponina, who was in frantic despair at
the rumor; but he had her informed, by the mouth of one of his freedmen,
of his place of concealment, begging her at the same time to keep up a
show of widowhood and mourning, in order to confirm the report already in
circulation.  "Well did she play her part," to use Plutarch's expression,
"in her tragedy of woe."  She went at night to visit her husband in his
retreat, and departed at break of day; and at last would not depart at
all.  At the end of seven months, hearing great talk of Vespasian's
clemency, she set out for Rome, taking with her her husband, disguised as
a slave, with shaven head and a dress that made him unrecognizable.  But
the friends who were in their confidence advised them not to risk as yet
the chance of imperial clemency, and to return to their secret asylum.
There they lived for nine years, during which "as a lioness in her den,
neither more nor less," says Plutarch, "Eponina gave birth to two young
whelps, and suckled them herself at her teat."  At last they were
discovered and brought before Vespasian at Rome: "Caesar," said Eponina,
showing him her children, "I conceived them and suckled them in a tomb,
that there might be more of us to ask thy mercy."

[Illustration: Eponina and Sabinus hidden in a Vault----97]

But Vespasian was merciful only from prudence, and not by nature or from
magnanimity; and he sent Sabinus to execution.  Eponina asked that she
might die with her husband, saying, "Caesar, do me this grace; for I have
lived more happily beneath the earth and in the darkness than thou in the
splendor of thy empire."  Vespasian fulfilled her desire by sending her
also to execution; and Plutarch, their contemporary, undoubtedly
expressed the general feeling, when he ended his tale with the words,
"In all the long reign of this emperor there was no deed so cruel or so
piteous to see; and he was afterwards punished for it, for in a short
time all his posterity was extinct."

In fact the Caesars and the Flavians met the same fate; the two lines
began and ended alike; the former with Augustus and Nero, the latter with
Vespasian and Domitian; first a despot, able, cold, and as capable of
cruelty as of moderation, then a tyrant, atrocious and detested.  And
both were extinguished without a descendant.  Then a rare piece of good
fortune befell the Roman world.  Domitian, two years before he was
assassinated by some of his servants whom he was about to put to death,
grew suspicious of an aged and honorable senator, Cocceius Nerva, who had
been twice consul, and whom he had sent into exile, first to Tarenturn,
and then in Gaul, preparatory, probably, to a worse fate.  To this victim
of proscription application was made by the conspirators who had just got
rid of Domitian, and had to get another emperor.  Nerva accepted, but not
without hesitation, for he was sixty-four years old; he had witnessed the
violent death of six emperors, and his grandfather, a celebrated jurist,
and for a long while a friend of Tiberius, had killed himself, it is
said, for grief at the iniquitous and cruel government of his friend.
The short reign of Nerva was a wise, a just, and a humane, but a sad one,
not for the people, but for himself.  He maintained peace and order,
recalled exiles, suppressed informers, re-established respect for laws
and morals, turned a deaf ear to self-interested suggestions of
vengeance, spoliation, and injustice, proceeding at one time from those
who had made him emperor, at another from the Praetorian soldiers and the
Roman mob, who regretted Domitian just as they had Nero.  But Nerva did
not succeed in putting a stop to mob-violence or murders prompted by
cupidity or hatred.  Finding his authority insulted and his life
threatened, he formed a resolution which has been described and explained
by a learned and temperate historian of the last century, Lenain de
Tillemont (_Histoire des Empereurs,_ &c., t. ii.  p. 59), with so much
justice and precision that it is a pleasure to quote his own words.
"Seeing," says he, "that his age was despised, and that the empire
required some one who combined strength of mind and body, Nerva, being
free from that blindness which prevents one from discussing and measuring
one's own powers, and from that thirst for dominion which often prevails
over even those who are nearest to the grave, resolved to take a partner
in the sovereign power, and showed his wisdom by making choice of
Trajan."  By this choice, indeed, Nerva commenced and inaugurated the
finest period of the Roman empire, the period that contemporaries
entitled the golden age, and that history has named the age of the
Antonines.  It is desirable to become acquainted with the real character