ere else to come
in for active service. Unquiet neighbours on the frontier, Germans and
Helvetians, were threatening invasion, and would have to be repelled.
And this would give the Pro-consul the chance of doing what Caesar
specially desired, of raising and training an army which he might make
as devoted to himself as were Pompey's veterans to their brilliant
chieftain--the hero "as beautiful as he was brave, as good as he was
beautiful." Without such a force Caesar foresaw that all his efforts
to redress the abuses of the State would be in vain. As Consul he had
carried certain small instalments of reform; but they had made him
more hated than ever by the classes at whose corruption they were
aimed, and might any day be overthrown. And neither Pompey nor Crassus
were in any way to be depended upon for his plans in this direction.

A. 9.--Events proved kinder to him than he could have hoped. His
ill-wishers at Rome actually aided his preparations for war; for
Caesar had not yet gained any special military reputation, while
the barbarians whom he was to meet had a very high one, and might
reasonably be expected to destroy him. And the Helvetian peril proved
of such magnitude that he had every excuse for making a much larger
levy than there was any previous prospect of his securing. On the
surpassing genius with which he manipulated the weapon thus put into
his hand there is no need to dwell. Suffice it to say that in spite
of overwhelming superiority in numbers, courage yet more signal, a
stronger individual physique, and arms as effective, his foes one
after another vanished before him. Helvetians, Germans, Belgians,
were not merely conquered, but literally annihilated, as often as they
ventured to meet him, and in less than three years the whole of Gaul
was at his feet.

SECTION B.

Sea-fight with Veneti and Britons--Pretexts for invading
Britain--British dominion of Divitiacus--Gallic tribes in
Britain--Atrebates--Commius.

B. 1.--One of the last tribes to be subdued (in B.C. 56) was that
which, as the chief seafaring race of Gaul, had the most intimate
relations with Britain, the Veneti, or men of Vannes, who dwelt in
what is now Brittany.[68] These enterprising mariners had developed a
form of vessel fitted to cope with the stormy Chops of the Channel on
lines exactly opposite to those of the British "curraghs."[69] Instead
of being so light as to rise to every lift of the waves, and with
frames so flexib