f Caesar's proceedings there can be no doubt. "The
tribunitian veto was interposed; Caesar contented himself with
disregarding it."[248] This is quoted from the German historian, who
intends to leave an impression that Caesar was great and wise in all that
he did; and who tells us also of the "obstinate, weak creature Bibulus,"
and of "the dogmatical fool Cato." I doubt whether there was anything of
true popular ferment, or that there was any commotion except that which
was made by the "roughs" who had attached themselves for pay to Caesar or
to Pompey, or to Crassus, or, as it might be, to Bibulus and the other
leaders. The violence did not amount to more than "nearly" killing this
man or the other. Some Roman street fights were no doubt more bloody--as
for instance that in which, seven years afterward, Clodius was
slaughtered by Milo--but the blood was made to flow, not by the people,
but by hired bravoes. The Roman citizens of the day were, I think, very
quiescent. Neither pride nor misery stirred them much. Caesar, perceiving
this, was aware that he might disregard Bibulus and his auguries so long
as he had a band of ruffians around him sufficient for the purposes of
the hour. It was in order that he might thus prevail that the coalition
had been made with Pompey and Crassus. His colleague Bibulus, seeing how
matters were going, retired to his own house, and there went through a
farce of consular enactments. Caesar carried all his purposes, and the
people were content to laugh, dividing him into two personages, and
talking of Julius and Caesar as the two Consuls of the year. It was in
this way that he procured to be allotted to him by the people his
irregular command in Gaul. He was to be Proconsul, not for one year,
with perhaps a prolongation for two or three, but for an established
period of five. He was to have the great province of Cisalpine
Gaul--that is to say, the whole of what we now call Italy, from the foot
of the Alps down to a line running from sea to sea just north of
Florence. To this Transalpine Gaul was afterward added. The province so
named, possessed at the time by the Romans, was called "Narbonensis," a
country comparatively insignificant, running from the Alps to the
Pyrenees along the Mediterranean. The Gaul or Gallia of which Caesar
speaks when, in the opening words of his Commentary, he tells us that it
was divided into three parts, was altogether beyond the Roman province
which was assigned to