him. Caesar, when he undertook his government, can
hardly have dreamed of subjecting to Roman rule the vast territories
which were then known as Gallia, beyond the frontiers of the Empire, and
which we now call France.

But he caused himself to be supported by an enormous army. There were
stationed three legions on the Italian side of the Alps, and one on the
other. These were all to be under his command for five years certain,
and amounted to a force of not less than thirty thousand men. "As no
troops could constitutionally be stationed in Italy proper, the
commander of the legions of Northern Italy and Gaul," says Mommsen,
"dominated at the same time Italy and Rome for the next five years; and
he who was master for five years was master for life."[249]

[Sidenote: B.C. 59, aetat. 48.]

Such was the condition of Rome during the second year of the
Triumvirate, in which Caesar was Consul and prepared the way for the
powers which he afterward exercised. Cicero would not come to his call;
and therefore, as we are told, Clodius was let loose upon him. As he
would not come to Caesar's call, it was necessary that he should be
suppressed, and Clodius, notwithstanding all constitutional
difficulties--nay, impossibilities--was made Tribune of the people.
Things had now so far advanced with a Caesar that a Cicero who would not
come to his call must be disposed of after some fashion.

Till we have thought much of it, often of it, till we have looked
thoroughly into it, we find ourselves tempted to marvel at Cicero's
blindness. Surely a man so gifted must have known enough of the state of
Rome to have been aware that there was no room left for one honest,
patriotic, constitutional politician. Was it not plain to him that if,
"natus ad justitiam," he could not bring himself to serve with those who
were intent on discarding the Republic, he had better retire among his
books, his busts, and his literary luxuries, and leave the government of
the country to those who understood its people? And we are the more
prone to say and to think all this because the man himself continually
said it, and continually thought it. In one of the letters written early
in the year[250] to Atticus from his villa at Antium he declares very
plainly how it is with him; and this, too, in a letter written in
good-humor, not in a despondent frame of mind, in which he is able
pleasantly to ridicule his enemy Clodius, who it seems had expressed a
wish to go o