defenders.
From the sources of the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean the German tribes
were in motion; the whole line of the Rhine was threatened by them;
it was a moment like that when the Alamanni and the Franks
threw themselves on the falling empire of the Caesars;
and even now there seemed on the eve of being carried into effect
against the Celts that very movement which was successful
five hundred years afterwards against the Romans.

Caesar Proceeds to Gaul
Caesar's Army

Under these circumstances the new governor Gaius Caesar arrived
in the spring of 696 in Narbonese Gaul, which had been added by decree
of the senate to his original province embracing Cisalpine Gaul
along with Istria and Dalmatia. His office, which was committed
to him first for five years (to the end of 700), then in 699
for five more (to the end of 705), gave him the right to nominate
ten lieutenants of propraetorian rank, and (at least according to
his own interpretation) to fill up his legions, or even to form
new ones at his discretion out of the burgess-population--who were
especially numerous in Cisalpine Gaul--of the territory under his
sway. The army, which he received in the two provinces, consisted,
as regards infantry of the line, of four legions trained and inured
to war, the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth, or at the utmost
24,000 men, to which fell to be added, as usual, the contingents
of the subjects. The cavalry and light-armed troops, moreover,
were represented by horsemen from Spain, and by Numidian, Cretan,
and Balearic archers and slingers. The staff of Caesar--the elite
of the democracy of the capital--contained, along with not a few
useless young men of rank, some able officers, such as Publius
Crassus the younger son of the old political ally of Caesar,
and Titus Labienus, who followed the chief of the democracy
as a faithful adjutant from the Forum to the battle-field.
Caesar had not received definite instructions; to one
who was discerning and courageous these were implied
in the circumstances with which he had to deal. Here too
the negligence of the senate had to be retrieved, and first of all
the stream of migration of the German peoples had to be checked.

Repulse of the Helvetii

Just at this time the Helvetic invasion, which was closely
interwoven with the German and had been in preparation for years,
began. That they might not make a grant of their abandoned huts
to the Germans and might render their ow