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After
considerable figting, the Britons under Cassivellaunus sued for terms, gave
hostages and agreed to pay tribute. Whereupon Caesar sailed back to Gual, where
there was always a risk that the recently subdued natives might make a fresh bid
for their independence. In fact, they did rebel, and for several years Caesar
found a worthy match in the young Vercingetorix. Once he was defeated, and the
Roman position in Gual was threatened as it had never been before. But Caesar
managed to unite his forces, and at Alesia in 52 B.C. crushed the Gaulish armies
and obtained Vercingetorix’s surrender. This was the end to resistance to Roman
rule henceforth Gual was a great and increasingly prosperous province of the
Roman realm. Casear’s victory was opportune, for affairs at Rome demanded his
attention.
The Triumvirate was on the verge of dissolution. Pompey was
estranged, and Crassus had gone off to the east, where he met disaster and death
in battle with the Parthians. Caesar’s terms of office in Gaul was nearing it’s
end, and already his enemies in Rome were talking of what they would do to him
when he had returned to civil life. They complained of his having overstepped
his authority, of having embarked on grandiose schemes of comquest, of cruelties
inflicted on poor inoffensive barbarians. All there things were reported to
Caesar in his camp, and, being the man he was, it is not surprising that he
resolved to get in the firt blow. Although he had only one legion under his
immediate command, and Pompey had been boasting that he had only to stamp on the
ground and legions would rise up to do his bidding he resolved to march on Rome.
Early in January, 49 B.C. he took the decisive step of crossing the Rubicon, the
little river that ws the boundry of his command.
As he watched his men plunging
into streams he talked up and down the banks, and some who were near said that
he muttered the wrods “Jacta alea est”, “the die is cast” . Whether he spoke the
words or not, the die was cast, and in open defiance of Pompey’s government,
Caesar marched with all speed on the capital. Pompey’s support disintegrated,
and he was foced to flee overseas. Caesar entered Rome triumph. Almost without a
blow Caesar had become master of Rome, and he ws forthwith granted dictatorial
powers. But Pomey and his friends rallied, and for the next five years Caesar
was chiefly engaged in defeating, first, Pompey at Pharsalia in Greece, soon
after which Pompey was murdered in Egypt, next Pompey’s sons in spain, and hten
the army of those Roman leaders who constituted what was known as the senatorial
party those who clung to the onle time-honoured system of republican rule
through the Senate.
A strange intrelude in this torrent of campaining is the
time spent by Caesar in Egypt, when he had an affair with the beautiful young
Queen Cleopatra, who bore him a son. After this he proceeded to Asia Minor,
where Pharnaces, the son and murdered of King Mithridates, was Causing trouble.
Caesar made short work of him. In his message to the Senate he reported “Veni,
vidi, vici”, “I came, I saw, I conquered’. At length he returned to Rome, and
was according yet another triumph he had had four already. Vast crowds acclaimed
him as he passed in his chariot through the streets on his way to the Capitol.
Great hopes were centered upon him, great things were expected of him. The old
system must soon come to birth. We shall never know what vast schemes were
fermenting in the brain of the man who was now hailed as Impector, the first of
the emperors ot walk the stage of history, but we may perhaps get some idea of
them from what he managed to accomplish in the all too short period that was
left to him.
For the most part they were young men and vigorous, and he was
middle-aged and grown heavy and less active than in the days when he had
soldiered with his men in Gual. But he put up a good fight. He struggled,
unarmed though he was, tried to push them sway, and then struck at them with his
meta stilus or pen. Then he saw Brutus was among his assailants. “what, you too,
Brutus” as he said and convering his body with his robe so that he should fall
decently, suffered himself to be overborne. He fell, with twenty-three wounds in
his body, at the foot of the statue of his great rival Pompey, which, with
characteristic magnanimity, he had allowed to be re-erected in the Capitol.
Such
was their mad fury, some of the murderers had wounded one another in their
bloody work. Now they ruched from the scene, sxultingly shouting that the Tyrant
was no more. Thy called upon the people who were there to rejoice with them, but
the people hung their heads, or muttered a prayer or fled. So Caesar died “the
noblest man”, to quote Shakespeare’s immortal lines again, “that ever lived in
the tide of times Work Cited 100 Great Kings, Queens and Rulers of the World
Edited by John Canning School Library Journal Audio Recording Drama Theater
Julius Caear http://homepages.iol.ie/~coolmine/typ/romans/romans6.html Julius
Caesar http:library.thinkingquest.org/17120/data/bios/users/caesar/page_1.html
The Word Book Encyclopedia Julius Caesar Vol 3
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