If Cæsar had accepted the government of Gaul with the sole aim of having an army devoted to his designs, it must be admitted that so experienced a general would have taken, to commence a civil war, the simplest of the measures suggested by prudence: instead of separating himself from his army, he would have kept it with him, or, at least, brought it near to Italy, and distributed it in such a manner that he could re-assemble it quickly; he would have preserved, from the immense booty taken in Gaul, sums sufficient to supply the expenses of the war. Cæsar, on the contrary, as we shall see in the sequel, sends first to Pompey, without hesitation, two legions which are required from him under the pretext of the expedition against the Parthians. He undertakes to disband his troops if Pompey will do the same, and he arrives at Ravenna at the head of a single legion, leaving the others beyond the Alps, distributed from the Sambre as far as the Saône.[34] He keeps within the limit of his government without making any preparation which indicates hostile intentions,[35] wishing, as Hirtius says, to settle the quarrel by justice rather than by arms.[36] In fact, he has collected so little money in the military chest, that his soldiers club together to procure him the sums necessary for his enterprise, and that all voluntarily renounce their pay.[37] Cæsar offers Pompey an unconditional reconciliation, and it is only when he sees his advances rejected, and his adversaries meditating his ruin, that he boldly faces the forces of the Senate, and passes the Rubicon. It was not, then, the supreme power which Cæsar went into Gaul to seek, but the pure and elevated glory which arises from a national war, made in the traditional interest of the country. [Sidenote: Plan followed in the Relation of the War in Gaul.] IV. In reproducing in the following chapters the relation of the war in Gaul, we have borne in mind the words of Cicero. “Cæsar,” he says, “has written memoirs worthy of great praise. Deprived of all oratorical art, his style, like a handsome body stripped of clothing, presents itself naked, upright, and graceful. In his desire to furnish materials to future historians, he has, perhaps, done a thing agreeable to the little minds who will be tempted to load these natural graces with frivolous ornaments; but he has for ever deprived men of sense of the desire of writing, for nothing is more agreeable in history than a correct and luminous brevity.”[38] Hirtius, on his part, expresses himself in the following terms: “These memoirs enjoy an approval so general, that Cæsar has much more taken from others than given to them the power of writing the history of the events which they recount. We have still more reasons than all others for admiring it, for others know only how correct and accurate this book is; we know the facility and rapidity with which it was composed.”[39]