I. In the preceding book we have given, from the “Commentaries,” the relation of the war in Gaul, and endeavoured to elucidate doubtful questions, and to discover the localities which were the scenes of so many combats. It will now be not uninteresting to recapitulate the principal events of the eight campaigns of the Roman proconsul, separated from all their technical details. We will at the same time examine what was passing, during this period, on the banks of the Tiber, and the events which led to the Civil War. Writers who dislike glory take pleasure in undervaluing it. They seem to wish thus to invalidate the judgment of past ages: we seek in preference to confirm it, by explaining why the renown of certain men has filled the world. To bring to light the heroic examples of the past, to show that glory is the legitimate reward of great actions, is to pay homage to the public opinion of all times. Man struggling with difficulties which seem insurmountable, and conquering them by his genius, offers a spectacle always worthy of our admiration; and this admiration will be the more justified, according to the greater disproportion between the end and the means. Cæsar is going to quit Rome, to go far from the debates of the Forum, the agitation of the comitia, and the intrigues of a corrupt town, in order to take the command of his troops. Let us, then, for a moment lay aside the statesman, and consider only the warrior, the great captain. The Roman proconsul is not one of those barbarian chieftains who, at the head of innumerable hordes, throw themselves upon a foreign country to ravage it with fire and sword. His mission is not to destroy, but to extend to a distance the influence of the Republic, by protecting the peoples of Gaul, either against their own dissensions, or against the encroachments of their dangerous neighbours. The dangers from which Italy had been saved by the victories of Marius are not forgotten. Men’s memory still recalls the savage bravery, and, still more, the multitude of those barbarians who, before the battle of Aix, had employed six entire days in defiling in front of the camp of Marius;[558] they still fear a renewal of these inundations of peoples, and Cæsar’s first duty is to avert similar perils. Already the Helvetii and their allies, to the number of 368,000, are on the road towards the Rhine; 120,000 Germans have established themselves in Gaul; 24,000 Harudes, their countrymen, have just followed the same example; others are marching after them, and more than 100,000 Suevi are preparing to cross the Rhine.