The History of Rome by Theodor Mommsen

Author:Theodor Mommsen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2013-05-27T16:00:00+00:00

The situation which Caesar found upon his arrival in Gaul in the spring of 58 B.C. was a difficult one. The Celtic culture of Gaul, prevented by the Romans from expanding further south-westward, was showing signs of disintegration under the blows of the Germans advancing from the east. This pressure had already dislodged the Helvetian tribe of Celts from their accustomed territory and sent them in search of new land in the interior of Gaul. Caesar chastised the Helvetii and sent them back to their former terrain. Then he crushed a major German invasion—and thereby for the first time established the Rhine as the Roman boundary against the Germans.

Thus began the eight years of complicated warfare (58 through 51 B.C.) which accomplished the conquest of all Gaul and saw the beginnings of the Roman dominion over Britain. The detailed story of the numerous campaigns of those years—full of Roman victories, though frequently accompanied by perils and sometimes by disaster—has often been told, most notably by Caesar himself in his Gallic Wars. The consequences were tremendous. “Centuries elapsed before men understood that Caesar had not merely conquered a new province for the Romans, but had laid the foundations for the Romanizing of the west,” comments Mommsen. “That there is a bridge connecting the past glory of Greece and Rome with the prouder fabric of modern history; that Western Europe is Romanic, and Germanic Europe classic; that the names of Themistocles and Scipio have a very different sound for us than those of Asoka and Salmanazar; that Homer and Sophocles are not merely attractive to the literary botanist, but bloom for us in our own garden—all this is the work of Caesar.”

But the still vaster work of Caesar—pulling down the structure of the Roman republic, and thereby laying the foundation of the Roman empire—was yet to come.

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