Chapter 1
Scylla, Caesar and Charybdis: (Mis)readings of the Gallic War
Christopher B. Krebs
âVercingetorixâ stands, some 20 feet tall, on top of Mont Auxois near Alise-Sainte-Reine; decked out with a cuirass and a necklace of pearls, and with his hands resting on the pommeled hilt of his hefty sword, he gazes, mournfully perhaps, into the distance. Commissioned by NapolĂ©on III, sculpted by AimĂ© Millet, and erected in 1865 (Figure 1.1), he commemorates, as the second of two inscriptions specifies, Vercingetorix, Caesarâs main antagonist in the great Gallic uprising of 52 BCE, who lost his final battle defending the oppidum of Alesia on this very hilltop.1 It seems only proper, then, that the Roman leader is present too, inscribed, that is, into the statueâs base; for the upper inscription reads: âLa Gaule unie, formant une seule nation, animĂ©e dâun mĂȘme esprit, peut dĂ©fier lâunivers.â It is an adapted excerpt from a speech that Caesar, in his Gallic War, reports of Vercingetorix, who promises âto effect one plan for all of Gaul; and not even the whole world can withstand its unanimityâ (unum consilium totius Galliae effecturum, cuius consensui ne orbis quidem terrarum possit obsistere; BG 7.29).
To the keen eye, âVercingetorixâ quickly disintegrates: archaeologists will be quick to point out that his anachronistic accoutrements date from a range of periods other than Vercingetorixâs own, what with his armament from the Bronze Age, and his pantaloons Merovingian; and anyone familiar with NapolĂ©on III will notice the uncanny resemblance (Le Gall 1970, 207â208). âVercingetorixâ, it appears, is doubly representative, albeit in starkly uneven measure: he tells todayâs observer a great deal about a modern rulerâs infatuation with Caesar and his battle for Gaul, a great deal, too, about âtheâ Gaul in the artistic imagination of the Second Empire;2 and exceedingly little about his actual referent, Vercingetorix himself. As such, he may well be said to emblematize the mythical transmogrification the Gallic leader has undergone over the last century and a half.3
As the upper inscription neatly intimates, any interest in the Iron Age Gallic man underneath the 19th-century French monument ultimately leads to Caesarâs Gallic War, as, first, it is the only extant contemporary account by an eyewitness (for the most part); second, it is highly uncertain to what â if any â extent later retellings of the campaigns (such as Plutarchâs or Cassius Dioâs) contain anything additional or contradictory to Caesarâs account that is not owed to error, inference, condensation or rhetorical elaboration; and, lastly, even the coins that bear Vercingetorixâs name by themselves tell us next to nothing other than that he seems to have been more important than any other of the five Arvernian leaders Caesar mentions, for whom we lack numismatic evidence.4 âVercingetorixâ, in his statued embodiment as well as any other manifestation, owes his existence to Caesar; the ironies multiply.
Figure 1.1 Nineteenth-century statue of Arvernian chieftain Vercingetorix by AimĂ© Millet, at Mont Auxois, Alise-Sainte-Reine, CĂŽte-dâOr (courtesy MusĂ©oparc AlĂ©sia, photo T. ClartĂ©, BalloĂŻde Photo).
What is true of the Gallic leader holds true also â if to a lesser degree â of the battle for Gaul in general; and this is another way in which âVercingetorixâ may serve us as an emblem. For all the clarification and correction that archaeology â the only truly independent (or is it?) alternative source â has brought to our understanding of the Gallic campaigns, it bears recalling what Christian Goudineau stated in the middle of his review of archaeological findings concerning these campaigns some twenty years ago: âĂ supposer que CĂ©sar nâeĂ»t pas Ă©crit ses Commentaires et que nul auteur antique ne sâen fut inspirĂ©, la recherche archĂ©ologique aurait Ă©tĂ© incapable dâimaginer quâil sâĂ©tait dĂ©roulĂ©, entre 58 et 50 av. J.-C, une sĂ©rie dâexpĂ©ditions militaires sur le territoire gaulois.â5 Let us just think, once more, of the almost two-dozen coins bearing Vercingetorixâs name and how difficult it would be to understand their full significance without Caesarâs narrative. In consequence, for the purposes of this volume (and beyond), a contextual understanding and watchful reading of the Gallic War are imperative.
Caesarâs âNotes on events in the Gallic Warâ, commentarii rerum gestarum belli Gallici, as its original title in all likelihood ran, have traditionally been read â and more often than not from the lectern â with an historical or linguistic interest: time and again, students of history and Latin (were) marched through their pages.6 Caesarâs style seems to encourage both: tendentiously characterized by none other than his political and intellectual rival Cicero as ânaked ⊠straight and charming, with all embellishment of speech stripped off just like a dressâ (nudi ⊠recti et venusti, omni ornatu orationis tamquam veste detracta, Brutus 262), these âNotesâ, as highlighted by the deprecatory title, suggest easy access to what happened in Gaul and (the learning of) the Latin language.
But both views require qualification. Cicero, again (Brutus 261), addressing Caesarâs Latin more particularly, comments on how the latter âcorrect[ed] faulty and corrupt usage with his pure and uncorrupted usage (pura et incorrupta consuetudine), aided by theory (rationem adhibens)â; and we now understand much better just how Caesar created his lapidary schoolbook-friendly regular idiom out of the irregular Latin of the time, with a discerning eye on the qualities of the language of the Roman state.7 And just as Caesar shaped his own idiom, so he shaped his narrative, choosing the places, protagonists and occurrences to include as well as the (usually) small amount of detail to provide of them. There are several reasons for the often vague, sometimes misleading presentations of motivations, movements and military engagements. But his contemporaries already felt a certain malaise when reading an account for which one and the same man answered as both protagonist and author; and just so we have come to appreciate rather more fully how the authorâs political stake colours his (re) presentation of events and participants in the Gallic War. Caesar writes about âCaesarâ, âVercingetorixâ, and âthe battle for Gaulâ, as it were: Michel Rambaud (1966), who half a century ago looked deeply into Caesarâs art de la dĂ©formation historique, overshot, it seemed to most of his critics, when he suggested that the seemingly straightforward war narrative was in fact the product of all-pervasive rhetorical manipulation for political purchase; but it is in no small part Rambaudâs legacy that any responsible reading of the Gallic War today must proceed at equidistance from both a naĂŻve positivism and a radical scepticism.8
Just as political concerns warped the Gallic War, so did literary ones. Mostly forgotten today, to his (near) contemporaries Caesar was known not only as an efficient politician and quick-footed general but also as an eminent man of letters, whose list of accomplishments â in oratory and linguistics, in engineering and geography â was long. When the imperial encyclopaedist Pliny the Elder, a man of formidable learning, pondered Caesar with hindsight, he lamented his battle for Gaul, which âI for one should not set down to his gloryâ; but he praised the man of letters, whose âintellectual excellence [was] capable of comprehending everything under the skiesâ.9 As such Caesar knew that (ancient) histories were treated much the same way we today treat historical fiction: that around a core (often small) of sober historical facts, colourful details, pulled from the rhetorical and literary traditions and the authorâs poetic imagination, had to be woven into the text.10 As has become increasingly apparent, the Commentarii, despite their dismissive and disarming title11 and their first impression of simplicity, owe plenty to these traditions. This â more recent â third way of reading, often styled âhistoriographicalâ, differs from the more traditional historical one in that the former looks for evidence of rhetorical embellishment and borrowings from other Greek and Roman authors (historians amongst them) where the latter (more or less) simply assumes facts. It makes them both more interesting as literary text and more problematic as historical source: is âVercingetorixâ characterized as a âyoung manâ (adulescens, BG 7.4.1), because he was in his 20s when he rose against Caesar; or because other famous enemies of Rome (such as Hannibal) had previously been characterized as young men in Greek and Roman histories (Polybius 3.15.6 áŒ
ÏΔ ÎœÎÎżÏ âŠ áœ€Îœ, âfor he [Hannibal] was youngâ)? The youthful depictions of âVercingetorixâ on contemporary coins (Figure 1.2) do not, unfortunately, offer any independent corroboration, as they, in turn, adhere to their own conventions (Nieto-Pelletier 2012, 243â245).
Figure 1.2 Gold stater of Vercingetorix from the hoard discovered at Pionsat, Puy-de-DÎme in 1852. Diameter 19mm. Delestrée and Tache (2007) type DT 3601 (© Musée Danicourt, Péronne / Bibracte, photo Antoine Maillier).
Once again, to dismiss all of the detail in the commentarii as âcommonplaceâ would be just as foolish as to accept it all as fact; indeed, it may on occasion be both: when Gergovia, Vercingetorixâs most likely place of birth, is describe...