o the Senate and the public on the conduct of his
Gallic campaigns; the latter, as primarily intended for a defense of his
constitutional position in the Civil War.

They are memoirs, half way between private notes and formal history.
Cicero says that while their author "desired to give others the material
out of which to create a history, he may perhaps have done a kindness to
conceited writers who wish to trick them out with meretricious graces"
(to "crimp with curling-irons"), "but he has deterred all men of sound
taste from ever touching them. For in history a pure and brilliant
conciseness of style is the highest attainable beauty." "They are worthy
of all praise, for they are simple, straightforward and elegant, with
all rhetorical ornament stripped from them as a garment is stripped."
(Cicero, Brutus, 262.)

The seven books of the Gallic War are each the account of a year's
campaigning. They were written apparently in winter quarters. When Caesar
entered on the administration of his province it was threatened with
invasion. The Romans had never lost their dread of the northern
barbarians, nor forgotten the capture of Rome three centuries before.
Only a generation back, Marius had become the national hero by
destroying the invading hordes of Cimbri and Teutones. Caesar purposed to
make the barbarians tremble at the Roman name. This first book of the
Commentaries tells how he raised an army in haste, with which he
outmarched, outmanoeuvred and defeated the Helvetian nation. This
people, urged by pressure behind and encouragement in front, had
determined to leave its old home in the Alpine valleys and to settle in
the fairer regions of southeastern France. Surprised and dismayed by
Caesar's terrific reception of their supposed invincible host, they had
to choose between utter destruction and a tame return, with sadly
diminished numbers, to their old abodes. Nor was this all the work of
the first year. Ariovistus, a German king, also invited by a Gallic
tribe, and relying on the terror of his nation's name, came to establish
himself and his people on the Gallic side of the Rhine. He too was
astonished at the tone with which Caesar ordered him to depart, but soon
found himself forced to return far more quickly than he had come.

Having thus vindicated the Roman claim to the frontiers of Gaul against
other invaders, the proconsul devoted his second summer to the
subjugation of the Belgae, the most warlike and the mos