Plutarch says that Caesar's
campaigns in Gaul (58-51) show him 'not in the least inferior to the
greatest and most admired commanders the world ever produced'. 'In
Gaul', he says, 'we begin a new life, as it were, and have to follow him
in quite another track.' In the nine years he spent there Caesar showed
astonishing genius as a soldier and won the utter devotion of his men.
But what he did in the field is surpassed by the statesmanship shown in
his settlement of the country and plan for its government.

In Gaul Caesar's great ideas found scope; but they were not born in
Gaul. If Caesar at work in Gaul appears to be a different man from
Caesar playing at politics in Rome, the reason is not that he suddenly
changed but that the picture of him in Rome is based on the accounts
given by his enemies, by men who feared and disliked without
understanding him. They have drawn a picture of a wild, extravagant, and
dissipated young man. Caesar was that, but behind it there was a mind
more powerful, a personality more strong, than in any of his
contemporaries: that mind and personality which old Sulla had perceived.
When in Rome Caesar worked incessantly even while he pretended to idle.
He was one of the busiest men in the city, though some of his busy-ness
was of a foolish kind. In Gaul his immense energies were turned to
constructive work. His health, which had been fragile--he suffered from
epilepsy or what was called 'the falling sickness' and from violent
headaches--and never became extraordinarily robust, was strengthened by
the hardships of a military life, by long marches, exposure, and spartan
food. And his energy, always extraordinary, seemed to grow by what it
fed on. He never rested. When on horseback on the march he kept
secretaries by him to write, at his dictation, letters, orders,
memoranda, draft laws, and his own history. He reduced his hours of
sleep to the fewest and at all times shared, like Hannibal, every
hardship of his men. They adored him, not only because of this and
because he never forgot that they were men like himself, but because of
something magnetic in his personality, that charm which is the hardest
thing in the world to describe or define. Caesar made his men believe in
him: trust him when he asked them to do things that appeared impossible:
face the most terrific odds and the severest trials in perfect belief in
him. They believed, as he did, in his star. But their devotion was not
only due