decisive step towards the transformation of the Roman republic into a
Roman empire.




CHAPTER IV.----GAUL CONQUERED BY JULIUS CAESAR.

Historians, ancient and modern, have attributed to the Roman Senate,
from the time of the establishment of the Roman province in Gaul, a
long-premeditated design of conquering Gaul altogether. Others have said
that when Julius Caesar, in the year of Rome 696, (58 B C.) got himself
appointed proconsul in Gaul, his single aim was to form for himself there
an army devoted to his person, of which he might avail himself to satisfy
his ambition and make himself master of Rome. We should not be too ready
to believe in these far-reaching and precise plans, conceived and settled
so long beforehand, whether by a senate or a single man. Prevision and
exact calculation do not count for so much in the lives of governments
and of peoples. It is unexpected events, inevitable situations, the
imperious necessities of successive epochs, which most often decide the
conduct of the greatest powers and the most able politicians. It is
after the fair, when the course of facts and their consequences has
received full development, that, amidst their tranquil meditations,
annalists and historians, in their learned way, attribute everything to
systematic plans and personal calculations on the part of the chief
actors. There is much less of combination than of momentary inspiration,
derived from circumstances, in the resolutions and conduct of political
chiefs, kings, senators, or great men. From the time that discord and
corruption had turned the Roman Republic into a bloody and tyrannical
anarchy, the Roman Senate no longer meditated grand designs, and its