waft over his army in vessels, he built a bridge that they might pass
over dry-foot. There it was that he built that wonderful bridge of which
he gives so particular a description; for he nowhere so willingly dwells
upon his actions as in representing to us the subtlety of his inventions
in such kind of handiwork.

I have also observed this, that he set a great value upon his
exhortations to the soldiers before the fight; for where he would show
that he was either surprised or reduced to a necessity of fighting, he
always brings in this, that he had not so much as leisure to harangue his
army. Before that great battle with those of Tournay, "Caesar," says he,
"having given order for everything else, presently ran where fortune
carried him to encourage his people, and meeting with the tenth legion,
had no more time to say anything to them but this, that they should
remember their wonted valour; not to be astonished, but bravely sustain
the enemy's encounter; and seeing the enemy had already approached within
a dart's cast, he gave the signal for battle; and going suddenly thence
elsewhere, to encourage others, he found that they were already engaged."
Here is what he tells us in that place. His tongue, indeed, did him
notable service upon several occasions, and his military eloquence was,
in his own time, so highly reputed, that many of his army wrote down his
harangues as he spoke them, by which means there were volumes of them
collected that existed a long time after him. He had so particular a
grace in speaking, that his intimates, and Augustus amongst others,
hearing those orations read, could distinguish even to the phrases and
words that were not his.

The first time that he went out of Rome with any public command, he
arrived in eight days at the river Rhone, having with him in his coach a
secretary or two before him who were continually writing, and him who