Each epoch has its secret, and each epoch-maker his own. Caesar's
secret lay in the power he had of projecting a soul into the ranks
of an army, of making legions and their leader one. Disobedience
only he punished; anything else he forgave. After a victory his
soldiery did what they liked. He gave them arms, slaves to burnish
them, women, feasts, sleep. They were his comrades; he called them
so; he wept at the death of any of them, and when they were
frightened, as they were in Gaul before they met the Germans, and
in Africa before they encountered Juba, Caesar frightened them
still more. He permitted no questions, no making of wills. The
cowards could hide where they liked; his old guard, the Tenth,
would do the work alone; or, threat still more sinister, he would
command a retreat. Ah, that, never! Fanaticism returned, the
legions begged to be punished.
Michelet says he would like to have seen him crossing Gaul,
bareheaded, in the rain. It would have been as interesting,
perhaps, to have watched him beneath the shade of the velarium
pleading the cause of Masintha against the Numidian king. Before
him was a crowd that covered not the Forum alone, but the steps of
the adjacent temples, the roofs of the basilicas, the arches of
Janus, one that extended remotely to the black walls of the Curia
Hostilia beyond. And there, on the rostrum, a musician behind him
supplying the la from a flute, the air filled with gold motes,
Caesar, his toga becomingly adjusted, a jewelled hand extended,
opened for the defence.
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