Caesar

We are told, moreover, that Caesar was the first to devise intercourse with his friends by letter, since he could not wait for personal interviews on urgent matters owing to the multitude of his occupations and the great size of the city. Of his indifference in regard to his diet the following circumstance also is brought in proof. When the host who was entertaining him in Mediolanum, Valerius Leo, served up asparagus dressed with myrrh instead of olive oil, Caesar ate of it without ado, and rebuked his friends when they showed displeasure.

Surely, said he, it were enough not to eat what you don’t like; but he who finds fault with ill-breeding like this is ill-bred himself. Once, too, upon a journey, he and his followers were driven by a storm into a poor man’s hut, and when he found that it consisted of one room only, and that one barely able to accommodate a single person, he said to his friends that honours must be yielded to the strongest, but necessities to the weakest, and bade Oppius lie down there, while he himself with the rest of his company slept in the porch.

But to resume, the first of his Gallic wars was against the Helvetii and Tigurini,[*](Cf. Caesar, Bell. Gall. i. 2-29.) who had set fire to their twelve cities and four hundred villages and were advancing through that part of Gaul which was subject to the Romans, as once the Cimbri and Teutones had done. To these they were thought to be not inferior in courage and of equal numbers, being three hundred thousand in all, of whom one hundred and ninety thousand were fighting men.

The Tigurini were crushed at the river Arar, not by Caesar himself, but by Labienus, his deputy; the Helvetii, however, unexpectedly attacked Caesar himself on the march, as he was leading his forces towards a friendly city, but he succeeded in reaching a strong place of refuge. Here, after he had collected and arrayed his forces, a horse was brought to him. This horse, said he, I will use for the pursuit after my victory; but now let us go against the enemy, and accordingly led the charge on foot.