Caesar’s Military Plans
Defence of the Frontier
But, however decidedly and urgently the circumstances pointed to military monarchy, and however distinctly Caesar took the supreme command exclusively for himself, he was nevertheless not at all inclined to establish his authority by means of, and on, the army. No doubt he deemed a standing army necessary for his state, but only because from its geographical position it required a comprehensive regulation of the frontiers and permanent frontier garrisons. Partly at earlier periods, partly during the recent civil war, he had worked at the tranquillizing of Spain, and had established strong positions for the defence of the frontier in Africa along the great desert, and in the north-west of the empire along the line of the Rhine. He occupied himself with similar plans for the regions on the Euphrates and on the Danube. Above all he designed an expedition against the Parthians, to avenge the day of Carrhae; he had destined three years for this war, and was resolved to settle accounts with these dangerous enemies once for all and not less cautiously than thoroughly. In like manner he had projected the scheme of attacking Burebistas king of the Getae, who was greatly extending his power on both sides of the Danube,(37) and of protecting Italy in the north-east by border-districts similar to those which he had created for it in Gaul. On the other hand there is no evidence at all that Caesar contemplated like Alexander a career of victory extending indefinitely far; it is said indeed that he had intended to march from Parthia to the Caspian and from this to the Black Sea and then along its northern shores to the Danube, to annex to the empire all Scythia and Germany as far as the Northern Ocean—which according to the notions of that time was not so very distant from the Mediterranean—and to return home through Gaul; but no authority at all deserving of credit vouches for the existence of these fabulous projects. In the case of a state which, like the Roman state of Caesar, already included a mass of barbaric elements difficult to be controlled, and had still for centuries to come more than enough to do with their assimilation, such conquests, even granting their military practicability, would have been nothing but blunders far more brilliant and far worse than the Indian expedition of Alexander. Judging both from Caesar’s conduct in Britain and Germany and from the conduct of those who became the heirs of his political ideas, it is in a high degree probable