Another historian, contemporary with Plutarch, Florus, attributes to Vercingetorix, as he fell down and cast his arms at Caesar’s feet, these words:  “Bravest of men, thou hast conquered a brave man.”  It is not necessary to have faith in the rhetorical compliment, or to likewise reject the mixture of pride and weakness attributed to Vercingetorix in the account of Dion Cassius.  It would not be the only example of a hero seeking yet some chance of safety in the extremity of defeat, and abasing himself for the sake of preserving at any price a life on which fortune might still smile.  However it be, Vercingetorix vanquished, dragged out, after ten years’ imprisonment, to grace Caesar’s triumph, and put to death immediately afterwards, lives as a glorious patriot in the pages of that history in which Caesar appears, on this occasion, as a peevish conqueror who took pleasure in crushing, with cruel disdain, the enemy he had been at so much pains to conquer.

Alesia taken, and Vercingetorix a prisoner, Gaul was subdued.  Caesar, however, had in the following year (A.  U. C. 703) a campaign to make to subjugate some peoplets who tried to maintain their local independence.  A year afterwards, again, attempts at insurrection took place in Belgica, and towards the mouth of the Loire; but they were easily repressed; they had no national or formidable characteristics; Caesar and his lieutenants willingly contented themselves with an apparent submission, and in the year 705 A. U. C. the Roman legions, after nine years’ occupation in the conquest of Gaul, were able to depart therefrom to Italy and the East for a plunge into civil war.

CHAPTER V.——­GAUL UNDER ROMAN DOMINION.

From the conquest of Gaul by Caesar, to the establishment there of the Franks under Clovis, she remained for more than five centuries under Roman dominion; first under the pagan, afterwards under the Christian empire.  In her primitive state of independence she had struggled for ten years against the best armies and the greatest man of Rome; after five centuries of Roman dominion she opposed no resistance to the invasion of the barbarians, Germans, Goths, Alans, Burgundians, and Franks, who destroyed bit by bit the Roman empire.  In this humiliation and, one might say, annihilation of a population so independent, so active, and so valiant at its first appearance in history, is to be seen the characteristic of this long epoch.  It is worth while to learn and to understand how it was.

[Illustration:  Gaul subjugated by the Romans——­83]

Gaul lived, during those five centuries, under very different rules and rulers.  They may be summed up under five names, which correspond with governments very unequal in merit and defect, in good and evil wrought for their epoch: 

1st, the Caesars from Julius to Nero (from 49 B.C. to A.D. 68); 2d, the Flavians, from Vespasian to Domitian (from A.D. 69 to 95); 3d, the Antonines, from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius (from A.D. 96 to 180); 4th, the imperial anarchy, or the thirty-nine emperors and the thirty-one tyrants, from Commodus to Carinus and Numerian (from A.D. 180 to 284); 5th, Diocletian (from A.D. 284 to 305).