In nine years Caesar completed the subjugation of all that part of Gaul which is bounded by the Saltus Pyrenaeus, the Alps and the Cevennes, the Rhine and the Rhone; and it was reduced to the form of a province.  (Suetonius, Caesar, c. 25.) With the capture of Alesia the Seventh book of the Gallic War ends.  The Eighth book is not by Caesar.]

[Footnote 509:  As to the disturbances at Rome mentioned in this chapter, see the Life of Pompeius, c. 54, &c., notes.]

[Footnote 510:  Life of Pompeius, c. 52.]

[Footnote 511:  M. Claudius Marcellus, consul B.C. 51, with S. Sulpicius Rufus.]

[Footnote 512:  Novum Comum or Novocomum; north of the Padus, had been settled as a Colonia Latina by Caesar. (Appianus, Civil Wars, ii. 26.)

The government of the colonia was formed on a Roman model:  there was a body of Decuriones or Senators.]

[Footnote 513:  See the Life of Pompeius, c. 58; Appianus, Civil Wars, ii, 26; Dion Cassius, 40. c. 59.]

[Footnote 514:  L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, whom Caesar took in Corfinium, c. 34.]

[Footnote 515:  See the Life of Pompeius, c. 52.]

[Footnote 516:  Caesar (Civil War, i. 1) mentions this letter; but it was read in the Senate after great opposition.  The consuls of the year B.C. 49 were L. Cornelius Lentulus and C. Claudius Marcellus.

Caesar, in the first few chapters of the Civil War, has clearly stated all the matters that are referred to in c. 30 and 31.  The “letters” mentioned in c. 31 as coming before Curio and Antonius left Rome, are not mentioned by Caesar.  Plutarch might have confounded this with another matter. (Civil War, i. 3.)]

[Footnote 517:  Caesar was at Ravenna when the tribunes fled from Rome, and he first saw them at Ariminum, Rimini, which was not within the limits of Caesar’s province. (Civil War, i. 6; Dion Cassius, 41. c. 3.)]

[Footnote 518:  Q. Hortensius Hortalus, a son of the orator Hortensius.  He was an unprincipled fellow.]

[Footnote 519:  Caesar says nothing of the passage of the Rubico, but his silence does not disprove the truth of the story as told by Plutarch.  The passage of the Rubico was a common topic (locus communis) for rhetoricians.  Lucanus (Pharsalia, i. 213) has embellished it:—­

    “Fonte cadit modico parvisque impellitur undis
    Puniceus Rubicon, cum fervida canduit aestas—­
    Tunc vires praebebat hiems.”

This small stream does not appear to be identified with certainty.  Some writers make it the Fiumicino.

Ariminum was not in Caesar’s province, and Plutarch must have known that, as appears from his narrative.  Kaltwasser thinks that he may mean that it was originally a Gallic town, which was true.]

[Footnote 520:  In Plutarch’s time the system of naming the Romans was greatly confused, and he extended the confusion to earlier times.  C. Asinius Pollio, who was with Caesar at the Rubico and at the battle of Pharsalia, wrote a history of the Civil Wars.  He was also a poet.  (Horatius, Od. ii. 1.) His work, as we may collect from c. 46, furnished materials for anecdotes about Caesar.]