Alberto Angela: Caesar Committed Crimes Against Humanity in Gaul

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—Was it a war necessary for Rome, or for Caesar’s power?

—Both things. Caesar went to Gaul for glory and for ambition. A few years earlier, in Spain, he was quaestor and had to help the governors collect taxes and administer justice. During that time he encounters a statue of Alexander the Great in Cádiz, a fact that proved pivotal, as he himself acknowledges. He goes as far as to say: “Alexander, at thirty-two, conquered the world; I, at the same age, have done nothing.” The anecdote is famous because he cried. Ambition and the quest for the glory of eternity were the engines, the fuel, of Julius Caesar. So why did he go to Gaul? Because he wanted to become the Alexander the Great of Rome, and he achieved it.

—Did that figure influence him so much?

—In fact, he even fought on the front line, beside his soldiers and without a helmet, so that everyone would recognize him. If you look at the mosaic of the Battle of Issus, where Alexander the Great appears in the thick of the fight, you understand that the same figure could be Julius Caesar, because he did the same. But in Gaul he would not only gain glory, he would also gain money. This was crucial, because he was a politician and had fallen into debt. He could not sleep at night because of it. As a politician, he had to bankroll popular games for the people. It was the way to win their favor. He used his money, of course, but he also borrowed. Additionally, he had the obligation to pay his own troops. He paid the men of his legions himself. How to resolve these two problems? With the loot he took from battles. He waged war and earned substantial booty. He became one of the richest men in Rome. He even bought a piece of the forum, the forum known as Caesar’s Forum. In the book I include the calculation of what he spent. An enormous sum, paid by the Gauls. So the answer would be that Caesar went to Gaul for glory and money, although, of course, Rome also applauded him and said: “Go ahead, go.”

—He does not choose Gaul by chance. Gaul was Rome’s great enemy. The Gauls had entered Rome and everyone feared them.

—Caesar was consul. The Romans did not trust that there would be only one man at the forefront of power. It is a lesson they had learned, and that is why they placed two. One acted as opposition to the other, to keep them in check, and, moreover, they could only govern for one year. The Romans knew they had to beware of power. That is a good lesson for us, for our era. What happened when you became a former prime minister today? The Romans became governors of provinces. They sent them to govern a province. Caesar, thanks to the triumvirate with Crassus and Pompey, that lobby of power, paid the senators to grant them the best provinces. He took ex-Yugoslavia, Illyria and the north of Italy, but that was not enough because he wanted to become Alexander the Great, he wanted war, and in these zones that was not possible. He needed another. The Romans controlled the south of France. The governor of this Transalpine Gaul dies. They say he was killed by his wife, a Marilyn Monroe of the era, Claudia. His brother, Clodius, is Caesar’s right-hand man. It could have been an order from Caesar as well. Moreover, Claudia is a lesbian, as Catullus called her. At that moment, Caesar had three provinces and four legions. He was a powerful man and waited for a motive to conquer Gaul, because Rome required that you could not go against anyone without a motive, so he waited for months for a cause to go to war. This arises when a mass of barbarians crosses present-day Switzerland and one of Rome’s allied tribes asks for help. Caesar goes to defend them and that is where it all begins. What he does is build power with the consent of the Senate and the people of Rome. He is going to help an ally, so Rome is pleased because, at that moment, it was expanding, it was a republic and controlled forty million people.

—What did that entail?

—Rome was growing very large across the entire Mediterranean basin, and he already had that urge to go out and conquer territories, for three reasons, the three wells of petroleum of the era: slaves, grain, and precious metals. That was the motive, and he exploited it.

—The conquest of Gaul is highly controversial today.

—If we look at Ukraine or what is happening in other parts of the world, it is clear that war is always horrible. War is devastating. This is a book about war against war. When I describe the Gauls I am not talking about warriors, I am talking about families with wives, children and the elderly who lived well and who, suddenly, found themselves facing Caesar’s war. They found it on them. Caesar is like an earthquake. They did not seek him out. Caesar went to conquer and to kill. Caesar, at a certain moment, destroys two populations. He does not trust the Germans who had entered Gaul’s territory asking for help because other warriors were pursuing them. Caesar begins to negotiate, but he believes it is an excuse. He thinks they are buying time to wait for his cavalry, which was very strong. So he decided to strike first. But he did not strike an army, but a camp. There are tens of thousands of dead of all ages. All of them ended up dead. When the news reaches Rome, everyone is happy, but one senator says that this is not right. We cannot celebrate it because it was not an army they had attacked. It were civilians. That, first. Secondly, there was a truce. They were negotiating and Caesar violated that truce. He stained the fides romana, your word, when you promise something and you do not keep it. Despite the world they lived in, in Rome there were rules and the interesting thing is that many senators began to protest that victory. More than two thousand years ago, that modern ethics emerges, because what Caesar had done were crimes against humanity. It is not genocide, because he did not kill people because of their origin and he had Gallic allies, but yes, they were crimes against humanity. That, certainly, were so. In that era they already understood that this could not be done. We see it as horrible, but in every era these things have happened. The conclusion is that it was a brutal world, where there was slavery and massacres. The Gauls disappear afterward. Caesar wipes them out in a few years. He destroys everything and they cease to exist. Was there hatred in Rome toward the Gauls? Yes, but that was not the main reason. It was a justification. It was argued: “Look, they killed our ancestors, our grandparents, so now we will take revenge…”

—The Gauls were not angels, either.

—No, the Gauls were not good people either. All of them were tribes that chopped off heads and placed them at the entrance of towns or in their homes. They kept the heads mummified and displayed them to their guests, as someone might have a deer on the wall, but that was the world that existed. The rule of a historian is to travel through time, but not to judge, just as today you travel to another country and do not judge its customs. You may say you do not like it, you live differently, but we cannot judge the past with present-day eyes.

—Is The Gallic War the first great example of a book used as political propaganda?

—I don’t know if he was the first, but he is certainly one of the most famous cases. He did not write The Gallic War as memoirs, like the ones by Obama, Carter, or Ford. That is later. Caesar does not do that. He wrote in the moment because The Gallic War were the military reports he sent to Rome regularly during the campaign. It is as if we were to compose a book based on the words of Neil Armstrong when he goes to the Moon. He sent those reports to the Senate and they were read aloud for everyone to hear. They were political speeches in which he said: “Clearly, I have won.” One must scale down the figures he provides, because they are tremendous and, in that sense, they cannot be taken literally, but it is true that the things he recounted are corroborated. The reason is that they were real military documents. If he was defeated and there were legionaries dead, he could not invent that, he could not justify it. In a football match you can give your version, but the results are what they are. But there is another aspect.

—Which one?

—Beyond the political and military parts, this book is partly an anthropological exploration. What we know about the Gauls today is based almost exclusively on what Caesar said. The Gauls did not write. They had no written history. It was oral, so no one wrote about them, except some Greeks. Caesar is the only one who describes the names, the cities, the customs and some figures, for example, Diviciacus, a druid who was his ally and with whom he always fought. He was not dressed like Panoramix because he was a warrior. The Druids were not only priests. It is very interesting, because Caesar describes places and even the tides at Mont Saint-Michel. He provides a great deal of valuable information.

—Why did his legions trust him so much? They follow him even when he crosses the Rubicon, violating Roman law.

—Caesar leads the legions to victory. The soldiers see him as an unbeatable leader who never loses, except in a few instances. He fought at the side of his soldiers. He did not fall back. Augustus, by contrast, did. He stayed in the rear. It is hard to find a general who fights alongside his troops in battle. He removes his helmet and wears a red cloak because he wanted them to notice him. He organizes the front line at the toughest moments. He is always there. The soldiers see him as one of them. In the camp he does not remain in his tent. He eats beside his men. He sleeps outside the tent, under the open sky, he walks like everyone else, he suffers like everyone else. They see him as an equal. It is crucial. That is why they followed him. There existed this loyalty among them, a concept that is hard for us to understand today, but the legionaries, when they had faith in their general, followed him. He endures all the rigors at their side. If they take a risk, he takes it as well. Moreover, there is the idea of Caesar’s victorious legions. He had a charisma that remained intact, especially among the veterans, because the veterans spoke to him as an equal. They were brothers-in-arms. One detail: in every camp eight legionaries lived in the same tent, four or eight, sleeping together; a centurion commanded ten tents, eighty men, who formed a centuria and marched together. Those eight were brothers-in-arms, had a close human bond, and that was fundamental within the legions. Caesar was one of them. That is why they followed him.

—Did they commit massacres?

—Among the Gauls, Caesar was seen as Attila. The tribes were doing well, and suddenly a man with legions arrived who aimed to conquer their territories and kill them, and who fought in an undefeatable manner. They were professional soldiers against soldiers who were good, the Gauls, but not professional as the legions, which trained in military drill. There were massacres of both civilians and soldiers. They had specific weapons and very different and sophisticated techniques. When the Gauls, Germans, Britons or whoever arrived, they remained silent. The Romans felt the ground move beneath the thousands of people coming, and they used the shield to amplify their shouts. The legionaries, by contrast, were quiet to listen for orders through horns and trumpets, and moved as directed. The centurion wore a crest so that everyone could see him and know where he was in the middle of the battle. They were professionals.

—And the Gauls?

—The Gauls decapitated people and the legionaries feared the Germans and those who fought with their torsos bare because they saw themselves as invincible. They thought they would not die, and the Romans, who stood about five feet five inches tall, were shorter. Wars in that era were devastating for both soldiers and civilians. A curiosity: when archaeologists go to battlefields, they never find anything, except at Alesia, and no one knew why. It was thought Caesar had made it all up, but he could not lie because they were military reports that reached Rome. It was later discovered that, at the end of the battle, the Romans collected absolutely everything: spears, shields, swords. Both theirs and those of the enemies. The reason was that they were in territory with no resources and no way to buy anything anywhere, so they took everything, even the animals to eat. And afterwards, the bodies were burned. Or left there, but after two thousand years nothing remained. This anecdote illustrates the mindset they had. War was brutal in that era. This is a book that suggests one should not wage war. It is a fitting example for us because the Gaulish tribes were separate, and for that reason Caesar was able to conquer them. Europe must stay united to defend itself, its institutions, and democracy. That is what Caesar teaches us. The Gauls did not do so, and that is why they disappeared.

—Caesar is the first great populist in history?

—Yes, but there were others like him during that period. To be a populist was necessary to win popular consensus. The difference is that he prevailed while the others did not. He was very good as a politician in general and also for literature. He produced a classic.

—Why was he killed?

—They say everyone feared that he would become king because he was a dominator. The Romans feared returning to the age of kings, because Rome was already a republic. A detail that terrified them was that he was about to embark on a new campaign toward the East, against the Persians, for glory, as he had said before, and in Rome there existed a legend, recorded in the Sibylline Books, that only a king could do that. They feared that he would return from there as king. That is why they killed him. There were also other motives, such as the reforms he wished to undertake, of course. Those who killed him were people who owed him a lot, to whom he had saved or forgiven. There are personal, economic and political motives. When he was assassinated he was without an escort, a delirium. I believe that in the last months he began to grow vain and, therefore, underestimated the danger around him.