He brought the
insurgent 10th legion into submission by a single word. When the civil war
began and Labienus left him, he told all his officers who had served under
Pompey that they were free to follow if they wished. Not another man
forsook him.
Suetonius says that he was rapacious, that he plundered tribes in Spain
who were allies of Rome, that he pillaged shrines and temples in Gaul, and
destroyed cities merely for spoil. He adds a story which Cicero would not
have left untold and uncommented on if he had been so fortunate as to hear
of it: that Caesar when first consul took three thousand pounds weight of
gold out of the Capitol and replaced it with gilded brass. A similar story
is told of the Cid and of other heroes of fiction. How came Cicero to be
ignorant of an act which, if done at all, was done under his own eyes?
When praetor Caesar brought back money from Spain to the treasury; but he
was never charged at the time with peculation or oppression there. In Gaul
the war paid its own expenses; but what temples were there in Gaul which
were worth spoiling? Of temples, he was, indeed, scrupulously careful.
Varro had taken gold from the Temple of Hercules at Cadiz. Caesar replaced
it. Metellus Scipio had threatened to plunder the Temple of Diana at
Ephesus. Caesar protected it. In Gaul the Druids were his best friends;
therefore he certainly had not outraged religion there; and the quiet of
the province during the civil war is a sufficient answer to the accusation
of gratuitous oppression.
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