The Gauls paid the expenses of their conquest in the prisoners taken in
battle, who were sold to the slave merchants; and this is the real blot on
Caesar's career. But the blot was not personally upon Caesar, but upon the
age in which he lived. The great Pomponius Atticus himself was a dealer in
human chattels. That prisoners of war should be sold as slaves was the law
of the time, accepted alike by victors and vanquished; and the crowds of
libertini who assisted at Caesar's funeral proved that he was not regarded
as the enemy of these unfortunates, but as their special friend.
His leniency to the Pompeian faction has already been spoken of
sufficiently. It may have been politic, but it arose also from the
disposition of the man. Cruelty originates in fear, and Caesar was too
indifferent to death to fear anything. So far as his public action was
concerned, he betrayed no passion save hatred of injustice; and he moved
through life calm and irresistible, like a force of nature.
Cicero has said of Caesar's oratory that he surpassed those who had
practised no other art. His praise of him as a man of letters is yet more
delicately and gracefully emphatic. Most of his writings are lost; but
there remain seven books of commentaries on the wars in Gaul (the eighth
was added by another hand), and three books upon the civil war, containing
an account of its causes and history.
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