The ‘Gallic Menace‘ in Caesar's Propaganda

Extract

Between the ‘home’ territory of the Roman people in the Italian peninsula and the tribes of Gaul and Germany lay two provinces – Cisalpine Gaul, most of whose population were actually already Roman citizens or in possession of Latin rights, and Transalpine Gaul, a province only since 121 B.C., but already in Caesar's time displaying a developed urban civilization based on the Greek model, under the influence of Massilia. By the end of the first century B.C. well-to-do Romans considered the schools of Massilia an acceptable alternative to those of Athens for their sons' higher studies (Strabo 4.1.5). On the fringes of the Province, however, and beyond in Gaul proper were the ‘long-haired’ Gauls (hence Gallia Comata) and beyond them the German tribes. Only occasionally had these presented any real and immediate threat to the security of the Italian peninsula. Nevertheless, they were present in Roman consciousness as a kind of bogeymen. In 44 B.C., the founding charter of Urso, a Julian colony in southern Spain, included a provision that certain minor public officials should be exempt from military service except tumultus Italici Gallicive causa (ILS 6087). Events of this nature were hardly likely to necessitate conscription in southern Spain, but this clause was clearly taken over from the standard charter of an Italian municipality, where these were seen as possible emergencies.