Narrative in Eighth Book of the " Gallic War" 39 



sionis}-^ He surely regarded the earlier part of the period sub- 

 sequent to March i, 50, as initium dissensionis. 



The conchision naturally to be drawn from the evidence exam- 

 ined, vis., that the first and fifteenth legions, the first in particular, 

 made an early start for Rome, derives some support from the fact 

 that, even if Bibulus's need of reinforcements was a mere pretext, 

 if Pompeius and his followers intended from the outset to keep 

 the legions, it was to their interest to act in such a way as to seem 

 sincere, by sending for the troops promptly. It might be that 

 fortune would help them out later, as she did in the retreat of the 

 Parthians, by furnishing an excuse for not despatching the legions 

 to Syria for the present. The probability is that officers went to 

 Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul to bring these legions to Rome 

 without undue loss of time following the senate's decree. If the 

 first legion came from Matisco and left camp June i, it may have 

 come to Rome in the second half of July. It is not probable that 

 it arrived later than the middle of August. 



Between the date at which Caesar surrendered the first legion 

 and the distribution of the remaining legions into quarters for the 

 winter of 50/49 as many as five months may have intervened, 

 June I to early November. Since the events of c. 54, 1-3, belong 

 to the first half of the year 50, it follows that the narrative inter- 

 rupted at c. 52, 4, is resumed, in fact, in c. 54, 4, with the words 

 ipse exercitui distribuit hiberna. But the author fails to signalize 

 resumption, the employment of ipse implying, rather, a close con- 

 nection between its own sentence and what goes just before. The 

 first and thirteenth legions, as we have found, came down about 

 the same time.^^^ Did Hirtius think of their departure as syn- 

 chronous, or nearly so, with the assignment of winter quarters to 

 the remaining legions? The circumstances attendant upon the 

 withdrawal of the first and fifteenth legions from Caesar were 

 surely too striking for Hirtius, who was with Caesar in 50, as he 

 recalled the events of that year, to misplace by several months the 

 date at which the first and thirteenth legions started south. His 



'B. C, III, 

 ' P. 322. 



331 



