Page:The Commentaries of Caesar.djvu/77

 had taken refuge, desiring that these horsemen should he given up to him. But the Sigambri will not obey. The Germans seem to have understood that Cæsar had Gaul in his hands, to do as he liked with it; but they grudged his interference beyond the Rhine. Cæsar, however, always managed to have a set of friends among his enemies, to help him in adjusting his enmities. We have heard of the Ædui in central Gaul, and of the Remi in the north. The Ubii were his German friends, who were probably at this time occupying both banks of the river; and the Ubii ask him just to come over and frighten their neighbours. Cæsar resolves upon gratifying them. And as it is not consistent either with his safety or with his dignity to cross the river in boats, he determines to build a bridge.

Is there a schoolboy in England, or one who has been a schoolboy, at any Cæsar-reading school, who does not remember those memorable words, "Tigna bina sesquipedalia," with which Cæsar begins his graphic account of the building of the bridge? When the breadth of the river is considered, its rapidity, and the difficulty which there must have been in finding tools and materials for such a construction, in a country so wild and so remote from Roman civilisation, the creation of this bridge fills us with admiration for Cæsar's spirit and capacity. He drove down piles into the bed of the river, two and two, prone against the stream. We could do that now, though hardly as quickly as Cæsar did it; but we should want coffer-dams and steam-pumps, patent rammers, and a clerk of the works. He explains to us that he so built the foun-