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‘Well, you have to understand his position. He feels no personal animosity towards your master – very much the opposite. But unlike my father and Pompey, he’s not in Rome to defend himself. He’s concerned about losing political support while his back is turned, and being recalled before his work here is complete. He sees Cicero as the greatest threat to his position. Come inside – let me show you something.’

We passed the sentry and went into the house, and Publius conducted me through the crowded public rooms to a small library where, from an ivory casket, he produced a series of dispatches, all beautifully edged in black and housed in purple slip-cases, with the word Commentaries picked out in vermilion in the title line.

‘These are Caesar’s own personal copies,’ Publius explained, handling them carefully. ‘He takes them with him wherever he goes. They are his record of the campaign in Gaul, which he has decided to send regularly to be posted up in Rome. One day he intends to collect them all together and publish them as a book. It’s perfectly marvellous stuff. See for yourself.’

He plucked out a roll for me to read:

There is a river called the Saone, which flows through the territories of the Aedui and Sequani into the Rhone with such incredible slowness that it cannot be determined by the eye in which direction it flows. This the Helvetii were crossing by rafts and boats joined together. When Caesar was informed by spies that the Helvetii had already conveyed three parts of their forces across that river, but that the fourth part was left behind on this side of the Saone, he set out from the camp with three legions. Attacking them, encumbered with baggage, and not expecting him, he cut to pieces a great part of them …

I said, ‘He writes of himself with wonderful detachment.’

‘He does. That’s because he doesn’t want to sound boastful. It’s important to strike the right note.’

I asked if I might be allowed to copy some of it, and show it to Cicero. ‘He misses the regular news from Rome. What reaches us is sparse, and late.’

‘Of course – it’s all public information. And I’ll make sure you get in to see Caesar. You’ll find he’s in a tremendously good mood.’

He left me alone and I settled to work.

Even allowing for a degree of exaggeration, it was plain from the Commentaries that Caesar had enjoyed an astonishing run of military successes. His original mission had been to halt the migration of the Helvetii and four other tribes who were trekking westwards across Gaul to the Atlantic in search of new territory. He had followed their immense column, which consisted both of fighting men and of the elderly and women and children, with a new army he had mostly raised himself of five legions. Finally he had lured them into battle at Bibracte. As a guarantee to his new legions that neither he nor his officers would abandon them if things went wrong, he had all their horses sent far away to the rear. They fought on foot with the infantry, and in the event Caesar, by his own account, did not merely halt the Helvetii – he slaughtered them. Afterwards a list giving the total strength of the migration had been discovered in the enemy’s abandoned camp:

Helvetii

263,000

Tulingi

36,000

Latobrigi

14,000

Rauraci

23,000

Boii

32,000

368,000

Of these, according to Caesar, the total number who returned alive to their former homeland was 110,000.

Then – and this was what no one else surely would have dreamed of attempting – he had force-marched his weary legions back across Gaul to confront 120,000 Germans who had taken advantage of the Helvetii’s migration to cross into Roman-controlled territory. There had been another terrific battle, lasting seven hours, in which young Crassus had commanded the cavalry, and by the end of it the Germans had been entirely annihilated. Hardly any had been left alive to flee back across the Rhine, which for the first time became the natural frontier of the Roman Empire. Thus, if Caesar’s account was to be believed, almost one third of a million people had either died or disappeared in the space of a single summer. To round off the year, he had left his legions in their new winter camp, a full one hundred miles north of the old border of Further Gaul.