ABSTRACT
Facts and figures were an important part of any narrative of an ancient war and Caesar’s account is no exception. He regularly enumerates the size and type of enemy forces he was facing and often gives a figure for their casualties. The accuracy of these figures is rather suspect and as already indicated there were good political reasons for exaggerating both the size of the enemy force and the number of casualties inflicted. Casualty figures were a kind of currency of military success, not least because a general needed to have inflicted at least 5,000 enemy casualties in battle in order to claim a triumph back in Rome. So figures are likely to have been inflated to stress the military skill and prowess of the commander and his troops. And the rule on minimum figures for triumphs may have encouraged the slaughter in the aftermath of battle to go on longer than strictly necessary, just to make sure enough were killed. The figures given in the Gallic War for sizes of enemy forces and casualties must be regarded as very rough estimates that are severely exaggerated. Sometimes they become almost unbelievable. It is highly unlikely that the Gallic relieving army at Alesia was anything like the 240,000 Caesar claims, even though to give his figures a suggestion of authenticity he lists each individual tribe and the number of warriors they contributed. Along with the alleged 80,000 Gauls trapped in the oppidum with Vercingetorix this represents an unlikely concentration of troops. Caesar was probably never as seriously outnumbered as he likes to suggest. Despite the problems with numbers, however, the total casualties in the nine years of fighting must have been appalling. Some tribes were all but wiped out, or else their influence declined so much because of crushing defeats with high casualties that little is heard of them again. The Helvetii thought of themselves as one of the bravest and most influential of the Gauls, but after they were forced back to their homelands little is heard of them again.
