ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes events in both Gaul and Rome, as Julius Caesar himself had to do. His normal pattern was to begin campaigning in spring, and then to winter towards the close of the year in Cisalpine Gaul in order to catch up with news from Rome and survey the state of his alliance with Pompey and Marcus Licinius Crassus. His popular orientation and easy familiarity with ordinary plebeians caused him to be known as 'Clodius', which was the plebeian pronunciation of 'Claudius'. This was not necessarily Clodius' aim, nor even inevitable, for the clubs were often organized at first instance as trade guilds or funeral associations or for other innocuous purposes. Ceasar must have felt mightily satisfied, as though his former superiors had acknowledged the gloria of his achievements to date. Little does he appear to have suspected the firestorm that lay ahead in Gaul.
