There were fantastic stories that he planned to return by a wide circuit, marching around the Caspian Sea through what would become southern Russia and conquering the German tribes on his way back to Gaul, but this conflicts with the otherwise methodical tone of the planning. It is also obvious that this would inevitably have taken longer than three years. It is possible that the idea of an eastern war was made more attractive to Caesar by its associations with Alexander the Great, but there is simply no good evidence to suggest that he had become prey to such megalomaniac dreams.
