As always in Caesar’s story, we need to be very careful not to allow hindsight to impose a sense of inevitability on events. The scale of Caesar’s successes in Gaul was startling, even in a Rome so recently dazzled by Pompey’s achievements. Yet the balance between success and failure was often narrow, and he might easily have been killed, or have died from accident or disease before he could return. That he would eventually come back as a rebel to fight against his former ally and son-in-law Pompey was unlikely to have occurred to anyone. When Caesar went to Gaul he had plans and ambitions,
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