Marius Mules: Book Three Gallia Invicta by SJA Turney

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Caesar has returned to Rome announcing, for the second time, that Gaul is pacified and leaving his
Legions to re-equip and where possible recruit to make up for their considerable losses.
  
The book opens with Galba, Legate of the Twelfth Legion, trying with his three remaining cohorts to garrison the town of Octodurus, capital of the Veragri tribe and holding the pass between Lake Geneva and Cisalpine Gaul.   Having fortified the upper part of the town Galba then faces a revolt by the Veragri and two neighbouring tribes and faced with overwhelming odds extricates the survivors to Eporedia in Cisalpine Gaul.   In Northern Gaul Crassus, Legate of the Seventh Legion, stirs up a hornets nest with his constant raids on the local tribes for food and other supplies.   He steadfastly refuses his officers plea to arrange supplies from Southern Gaul as he fears losing face in the eyes of Caesar.   When he arresta a Druid who arrives to negotiate with him the Veneti leading the other local tribes rise in revolt.

Meanwhile in Rome Fronto, who is on leave and Priscus his First Spear who is convalescing from a crippling leg wound, are recruited by Cicero to guard Caelius Rufus who is being prosecuted by Caesar's enemy Clodius Pulcher.   At this point we are reintroduced to Aulus Paetus whom all other characters in the story believe to be dead.   Paetus was Caesar's Camp Prefect and was found to be spying on behalf of Clodius who had threatened his familly.   Fronto persuades Caesar to use him to send misleading information to Clodius in return for protection for his familly.   Caesar makes this promise then does nothing and when Clodius discovers he has been tricked Paetus' familly is butchered.   Paetus is now in Rome seeking revenge on both Clodius and Caesar.

Clodius case against Caelius is trashed in the Court by Cicero and Crassus Senior but Caelius is still in danger of being murdered by Clodius who now runs the biggest gang of cutthroats in Rome.   As Fronto is recalled to his Legion by Caesar he leaves Caelius in the protection of Priscus who has also recruited a gang to act as bodyguards.

On his return to Gaul Caesar, who had already told the Senate that he had conquered the Gaulish tribes, is not pleased that Crassus had stirred the Veneti to revolt.   However, he cannot dismiss him as he needs the support of Crassus Senior in Rome and so sends the Seventh to pacify the restless tribes of the Pyrenees.   The Veneti avoid a pitched battle with the Romans by using their skill as sailors but eventualy they are cornered and those who are not killed are enslaved.

Priscus writes to Fronto that men loyal to Caesar are being murdered by Clodius gang and that Clodius himself has had meetings with Pompey Magnus and that Fronto's mother and sister were attacked at the market but rescued by an unknown man who walks away without a word.   The man, of course, is Paetus.   Clodia, sister of odious Clodius, has disappeared and Priscus finds her murdered body at the mausoleum of the Paetus familly.

In Gaul two more revolts are put down but Caesar and Crassus are persuaded to leave the tribes on their land if only because they can grow the increasing amounts of food that an ever expanding Rome requires.

Caesar, Fronto and the rest of the senior officers return to Rome as the Legions move into winter quarters to recruit and re-equip.   There they find that Clodius is ever more ambitious and daring as his huge private army rules the streets and an escalating series of fracas lead to a full scale attack on Fronto's home.   It is beaten off but leads to Caesar calling a meeting with Crassus Senior and Pompey Magnus with the intention of bringing down Clodius once and for all.

SJA Turney has given us another first class adventure story set in my favouite historical period.   However, I must admit that I was more interested in the Roman episodes than the battlefield incidents which all seem to end up as a load of Celtic nutters throwing themselves at disciplined Roman sheildwalls and being slaughtered.   Perhaps volume four will show us more of the battle against Clodius and his street fighters.