Note 807 — Chapter VIII · EVENTS OF THE YEAR 703.
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The question became complicated through the difference of origin of the powers given for each of the two Gauls. The Senate had the power of taking away from Cæsar’s command Ulterior Gaul, which was given to him by a senatus-consultus, but it could not deprive him of Citerior Gaul, given by a plebiscitum, and yet it was the contrary opinion that Cicero sustained in 698. In fact, he exclaimed then, in his Oration on the Consular Provinces: “He separates the part of the province on which there can be no opposition (because it has been given by a senatus-consultus), and does not touch that which can be easily attacked; and, at the same time that he dares not take away that which has been given by the people, he is in haste to take away all, senator as he is, that which has been given by the Senate.” (Cicero, Orat. de Provinc. Consular., 15.—Velleius Paterculus, II. 44.—Suetonius, Cæsar, 20.—Appian, Civil Wars, II. 13.—Dio Cassius, XXXVIII. 8.)