During a term as praetor in Iberia, Pompey's contemporary Julius Caesar of the Roman Julii clan defeated the Calaici and Lusitani in battle. Following a consular term, he was then appointed to a five-year term as Proconsular Governor of Transalpine Gaul (current southern France) and Illyria (the coast of Dalmatia). Not content with an idle governorship, Caesar strove to find reason to invade Gaul, which would give him the dramatic military success he sought. To this end he stirred up popular nightmares of the first sack of Rome by the Gauls and the more recent spectre of the Cimbri and Teutones. When the Helvetii and Tigurini tribes began to migrate on a route that would take them near (not into) the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul, Caesar had the barely sufficient excuse he needed for his Gallic Wars, fought between 58 BC and 49 BC. After slaughtering the Helvetii tribe, Caesar prosecuted a "long, bitter and costly" campaign against other tribes across the breadth of Gaul, many of whom had fought alongside Rome against their common enemy the Helvetii, and annexed their territory to that of Rome. Plutarch claims that the campaign cost a million Gallic lives. Although "fierce and able" the Gauls were handicapped by internal disunity and fell in a series of battles over the course of a decade.