United States or Taiwan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Meanwhile four Gallic horsemen and two Numidians, who were sent to Hannibal with a letter from Hasdrubal, after he had retired from the siege of Placentia, having traversed nearly the whole length of Italy through the midst of enemies, while following Hannibal as he was retiring to Metapontum, were taken to Tarentum by mistaking the roads; where they were seized by some Roman foragers, who were straggling through the fields, and brought before the proprietor, Caius Claudius.
Two distinct kinds of men inhabit this kingdom. The one occupying the valleys of the Meuse and the Scheldt, and the high grounds bordering on France, speak a dialect of the language of that country, and evidently belong to the Gallic race. They are called Walloons, and are distinguished from the others by many peculiar qualities.
There were men of the West who denied the existence of anything east of the Rhine: men of the North who denied the existence of everything south of the Loire: men of the South who called all those who lived north of the Loire Barbarians: and there were men who boasted of being of Gallic descent: and, craziest of all, there were "Romans" who prided themselves on the defeat of their ancestors: and Bretons, and Lorrainians, and Felibres, and Albigeois; and men from Carpentras, and Pontoise, and Quimper-Corentin: they all thought only of themselves, the fact of being themselves was sufficient patent of nobility, and they wild not put up with the idea of people being anything else.
It is still France, little changed; and only more national, for it is less Frank and more Gallic; as England has become less Norman and more Saxon. 'And it is your opinion, then, that the present King may maintain himself? 'Every movement in this country, however apparently discordant, seems to tend to that inevitable end.
Success, however, essentially depends upon the impression which the origination of the war makes upon us and others; it is important that we should be the party attacked, and this Gallic overweening and touchiness will make us if we announce in the face of Europe, so far as we can without the speaking-tube of the Reichstag, that we fearlessly meet the public threats of France."
Hirtius, who, at Caesar's request, appended an eighth book to the Gallic War, tells us in a letter to Balbus, how rapidly he wrote. "I wish that those who will read my book could know how unwillingly I took it in hand, that I might acquit myself of folly and arrogance in completing what Caesar had begun.
There seems to have been regular and established companies of watermen on these rivers, whose business it was to convey goods on them: an ancient inscription at Lyons mentions Tauricius of Vannes, as the general overseer of the Gallic trade, the patron or head of the watermen on the Seine and Loire, and the regulator of weights, measures, and carriages; and other ancient inscriptions state, that the government of the watermen who navigated the Rhone and the Saone, was often bestowed on Roman knights.
But though the soldier's attachment to his master was quite as brave and disinterested as that of the Gallic slave, yet he was far from being equally blameless in the means he employed, and if his were a golden deed at all, it was mixed with much of iron.
It is not impossible that the subdivision of the army and the intervals between the maniples in front were arranged with a view to resist, as they did resist, its first and only dangerous charge; and it accords with this hypothesis that Marcus Furius Camillus, the most celebrated Roman general of the Gallic epoch, is presented in various detached notices as the reformer of the Roman military system.
And not only men rejoiced at this victory, but the immortal gods also had supplications paid to them, for the space of three days, on account of the business of the state having been wisely and successfully, not rashly and unfortunately, conducted by Lucius Furius, praetor. Besides, the Gallic wars were, by some fatality, destined to the Furian family."
Word Of The Day