Wednesday, August 25, 2010

A lesson from history

When the Roman Republic decided that it wanted to dispatch Julius Caesar and his armies to as yet unconquered Gaul they needed to give his job a title. What do you think it might have been?

Protector of the Gauls.

That's right, and in the course of protecting the Gauls Caesar found himself having to kill around one million Gauls, a quarter of a million Germans, a few Brits and he also enslaved around one million of the barbarian peoples.

A more energetic protector of the Gauls you will not find.

In fairness to him he let them keep their oil and he didn't go on to describe himself as a 'peace envoy'.

2 comments:

Stuart Jeffery said...

Remind me not to employ you as a history teacher... I doubt the Caesar killed Germans or Brits!

Jim Jepps said...

He did!

JC was the first Roman to invade Britain... although he didn't stay long.

And during his war in Gaul he took time out to invade Germany to put down an incursion after 72(?) romans were killed in a night time raid.

He estimated that he killed men, women and children totalling 430,000.

Cato was so angry about it that he suggested, in the senate, that Caesar be handed over to the Germans!