Nobody Loves a Centurion(17)

“Why do you think I wanted five years to finish it? The Helvetii were already on the move when I reached Gaul. Now the Germans are involved. Before I am done, I may have to subdue Gaul all the way from the Rhine to the Pyrenees. I may have to go all the way to Britannia.”

I almost choked on my Falernian. “That is a large chunk of territory to take on. Not to mention a large population of extremely warlike barbarians.”

He shrugged. “Alexander used to take as much territory in a year.”

There it was: Alexander again. I wished the little Macedonian bastard was alive so I could kill him all over again. Just one such maniac in all of history and he inspired fools forever after. Well, Macedonia is part of the Roman Empire now, which ought to teach people something.

“Gauls aren’t Persians.”

“No, and I thank Jupiter for it. I doubt that Persians would ever make good citizens.”

It was as if he had abruptly switched to a language with which I was not conversant. “I don’t believe I follow you, Caesar.”

He fixed me with that intense, lawyer’s gaze. “Rome needs new blood, Decius. We are no longer the people we were in the days of Scipio and Fabius. Once, we could raise ten strong legions from the regions within two or three days’ march around Rome. Now we have to scour all of Italy to make up three or four good legions. In a generation or two we may not even have that. Where, then, will we find our soldiers? Greece? That is absurd. Syria; Egypt? The idea is laughable.”

What he said was not totally unreasonable. “If we could just clear the multitude of foreign slaves out of Italy and put natives back to work on Italian soil, we would not have this problem,” I asserted.

He shook his head. “Now you sound like Cato. No man can undo history. We must seize the moment and bend the present to our will. You have served in Spain. What is your impression of the Iberians?”

“Wild and primitive, but they make first-rate soldiers.”

“Exactly. And many of them are Gauls of a sort. I think these people of the Gallic heartland can be civilized. If they can be made to give up their seminomadic habits, settle down and stop fighting one another, and acknowledge the mastery of Rome, they could contribute immeasurably to our strength and prosperity.”

This was radical thinking. To conquer barbarians was one thing: everyone approved of that. But make citizens of them?

“They can’t even make good wine, although I admit their racehorses and charioteers are as good as any bred in Rome.”

“I knew I could depend on you to have a firm grasp of the essentials.”

“But, Caesar, not so long ago we fought a bloody war over the right of Italian communities to hold the franchise! Those were our cousins, most of them Latins or at least Oscans who shared most of our customs and traditions. If it took a war to give those people full citizenship, what would it take to convince Romans that Gauls deserve the honor?”

“Good sense, I would hope,” he said impatiently. “That, and fear of the Germans.” He had a point there. “You know as well as I do that they are not howling savages, they just look and sound like it. They are marvelous artificers and halfway decent farmers. They even have rather attractive architecture, although they don’t build in stone. But they are politically primitive, still in the tribal stage, feuding endlessly with one another.”

“And they have no writing,” I pointed out.

“No, they do not. What they have instead is Druids.”

“I fail to make the connection.”

“How powerful would a priesthood be if it had a monopoly on literacy, Decius? Think about it. I know that you are not as dense as you pretend.”

It was flattery of a sort. “You mean like the Egyptians before they learned Greek writing?”

“Something like that. But imagine a society in which only the priests could read and write while even the nobles and the kings were illiterate. The Druids have a position almost like that.”

“Lovernius told me they were repositories of law and tradition as well as intermediaries between the Gauls and their gods.”

“Exactly. And as such they are arbiters on all matters of contention between the petty kings and chieftains, not that they stop much of the fighting. They wield great influence where the Gauls must cooperate to deal with a non-Gallic people such as the Germans. Or Rome. There are twenty or more major Gallic nations and a hundred petty chieftains and their tribes, with no unity among them. But there is a single cult of Druids from the Pyrenees to Britannia all the way to Galatia. They are the sole unifying force among the Gauls. If I am to subdue the Gauls, I may first have to break the power of the Druids.”