Two of my most favorite series in the entire whole are Rome and I, Claudius. I can watch them over and over again. Two scenes in particular have been brought to mind in the last day and a half. The first, from Rome, is when Brutus, Cicero, Cassius and few other senators are looking below at the new senators, Gauls appointed by J.C. (Julius Caesar, not Christ). They are absolutely disgusted by the influx of new senators to begin with, but Gauls! It's an outrage! The scene from I, Claudius is a little more comical. It's just after Caligula has been assassinated and Claudius, in fear of his own life, hides in the curtains. After the Praetorian Guard have pulled him out from behind the curtain and proclaim the he become emperor, the German guards come storming in. One of the guards have to explain to one of the Germans that this is the new emperor. The German guard seems confused for a second until the Roman shouts "Kaiser" then "emperor" again. The camera goes to the German guards face and he says "Ja?!" and the Roman responds "Ja!" half laughing at him.
I would not have given a second thought to these scenes if it hadn't been for the homework we had been assigned yesterday. Our group was assigned Book VI. Since there are 4 of us in the group and 44 chapters, we were able to divide them equally: 11 chapters each. I wasn't able to check my email last night to see which 11 were mine, so I opted for reading the whole book to be on the safe side. Now before all of you who know my reading habits get all in a tizzy, a book is like a chapter and a chapter is about the length of a paragraph, so not that horribly long. Holly had offered me a ticket to the Greenjackets game, so I packed up my Loeb edition of the Gallic Wars, and headed to Lake Olmstead.
The first couple of chapters were about the conspiracy against the Romans by the Treveri tribe, etc etc etc. My section was basically a comparison of the two main groups that existed in Gaul: the Gauls (of course) and the Germans.
The way that Caesar described the Gauls would make you think that he was describing the tough older brother of Rome. The first description is of the differences in their class system.
Throughout Gaul there are two classes of persons of definite account and diginity. As for the common folk, they are treated almost as slaves, venturing not of themselves, never taken into counsel. (Book VI.13)
He even uses the term plebes for the Gallic lower classes instead of something like vulgus. Without much more description of the common people, he names the two upper classes of the Gauls. The first are the Druids. The Druids are in charge of almost every judicial and religious matter that happens. They can even ban you from participating in sacrifices, which likens you to a petty criminal. The coolest thing about the Druids, though, is that they learn all of their verses by memory. It's not that they can't write, Caesar evens states that when they do write, they use Greek letters. This is the quote from my Loeb translation:
...the assistance of writing tends to relax the diligence of the student and the action of the memory. (Book VI.14)
The other group are the Knights. The Knights are basically like a typical Roman patrician family. The men are expected to be in some sort of military service, the have the power over the lives of their family, and so forth. The only exceptional thing is that it is shameful for a son to be seen in public with his father unless he is fit for military service. Talk about earning your father's love. Oy!
The Gauls have other distinguishing characteristics but I'm more excited to talk about the Germans. The Germans in the time of Caesar were so beautifully simple. Let me clarify, that I don't mean simple as in dumb, but simple as in no-frills self control, living off the land so to speak. The Germans sought out toil and hardship and remained chaste until they were, minimum, 20 years old. It weakened the zeal of a warrior to do otherwise. They didn't even live in the same place for more than a year at a time to keep themselves from becoming attached to the land.
The rest of the description of the Germans was in one of my group members section, so I didn't read too much more, though I do plan to.
In my mind, Germans win the awesome factor.
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