THE SCENE: The warriors of ancient Gaul may have respected the Roman army as a fearsome opponent, but they had nothing but contempt for the Roman soldiers themselves.
THE TEXT: On the arrival of the Roman army the Atuatuci at first made a series of sorties from their fortress and engaged in skirmishes; but when they found themselves enclosed by an earthwork twelve feet high, with a circuit of five miles and redoubts at frequent intervals, they stayed inside. The Romans formed a line of mantlets and constructed a siege terrace. When they began to erect a siege tower at some distance, the defenders on the wall at first made abusive remarks and ridiculed the idea of setting up such a huge apparatus so far away. Did those pygmy Romans, they asked, wither their feeble hands and muscles, imagine that they could mount such a heavy tower on top of a wall? (All the Gauls are inclined to be contemptuous of our short stature, contrasting it with their own great height.) But when they saw the tower in motion and approaching the fortress walls, the strange, unfamiliar spectacle frightened them into sending annoys to ask Caesar for peace.
– The Conquest of Gaul, Julius Caesar, 1st Century BC
