The Gallic Hero In William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

The year was 52 BCE. The stage in Europe. The Gallic War is in full swing. On one side of the conflict, Rome. At the time, Rome is kind of a force to be reckoned with. Best described as extremely professional. A historian said of the Roman military, “They do not sit with folded hands in peacetime, on the contrary, as though they had been born with weapons in hand, they never have a truce from training.” The Roman weapon of choice was the mass-produced gladius. The gladius was a short workman-like blade. Proper use of the gladius would, “Puncture vital organs, leading to trauma, catastrophic tissue damage, and rapid bleeding out of the victim.” And leading the Roman charge, Julius Caesar. Noted not only for his tactical prowess but also for possessing the special ability to win the admiration of his soldiers. But make no mistake, Caesar was not a man to trifle with. He was as cunning as he was ruthless. As Shakespeare wrote, “Danger knows full well that

His army was estimated to number around 50,000. While Vercingetorix oversaw 80,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalries. So instead of attacking, Caesar utilized his army’s uncanny talent of civil engineering. Caesar plan was seemingly this, wall them up like rats and watch them starve. The wall, called a circumvallation, was not without its defenses. If Vercingetorix wanted his men to attempt an assault on Caesar’s wall, they’d first come upon a 20ft wide trench. This likely dampened any hope for a surprise attack. Beyond that, two more trenches dung into a V-shape, each was 15ft deep. One of them turned into a moat using the nearby rivers. To top it all off, a belt of scattered camouflage pits, the bottoms lovingly adorned with sharpened poles, laid in between all of the trenches. If anyone did make it to the Roman rampart, they’d find themselves facing a 12ft wall with projecting stakes, a primitive version of barbed