00:00:00.160Hello and welcome back to Epochs, where I shall be continuing my narrative of the decline and fall of the Roman Republic
00:00:05.540and specifically the career of Julius Caesar and specifically the portion of his career where he's invading Gaul over many, many years.
00:00:14.480So let's just continue the story. If you remember last time we left off at the end of the year 56 BC with an indecisive campaign against the Marini.
00:00:22.040So the next year, 55 BC, this is the year where Caesar has incursions across the Rhine, i.e. into Germany and into Great Britain.
00:00:33.120I mentioned before I've done a little bit of content before a while ago in the old studio all about Caesar in Britain.
00:00:39.160Well it wasn't all about that but we talked about it a bit. So we'll go into it in more detail this time and that does cover pretty much the whole of the year 55 BC.
00:00:47.320So first of all then, just to say, what it looks like Caesar is doing, or what Caesar is doing, is he's conquered Gaul nominally, lots of rebellions have risen up,
00:00:59.140he's put them down and now he's trying to sort of shore up the edges, trying to make sure he doesn't have any big incursions,
00:01:07.420firstly from the Germans really, the Britons are a whole different kettle of fish,
00:01:11.240but just trying to make sure, trying to make his position, the Roman position in Gaul, as safe as possible and it's still far from safe.
00:01:19.900So first of all, he tells us about a giant massacre of the Eusippetes and the Tenkturi, both German tribes.
00:01:27.740So once again, this is the year 55 BC and he tells us this, quote,
00:01:30.860In the following winter, in which the consulship of Pompey and Crassus began, the German tribes of the Eusippetes and the Tenkturi crossed the Rhine in large numbers not far from its mouth.
00:01:42.260They were forced to migrate because for several years they had been subjected to harassing attacks by the Suebi and prevented from tilling their land.
00:01:50.380So the Suebi are often called certainly one of the biggest, but definitely one of, if not the most warlike of the German tribes.
00:02:00.460I often think of the Suebi as one of the inner core or one of, certainly just one of the most important Germanic tribes.
00:02:07.360So if they're on the move or if they're doing some sort of large scale offensive operations, then it's really something to have to deal with.
00:02:24.000The Suebi are by far the largest and most warlike of the German nations.
00:02:27.840It is said that they have a hundred cantons, each of which provides annually a thousand armed men for service in foreign wars.
00:02:35.280Those who are left at home have to support the men in the army as well as themselves,
00:02:39.420and the next year take their turn of service while the others stay at home.
00:02:43.520Thus both agriculture and military instruction and training continue without interruption.
00:02:49.320No land, however, is the property of private individuals, and no one is allowed to cultivate the same plot for more than one year.
00:02:57.640So there's something a little bit communistic there, like diggers, communal land, there's no private property.
00:03:04.920One other thing I'll say before I continue is that Caesar's account of the Germanic peoples is among the first ever literary count of them.
00:03:14.340Later, quite a lot later, 150 years later, plus Tacitus writes the Germania, which is another account.
00:03:22.320So Caesar talking about both Britain and Germany, it's some of the earliest material.
00:03:29.320And he says they don't really have much private property, or any real private property.
00:04:53.380Traders are admitted into their country more because they want to sell their booty than because they stand in any need of imports.
00:04:59.980I.e., he's saying they're Germany, sort of, fairly resource-poor, they haven't got many things that other people want to buy.
00:05:08.100Even horses, which the Gauls are inordinately fond of, and purchase at big prices, are not imported by the Germans.
00:05:15.900They are content with their homebred horses, which, although undersized and ugly, are rendered capable of very hard work by daily exercise.
00:05:23.740In cavalry battles, they often dismount and fight on foot, training the horses to stand perfectly still so that they can quickly get back to them in case of need.
00:05:34.060In their eyes, it is the height of effeminacy and shame to use a saddle, and they do not hesitate to engage the largest force of cavalry riding saddled horses, however small their own numbers may be.
00:05:45.620They absolutely forbid the importation of wine, because they think that it makes them soft and incapable of enduring hard toil.
00:05:53.860It's not that they don't like booze, but just not specifically Roman wine, Mediterranean wine.
00:06:00.660They regard it as the proudest glory of a nation to keep the largest possible area around its frontiers uninhabited, like a dead zone,
00:06:08.680because it shows that many other peoples are inferior to it in military might.
00:06:12.260It is said, for example, that on one side of the Suebic Territory, the country is uninhabited for a distance of more than 550 miles.
00:06:22.840So, yeah, they have this idea of dead zones, that if you've got your tribe, in order to show that you're the master of all the surrounding territory,
00:06:31.980you completely depopulate it, and the bigger this dead zone is, the more powerful you are.