Quote of the Day

Sed fortuna, quae plurimum potest cum in reliquis rebus tum praecipue in bello, parvis momentis magnas rerum commutationes efficit; ut tum accidit. Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces.

—Julius Caesar

A Note on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

I had the role of Marc Antony in that play once upon a time. His speech that struck me most wasn’t the funeral oration. It was his soliloquy earlier in Act III. It begins:

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers …

Antony goes on to predict

Domestic fury and fierce civil strife …

I truly hope that the extremist Democrats are less successful in stirring up resistance today than the extremist Democrats were in 1861.

Team Kimberlin Post of the Day

This is the origin of one of the Latin expressions I use. It’s from Book II of Caesar’s Commentary on the War in Gaul

Chapter 32

To these things Caesar replied, “That he, in accordance with his custom rather than owing to their desert, should spare the city, if they should surrender themselves before the battering-ram should touch the wall; but that there was no condition of surrender, except upon their arms being delivered up; that he should do to them that which he had done in the case of the Nervii, and would command their neighbors not to offer any injury to those who had surrendered to the Roman people.” The matter being reported to their countrymen, they said that they would execute his commands. Having thrown a very large quantity of their arms from the wall into the trench that was before the town so that the heaps of arms almost equalled the top of the wall and the rampart, and nevertheless having retained and concealed, as we afterward discovered, about a third of their arms in the town, the gates were opened, and they enjoyed peace for that day.

Chapter 33

Toward evening Caesar ordered the gates to be shut and the soldiers to go out of the town lest the towns-people should receive any injury from them by night. The Aduatuci, by a design before entered into, as we afterwards understood, because they believed that, as a surrender had been made, our men would dismiss their guards or at least would keep watch less carefully, partly with those arms which they had retained and concealed, partly with shields made of bark or interwoven wickers which they had hastily covered over with skins (as the shortness of time required), in the third watch, suddenly made a sally from the town with all their forces in the direction which the ascent to our fortifications seemed the least difficult. The signal having been immediately given by fires, as Caesar had previously commended, a rush was made thither by Roman soldiers from the nearest fort; and the battle was fought by the enemy as vigorously as it ought to be fought by brave men in the last hope of safety, in a disadvantageous place, and against those who were throwing their weapons from a rampart and from towers; since all hope of safety depended on their courage alone. About 4,000 of the men having been slain, the rest were forced back into the town. The next day, Caesar, after breaking open the gates which there was no one then to defend, and sending in our soldiers, sold the whole spoil of that town. The number of 53,000 persons was reported to him by those who had bought them.

Murum aries attigit.

Quote of the Day

Sed fortuna, quae plurimum potest cum in reliquis rebus tum praecipue in bello, parvis momentis magnas rerum commutationes efficit; ut tum accidit. Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces.

—Julius Caesar

Quote of the Day

Se magis consuetudine sua quam merito eorum civitatem conservaturum, si prius quam murum aries attigisset se dedidissent; sed deditionis nullam esse condicionem nisi armis traditis. That he should spare the city in accordance with his custom rather than giving them what they deserved if they should surrender themselves before the battering-ram should touch the wall; but that there was no condition of surrender, except upon their arms being delivered up.

—Julius Caesar, Commentarii de bello Gallico, II, 32