Laudator Temporis Acti

Statue of Vercingetorix by Aimé Millet: Bijan Omrani, Caesar's Footprints. A Cultural Excursion to Ancient France: Journeys Through Roman Gaul (New York: Pegasus Books, 2017), p. 103:

In a clearing of tattered oaks and beeches on the western height of Mont Auxois, above the village of Alise-Sainte-Reine, stands a statue of Vercingétorix, looking down over the scene of his defeat. The clearing is empty and silent when I visit, and the peaks of the surrounding hills where Caesar camped are hidden in cloud. Rainwater has washed seawatery green stains from the metal body of the statue into the limestone plinth, and the mass of it lours dark against a leaden sky. The statue has stood here since the 1860s, when it was commissioned by Emperor Napoleon III. Its inscription, adapted from the commentaries of Caesar, bespeaks the power imputed to its subject: La Gaule Unie, formant une seule nation, animée d'une même esprit, peut défier l'univers ('Gaul, united, forming a single nation, animated by the same spirit, is able to defy the universe'). Caesar had defeated and captured Vercingétorix, imprisoned and executed him, and appropriated the record of his deeds for his own benefit. And yet Caesar, for all his self-glorification and destructiveness, had laid sufficient foundations for a new identity for Vercingétorix — and for Gaul — to emerge in years to come.

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