Vercingetorix Throws Down his Arms at the Feet of Julius Caesar

I had to post this, as It has been on my mind a lot. Vercingetorix Throws Down his Arms at the Feet of Julius Caesar  is a great moment in history, as great and rare as any when history herself chooses to change her own course.

 

 

Unlike, say Hannibal, Caesar was no great tactical genius at battle, neither was he a great commander. Caesar was, in one word, will. Pure and unadulterated, not fancy resolve or ambition, just raw will.

Imagine being surrounded on all the sides by an enemy who outnumbered you 1 : 5 , in a land distant and unfamiliar, with your own troops  battle-weary, running out of ration and hopelessly homesick, how on earth would you even conceive of succeeding against such a volley of unbeatable odds ? Well, that's Caesar, starving his men out, starving himself, and blinded by only one thing - Victory. It was a pure display of will, that I have never known or heard of in history. As Cicero so eloquently put it to Julius Caesar: Your spirit has never been content within the narrow confines which nature has imposed upon us.

The painting is the famous Oil Painting by a less known painter of his time - Lionel-Noël Royer, The grandness aptly captures the moment  when Vercingetorix, having recognised that he has been beaten comes out of his fort in Alesia  and lays his arms before the Caesar in his encampment,  thus handing his greatest victory which in due course would end up changing the pathway of the entire western world.