The Coolest Person To Ever Build A Wall

Now this is something I wish they taught in school.

Did you know that Julius Caesar was actually a savage, and I use that word as in ‘cool’ not violent. He was a bloodthirsty murderer, but let's but that aside for the sake of me telling you this story. Now, I'm assuming you know who he is. He is the ‘Beware the ides of March’ guy. The stabbed 23 times by his closest ‘friends' guy. Was having a sexual relationship with Cleopatra guy. You know, Julius Caesar; Roman dictator.

There are a lot of stories that I’m sure you’ve heard before about Julius Caesar but, I am willing to bet you haven't heard this one.

Okay, so it's like a very long time ago, 52 BC to be exact. Rome had long since been at war with the Gaul's and Caesar was ready to defeat them once and for all. The Gauls had actually once sacked Rome and they had been an enemy tribe ever since. Vercingetorix, one of the coolest named people I've heard about in a while, was the leader of Arverni, a gallic tribe.

Vercingetorix was leading his army into battle after battle against the Romans and murdering an outstanding number of roman citizens. After taking a break from his long hard day of murder and warfare, he brought his tribe, of more than 75,000, to rest in the city of Alesia. Alesia is a hilly city, located in what is present day France. When Caesar got word of their whereabouts he stealthily followed behind.

Alesia was atop a hill, surrounded on either side by two rivers, and had a large plain of land in front of the hill. Now think about this like you are Caesar, okay? The city is atop a hill. Can you climb it and attack? No, they would be assaulted by arrows. Can you somehow attack by the sides? Um, no there is water surrounding the hill. So, how exactly are the Romans supposed to attack the city? I’ll tell you how.

They built a wall.

Tell me that isn’t hilarious! Okay, so imagine you are the Arverni, hanging out in this random town, watching the most brutal military of its day, building a ten mile wall. The Gallic tribe started to panic, obviously, so they decided to try and attack. Only issue is that the Romans boobytrapped the wall. There were 20 foot deep trenches, pits filled with spikes and a 12 foot tall wall with spikes sticking out of it. Caesar was a genius.

Eventually, the city of Alesia was starting to go hungry so Vercingetorix sent out a few of his men and what did the Romans do? They slaughtered every last one of them.

Eventually Vercingetorix was able to sneak 12,000 men out to spread the word to other tribes, so that they would be able to come back and take down Caesar's wall. This plan worked out pretty well, seeing as those men were able to round up more than 200,000 more people to fight in this battle. 200,000 people is a lot, especially compared to Caesar, who was reported to only have about 60,000 men with him at the time of the battle.

Now really picture this. The men rounded up a huge army and they brought them back to Alesia. Do you want to know what they found upon their return?

Another wall!

So the battle breaks out, a ton of people die and Julius Caesar is named champion over Vercingetorix. Not to skip over the part where somehow he defeated over 200,000 people with an army of 50,000 but, I’m sure you can imagine the battle yourself. It was gruesome.

All I know is that Julius Caesar should be named the coolest person to build a wall. Ever.