artened, dispersed at once from the battle-field
and went home. Vercingetorix might perhaps have even now taken
to flight, or at least have saved himself by the last means open
to a free man; he did not do so, but declared in a council of war that,
since he had not succeeded in breaking off the alien yoke,
he was ready to give himself up as a victim and to avert as far as
possible destruction from the nation by bringing it on his own
head. This was done. The Celtic officers delivered their general--
the solemn choice of the whole nation--over to the energy of their
country for such punishment as might be thought fit. Mounted
on his steed and in full armour the king of the Arverni appeared
before the Roman proconsul and rode round his tribunal;
then he surrendered his horse and arms, and sat down in silence
on the steps at Caesar's feet (702).

Vercingetorix Executed

Five years afterwards he was led in triumph through the streets
of the Italian capital, and, while his conqueror was offering solemn
thanks to the gods on the summit of the Capitol, Vercingetorix
was beheaded at its foot as guilty of high treason against the Roman
nation. As after a day of gloom the sun may perhaps break through
the clouds at its setting, so destiny may bestow on nations
in their decline yet a last great man. Thus Hannibal stands
at the close of the Phoenician history, and Vercingetorix
at the close of the Celtic. They were not able to save the nations
to which they belonged from a foreign yoke, but they spared them
the last remaining disgrace--an inglorious fall. Vercingetorix,
just like the Carthaginian, was obliged to contend not merely
against the public foe, but also and above all against that anti-national
opposition of wounded egotists and startled cowards, which regularly
accompanies a degenerate civilization; for him too a place
in history is secured, not by his battles and sieges,
but by the fact that he was able to furnish in his own person
a centre and rallying-point to a nation distracted and ruined
by the rivalry of individual interests. And yet there can hardly
be a more marked contrast than between the sober townsman
of the Phoenician mercantile city, whose plans were directed towards
one great object with unchanging energy throughout fifty years,
and the bold prince of the Celtic land, whose mighty deeds and high-
minded self-sacrifice fall within the compass of one brief summer.
The whole ancient world present