by Charles S. Kraszewski.
Illi, ut erat imperatum, circumsistunt hominem atque interficiunt; at equites Aedui ad Caesarem omnes revertuntur.
The facts are recorded in the stately prose of Caesar’s Gallic War,
With a clerical calmness no more dramatic than the price of Pannonian beer,
The end of sessions that side of the Alps,
Or the number of shallow-draft rowboats
That had better prickle the waters of Portus Icius
By the time He gets back from Ilyria.
So, when the Roman posse caught up with Dumnorix
(Unruly brother of Cingetorix,
Loyal unto Caesar, loyal unto the death of his brother Dumnorix,
Who tried to melt away into the woods after telling Caesar what he wanted to hear),
They made a tight circle around him
And, after having given him the chance to be reasonable,
Perforated his leather jerkin with pilum and hasta,
Dealing the coup-de-grace on the spongy Aeduan loam
With a kind thrust of the short sword from the blind side.
He died defiant, as Caesar duly noted
Calling out, “I am a free man,
Of a free people!”
The noteworthy thing — it suddenly occurred to that same Caesar, years later,
As the daggers of the assassins he so trusted chuckled in the reflected light —
Was not that I had him killed when we caught him;
— Those were my orders, and he died bravely;
And even brave men must bow to the inevitable, meaning Rome,
And I did hold up an army for a whole afternoon,
For one man retarding the invasion of Britain! —
But that I recorded just what he said,
As it was reported to me. Even though he hated me.
He died bravely, and so have I written.
I would have you remember that, he appealed to the ages,
As he covered his head with his tunic
So that Rome should not see the shame he felt
On account of such Romans as now approached him,
Ringing down in this way the curtain between History
And the new ages of Propaganda.
And even Brutus dipped a lying iron quill
In the well of his Father’s own lifeblood.