Harnessing Talents

From Caesar's Footprints by Bijan Omrani.

The Gauls were renowned in Rome for their eloquence, cleverness and bravery: what better way of harnessing their talents than to give them access to a system of education that revered rhetorical excellence as the apogee of its attainment, before paving the path for Gauls to enter the Roman system of government and the Roman courts?

Moreover, like Roman gods and Roman religion, the Roman identity was not exclusive.  Just as long as the reverence due to Caesar and Rome was paid, Roman citizenship, or else presence as a resident in the empire, allowed loyalties and other identities.  Ausonius himself (1), the most Roman of Gauls, wrote that 'I love Bordeaux, Rome I venerate; in this, I am a citizen, in both a consul; here was my cradle, there my curule chair'.(2)

The genius of Rome was to allow both identities to coexist, and to show that acquiescence to Rome not only benefited an individual in a material sense or in the Roman scheme of things, but also allowed that individual to succeed better within the framework of his original cultural identity; to be a more committed Roman gave a Gallic aristocrat the chance to be better and more successful within the old hierarchy of Gallic society as well.

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(1) Decimius Magnus Ausonius (310-395) was a native of Bordeaux and poet, teacher, and tutor to the Emperor Gratian, who named him consul.

(2) A curule chair was the foldable and transportable chair used by high Roman dignitaries.