homicide relieved him.  The Gaul was irascible, furious in his wrath, but less formidable in a sustained conflict with a powerful foe.  “All the Gauls are of very high stature,” says a soldier who fought under Julian. (Amm.  Marcel. xv. 12. 1).  “They are white, golden-haired, terrible in the fierceness of their eyes, greedy of quarrels, bragging and insolent.  A band of strangers could not resist one of them in a brawl, assisted by his strong blue-eyed wife, especially when she begins, gnashing her teeth, her neck swollen, brandishing her vast and snowy arms, and kicking with her heels at the same time, to deliver her fisticuffs, like bolts from the twisted strings of a catapult.  The voices of many are threatening and formidable.  They are quick to anger, but quickly appeased.  All are clean in their persons; nor among them is ever seen any man or woman, as elsewhere, squalid in ragged garments.  At all ages they are apt for military service.  The old man goes forth to the fight with equal strength of breast, with limbs as hardened by cold and assiduous labor, and as contemptuous of all dangers, as the young.  Not one of them, as in Italy is often the case, was ever known to cut off his thumbs to avoid the service of Mars.”

The polity of each race differed widely from that of the other.  The government of both may be said to have been republican, but the Gallic tribes were aristocracies, in which the influence of clanship was a predominant feature; while the German system, although nominally regal, was in reality democratic.  In Gaul were two orders, the nobility and the priesthood, while the people, says Caesar, were all slaves.  The knights or nobles were all trained to arms.  Each went forth to battle, followed by his dependents, while a chief of all the clans was appointed to take command during the war.  The prince or chief governor was elected annually, but only by the nobles.  The people had no rights at all, and were glad to assign themselves as slaves to any noble who was strong enough to protect them.  In peace the Druids exercised the main functions of government.  They decided all controversies, civil and criminal.  To rebel against their decrees was punished by exclusion from the sacrifices—­a most terrible excommunication, through which the criminal was cut off from all intercourse with his fellow-creatures.

With the Germans, the sovereignty resided in the great assembly of the people.  There were slaves, indeed, but in small number, consisting either of prisoners of war or of those unfortunates who had gambled away their liberty in games of chance.  Their chieftains, although called by the Romans princes and kings, were, in reality, generals, chosen by universal suffrage.  Elected in the great assembly to preside in war, they were raised on the shoulders of martial freemen, amid wild battle cries and the clash of spear and shield.  The army consisted entirely of volunteers, and the soldier was for life infamous who deserted