THE BATTLE OF ALESIA

The Battle of Alesia (The Gallic Wars). Ok so today I had to get up and come to work and then when I'm done with work I have to go to my second job. Now imagine that your job is in the Roman Army. And unfortunately for you your fighting against an army 5 times bigger than you. Caesar is going to try and lay siege to Alesia. As he approaches the city he builds a wall around it (see the inside wall with the men in the tower?) Now he realizes he could be attacked from the left side of the picture so he builds a second wall. So it takes somewhere around 60 K laborers to complete this task in about 3 weeks for a 10 mile diameter wall. The outer wall was 15 miles in diameter....what is my point?

A few years ago I put in a brick patio in my house and it took me 3 days to dig out the dirt and put down the brick. Basically my patio is about 11' w by 20' long. What amazes me about this story is that the wall the Romans built was 15' high and they built about a mile of wall each day. On top of this they had to ward off the enemy , shower/eat/ take a nap etc......No bulldozers, no dump trucks nothing like that just labor intensive. I am simply amazed at the Engineering skills of our Ancestors.

If you want to read a great story go to http://www.angelfire.com/me/ik/alesia3.html and check it out. History simply fascinates me but this is gotta be the biggest coolest thing in history I have ever seen. I keep coming back to this story.

The Black Widow