De bello Gallorum

The name Julius Caesar evokes different ideas to different people. To me , he is not only a brilliant strategist, emperor, and one of the most famous lovers of Egyptian Queen Cleopatra, he is foremost the general whose war diaries we read as required reading, in the original Latin, in my years in Catholic high school in Belgium. Julius Caesar holds a prominent place in my memory because he said one thing that makes me exceedingly proud to this day: "Belgae fortissimi sunt omnae Gallorum". For those of you who do not speak Latin, it means: " the Belgian tribes are the strongest of all the Gaelic tribes".There you have it. As a native Belgian, how could I not be proud. To read this at age 14, at a time when a lot of Belgians continued to feel their dignity challenged because of language squabbles between the Wallons, who claim loyalty to the French language and culture, and the Flemish, who are all too proud to be Belgian, it was an impressive sentence,as a young Flemish girl, to read. It became engraved in my brain. My husband and I became first degree black belts in the martial art of Tae Kwon Do, and I remember our 9th degree Grand Master, under whom we trained, telling one of the black belt men I was sparring with one day, when referring to me in the all black belt evening class:"Don't make her mad!" It was music to my ears, I was so surprised and well, flattered, as this fellow black belt male towered over me at six foot four, and I am five foot eight. Some of that good old warrior blood Julius Caesar had talked about must have been noticeable to our South Korean Grand Master, because he was not prone to give complements to the women in his classes. I always felt that the women, who were outnumbered four to one, had to try at least twice at hard to get any respect and appreciation. I was also told  by a young master that I had a very powerful round house kick. I think some of that Gaelic blood must have lived on in my ancestors, because I sure enjoyed being a martial warrior as it allowed me to overcome a basic insecurity as to my value because of a highly critical mother and a very busy father. So, to me , all the splendor and historical musings Julius Caesar evokes and continues to spark in biography after biography, pales and becomes less important, because he will always be the general who knew first hand that among the Gaelic tribes the Belgae , of which I am a proud descendant, are the strongest.