No writing today--did family stuff, tutoring, w-f-h.

Was looking up Vercingetorix to see what happened to him after he surrendered to Julius Caesar (this isn't research, just wanted to know, because he surrendered something like six years before he was executed). He was taken to Rome and kept in prison till Caesar had time for a triumph, where V. was displayed. Then he was strangled in his prison cell. Can't even imagine how much that must have sucked--not the strangling, but being a defeated king-type warrior and living in a foreign prison for six years. I don't think prisons were for punishment then, but a place to hold somebody till they could be punished--so I wonder how he was treated.

Being strangled probably sucked, too, though. You'd think he would have preferred to die in battle, although I don't know enough about it to say. Who knows, he might have been glad to have it over with.

You know, somebody else was displayed in a triumph, but then got to go live out the remainder of her life in some palatial mansion near Rome for free. It was some lady ruler, can't remember who or when. Too bad Vercingetorix didn't get to do that. He sounds like a brave man who did his best for his people.

I guess if you were writing a book about it, you'd most likely write about the battles and the siege and losing and all that. But what interests me is this guy sitting in a prison for six years, after all the exciting part is over. I wonder if there were any windows. I wonder how often he got to eat, and what. I wonder what he slept on, and how he had to handle relieving himself. Did he just sit there every day for years? I wonder if his jailers spoke to him.