    36

    Caesar put superior engineering to work.  He built an instant

    bridge.  In one brief day he crossed the river that had held up the

    Helvetians for nearly a month.  His men were better disciplined and

    infinitely better organized. They outmaneuvered and outfought

    Helvetia's massive force of warriors.  When it was all over, the

    Helvetians begged for peace.  Caesar was relatively kind.  He sent the

    rebels back to the territory from which they'd come, and ordered them

    to rebuild the homes they'd burned.  The Helvetians had gambled

    mightily--and lost.  Of the 368,000 who had left to conquer Europe,

    only 110,000 remained.

    Like Helvetia, the Roman superorganism had once sent its

    citizens out in military swarms to descend upon their neighbors.  The

    Helvetians had failed to achieve their dreams of pecking order

    triumph.  Rome, on the other hand, had not.  She took over the entire

    European barnyard.

    A strange thing happens to the memes of the superorganism that

    mounts the pecking order's peak.  They spread as rapidly as the germs

    of plague, exultantly leaping from mind to conquered mind.  Today,

    most of the population of Europe, South America and North America

    speaks languages rich in Roman words.  It does its public business in

    buildings adorned with the flourishes of Roman architecture.  It reads

    and writes the Roman alphabet.  And it looks to the days of Rome's

    glories as those in which its own civilization was forged.  For the meme

    of Rome gambled on driving the Roman superorganism up the hierar-

    chical ladder of nations.  It placed its bets on making its host the first

    chicken at the trough.  And the meme of Rome hit the jackpot.

    <<  <  GO  >  >>