The Wit Of Mithradates

I am making an early start but will be out of town for most of today.

Forms of government or of social organization are a major theme in Poul Anderson's works and therefore also on this blog. We have discussed political and social arrangements in the fabulous city of Ys and on many alien or colonized planets. Readers may search the blog for Aeneas, Avalon, Cynthia, Dennitza, Freehold, Hermes, Merseia or Ythri.

Three Gallic tribes traveled into Asia where they:

conquered Cappadocians and Phrygians;

taxed farmers and traders and took a share in the crops;

divided their own tribes into four cantons, each with a chief and a judge, all notionally guided by one great council.

"Mithradates had remarked once that it was no mean feat to combine so carefully the worst features of a monarchy and a republic. The Gauls shunned cities, holding to fortified villages clustered around the castles of chiefs. There they practiced the skills of war, heard their bards and Druids, remained in fact - under all the proud trumpets - a wistful fragment of the North."
-Poul Anderson, The Golden Slave (New York, 1980), XVI, p. 211.

Early in the day though it it is, I thought that Mithradates' words of wisdom deserved to be preserved for posterity. Although I always say that Poul Anderson's texts are extremely rich, The Golden Slave proves to be almost embarrassingly so. Have a good Sunday whether you attend a church of your choice or make some other use of your time.

Till this evening or tomorrow.