In history class I well remember a student asking our teacher “Why are we learning about German reunification?” and our teacher answering “Who knows, it may again.” We all laughed wholeheartedly at the naivete of the old. A few years later, 3 October 1990, Germany reunited.
How do we know our history? One well-known OTD site describes 3 October 42 BC as “First Battle of Philippi: Triumvirs Mark Antony and Octavian fight an indecisive battle with Caesar’s assassins Brutus and Cassius.” Another describes it as “Triumvirs Mark Antony and Octavian fight a decision battle with Caesar’s assassins Brutus and Cassius.” Is our knowledge a point of view or the sum of typos?
Incidentally, 3 October a decade before was the surrender to Caesar by Vercingetorix, leader of the Gauls. Rather gracelessly Caesar had him imprisoned in Rome until parading him five years later in a triumph and then having him garrotted.
At the other end of empire, 3 October AD 382, Emperor Theodosius, mindful of LBJ’s dictum “Better to have your enemies inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in”, made a treaty with the Goths, affording them autonomous status around the Danube. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule over the whole of the empire; he couldn’t stop the rot; by AD 410 Alaric 1, king of the descendant Visigoths, had sacked Rome itself.
History is a curious teacher; on 3 October 1965 LBJ took a different approach, signing legislation abolishing an immigration quota system based on national origin that had been in force since 1924.
