[Sidenote: Account of northern nations.]
[Sidenote: Their strange customs.]
[Sidenote: Well-trained horses.]

Caesar gives, in his narrative, very extraordinary accounts of the
customs and modes of life of some of the people that he encountered.
There was one country, for example, in which all the lands were common,
and the whole structure of society was based on the plan of forming the
community into one great martial band. The nation was divided into a
hundred cantons, each containing two thousand men capable of bearing
arms. If these were all mustered into service together, they would form,
of course, an army of two hundred thousand men. It was customary,
however, to organize only one half of them into an army, while the rest
remained at home to till the ground and tend the flocks and herds. These
two great divisions interchanged their work every year, the soldiers
becoming husbandmen, and the husbandmen soldiers. Thus they all became
equally inured to the hardships and dangers of the camp, and to the more
continuous but safer labors of agricultural toil. Their fields were
devoted to pasturage more than to tillage, for flocks and herds could be
driven from place to place, and thus more easily preserved from the
depredations of enemies than fields of grain. The children grew up
almost perfectly wild from infancy, and hardened themselves by bathing
in cold streams, wearing very little clothing, and making long hunting
excursions among the mountains. The people had abundance of excellent
horses, which the young men were accustomed, from their earliest years,
to ride without saddle or bridle, the horses being trained to obey
implicitly every command. So admirably disciplined were they, that
sometimes, in battle, the mounted men would leap from their horses and
advance as foot soldiers to aid the other infantry, leaving the horses
to stand until they returned. The horses would not move from the spot;