Not all the Druidesses, however, succeeded in making the Roman generals go back, by a word or a gesture; nor did all the Roman generals fall from their horses and die. After fifty-five years of strangely varying fortunes, the Genius of Rome was victorious, and must needs have been victorious, for it led the whole world by its power. It brought with it also its gods, which in spite of their numbers, or rather perhaps because they were so numerous, met on the banks of the Rhine with a more determined resistance than its soldiers. Rome had a magnificent mission to fulfill. Her glorious duty upon earth was to restore the unity of all the great human families, and to improve their condition by bringing them in contact with each other--by fraternity, in fine. To attain this end, she had generally employed War as her principal instrument; Religion had been a subsidiary agent only, a weapon which she kept concealed, {096}but which she used with great efficacy to secure the permanency of her conquests. Unfortunately, Roman gods were as liable to corruption, and to fearful corruption, as the great men of the Empire. Nations rise step by step on the grand ladder of civilization; when they have reached the top they must keep up their activity, without which no life and no progress can be maintained, and thus the moment comes when they are forced to descend again, till at last they sink into sensual degradation, into erudite, refined, voluptuous barbarism--the very bottom of the ladder. [Illustration: 116] Rome had begun by raising altars to all the virtues; now her deities personified nothing but vices. How could they expect to introduce them and make them acceptable to these coarse Germans, among whom prostitution, adultery, and theft were hardly known by name, who allowed a woman {097}to claim hospitality at the house of any _Karl_, to rest under his roof, and even to share his couch, without fearing slander, if he had but put a naked sword between her and himself, and who had never known and could not know the use of locks and keys? Were they not accustomed to hang their most valuable possessions upon the branches of a consecrated tree in the open camp, or to place them on top of a druidical stone or beneath it, as they chose--knowing that there they were perfectly safe? When they had taken this simple precaution, they could go to bed and sleep quietly, and there was no need for putting a sentinel on guard. Already, in the days of Cæsar, the Romans had employed a very ingenious and cunning device, in order to win over the simple Gauls. They had pretended to find their gods, their own peculiar gods, already established in the country from olden times. Thus there existed in Gaul a statue which the Etrusci had erected in honor of _Ogmius_, or rather _Ogma_. The Greek Lucian mentions it in these words:-- “It is a decrepit old man; his skin is black; this form of a man, however, wears the attributes of Hercules, the lion’s skin and the club.