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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.
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