There is a great distance that we put between antiquity and now. We imagine the ancients looking like the actors in movies like Troy and 300. But reading Julius Caesar’s account of his conquest of Gaul, one sees parallels with the modern world. In antiquity, there were oligarchs, just like today, and there was also a rising German power in Europe, controlling Gaul which is today’s France. And it was just decades ago that a German power controlled Europe: