Bellum Incivile: Government Shutdown Over the Wall

Another text tentatively attributed to Caesar was discovered along with the fragments of the De Silvis and an appendix to De Bello Gallico. This is almost surely from the lost Bellum Incivile.

8.3 For reasons I already mentioned, Manicula resolved to keep people of color out of the homeland by means of executive orders and an expensive wall. Since he feared that people fleeing mortal danger and actual coyotes— amazing to say!– might cross the border and that heavy bags full of drugs might be thrown into the territory, he devised a new kind of wall, through which it possible to look, but not to enter, and decreed that sharpened stakes of steel be placed at regular, two-foot intervals into the ground. Disturbed by the new and rather unusual appearance of the wall, the citizens laughed and made fun of it, saying this plan for border security was childish and stupid and that the wall looked just like a medieval fortification. 

8.3 Manicula, his de causis quas commemoravi, coloratas gentes a patria decretis ac muro magni pretii prohibere constituit. Qui veritus ne gentes periculum effugientes et veri lupi, mirabile dictu, transirent saccique tumentes multis potionibus in fines conicerentur, formam muri novam, quo perspici posset, sed non intrari, excogitavit decrevitque ut trabes ferri praeacutae paribus intervallis, distantes inter se binos pedes, in solo collocarentur. Nova atque inusitatiore specie commoti cives inridebant atque increpitabant vocibus, consilium finium tuendorum puerile et stultum murumque simillimum forma munitionibus perveteribus esse.

8.4 Moved by great anger because of these words, Manicula replied that the wall should be referred to as a Beautiful Steel Slat Barrier; that the government must be shut down until the senators provide funding for his wall; and that in the meantime, according to his usual custom, he would put everyone who crossed the border into freezers and cages.

8.4 Magna adfectus ira his verbis Manicula ad ea respondit: murum Claustrum Trabium Ferrearum Pulchrum appellandum; rem publicam non administrandam, nisi senatores pecuniam publicam ex aerario ad murum struendum darent. Se interim consuetudine sua omnes, qui in fines transirent, in arcas gelatas ac caveas mitturum.

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