Excuse me?
"Excuse me?"
I'm hoping that's a translation problem, and what he means is using the force of reason.
Dear aposiopetic,
In the French, it reads, "Il faudra faire admettre aux autorités romaines..."
It's been a lot of years since I took French, but "faudra" is one of the future tenses of a verb that translates as "to be necessary" or "must." "Faire" is "to do," or when combined with other verbs, it can mean "is" (As in, "Il fait chaud," "It is hot," literally, "It does hot."), or also translates at times, "to make [something happen]," or "to cause," when used in conjunction with another verb, as it is here, with "admettre." "Admettre" is the verb "to admit."
So, I'd string it together as roughly, "It is necessary to make [the Roman authorities] admit..."
I think that to translate it as "force" might be a little strong, but there may be idiomatic reasons for it of which I'm blithely unaware. But I think it's reasonable to say "to make admit."
sitetest