About three centuries B.C. numerous hordes of Gauls crossed the Alps and
penetrated to the centre of Etruria, which is nowadays Tuscany. The
Etruscans, being then at war with Rome, proposed to take them, armed and
equipped as they had come, into their own pay. “If you want our hands,”
answered the Gauls, “against your enemies, the Romans, here they are at
your service--but on one condition: give us lands.”
[Illustration: A Tribe of Gauls on an Expedition----27]
A century afterwards other Gallic hordes, descending in like manner upon
Italy, had commenced building houses and tilling fields along the
Adriatic, on the territory where afterwards was Aquileia. The Roman
Senate decreed that their settlement should be opposed, and that they
should be summoned to give up their implements and even their arms. Not
being in a position to resist, the Gauls sent representatives to Rome.
They, being introduced into the Senate, said, “The multitude of people in
Gaul, the want of lands, and necessity forced us to cross the Alps to
seek a home. We saw plains uncultivated and uninhabited. We settled
there without doing any one harm. . . . We ask nothing but lands. We
will live peacefully on them under the laws of the republic.”
Again, a century later, or thereabouts, some Gallic Kymrians, mingled
with Teutons or Germans, said also to the Roman Senate, “Give us a little
land as pay, and do what you please with our hands and weapons.”
Want of room and means of subsistence have, in fact, been the principal
causes which have at all times thrust barbarous people, and especially
the Gauls, out of their fatherland. An immense extent of country is
required for indolent hordes who live chiefly upon the produce of the
chase and of their flocks; and when there is no longer enough of forest
or pasturage for the families that become too numerous, there is a swarm
from the hive, and a search for livelihood elsewhere. The Gauls
emigrated in every direction. To find, as they said, rivers and lands,
they marched from north to south, and from east to west. They crossed at
one time the Rhine, at another the Alps, at another the Pyrenees. More
than fifteen centuries B.C. they had already thrown themselves into
Spain, after many fights, no doubt, with the Iberians established between
the Pyrenees and the Garonne. They penetrated north-westwards to the
northern point of the Peninsula, into the province which received from
them and still bears the name of Galicia; south-eastwards to the southern
point, between the river Anas (nowadays Guadiana) and the ocean, where
they founded a Little Celtica; and centrewards and southwards from
Castile to Andalusia, where the amalgamation of two races brought about
the creation of a new people, that found a place in history as
Celtiberians. And twelve centuries after those events, about 220 B.C.,
we find the Gallic peoplet, which had planted itself in the south of
Portugal, energetically defending its independence against the
neighboring Carthaginian colonies. Indortius, their chief, conquered and
taken prisoner, was beaten with rods and hung upon the cross, in the
sight of his army, after having had his eyes put out by command of
Hamilcar-Barca, the Carthaginian general; but a Gallic slave took care to
avenge him by assassinating, some years after, at a hunting-party,
Hasdrubal, son-in-law of Hamilcar, who had succeeded to the command. The
slave was put to the torture; but, indomitable in his hatred, he died
insulting the Africans.
A little after the Gallic invasion of Spain, and by reason perhaps of
that very movement, in the first half of the fourteenth century B.C.,
another vast horde of Gauls, who called themselves Anahra, Ambra,
Ambrons, that is, “braves,” crossed the Alps, occupied northern Italy,
descended even to the brink of the Tiber, and conferred the name of
Ambria or Umbria on the country where they founded their dominion. If
ancient accounts might be trusted, this dominion was glorious and
flourishing, for Umbria numbered, they say, three hundred and fifty-eight
towns; but falsehood, according to the Eastern proverb, lurks by the
cradle of nations. At a much later epoch, in the second century B.C.,
fifteen towns of Liguria contained altogether, as we learn from Livy, but
twenty thousand souls. It is plain, then, what must really have been--
even admitting their existence--the three hundred and fifty-eight towns
of Umbria. However, at the end of two or three centuries, this Gallic
colony succumbed beneath the superior power of the Etruscans, another set
of invaders from eastern Europe, perhaps from the north of Greece, who
founded in Italy a mighty empire. The Umbrians or Ambrons were driven
out or subjugated. Nevertheless some of their peoplets, preserving their
name and manners, remained in the mountains of upper Italy, where they
were to be subsequently discovered by fresh and more celebrated Gallic
invasions.
Those just spoken of are of such antiquity and obscurity, that we note
their place in history without being able to say how they came to fill
it. It is only with the sixth century before our era that we light upon
the really historical expeditions of the Gauls away from Gaul, those, in
fact, of which we may follow the course and estimate the effects.
Towards the year 587 B.C., almost at the very moment when the Phoceans
had just founded Marseilles, two great Gallic hordes got in motion at the
same time, and crossed, one the Rhine, the other the Alps, making one for
Germany, the other for Italy. The former followed the course of the
Danube and settled in Illyria, on the right bank of the river. It is too
much, perhaps, to say that they settled; the greater part of them
continued wandering and fighting, sometimes amalgamating with the
peoplets they encountered, sometimes chasing them and exterminating them,
whilst themselves were incessantly pushed forward by fresh bands coming
also from Gaul. Thus marching and spreading, leaving here and there on
their route, along the rivers and in the valleys of the Alps, tribes that
remained and founded peoples, the Gauls had arrived, towards the year 340
B.C., at the confines of Macedonia, at the time when Alexander, the son
of Philip, who was already famous, was advancing to the same point to
restrain the ravages of the neighboring tribes, perhaps of the Gauls
themselves. From curiosity, or a desire to make terms with Alexander,
certain Gauls betook themselves to his camp. He treated them well, made
them sit at his table, took pleasure in exhibiting his magnificence
before them, and in the midst of his carouse made his interpreter ask
them what they were most afraid of.
“We fear nought,” they answered, “unless it be the fall of heaven; but we
set above everything the friendship of a man like thee.” “The Celts are
proud,” said Alexander to his Macedonians; and he promised them his
friendship. On the death of Alexander, the Gauls, as mercenaries,
entered, in Europe and Asia, the service of the kings who had been his
generals. Ever greedy, fierce, and passionate, they were almost equally
dangerous as auxiliaries and as neighbors. Antigonus, King of Macedonia,
was to pay the band he had enrolled a gold piece a head. They brought
their wives and children with them, and at the end of the campaign they
claimed pay for their following as well as for themselves: “We were
promised,” said they, “a gold piece a head for each Gaul; and these are
also Gauls.”
Before long they tired of fighting the battles of another; their power
accumulated; fresh hordes, in great numbers, arrived amongst them about
the year 281 B.C. They had before them Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly,
Greece, rich, but distracted and weakened by civil strife. They effected
an entrance at several points, devastating, plundering, loading their
cars with booty, and dividing their prisoners into two parts; one offered
in sacrifice to their gods, the other strung up to trees and abandoned to
the _gais_ and _matars,_ or javelins and pikes of the conquerors.
Like all barbarians, they, both for pleasure and on principle, added
insolence to ferocity. Their Brenn, or most famous chieftain, whom the
Latins and Greeks call Brennus, dragged in his train Macedonian
prisoners, short, mean, and with shaven heads, and exhibiting them beside
Gallic warriors, tall, robust, long-haired, adorned with chains of gold,
said, “This is what we are, that is what our enemies are.”
Ptolemy the Thunderbolt, King of Macedonia, received with haughtiness
their first message requiring of him a ransom for his dominions if he
wished to preserve peace. “Tell those who sent you,” he replied to the
Gallic deputation, “to lay down their arms and give up to me their
chieftains. I will then see what peace I can grant them.” On the return
of the deputation, the Gauls were moved to laughter. “He shall soon
see,” said they, “whether it was in his interest or our own that we
offered him peace.” And, indeed, in the first engagement, neither the
famous Macedonian phalanx, nor the elephant he rode, could save King
Ptolemy; the phalanx was broken, the elephant riddled with javelins, the
king himself taken, killed, and his head marched about the field of
battle on the top of a pike.
Macedonia was in consternation; there was a general flight from the open
country, and the gates of the towns were closed. “The people,” says an
historian, “cursed the folly of King Ptolemy, and invoked the names of
Philip and Alexander, the guardian deities of their land.”
Three years later, another and a more formidable invasion came bursting
upon Thessaly and Greece. It was, according to the unquestionably
exaggerated account of the ancient historians, two hundred thousand
strong, and commanded by that famous, ferocious, and insolent Brennus
mentioned before. His idea was to strike a blow which should
simultaneously enrich the Gauls and stun the Greeks. He meant to plunder
the temple at Delphi, the most venerated place in all Greece, whither
flowed from century to century all kinds of offerings, and where, no
doubt, enormous treasure was deposited. Such was, in the opinion of the
day, the sanctity of the place, that, on the rumor of the projected
profanation, several Greeks essayed to divert the Gallic Brenn himself,
by appealing to his superstitious fears; but his answer was, “The gods
have no need of wealth; it is they who distribute it to men.”
All Greece was moved. The nations of the Peloponnese closed the isthmus
of Corinth by a wall. Outside the isthmus, the Beeotians, Phocidians,
Locrians, Megarians, and AEtolians formed a coalition under the
leadership of the Athenians; and, as their ancestors had done scarcely
two hundred years before against Xerxes and the Persians, they advanced
in all haste to the pass of Thermopylae, to stop there the new
barbarians.
And for several days they did stop them; and instead of three hundred
heroes, as of yore in the case of Leonidas and his Spartans, only forty
Greeks, they say, fell in the first engagement. ‘Amongst them was a
young Athenian, Cydias by name, whose shield was hung in the temple of
Zeus the savior, at Athens, with this inscription:--
THIS SHIELD, DEDICATED TO ZEUS, IS THAT OF A VALIANT MAN,
CYDIAS. IT STILL BEWAILS ITS
YOUNG MASTER. FOR THE FIRST TIME
HE BARE IT ON HIS LEFT ARM
WHEN TERRIBLE ARES CRUSHED
THE GAULS.
But soon, just as in the case of the Persians, traitors guided Brennus
and his Gauls across the mountain-paths; the position of Thermopylae was
turned; the Greek army owed its safety to the Athenian galleys; and by
evening of the same day the barbarians appeared in sight of Delphi.
Brennus would have led them at once to the assault. He showed them, to
excite them, the statues, vases, cars, monuments of every kind, laden
with gold, which adorned the approaches of the town and of the temple:
“‘Tis pure gold--massive gold,” was the news he had spread in every
direction. But the very cupidity he provoked was against his plan; for
the Gauls fell out to plunder. He had to put off the assault until the
morrow. The night was passed in irregularities and orgies.
The Greeks, on the contrary, prepared with ardor for the fight. Their
enthusiasm was intense. Those barbarians, with their half-nakedness,
their grossness, their ferocity, their ignorance, and their impiety, were
revolting. They committed murder and devastation like dolts. They left
their dead on the field, without burial. They engaged in battle without
consulting priest or augur. It was not only their goods, but their
families, their life, the honor of their country, and the sanctuary of
their religion, that the Greeks were defending, and they might rely on
the protection of the gods. The oracle of Apollo had answered, “I and
the white virgins will provide for this matter.” The people surrounded
the temple, and the priests supported and encouraged the people. During
the night small bodies of AEtolians, Amphisseans, and Phocidians arrived
one after another. Four thousand men had joined within Delphi, when the
Gallic bands, in the morning, began to mount the narrow and rough incline
which led up to the town. The Greeks rained down from above a deluge of
stones and other missiles. The Gauls recoiled, but recovered
themselves. The besieged fell back on the nearest streets of the town,
leaving open the approach to the temple, upon which the barbarians threw
themselves. The pillage of the shrines had just commenced when the sky
looked threatening; a storm burst forth, the thunder echoed, the rain
fell, the hail rattled. Readily taking advantage of this incident, the
priests and the augurs sallied from the temple clothed in their sacred
garments, with hair dishevelled and sparkling eyes, proclaiming the
advent of the god: “‘Tis he! we saw him shoot athwart the temple’s vault,
which opened under his feet; and with him were two virgins, who issued
from the temples of Artemis and Athena. We saw them with our eyes. We
heard the twang of their bows, and the clash of their armor.” Hearing
these cries and the roar of the tempest, the Greeks dash on--the Gauls
are panic-stricken, and rush headlong down the bill. The Greeks push on
in pursuit. Rumors of fresh apparitions are spread; three heroes,
Hyperochus, Laodocus, and Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, have issued from
their tombs hard by the temple, and are thrusting at the Gauls with their
lances. The rout was speedy and general; the barbarians rushed to the
cover of their camp; but the camp was attacked next morning by the Greeks
from the town and by re-enforcements from the country places. Brennus
and the picked warriors about him made a gallant resistance, but defeat
was a foregone conclusion. Brennus was wounded, and his comrades bore
him off the field. The barbarian army passed the whole day in flight.
During the ensuing night a new access of terror seized them they again
took to flight, and four days after the passage of Thermopylae some
scattered bands, forming scarcely a third of those who had marched on
Delphi, rejoined the division which had remained behind, some leagues
from the town, in the plains watered by the Cephissus. Brennus summoned
his comrades “Kill all the wounded and me,” said he; “burn your cars;
make Cichor king; and away at full speed.” Then he called for wine,
drank himself drunk, and stabbed himself. Cichor did cut the throats of
the wounded, and traversed, flying and fighting, Thessaly and Macedonia;
and on returning whence they had set out, the Gauls dispersed, some to
settle at the foot of a neighboring mountain under the command of a
chieftain named Bathanat or Baedhannatt, i.e., son of the wild boar;
others to march back towards their own country; the greatest part to
resume the same life of incursion and adventure. But they changed the
scene of operations. Greece, Macedonia, and Thrace were exhausted by
pillage, and made a league to resist. About 278 B.C. the Gauls crossed
the Hellespont and passed into Asia Minor. There, at one time in the pay
of the kings of Bithynia, Pergamos, Cappadocia, and Syria, or of the free
commercial cities which were struggling against the kings, at another
carrying on wars on their own account, they wandered for more than thirty
years, divided into three great hordes, which parcelled out the
territories among themselves, overran and plundered them during the fine
weather, intrenched themselves during winter in their camp of cars, or in
some fortified place, sold their services to the highest bidder, changed
masters according to interest or inclination, and by their bravery became
the terror of these effeminate populations and the arbiters of these
petty states.
At last both princes and people grew weary. Antiochus, King of Syria,
attacked one of the three bands,--that of the Tectosagians,--conquered
it, and cantoned it in a district of Upper Phrygia. Later still, about
241 B.C., Eumenes, sovereign of Pergamos, and Attalus, his successor,
drove and shut up the other two bands, the Tolistoboians and Troemians,
likewise in the same region. The victories of Attalus over the Gauls
excited veritable enthusiasm. He was celebrated as a special envoy from
Zeus. He took the title of King, which his predecessors had not hitherto
borne. He had his battles showily painted; and that he might triumph at
the same time both in Europe and Asia, he sent one of the pictures to
Athens, where it was still to be seen three centuries afterwards, hanging
upon the wall of the citadel. Forced to remain stationary, the Gallic
hordes became a people,--the Galatians,--and the country they occupied
was called Galatia. They lived there some fifty years, aloof from the
indigenous population of Greeks and Phrygians, whom they kept in an
almost servile condition, preserving their warlike and barbarous habits,
resuming sometimes their mercenary service, and becoming once more the
bulwark or the terror of neighboring states. But at the beginning of the
second century before our era, the Romans had entered Asia, in pursuit of
their great enemy, Hannibal. They had just beaten, near Magnesia,
Antiochus, King of Syria. In his army they had encountered men of lofty
stature, with hair light or dyed red, half naked, marching to the fight
with loud cries, and terrible at the first onset. They recognized the
Gauls, and resolved to destroy or subdue them. The consul, Cn. Manlius,
had the duty and the honor. Attacked in their strongholds on Mount
Olympus and Mount Magaba, 189 B.C., the three Gallic bands, after a short
but stout resistance, were conquered and subjugated; and thenceforth
losing all national importance, they amalgamated little by little with
the Asiatic populations around them. From time to time they are still
seen to reappear with their primitive manners and passions. Rome humored
them; Mithridates had them for allies in his long struggle with the
Romans. He kept by him a Galatian guard; and when he sought death, and
poison failed him, it was the captain of the guard, a Gaul named
Bituitus, whom he asked to run him through. That is the last historical
event with which the Gallic name is found associated in Asia.
Nevertheless the amalgamation of the Gauls of Galatia with the natives
always remained very imperfect; for towards the end of the fourth century
of the Christian era they did not speak Greek, as the latter did, but
their national tongue, that of the Kymro-Belgians; and St. Jerome
testifies that it differed very little from that which was spoken in
Belgica itself, in the region of Troves.
The Romans had good ground for keeping a watchful eye, from the time they
met them, upon the Gauls, and for dreading them particularly. At the
time when they determined to pursue them into the mountains of Asia
Minor, they were just at the close of a desperate struggle, maintained
against them for four hundred years, in Italy itself; “a struggle,” says
Sallust, “in which it was a question not of glory, but of existence, for
Rome.” It was but just now remarked that at the beginning of the sixth
century before our era, whilst, under their chieftain Sigovesus, the
Gallic bands whose history has occupied the last few pages were crossing
the Rhine and entering Germany, other bands, under the command of
Bellovesus, were traversing the Alps and swarming into Italy. From 587
to 521 B.C. five Gallic expeditions, formed of Gallic, Kymric, and
Ligurian tribes, followed the same route and invaded successively the two
banks of the Po--the bottomless river, as they called it. The Etruscans,
who had long before, it will be remembered, themselves wrested that
country from a people of Gallic origin, the Umbrians or Ambrons, could
not make head against the new conquerors, aided, may be, by the remains
of the old population. The well-built towns, the cultivation of the
country, the ports and canals that had been dug, nearly all these labors
of Etruscan civilization disappeared beneath the footsteps of these
barbarous hordes that knew only how to destroy, and one of which gave its
chieftain the name of Hurricane (Elitorius, Ele-Dov). Scarcely five
Etruscan towns, Mantua and Ravenna amongst others, escaped disaster. The
Gauls also founded towns, such as Mediolanum (Milan), Brixia (Brescia),
Verona, Bononia (Bologna), Sena-Gallica (Sinigaglia), &c. But for a long
while they were no more than intrenched camps, fortified places, where
the population shut themselves up in case of necessity. “They, as a
general rule, straggled about the country,” says Polybius, the most
correct and clear-sighted of the ancient historians, “sleeping on grass
or straw, living on nothing but meat, busying themselves about nothing
but war and a little husbandry, and counting as riches nothing but flocks
and gold, the only goods that can be carried away at pleasure and on
every occasion.”
During nearly thirty years the Gauls thus scoured not only Upper Italy,
which they had almost to themselves, but all the eastern coast, and up to
the head of the peninsula, encountering along the Adriatic, and in the
rich and effeminate cities of Magna Graecia, Sybaris, Tarentum, Crotona,
and Locri, no enemy capable of resisting them. But in the year 391 B.C.,
finding themselves cooped up in their territory, a strong band of Gauls
crossed the Apennines, and went to demand from the Etruscans of Clusium
the cession of a portion of their lands. The only answer Clusium made
was to close her gates. The Gauls formed up around the walls. Clusium
asked help from Rome, with whom, notwithstanding the rivalry between the
Etruscan and Roman nations, she had lately been on good terms. The
Romans promised first their good offices with the Gauls, afterwards
material support; and thus were brought face to face those two peoples,
fated to continue for four centuries a struggle which was to be ended
only by the complete subjection of Gaul.
The details of that struggle belong specially to Roman history; they have
been transmitted to us only by Roman historians; and the Romans it was
who were left ultimately in possession of the battle-field, that is, of
Italy. It will suffice here to make known the general march of events
and the most characteristic incidents.
Four distinct periods may be recognized in this history; and each marks a
different phase in the course of events, and, so to speak, an act of the
drama. During the first period, which lasted forty-two years, from 391
to 349 B.C., the Gauls carried on a war of aggression and conquest
against Rome. Not that such had been their original design; on the
contrary, they replied, when the Romans offered intervention between them
and Clusium, “We ask only for lands, of which we are in need; and Clusium
has more than she can cultivate. Of the Romans we know very little; but
we believe them to be a brave people, since the Etruscans put themselves
under their protection. Remain spectators of our quarrel; we will settle
it before your eyes, that you may report at home how far above other men
the Gauls are in valor.”
But when they saw their pretensions repudiated and themselves treated
with outrageous disdain, the Gauls left the siege of Clusium on the spot,
and set out for Rome, not stopping for plunder, and proclaiming
everywhere on their march, “We are bound for Rome; we make war on none
but Romans;” and when they encountered the Roman army, on the 16th of
duly, 390 B.C., at the confluence of the Allia and the Tiber, half a
day’s march from Rome, they abruptly struck up their war-chant, and threw
themselves upon their enemies. It is well known how they gained the day;
how they entered Rome, and found none but a few gray-beards, who, being
unable or unwilling to leave their abode, had remained seated in the
vestibule on their chairs of ivory, with truncheons of ivory in their
hands, and decorated with the insignia of the public offices they had
filled. All the people of Rome had fled, and were wandering over the
country, or seeking a refuge amongst neighboring peoples. Only the
senate and a thousand warriors had shut themselves up in the Capitol, a
citadel which commanded the city. The Gauls kept them besieged there for
seven months. The circumstances of this celebrated siege are well known,
though they have been a little embellished by the Roman historians. Not
that they have spoken too highly of the Romans themselves, who, in the
day of their country’s disaster, showed admirable courage, perseverance,
and hopefulness. Pontius Cominius, who traversed the Gallic camp, swam
the Tiber, and scaled by night the heights of the Capitol, to go and
carry news to the senate; M. Manlius, who was the first, and for some
moments the only one, to hold in check, from the citadel’s walls, the
Gauls on the point of effecting an entrance; and M. Furius Camillus, who
had been banished from Rome the preceding year, and had taken refuge in
the town of Ardea, and who instantly took the field for his country,
rallied the Roman fugitives, and incessantly harassed the Gauls--are true
heroes, who have earned their weed of glory. Let no man seek to lower
them in public esteem. Noble actions are so beautiful, and the actors
often receive so little recompense, that we are at least bound to hold
sacred the honor attached to their name.
[Illustration: The Gauls in Rome----39]
The Roman historians have done no more than justice in extolling the
saviors of Rome. But their memory would have suffered no loss had the
whole truth been made known; and the claims of national vanity are not of
the same weight as the duty one owes to truth. Now, it is certain that
Camillus did not gain such decisive advantages over the Gauls as the
Roman accounts would lead one to believe, and that the deliverance of
Rome was much less complete. On the 13th of February, 389 B.C., the
Gauls, it is true, allowed their retreat to be purchased by the Romans;
and they experienced, as they retired, certain checks, whereby they lost
a part of their booty. But twenty-three years afterwards they are found
in Latium scouring in every direction the outlying country of Rome,
without the Romans daring to go out and fight them. It was only at the
end of five years, in the year 361 B.C., that, the very city being
menaced anew, the legions marched out to meet the enemy. “Surprised at
this audacity,” says Polybius, “the Gauls fell back, but merely a few
leagues from Rome, to the environs of Tibur; and thence, for the space of
twelve years, they attacked the Roman territory, renewing the campaign
every year, often reaching the very gates of the city, and being repulsed
indeed, but never farther than Tibur and its slopes.” Rome, however, made
great efforts, every war with the Gauls was previously proclaimed a
tumult, which involved a levy in mass of the citizens, without any
exemption, even for old men and priests. A treasure, specially dedicated
to Gallic wars, was laid by in the Capitol, and religious denunciations
of the most awful kind hung over the head of whoever should dare to touch
it, no matter what the exigency might be. To this epoch belonged those
marvels of daring recorded in Roman tradition, those acts of heroism
tinged with fable, which are met with amongst so many peoples, either in
their earliest age, or in their days of great peril. In the year 361
B.C., Titus Manlius, son of him who had saved the Capitol from the night
attack of the Gauls, and twelve years later M. Valerius, a young military
tribune, were, it will be remembered, the two Roman heroes who vanquished
in single combat the two Gallic giants who insolently defied Rome. The
gratitude towards them was general and of long duration, for two
centuries afterwards (in the year 167 B.C.) the head of the Gaul with his
tongue out still appeared at Rome, above the shop of a money-changer, on
a circular sign-board, called “the Kymrian shield” (scutum Cimbricum).
After seventeen years’ stay in Latium, the Gauls at last withdrew, and
returned to their adopted country in those lovely valleys of the Po which
already bore the name of Cisalpine Gaul. They began to get disgusted
with a wandering life. Their population multiplied; their towns spread;
their fields were better cultivated; their manners became less barbarous.
For fifty years there was scarcely any trace of hostility or even contact
between them and the Romans. But at the beginning of the third century
before our era, the coalition of the Samnites and Etruscans against Rome
was near its climax; they eagerly pressed the Gauls to join, and the
latter assented easily. Then commenced the second period of struggles
between the two peoples. Rome had taken breath, and had grown much more
rapidly than her rivals. Instead of shutting herself up, as heretofore,
within her walls, she forthwith raised three armies, took the offensive
against the coalitionists, and carried the war into their territory. The
Etruscans rushed to the defence of their hearths. The two consuls,
Fabius and Decius, immediately attacked the Samnites and Gauls at the
foot of the Apennines, close to Sentinum (now Sentina). The battle was
just beginning, when a hind, pursued by a wolf from the mountains, passed
in flight between the two armies, and threw herself upon the side of the
Gauls, who slew her; the wolf turned towards the Romans, who let him go.
“Comrades,” cried a soldier, “flight and death are on the side where you
see stretched on the ground the hind of Diana; the wolf belongs to Mars;
he is unwounded, and reminds us of our father and founder; we shall
conquer even as he.” Nevertheless the battle went badly for the Romans;
several legions were in flight, and Decius strove vainly to rally them.
The memory of his father came across his mind. There was a belief
amongst the Romans that if in the midst of an unsuccessful engagement the
general devoted himself to the infernal gods, “panic and flight” passed
forthwith to the enemies’ ranks. “Why daily?” said Decius to the grand
pontiff, whom he had ordered to follow him and keep at his side in the
flight; “‘tis given to our race to die to avert public disasters.” He
halted, placed a javelin beneath his feet, and covering his head with a
fold of his robe, and supporting his chin on his right hand, repeated
after the pontiff this sacred form of words:--
“Janus, Jupiter, our father Mars, Quirinus, Bellona, Lares, . . . ye
gods in whose power are we, we and our enemies, gods Manes, ye I adore;
ye I pray, ye I adjure to give strength and victory to the Roman people,
the children of Quirinus, and to send confusion, panic, and death amongst
the enemies of the Roman people, the children of Quirinus. And, in these
words for the republic of the children of Quirinus, for the army, for the
legions, and for the allies of the Roman people, I devote to the gods
Manes and to the grave the legions and the allies of the enemy and
myself.”
Then remounting, Decius charged into the middle of the Gauls, where he
soon fell pierced with wounds; but the Romans recovered courage and
gained the day; for heroism and piety have power over the hearts of men,
so that at the moment of admiration they become capable of imitation.
During this second period Rome was more than once in danger. In the year
283 B.C. the Gauls destroyed one of her armies near Aretium (Arezzo),
and advanced to the Roman frontier, saying, “We are bound for Rome; the
Gauls know how to take it.” Seventy-two years afterwards the Cisalpine
Gauls swore they would not put off their baldricks till they had mounted
the Capitol, and they arrived within three days’ march of Rome. At every
appearance of this formidable enemy the alarm at Rome was great. The
senate raised all its forces and summoned its allies. The people
demanded a consultation of the Sibylline books, sacred volumes sold, it
was said, to Tarquinius Priscus by the sibyl Amalthea, and containing the
secret of the destinies of the Republic. They were actually opened in
the year 228 B.C., and it was with terror found that the Gauls would
twice take possession of the soil of Rome. On the advice of the priests,
there was dug within the city, in the middle of the cattle-market, a huge
pit, in which two Gauls, a man and a woman, were entombed alive; for thus
they took possession of the soil of Rome, the oracle was fulfilled, and
the mishap averted. Thirteen years afterwards, on occasion of the
disaster at Cann, the same atrocity was again committed, at the same
place and for the same cause. And by a strange contrast, there was at
the committing of this barbarous act, “which was against Roman usage,”
says Livy, a secret feeling of horror, for, to appease the manes of the
victims, a sacrifice was instituted, which was celebrated every year at
the pit, in the month of November.
In spite of sometimes urgent peril, in spite of popular alarms, Rome,
during the course of this period, from 299 to 258 B.C., maintained an
increasing ascendency over the Gauls. She always cleared them off her
territory, several times ravaged theirs, on the two banks of the Po,--
called respectively Transpadan and Cispadan Gaul, and gained the majority
of the great battles she had to fight. Finally in the year 283 B.C., the
proprietor Drusus, after having ravaged the country of the Senonic Gauls,
carried off the very ingots and jewels, it was said, which had been given
to their ancestors as the price of their retreat. Solemn proclamation
was made that the ransom of the Capitol had returned within its walls;
and, sixty years afterwards, the Consul M. Cl. Marcellus, having defeated
at Clastidium a numerous army of Gauls, and with his own hand slain their
general, Virdumar, had the honor of dedicating to the temple of Jupiter
the third “grand spoils” taken since the foundation of Rome, and of
ascending the Capitol, himself conveying the armor of Virdumar, for he
had got hewn an oaken trunk, round which he had arranged the helmet,
tunic, and breastplate of the barbarian king.
Nor was war Rome’s only weapon against her enemies. Besides the ability
of her generals and the discipline of her legions, she had the sagacity
of her Senate. The Gauls were not wanting in intelligence or dexterity,
but being too free to go quietly under a master’s hand, and too barbarous
for self-government, carried away, as they were, by the interest or
passion of the moment, they could not long act either in concert or with
sameness of purpose. Far-sightedness and the spirit of persistence were,
on the contrary, the familiar virtues of the Roman Senate. So soon as
they had penetrated Cisalpine Gaul, they labored to gain there a
permanent footing, either by sowing dissension amongst the Gallic
peoplets that lived there, or by founding Roman colonies. In the year
283 B.C., several Roman families arrived, with colors flying and under
the guidance of three triumvirs or commissioners, on a territory to the
north-east, on the borders of the Adriatic. The triumvirs had a round
hole dug, and there deposited some fruits and a handful of earth brought
from Roman soil; then yoking to a plough, having a copper share, a white
bull and a white heifer, they marked out by a furrow a large enclosure.
The rest followed, flinging within the line the ridges thrown up by the
plough. When the line was finished, the bull and the heifer were
sacrificed with due pomp. It was a Roman colony come to settle at Sena,
on the very site of the chief town of those Senonic Gauls who had been
conquered and driven out. Fifteen years afterwards another Roman colony
was founded at Ariminum (Rimini), on the frontier of the Bolan Gauls.
Fifty years later still two others, on the two banks of the Po, Cremona
and Placentia (Plaisance). Rome had then, in the midst of her enemies,
garrisons, magazines of arms and provisions, and means of supervision and
communication. Thence proceeded at one time troops, at another
intrigues, to carry dismay or disunion amongst the Gauls.
Towards the close of the third century before our era, the triumph of
Rome in Cisalpine Gaul seemed nigh to accomplishment, when news arrived
that the Romans’ most formidable enemy, Hannibal, meditating a passage
from Africa into Italy by Spain and Gaul, was already at work, by his
emissaries, to insure for his enterprise the concurrence of the
Transalpine and Cisalpine Gauls. The Senate ordered the envoys they had
just then at Carthage to traverse Gaul on returning, and seek out allies
there against Hannibal. The envoys halted amongst the Gallo-Iberian
peoplets who lived at the foot of the eastern Pyrenees. There, in the
midst of the warriors assembled in arms, they charged them in the name of
the great and powerful Roman people, not to suffer the Carthaginians to
pass through their territory. Tumultuous laughter arose at a request
that appeared so strange. “You wish us,” was the answer, “to draw down
war upon ourselves to avert it from Italy, and to give our own fields
over to devastation to save yours. We have no cause to complain of the
Carthaginians or to be pleased with the Romans, or to take up arms for
the Romans and against the Carthaginians. We, on the contrary, hear that
the Roman people drive out from their lands, in Italy, men of our nation,
impose tribute upon them, and make them undergo other indignities.” So
the envoys of Rome quitted Gaul without allies.
Hannibal, on the other hand, did not meet with all the favor and all the
enthusiasm he had anticipated. Between the Pyrenees and the Alps several
peoplets united with him; and several showed coldness, or even hostility.
In his passage of the Alps the mountain tribes harassed him incessantly.
Indeed, in Cisalpine Gaul itself there was great division and hesitation;
for Rome had succeeded in inspiring her partisans with confidence and her
enemies with fear. Hannibal was often obliged to resort to force even
against the Gauls whose alliance he courted, and to ravage their lands in
order to drive them to take up arms. Nay, at the conclusion of an
alliance, and in the very camp of the Carthaginians, the Gauls sometimes
hesitated still, and sometimes rose against Hannibal, accused him of
ravaging their country, and refused to obey his orders. However, the
delights of victory and of pillage at last brought into full play the
Cisalpine Gauls’ natural hatred of Rome. After Ticinus and Trebia,
Hannibal had no more zealous and devoted troops. At the battle of Lake
Trasimene he lost fifteen hundred men, nearly all Gauls; at that of
Canine he had thirty thousand of them, forming two thirds of his army;
and at the moment of action they cast away their tunics and checkered
cloaks (similar to the plaids of the Gals or Scottish Highlanders), and
fought naked from the belt upwards, according to their custom when they
meant to conquer or die. Of five thousand five hundred men that the
victory of Cannae cost Hannibal, four thousand were Gauls. All Cisalpine
Gaul was moved; enthusiasm was at its height; new bands hurried off to
recruit the army of the Carthaginian who, by dint of patience and genius,
brought Rome within an ace of destruction, with the assistance almost
entirely of the barbarians he had come to seek at her gates, and whom he
had at first found so cowed and so vacillating.
When the day of reverses came, and Rome had recovered her ascendency,
the Gauls were faithful to Hannibal; and when at length he was forced to
return to Africa, the Gallic bands, whether from despair or attachment,
followed him thither. In the year 200 B.C., at the famous battle of
Zama, which decided matters between Rome and Carthage, they again formed
a third of the Carthaginian army, and showed that they were, in the words
of Livy, “inflamed by that innate hatred towards the Romans which is
peculiar to their race.”
This was the third period of the struggle between the Gauls and the
Romans in Italy. Rome, well advised by this terrible war of the danger
with which she was ever menaced by the Cisalpine Gauls, formed the
resolution of no longer restraining them, but of subduing them and
conquering their territory. She spent thirty years (from 200 to 170
B.C.) in the execution of this design, proceeding by means of war, of
founding Roman colonies, and of sowing dissension amongst the Gallic
peoplets. In vain did the two principal, the Boians and the Insubrians,
endeavor to rouse and rally all the rest: some hesitated; some absolutely
refused, and remained neutral. The resistance was obstinate. The Gauls,
driven from their fields and their towns, established themselves, as
their ancestors had done, in the forests, whence they emerged only to
fall furiously upon the Romans. And then, if the engagement were
indecisive, if any legions wavered, the Roman centurions hurled their
colors into the midst of the enemy, and the legionaries dashed on at all
risks to recover them. At Parma and Bologna, in the towns taken from the
Gauls, Roman colonies came at once and planted them-selves. Day by day
did Rome advance. At length, in the year 190 B.C., the wrecks of the one
hundred and twelve tribes which had formed the nation of the Boians,
unable any longer to resist, and unwilling to submit, rose as one man,
and departed from Italy.
The Senate, with its usual wisdom, multiplied the number of Roman
colonies in the conquered territory, treated with moderation the tribes
that submitted, and gave to Cisalpine Gaul the name of the Cisalpine or
Hither Gallic Province, which was afterwards changed for that of Gallia
Togata or Roman Gaul. Then, declaring that nature herself had placed the
Alps between Gaul and Italy as an insurmountable barrier, the Senate
pronounced “a curse on whosoever should attempt to cross it.”