once the defeat of her armies placed her existence in danger.'
Cicero says: 'From the beginning of our Republic, all our wise men have looked upon Gaul as the most redoubtable enemy of Rome.'
'The Romans,' says Sallust, 'held then, as in our days, the opinion that all other peoples must yield to their courage; but that with the Gauls it was no longer for glory, but for safety, that they had to fight.'
When the nations we term classical first became acquainted with the northern races, German and Celt had long been in possession of iron, and formed all their warlike weapons of that metal. Indeed, they were far from being the barbarians historians have often represented them. M. Fournet remarks: 'The Gauls were no more savages than the Germans; the Romans found with these people arts hitherto unknown to them, and the barbarism only existed with the sworn calumniators of other nations.'[1]
Among the Gauls, in the north, the breeding of cattle was the principal occupation,[2] and the pastures of Belgic Gaul produced a race of excellent horses.[3] In the centre and in the south the richness of the soil was augmented by productive mines of gold, silver, copper, iron, and lead.[4] The country was, without doubt, intersected by carriage roads, since the Gauls possessed a great number of all sorts of waggons,[5] since there still remain traces of Celtic
- ↑ Le Mineur. Lyons, 1863.
- ↑ Strabo, p. 163; edit. Didot.
- ↑ De Bello Gallico, lib. iv. 2.
- ↑ Strabo, pp. 121, 155, 170.
- ↑ 'Carpenta Gallorum.' (Florus, i. 13.)—'Plurima Gallica (verba) valuerunt, ut reda petorritum.' (Quintilian, De Institutione Oratoria, lib. i. cap. V. 57.)—'Petorritum enim est non ex Græcia dimidiatum, sed totum trausalpibus, nam est vox Gallica. Id scriptum est in libro
