42
caesar’s war against the Helvetians.
quite free from affectation. The author of the book on the
Spanish war is unknown : it is certainly the production of a
person who did not belong at all to the educated classes ; but
it is, nevertheless, highly interesting on account of its language,
which is nothing else than the common language of the Roman
soldiers. It is an abridgment of a diary kept by some narrow-
minded person during the war, and is altogether a remarkable
and singular piece of composition.
When Caesar went to Gaul, its inhabitants were in great
commotion. Languedoc and Provence, Dauphiné and Savoy,
the country of the Allobrogians, were under the dominion of
Rome. The Allobrogians called on Caesar to assist them
against the Helvetians, whose emigration is one of the most
remarkable phenomena in ancient history. A person of
wealth and distinction persuaded the whole nation to abandon
their native land, and endeavour to conquer a new country
for themselves in Gaul, not with the view of tilling the new
land in the sweat of their brows, but of making themselves its
lords, and of compelling the conquered inhabitants to cultivate
the soil for them. This must have been their intention, if we
consider the state of dissolution in which Gaul was at the
time. An additional motive may have been the fact, that
they apprehended in their Alpine country an invasion of the
Suevi, who had already begun to stir, and against whom they
would have had to defend themselves under unfavourable cir-
cumstances, or to seek the protection of the Romans. But it
is nevertheless strange that a whole nation—in an individual
it would not be very surprising—could be induced to destroy
their towns and villages, and to abandon their homes; and
that afterwards, when their leader had perished, they still per-
sisted in carrying out their plan. United with the Tigurini
they marched towards southern Gaul. But I must be brief :
how Caesar treated with the Helvetians—how he obstructed
their march towards the Roman province—how he followed
and defeated them in two battles, and compelled them to
capitulate, after a fearful massacre, in which the Romans took
vengeance on the Tigurini for their having joined the Cimbri,
all this may be read in detail in the first book of his Commen-
taries on the Gallic war. The power of the Helvetians was
broken, and the survivors were obliged to return—a frightful
end of a fantastic undertaking ! All that can be said to
CONDITION OF GAÜL.
43
account for their forming such a wild scheme, must be gathered
from a careful examination of the condition of Gaul. The
Gauls consisted of a great number of isolated nations ; and as
France is now the most united and most compact state in
Europe, so ancient Gaul was the most distracted and broken
up of all countries. We have to distinguish in Gaul the
Aquitanians, who were Iberians, in Guienne ; the Iberians
mixed with Celts in Languedoc; Celts and Ligurians on the
Rhone ; Ligurians on the coast of Provence ; and Celts or
Gauls occupying the whole country from Languedoc to the
north of France. I think, however, that Caesar’s statement,
that all the inhabitants from the Garonne in the south, to the
Seine and Marne in the north, were Gauls, is incorrect, and
believe that Cymri, or Belgae, inhabited Britany as early as that
time : their emigration from Britain in the fifth century of our
aera is Certainlyfabulous. The Cymri were in reality quite foreign
and hostile to the Gael, or Celts. There is nothing surprising
in the Gael having maintained themselves in Britany; for origi-
nally they occupied the whole country north of the Seine
and Marne, but were afterwards torn asunder by the Celts,
who pressed forward from the south to the north.
In former times, the Arverni had been the ruling people,
and in possession of the supremacy in the remaining free
parts of Gaul; the other nations were in a state of depend-
ence on them, resembling the relation which at one time had
existed between Sparta and the rest of Peloponnesus. After-
wards the Aedui rose by the side of the Arverni, just as in
Greece Athens rose to dispute the supremacy with Sparta.
As soon as the Romans began extending their dominion
beyond the Alps, they had recourse to their usual policy of
bringing about divisions in foreign countries, and encouraged
the Aedui to share the supremacy with the Arverni. The
Aedui had been on terms of friendship with the Romans in
the year 631, when the Arvcrni and the Allobrogians carried
on their unfortunate war against the Romans; and it must
have been on that occasion that the Aedui were honoured
with the title of friends and brothers of the Roman people.
The Aedui then became great, for a time, at the cost of the
Arverni ; and when their power declined, that of the Sequani,
the inhabitants of Franche Comté, rose, and this occasioned
the invitation of the German tribe of the Suevi into Gaul.