Chapter XIII: Part 13

The Celts may have had much in common with the Cymri, but their constitution was peculiar to them; we have no proof to show that what Caesar says about them also applies to the Belgae. The existence of an aristocratic constitution, which, in the case of many other nations is assumed only from misinterpreted expressions, cannot be doubted among the Celts. We find among them two ruling tribes, the knights and the priests, the well-known Druids; the rest of the people were mere serfs. This circumstance, as I have observed on other similar occasions, intimates that the Celts, in the countries where we know them, were conquering foreigners, and that the power which drove them out of Spain, led them into a country, where, in their turn, they subdued other people. My conjecture is, that this latter people, extending over nearly the whole of France, was no other than the Cymri, who, being pressed by the Celts, advanced northward, and threw themselves upon German tribes; and this circumstance produced the mixture of Belgae and Germans in the north.

It is well known that the Druids were a caste,[71] but it is impossible to ascertain whether the Druids and knights were two different castes, like the Brahmins and warriors in India, or whether the Druids were only a branch of the military caste, which occupied itself with matters of religion. Certain it is, however, that all the power was divided between these two, while the people lived in a condition which Caesar describes by the term _clientela_, that is, bondage. It was not exactly what we call serfdom; for the Celtic people were dependent only in relation to their feudal lords, whose retinue they formed, but in other respects they were free; and besides them, slaves are expressly mentioned.

The religion of the Druids was bloody and cruel, and for this reason it was the only one that was attacked by the Romans; though they may have done so also because that religion formed an obstacle to the Romanising of Gaul. Success was not difficult, and the Druids were completely crushed. It is possible that some of the later commotions of which we read in Tacitus, as, e.g., those of Sacrovir and Classicus, may have been connected with religion. The Druids also were the depositories of a kind of science and literature, for they had poems which it was unlawful to commit to writing. In the transactions of ordinary life, they used the Greek alphabet.

In the time of Caesar, it would be erroneous to speak of the Gauls as a really barbarous nation. It is true that everything connected with the arts, such as their coins and idols, is detestable, but in other things they seem to have reached the same stage of civilization at which our ancestors were in the time of the Othos. The population was very large; but the Cimbrian war made fearful havoc, and the misery resulting from it surpasses all our conceptions. In the time of Caesar, they had only partially recovered from it, and yet they present the appearance of a pretty strong population: their towns were considerable, the country was well cultivated; and all we hear of them suggests to us the idea of a rude rather than a barbarous state of things. The Romans became acquainted with water-mills and saw-mills in Gaul, nor were manufactures wanting there; but the Gauls were prevented by their treaties with the Romans from cultivating vines and olives. Their style of architecture is very common among ourselves, but was utterly unknown among the Greeks and Romans: the buildings consisted of wooden frames and wicker work, and even the walls of their towns were joined by means of beams, a method which was very surprising to the Romans. This is the reason why there are so very few remains of the ante-Roman period.

The Gauls very quickly adopted the civilisation of the Romans, who established themselves in the southern province about the year of the city 630, and thence extended their dominion towards Lyons. In Pliny’s time that country was so completely changed, that he declares it to be not a province but a true Italy. The rest of Gaul also soon became Romanised, though the Latin language did not spread there with equal facility; and we may probably assume that at the time of the Frankish conquest the Celtic language had not yet become extinct. Still, however, a dialect of Latin, different in character from our Latin, was diffused all over Gaul; and this is the root of the Romance or Provençal language. The study of Roman literature spread more and more; Gaul always had men of good abilities, and thus a peculiar literature was formed, of which Rheims, then called _Durocortorum_, was the seat and centre. I think I have discovered a new proof of an ancient rustic form of this name, according to which it was pronounced _Durocortoro_; I allude to a fragment from Fronto in Consentius:[72] _et illae vestrae Athenae Durocortoro_, where the corrupt termination is probably intentional, Fronto sneering at Consentius, because the inhabitants of the country did not correctly pronounce the name of their own university town.

The inclination of the Gauls to separate from Rome, and to constitute themselves as a distinct nation, manifests itself as early as the reign of Tiberius, and then again under Vespasian. Afterwards, we have the insurrection of Clodius Albinus, in the reign of Septimius Severus, and another in that of Gallienus, when, for a time, the Gauls had their own emperors, who resided at Treves, until Tetricus betrayed them to Aurelian. In all these movements we find, at an early date, considerable symptoms of a feeling of nationality, which was particularly strong during the fourth century, when Constantius Chlorus maintained himself there. Gaul always tried to set up opposition emperors: we must not, however, assert that this was so easy because those governors were stationed on the frontier, but it was because the nation met them in their desire. In the fifth century, a peculiar literary spirit manifested itself in Gaul, and nearly all the more important productions of literature during that century, both ecclesiastical and profane, belong to Gaul. It possessed at that time many men of genius, whose only disadvantage is the fact of their language being quite rustic, that is, it is the language of common life. Men of this kind are: the talented Sidonius Apollinaris, Bishop Salvianus of Marseilles, Claudianus Mamertus, Avitus, Cassianus, who was altogether a theological writer, but a man of great ability and genius, and Sulpicius Severus, who is even a very elegant writer, and deserves to be strongly recommended; his diction is not without faults, but he displays great intellectual worth, sound understanding, and a singular independence of judgment, at a time which bordered on a most terrible period. The Gauls, however, were excited rather than stunned by that unhappy period.

The whole of Gaul, which the Romans describe as their province, consisted of sixty-four _civitates_. In the time of Tiberius, there existed a number of separate tribes, each of which governed itself as a distinct state, and the same also continued afterwards. The Romans then divided Gaul into _Gallia Narbonensis_, _Aquitania_, and _Gallia Lugdunensis_. Each of these provinces consisted of a number of such _civitates_, which accordingly were both towns and states, and that more so than at present the French departments. They were absolutely subject to the Romans, but, before they obtained the Roman franchise, they had their own institutions. A _civitas_ was governed by a senate, of which the members resided in the capital, and every thing was managed according to their ancient rights and usages. The Roman franchise was first conferred upon them under Augustus; but they did not obtain the right of being elected to high offices or into the Roman senate. This franchise, however, was confined to the _provincia Romana_, which extended as far north as Lyons. The particulars are not known, but some _civitates_ within the Province had only the _jus Latii_. Afterwards many individual Gauls obtained the full franchise, including the right of being elected into the Roman senate. Claudius extended the franchise to Gallia Narbonensis, at the same time conferring upon the inhabitants the right of becoming members of the senate. Under Galba, the remaining Gauls also obtained the franchise, but not the Belgae. Tacitus (_Ann._ iii. 44) states that the sixty-four Gallic _civitates_ revolted, which no doubt is the sum total of all the Gallic _civitates_, though it is not certain whether Gallia Narbonensis is included or not.

After the Gallic migration, and previously to the Roman dominion in Gaul, some states had raised themselves to a kind of supremacy, and many others were in a condition of dependence. After the stormy period of migration, two tribes, the _Arverni_ and _Aedui_, unfortunately for Gaul, had risen, and tried to crush each other, as Athens and Sparta did in Greece. About two hundred and sixty years after the capture of Rome by the Gauls, these two tribes were the most powerful in the country; and all the others were obliged to acknowledge the majesty of either the one or the other. The Romans, who protected the Allobroges, became involved in a war with the Arverni; and it must have been on that occasion, perhaps after the victory of Q. Fabius, that they concluded the alliance with the Aedui, in which the latter were declared _fratres populi Romani_: with their assistance, the Arverni were greatly humbled. After this, the Aedui were, for a time, at the head of affairs; but soon the Cymri or Cimbri, driven back from the east of Europe, inundated Gaul. The Aedui then lost their power, and the Sequani, in Franche Comté, rose in their place. Caesar’s expressions on these affairs are unusual and strange, and require explanation.

The southern coast of Gaul, from the frontier of Catalonia, had formerly been inhabited by Ligurians. In the earliest times, they were mixed with Iberians, for Scylax of Caryanda says, that Ligyans, mixed with Iberians, occupied the country from the Pyrenees to the river Rhodanus. The Iberians spread there as they did in Aquitania. The conquest of the Iberians is repeated in that of the Visigoths and of the Arabs, and extends as far as the Loire. The Iberians were the rulers, and the Ligurians the subject people. At a later period, the inhabitants of Languedoc were Gauls, who had evidently advanced again and taken a portion of the conquest from their conquerors, otherwise Caesar would have described the inhabitants of those districts as Iberians. The Gauls, probably, spread southward as well as eastward.

NARBO, on the coast, was a large commercial city, which had long been a great emporium, and from which a commercial road passed right through Gaul to the Loire. Its harbour is now filled up with sand, like nearly all others on that coast; in antiquity, it was very well adapted for merchant ships, though not for ships of war. During the period between the Gracchi and the Cimbrian war, the Romans founded there the town of _Narbo Martius_ (in the provincial dialect _Narbona_), which, on account of its importance, was the provincial capital, without being politically the seat of the government. This was its condition in the time of Caesar and under the empire; but in the middle ages the place decreased in importance, because it is unhealthy.

Besides Narbo, there are very few important places in that beautiful hilly country between the Rhone and the Pyrenees. I may mention, however, _Agatha_, a Massilian colony. _Nemausus_ (Nismes) must have been a great city under the Romans, as we may infer from the ruins still existing. _Beterrae_ (Beziers) can scarcely be believed to have been a Gallic town; many Greek coins, with beautiful Greek inscriptions have been found there; and I suspect that it was a Massilian settlement.

The coast from the Rhone to Italy ought not to be regarded as a part of Gaul, but of Liguria. How far the Ligurians dwelt inland, cannot be ascertained; but the neighbourhood of Avignon was inhabited by Celts mixed with Ligurians, as is manifest from the name of the _Celtoligyans_ who formed the population of that part. It is probable that the Ligurians extended on the one hand towards Italy as far as the Cottian Alps, and on the other, in Gaul as far as the frontier of the Allobroges and the Basses-Alpes. But in these latter parts, the Ligurians must be regarded as the original inhabitants, and the greater part of the coast was afterwards taken from them by the Iberians. Marseilles was not the only Greek city there, but a number of Greek settlements existed all along the coast: Nizza is the ancient _Nicaea_, Antibes is the ancient _Antipolis_, and the name of the _Hierian islands_ shows that they were occupied by Greeks.

MASSALIA or MASSILIA. The origin of this city is frequently assigned to the reign of Cyrus, in consequence of a confusion between the settlement of the Phocaeans on the Ligurian coast, and their emigration after the conquest of their city by Harpagus; but the two events are quite distinct. Massalia was planted for commercial reasons, and was originally a factory, whereas the emigration of the Phocaeans was undertaken by them for the purpose of escaping from the dominion of the barbarians. Massalia did not contain those elements of growth and development which it would have had among a kindred people in Greece or Sicily; but it nevertheless became great at an early period, through its trade and commerce and through the reputation of its eunomia. Its relation of friendship with Rome was assuredly based on historical tradition and was very ancient; the presents sent by the Romans to the temple of Delphi were deposited in the treasury of the Massaliots. According to a statement of Trogus Pompeius in Justin, Massalia had to carry on serious wars with Carthage on account of the coral fisheries; Justin, indeed, speaks only of fisheries, but he probably alludes to the coral fisheries on the coast of Africa, which the Provençals possessed throughout the middle ages and down to the present day. Massalia acknowledged the supremacy of the Romans, who willingly and zealously supported the city against the neighbouring barbarians. In consequence of the fall of Carthage, the commerce of Massalia seems to have been greatly extended, and after the destruction of Carthage, it appears, in fact, to have stepped into its place. We cannot say with certainty how long Greek culture maintained itself at Marseilles, but it certainly preserved it longer than is commonly believed; traces of it occur at a very late period, and copies of the Greek gospels were made there as late as the ninth and tenth centuries. In the third century of our era, it is still called a Greek city; when, however, the Ligurians began to become Romanised, their influence was irresistible, and even Greeks were overpowered by it.

ARELAS or ARELATE was a great place during the decline of the Roman empire and during the middle ages; the modern Arles, just as the modern Ravenna, is only a shadow of what it once was. In later times, Arelate was the capital of Gaul.

AQUAE SEXTIAE (Aix), the first town founded by the Romans in Gaul, was a military colony. It is celebrated for the victory which Marius gained there. There were several other military colonies on the Rhone and in Gallia Narbonensis, such as _Forum Julii_ (Fréjus), _Avineo_ (Avignon), _Arausio_ (Oranges), _Nemausus_ (Nismes), but not Narbo. In the interior, as well as in the west and on the north-eastern frontier, there were but few military colonies; Lyons was not one of them, but there existed several _coloniae civiles_. _Colonia Augusta Rauracorum_ (Basle) was a military colony.

Beyond the Isara, we reach the extensive country of the ALLOBROGES, who were a great and extensive nation even as early as the time of Hannibal, when they occupied nearly the whole of Dauphiné and the greater part of Savoy. They allied themselves with Hannibal, and vigorously opposed the Romans in the wars of Fabius Allobrogicus and Domitius, but were overpowered; they were, however, not subdued until the war which immediately followed that of Sulla; their complete subjugation cannot be assigned to an earlier period than that of Caesar, for at the time of the Catilinarian conspiracy it was, properly speaking, not yet complete.

VIENNA was no doubt a capital even in the time of Hannibal; under the emperors it was a very important town.

LUGDUNUM, at the confluence of the Arar (Saone) and the Rhodanus, was a colony founded by Munatius Plancus in the earliest part of the reign of Augustus. It may have been a Gallic town before, otherwise it would scarcely have received a Gallic name; and this supposition quite agrees with the system of the ancients, to found colonies in places already existing as towns. Ancient Lugdunum was very small in comparison with the modern Lyons; but it afterwards became the residence of the Roman governor of the provincia Lugdunensis.

The country north of Lyons between mount Jura and the Cevennes was inhabited by three tribes. The _Arverni_, the westernmost of them, occupied the very heart and centre of Gaul, so far as height and ramification of the mountains are concerned. That district exhibits traces of an immense volcanic activity at some remote period. On the north-east of the Arverni, we have the _Aedui_ (not _Haedui_), in Bourgogne, and the _Sequani_ in Franche Comté. In the seventh century of Rome, these three nations were the most powerful in Gaul; and the Arverni and Aedui were contending for the supremacy. The Arverni and Allobroges were allied, and Q. Fabius and Cn. Domitius, who carried on war against them, broke the power of both in two campaigns. The Arverni, like all Gallic tribes, are said to have had kings, and names of kings occur on their barbarous coins; according to some accounts which must probably be traced to Posidonius, their power was very great. After the war of Fabius and Domitius, the greatness of the Arverni was completely gone; in the wars of Caesar, they act a very subordinate part, and when the Aedui, their former rivals, were humbled, the Arverni displayed a malicious satisfaction. During the latest period of the Roman empire, however, they again rose to a certain moral importance: when the Visigoths settled in Languedoc and made Toulouse the residence of their kings, when the Burgundians and other tribes advanced from the east, when northern Gaul was isolated from Spain and Italy, and when the war extended from the north-west to the Rhone, the Arverni, who now regarded themselves as Romans, and felt the greatest aversion against the barbarians, distinguished themselves by their manly and heroic resistance to the hostile conquerors. They were indeed ceded to the Goths, but the barbarians did not settle among them, as they had done in other countries by force of arms. The country of the Arverni is called by Gregory of Tours that of the _Romana nobilitas_. Sidonius Apollinaris does the greatest honour to his province.

The _Aedui_ are termed _fratres populi Romani_ as a recognition of their political fraternity and equality, but not on account of any relationship, as Lucan thinks. _Augustodunum_ was their most important town.

The _Sequani_ rose after the fall of the Arverni, just as the Boeotians and Aetolians did in Greece after the decay of the great states. When Caesar arrived in Gaul, his conquest averted from the country the calamity which, four centuries and a half later, actually came upon it, I allude to its conquest by the Germans; for Ariovistus and the Suevi had already settled in the country, as was afterwards done by the Franks: if the first conquest had succeeded, the country would have been called Suabia instead of France. Caesar subdued the Sequani.

_Tolosa_, on the left of the Arverni, was the most important town on the upper Garonne, and was remarkable for the temple and the gold accumulated in it, which the Romans, under Caepio, had taken as booty in the Cimbrian war. When Caesar appeared there, the people were already subject to the Romans.

The real _Aquitanians_, as I have already observed, were Iberians; but Augustus extended Aquitania for political convenience as far as the Loire; historically it did not extend beyond the Garonne.

_Burdigala_ was an ancient emporium. These towns were always favoured by the natural advantages of their situation.

According to Caesar, the _Matrona_ and _Sequana_ formed the frontier between Celtic Gaul and the Belgae. This is generally understood, as if those rivers had always been the permanent line of separation between the two nations, but if this had been the case, we should not be able to understand how the inhabitants of Lower Britany could be of the same race as the Belgae. In order to account for this fact, people have had recourse to an immigration, and it is alleged that, owing to the influx of Angli, Saxons, and Frisians into Britain, a part of the British population quitted their native island and settled in Lower Britany. But this alleged colony of Britons is not supported by any historical evidence; the writers of the fifth century say nothing about it, and what they do say, does not refer to an immigration, but to the fact that a part of Armorica, in the fifth century, made itself independent of Rome. We may assert, on the contrary, that, at an earlier period, the Cymri inhabited a much greater part of Gaul, and that in Lower Britany alone they maintained themselves against the invading Celts, while Normandy and the other countries were conquered by the Gael. The physical nature of Lower Britany also was favourable to its isolation; marshes and forests render it inaccessible, whence the inhabitants also remained free from Roman contagion. In this manner, the Cymrian element was preserved against the influence of the Gauls.

In the fourth and fifth centuries, the northern coast from the Loire to the frontier of the Netherlands, was called _Tractus Aremoricus_ or _Aremorica_ which in Celtic signifies “maritime country.” The commotions of the third century, which continued to increase during the fourth and fifth, repeatedly drove the Romans from that country. French antiquaries imagine that it was a regularly constituted Gallic republic, of which Chlovis had the protectorate, but this is wrong.

The country north of the Matrona and Sequana was inhabited by the BELGAE, who belonged to the race of the Cymri, and were mixed with Germans only accidentally, because conquered Germans lived among them. The _Remi_, with their capital of _Durocortorum_, were the most distinguished tribe among them in the time of Caesar, and they continued to be great for a long time after, although during the Roman wars they had, properly speaking, fallen from their height. The frontier between the Belgae and Germany is involved in much obscurity; in regard to many tribes, such as the Menapii, it is even doubtful as to whether they were Germans or Cymri. The _Treviri_, according to Tacitus, were _ambitiosi circa Germanicam originem_. On the whole, it would seem that eighteen or nineteen hundred years ago the frontier of the Germans was pretty much the same as it is now. Alsace was occupied by Germans, and the Vosges mountains, and the modern Walloon district about Liege probably formed the boundary. It is possible that at a later period Brabant and Flanders were still Cymric, but nothing decisive can be said about this.[73]

The German nations were divided, in the Roman administration into two great parts, _Germania prima_ and _secunda_, which were connected with Gaul only on account of the general government, but were not included by the Romans in the name of Gaul; and at a later time, they were politically separated, because they were under a military government.

Treves was the capital of these parts; in Tacitus it is still called TREVIRI, but afterwards AUGUSTA TREVIRORUM. Ever since the third century, it was probably a considerable city, though not in its circumference, which people generally are inclined to make much too large; it does not appear to have been much greater than that of its present walls, which, however, is not inconsiderable, if the place was well peopled. The amphitheatre was no doubt outside the walls, as in all Roman towns, except Rome itself. The greatness of Treves extends from the middle of the third to the fifth century; the architectural remains, as is evident from their style, belong to that period. It is the period after Maximinus, or somewhat later, after Valerian, when the barbarians advanced on all sides; the Gallic emperors resided at Treves.

COLONIA AGRIPPINA (Cologne) was less important; it was a frontier fortress and a prosperous colony; but by no means of the importance of Treves.

Traces of Roman settlements are particularly numerous in upper Alsace. _Germania prima_ and _secunda_ were not confined to the left bank of the Rhine: in the reign of Trajan, the Romans had extended the frontier to the line marked by the _limes_ running through a part of Nassau, across the Maine, and as far as the Alps. This _sinus imperii_ did not form a separate province, but belonged to Germania on the left bank of the Rhine, being one of those _provinciae Germaniae_, which had their own _praesides_. It was, on the whole, a favourite practice at that time to divide the power among several magistrates.

BRITANNIA.

Britain was known in the most remote times; but its name does not occur until the Macedonian period; it was previously designated by the name of _Cassiterides insulae_. The tin trade can be traced to a very early period; for the first attempts to smelt copper were made by mixing it with tin. The brass of the ancients, the real χαλκός, consisted for the most part of tin, and all the ancient Roman ases consist of copper and tin. Ὀρείχαλκος, from ὀρεύς, a mule, is something different (Messing), and the spuriousness of the mixture is indicated even by its name. A plentiful supply of tin is not found in any part of Europe, except Cornwall, whence it is quite certain that the name Cassiterides refers to Britain. The trade in it was carried on from Gades; but the Massilians had, no doubt, their share in it, as we may infer from the voyages of Pytheas. In the geography of Eratosthenes, the British islands are already mentioned in the plural; but before the time of Caesar, this part of the world was buried in great obscurity.

Britain, like Gaul, was inhabited by the two nations, the Gael and the Cymri; but it is very difficult and problematical to draw the boundary line between the two. The north seems originally to have been occupied by Cymri, though, according to Tacitus, who in this matter also is a weighty authority, apparently with an admixture of Germans or Scandinavians. At present, the inhabitants in the west, from Cumberland down to Cornwall, so far as the ancient population is preserved, are Cymri; but we do not know whether these Cymri retreated to those parts during the conquests of the Angli and Saxons, or whether they had dwelt there even before. In Ireland nearly the whole population is Gaelic; the north, about Ulster, contains only feeble traces of Belgae or Cymri, and if this observation be correct, it is a proof of a conquest having taken place. From Ireland the Gaelic population spread into Scotland, but it is uncertain whether in this latter country they strengthened the Gael who already dwelt there, or whether they expelled tribes of the Cymri. These events belong to a comparatively recent period. The Picts, in the south-west of Scotland, unquestionably belonged to the Cymrian race.

All Britain, like the country on the east of the British Channel, was inhabited by a number of small tribes, each of which had its own peculiar institutions. But they were much more uncivilised than those in Gaul, which had unquestionably been much benefited by their intercourse with Massilia and Rome. The conquest of Britain was attempted by Julius Caesar from a mere love of enterprise, and without any definite object, but he soon gave it up. Under Augustus the Romans were little concerned about Britain, and Tiberius only wanted stillness and stagnation, whence his generals could not attempt any great undertakings: he scarcely allowed them to defend themselves when they were hard pressed. This state of things ceased under Claudius, who undertook an expedition into Britain without Rome having any real interest in it. The conquest was wonderfully successful: a great part of England was subdued, and colonies were established in the country. A part of the inhabitants soon became Romanised, built towns according to the Roman fashion, and obtained the Roman franchise. Under Domitian, Agricola carried his conquests as far as the interior of Scotland. The hostility of the Picts induced Hadrian, and afterwards Severus, to build frontier walls against the northern tribes. Britain soon acquired the appearance of a civilised country, but the Romans did not concern themselves about Ireland. In the third century, Britain also acquired a kind of political importance, but it always remained subordinate to Gaul. Afterwards, during the invasions from the north, the inhabitants shewed great weakness and helplessness and were unable to defend their frontier walls. In no part of Europe has the ancient population been so utterly annihilated as in the eastern parts of England by the conquest of the Saxons.

The towns in Britain are not of any great historical importance; _Camalodunum_ alone ought perhaps to be mentioned. _London_ shows how successful the Romans were in selecting sites for towns. Tacitus, when speaking of the people in the south-west of England, says that they resembled the Spaniards, and he suspects that they were of Spanish origin. It is not impossible that Iberians may have spread as far as those districts, but whether there be any foundation for this opinion or not cannot be decided, for all historical traces are lost. It is possible, however, that there may have been a tradition, that the Gauls, who had conquered the north of Spain, were afterwards expelled from it; in this case we should be obliged to suppose that the Gauls, when driven out of Spain, arrived in Britain by sea. With few exceptions, all the stories of the middle ages relating to ancient times are devoid of historical value. The tradition of Irish chronicles—that their ancestors came from Spain—though it is interwoven with a tissue of fables, may yet not be altogether without some foundation. In the British legends, on the other hand, there occur stories, as if in the time of the Romans the country had been governed by native kings. English antiquaries, attaching too much weight to these stories, have imagined that Britain was a kind of feudal kingdom under the supremacy of Rome, whereas, in truth, it was governed like every other province.

CELTIC NATIONS ON THE EAST OF THE RHINE.

In order to complete the account of the Gallic race, let us turn our attention to the eastern banks of the Rhine. Caesar and Tacitus speak of Gauls dwelling in southern Germany, and expressly state that they spoke Gallic. One of these nations is the _Aravisci_; another the _Boii_, probably in Bohemia, but elsewhere also. These Boians appear as a great people on the Danube as well as in Italy, whereas in Gaul itself there are but few traces of them. No one can deny emigration in this instance, where a nation diverges in two opposite directions, the one dwelling on the north, and the other on the south of the Alps. The Boians were afterwards extirpated, and that probably by the Cymri. The _Norici_ in Carniola and Carinthia, are likewise mentioned as Gauls under Gallic kings; after the period of the Hannibalian war, about the time of the foundation of Aquileia, they were on terms of friendship with the Romans. They occupied the country from the frontiers of Italy as far as the Danube, but were not connected on their Italian frontier with the other Gallic tribes, being separated from them by the Raetians and Vindelicians. In the east, however, they were connected with a succession of Gallic tribes, and probably in the west also, that is, in the north of the Vindelicians and of the Danube. The _Vindelici_ were a Liburnian people, north of the Raetians at the foot of the Brenner, and probably in Bavaria also; but their frontier on the northern slope of the Alps and farther towards the Danube cannot be defined. In the east of the Norici, we find the _Taurisci_, and further on, the _Scordisci_, both terrible nations, which for two centuries (down to the seventh century of Rome) spread terror far and wide among the nations of those parts. The Scordiscans were extirpated by the Romans in an internecine war, or at least so much reduced that afterwards the Getae completely annihilated them: in the first century after Christ, they can scarcely be said to have existed at all. These nations appear in those countries at a time of which Caesar speaks as of a bygone age, that is, about Olymp. 100, soon after the Gauls had taken possession of Gallia Cisalpina. The time at which the tide of migration from the west crossed the Rhine, cannot be determined, but after it had once commenced it continued to flow to far distant countries in the east. Some of the tribes established themselves in the districts they had conquered, while others pressed onward, until they met with some insurmountable obstacle. The Tauriscans and Scordiscans displaced the Triballians, and extirpated the greater part of the Illyrians, while they subdued the rest; for a period of two centuries they then ruled over those countries as far as the frontiers of Macedonia, and at times over Macedonia itself; afterwards, when Rome had destroyed the kingdom of Macedonia, they even invaded Greece. About the end of the fifth century of Rome, they dwelt for a time in Macedonia, until they were expelled by Antigonus Gonatas. In like manner they subdued Thrace, which thus was a Gallic empire until the middle of the sixth century of Rome, when it was completely destroyed. All the foreign tribes which we meet with in Asia Minor, and which for a period of fifty years traversed Western Asia like nomades, belong to the same current of migration which left behind the Tauriscans and Scordiscans, and overran Thrace; they threw themselves into Asia, and settling in Phrygia, there formed what was afterwards called _Galatia_. They were gradually tamed by the kings of Pergamus, by time, and by the Asiatic climate and mode of life. After the war with Antiochus, the Romans took the opportunity to attack them for the purpose of protecting the people of Western Asia and of preventing any germs of development being formed there. Now whether the Gauls whom we afterwards meet with on the north bank of the Danube, were a branch of that great current, which in its onward course became divided, turning on the right into Thrace, and on the left into Wallachia, is a question concerning which we can only form conjectures. It certainly is possible: but it is also possible that another migration may have spread in the north of the Carpathians. But it is an undoubted fact, that, during the sixth century of Rome, at the time of the wars of Philip and Perseus, the great nation of the _Bastarnae_ dwelt on the lower Danube and in Wallachia. From the monuments of Olbia, in the neighbourhood of the modern Odessa, on the Dniepr, it is manifest that at the time when the great inscription was set up, Olbia was inhabited by Gauls; and among them are mentioned the _Sciri_, who afterwards, during the great migration of nations, are spoken of along with the Rugians. Unfortunately the inscription bears no date, though it probably belongs to the end of the sixth or the beginning of the seventh century of Rome: at that time, then, the Gauls extended as far as the Ukraine. The first thirty years of the seventh century must be regarded as the end of that migration; hence the expedition of the Cimbri, that is, Cymri, belongs to that period, for most of those Gallic tribes were, no doubt, Cymri, and the names of their chiefs are Cymric. This supposition also agrees with the account of Posidonius, that the Cimbri (Cymri) came from the Euxine.[74] The Bastarnae remained in the country about the Carpathians until the time of Tacitus, and maintained themselves against the Sarmatian immigration, which first set the Cymri in motion. I have written a separate treatise on the migration of the Sarmatians.[75] In Herodotus we find the Scythians on the Tanais as far as the Banat, all Moldavia and Wallachia was occupied by them, and the Triballians are found in Lower Hungary; but, afterwards, the latter occur in Moldavia, the Getae in Wallachia, and the Celts between these two. The different periods, therefore, must be carefully distinguished.

Johannes Müller was the first to propound the correct view about the Cimbri, maintaining that they were not Germans, but Celts, and that they did not come from the north. The work in which he proves this was his earliest production, and at the same time his most critical one, but he does not understand the nature of the Gallic migration. The Teutones were unquestionably Germans.

AFRICA.

CYRENAICA.

The coast of Libya between the Syrtes and Egypt, both begins and ends with a narrow, inhabitable, and yet barren tract of land; but in the middle, where the country reaches the northernmost parallel, it is beautiful, inhabited, and of considerable breadth. The eastern coast of the Syrtes is a complete sandy desert, still, however, not so much so as to be totally uninhabitable; towards Egypt, the country is stony, dry, and incapable of cultivation. But between Berenice and a little to the east of Cyrene, it is beautiful, richly watered, and fertile. The whole forms a slope; the interior of Africa is considerably elevated, and the desert, too, where it is removed from the coast, is high, while towards the coast the land sinks down; only the tract on which Cyrene is situated, forms another table-land rich in wood and springs of water. From Cyrene downwards to the sea, the country is likewise well watered and capable of cultivation. The elevation of Cyrene is so considerable, that the harvest time differs by a full month from that in the lower country. The coast, however, is not so beautiful nor so well fitted to be inhabited as the higher country.

CYRENE is situated at a distance of about ten English miles from the sea, but the beautiful country extends much farther into the interior; in the neighbourhood of Barca and Berenice, the fertile country is less broad. There are different traditions about the first settlement at Cyrene; according to one, the town was founded by Aristaeus and his mother Cyrene, and according to another by the Antenorids. This we learn from Pindar’s epinician hymns and his scholiasts; and these statements clearly show, that either a Tyrrheno-Pelasgian settlement existed there before the arrival of the Greeks, or at least that there was a belief that the coast had previously been inhabited by Pelasgians. Confusions, like that of Aristaeus with the Trojan Agenorids, also occur among other nations, among whom Tyrrhenian traditions existed. These legends, moreover, show different phases: according to one, the colonists who founded Cyrene came from Thera, whereas, according to Apollonius Rhodius, in his Argonautics, Triton, the Libyan god of the sea, gave to the Argonauts a clod of earth, which, on being thrown by them into the sea, formed the island of Thera. Here, then, we have again the same fluctuation as to mother-city and colony, which we have seen so often. Afterwards Cyrene was Doric, and unquestionably a colony of Thera. It was originally a small settlement, but during the period of the great commotion in Greece, about Olymp. 40, people from all parts of Greece flocked to Cyrene, being invited to defend the colony against the Libyans. Cyrene thus became great, and acquired the circumference which is still indicated by its magnificent ruins. Its kings traced their origin to the heroic ages, and are mentioned in history down to the Persian period, after which they disappear. The isolated situation of Cyrene was extremely fortunate, and few Greek cities have been visited by so few great calamities as Cyrene. When the Persians ruled in Egypt, Cyrene was little more than nominally dependent, for the deserts by which it was separated from Egypt, afforded it the means of putting itself in a favourable relation to Persia. When Egypt was governed by native kings, Cyrene was doubly well off, because it was for the interest of the Egyptians to keep up a good understanding with the Greeks. At the time of the overthrow of the Persian empire, Cyrene placed itself under the protection of Alexander; afterwards it fell into the hands of Magas, a half-brother of Ptolemy Soter, under whom the country became very prosperous, because Greeks and Greek civilisation withdrew to that coast. It then was for a time an Egyptian province, but again emancipated itself; on which occasion it was severely ravaged. Afterwards it became an appanage principality of the family of the Ptolemies, until in the end it came under the dominion of Rome, under whose rule it gradually decayed. In the history of Hadrian, we hear of the subjugation of rebellious Jews in Cyprus and Cyrenaica, which may have been one of the more immediate causes of the decay of Cyrene, so that in the time of Synesius it appears as a deserted, inactive, and insignificant place. Greek civilisation, however, maintained itself there for a long time, as we see from the letters of Synesius, the talented bishop of Cyrene in the fifth century. The city was at last destroyed during the Arab conquest, and has never recovered since that time. At present it is in a condition like that of Palmyra: the wandering Arabs encamp among the ruins of its temples, and the few peasants living in the neighbourhood destroy the monuments still more.

BERENICE is the westernmost place on the same coast. Three towns, Berenice, Arsinoe, and Ptolemais, derived their names from members of the royal family of Egypt. Berenice was a newly-built town, situated on the frontier towards Carthage. At present not a trace of it remains, but the ruins of ARSINOE, or Tauchira, are very numerous. According to the description of Della Celia, a Genoese physician, the walls measure three Italian miles in circumference, and are covered all over with inscriptions. The most ample materials for history might be discovered there. The origin of the town is unknown.

BARCA, founded in the reign of the third Arcesilaus, was an ἀποδασμὸς of the Cyreneans, and for a long time hostile to Cyrene. Afterwards its name was changed into _Ptolemais_, and it is still called _Tolometa_, which arose out of _Ptolemaide_.

_Apollonia_ was the port town of Cyrene.

On the west, Cyrene bordered upon the great republic of

CARTHAGE.

The frontier between these two states was as natural as any can be between two countries. The whole district from the bay of the lesser Syrtis, or the country of Tripoli, is a deep sandy desert, of which only a few parts, the neighbourhood of Tripoli, and the ancient Leptis, are capable of cultivation. But agriculture there being limited to sandy districts, produces nothing but _durra_, the African millet, and palm trees, which succeed in sandy ground, if it is well watered. The desert advances close to the coast, and the inhabitable coast tract is interrupted and unequal. On the east of Leptis, where the desert retreats farther into the interior and around the great Syrtis, the country forms a real sea of sand, which is far more dangerous than the Sahara, where the ground is for the most part firm; on this Syrtis, on the other hand, persons sink deep into the sand at every step.

On the frontier there were boundary marks, called _Arae Philaenorum_. The tradition about them was as follows:—Once the Cyreneans and Carthaginians being involved in a dispute about their frontiers, determined to send out men from the two extreme towns of their countries at the same moment, agreeing that the point of their meeting should be the frontier. This tradition is probably an invention, like so many other things which Sallust relates from Punic authorities. The SYRTES are generally described by the ancients, especially by the earlier Greeks, as one only. The Syrtis, they say, has tides, and is a bay full of sand-banks, which are sometimes sufficiently covered with water and sometimes rise above the water like lagoons. The existence of tides in the Mediterranean has, until recently, been denied, and all the statements of the ancients regarding them have been rejected, as in general ancient geography, about thirty or forty years ago, was treated with extreme recklessness. Tides do exist beyond all doubt, but they occur in a very irregular and unaccountable manner. They are very unequal: at Venice you may see it every day, and during a spring tide, the water rises as much as one foot and a half; it also exists in the Archipelago and in the Euripus near Chalcis, where it comes from the north, which has given rise to the story about the death of Aristotle.[76] It is said, that at Naples the tides are not perceptible, but that at Antium they are, especially when there is a spring tide. The peculiarity of the Syrtes, which the ancients asserted, and which moderns have denied, is that a current runs into the Syrtes and thus throws vessels on the sand-banks. This arises from the meetings of two currents, one of which comes from the Adriatic and the other from the Aegean; the one coming from the Euxine encounters that coming from the Ionian sea, and moves round in a curve, as in general all currents of the sea move in curves. We cannot wonder, therefore, that during a north-west wind, ships, sailing from Sicily to the Archipelago, were thrown into the Syrtes: the danger was, of course, much greater for the ancients than for us. The countries round the Syrtes are the most wretched and melancholy districts of all the inhabited parts of the earth; they are worse than the desert itself, except that water is not wanting for so long a period as in the desert. The caravans dig wells, but the water is bad.

The whole of the western part of the north coast of Africa, of which Carthage is the central point, was once under the dominion of Carthage, from the Syrtes to the straits of Gibraltar, though that dominion was not the same everywhere. The modern Algiers and Morocco contain no traces of Carthaginian colonies; there existed in those parts nothing but Carthaginian forts and factories for commercial purposes; but Tunis and Tripoli, that is, the whole coast from Hippo to Leptis, was covered with Punic towns. Some of them were more ancient than Carthage (which was for this reason called “New Town”); Utica, Hippo, Leptis, and perhaps also Hadrumetum, and others whose names can no longer be ascertained, were, like Gades, direct colonies of Tyre and Sidon in Phoenicia, and had been founded at the time when so many Phoenician settlements were formed on the coasts of Greece, in the islands of the Archipelago, and in Cyprus. It was during that period of the greatness of Phoenicia, which lies beyond our history, that numerous colonies were established on the coast of Africa. We do not know what circumstances directed the attention to those parts, for the Libyans were a great people. The nature of the country is very different in different parts: Tripoli (which is inhabitable from the head of the lesser to the greater Syrtis), is the foreland of the desert, while Tunis is much more fertile. Here the northern chain of mount Atlas terminates; and the western part of Tunis is a mountainous, beautiful, and fertile country. One range of the mountain extends as far as the sea, forming a hilly country, with the beautiful promontory and the bay of Carthage. The territory from this promontory as far as the Syrtes is, according to all descriptions, one of the most fertile countries, though the district in which Carthage was situated was less healthy and of a less agreeable climate. _Byzacene_, or the eastern coast of Tunis, on the other hand, is very healthy, and has no overpowering heat, except in rare cases when the poisonous wind blows from the desert this wind is much more frequent at Carthage and it neighbourhood.

This coast, then, was thickly studded with towns, the more ancient ones were Tyrian, and the more recent ones Carthaginian settlements. The inhabitants of the latter are called _Libyphoenices_, whence, from their very name, we cannot suppose that they were of pure Punic blood: they were Punians who had admitted Africans among them, and their language was a corrupt Punic. The Carthaginians were greatly inclined to mix with, and admit other tribes, which accounts for the fact of their language being so widely spread: all the civilisation adopted by the Africans was Punic. The Carthaginians had a peculiar Libyan alphabet, and when the writing of the Tuariks is once discovered, I hope the Carthaginian inscriptions also will be deciphered. Their literature, however, was Punic. The Romans gave the library of Carthage as a present to the kings of Numidia; that library contained the native historical records of Africa, from which such singular statements were extracted by Sallust in composing his Jugurtha, and the key to which must still be discovered: they did not contain real history, but we can see from them in what light those nations regarded their history.

The language of the original inhabitants of northern Africa was perhaps more widely spread than any other: this is the language of the Berbers, which was once spoken from the Canary islands in the west to the cataracts of the Nile, and in some parts it is spoken even at the present day. It is singular that the nation speaking that language embraced tribes of quite different physical characters, whites as well as blacks (though not negroes); the ancients, in fact, distinguish between Gaetulians and Melanogaetulians, though they regard them as one nation. Harsh rudeness was a generally prevailing characteristic of the nation, but in proportion to the extent of country occupied by it, it was not numerous; at present their descendants occur only in the oases of the desert, while formerly they extended from the Mediterranean to the banks of the Niger; on the coast they have nearly everywhere been displaced by the Arabs, who are still gaining ground, so that now they are found only in some parts of Algiers and Morocco. The Romans called them _Afri_, and the Greeks, Λίβυες; it has been supposed that the latter name is connected with that of Levante or Leguante. The name by which the nation designates itself, viz., Amazirgh, Mazirgh, or Mzirgh, is found, according to an observation of Castiglione, even in Herodotus, who speaks of Μάσυες; this is the correct form occurring in the MSS., instead of which the printed editions erroneously give Μάξυες. The name _Massaesyli_, which was given to the western Libyans between the lesser Syrtis and the Ocean, also is nothing but Mazirgh Shilha, for they also call themselves Shilhas. The eastern tribes are called _Massyli_, which is the same as Μάσυες, for the termination _yli_ seems to be the common Italian one, which we find in _Aequuli_ for _Aequi_. The Carthaginians probably called them by this name. The bilingual inscriptions, which exist in considerable numbers, would throw more light upon the language of those countries, if they were deciphered, and they may possibly contain the key by which the Punic inscriptions also are to be explained.

It is singular that the Romans called those nations _Numidae_, which is not a proper name, but a common noun. The Greek form was νομάδες, and from this the Romans made _Numidae_, a circumstance which shows to what extent Greek words were in common use among the Romans. Afterwards _Numida_ and _Numidia_ became names of the nation and the country, so that, no doubt, Masinissa called himself king of Numidia. These tribes extended from the boundary of the Carthaginian territory to the river Molochath (Mulucha), which still may be regarded as the frontier of Algiers. We must not, however, suppose that the country beyond that river was occupied by a different race, for it was only another tribe of the same stock. These latter were called _Mauri_ (Μαυροὶ, Blacks, in the Alexandrian dialect), a name which became as firmly established for the western tribes as Numidae was for the eastern ones. The country in the south, between Mount Atlas and the Sahara, as far as the Niger, was inhabited by the _Gaetuli_ and _Melanogaetuli_, the modern Tuariks. The Melanogaetuli were unquestionably of the same race as the Gaetuli, but had no doubt arisen from a mixture with the Aethiopians, who dwelt there. They were accordingly a dark mixed race like that at present in Darfoor. We do not know by what name they called themselves.