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He triumphed nominally over the Gauls, the Egyptians, the Asiatics of Pontus, over the Africans, and the Spaniards; but his triumph was, in truth, over the Republic. There appears from Suetonius to have been five separate triumphal processions, each at the interval of a few days. Amid the glory of the first Vercingetorix was strangled.
To others the Druids are pre-eminently the philosophers and teachers of the Gauls, and are distinguished from the seers designated vates. To others again, such as Pliny, they were the priests of the oak-ritual, whence their name was derived.
The virgin of the Isle of Sen sang in a voice as pure as her own soul: "The daughter of Joel and Margarid comes to offer gladly her life as a sacrifice to Hesus! "Oh, All-Powerful! From the stranger deliver the soil of our father! "Gauls of Britanny, you have the lance and the sword! "The daughter of Joel and Margarid has but her blood. She offers it voluntarily to Hesus! "Oh, Almighty God!
The first thing that shook the courage of the Gauls was, that their enemies had, contrary to their expectation, the honor of being aggressors. In the next place, the light-armed men, falling upon them before they could get into their usual order or range themselves in their proper squadrons, so disturbed and pressed upon them, that they were obliged to fight at random, without any order at all.
An unbridled passion for wine and strong liquors was general amongst them: the traders of Italy, and especially of Marseilles, brought supplies into every part of Gaul; from interval to interval there were magazines established, whither the Gauls flocked to sell for a flask of wine their furs, their grain, their cattle, their slaves.
The Bards stood in connection with the Druidical order. In worship, human sacrifices were offered in large numbers, the victims being prisoners, slaves, criminals, etc. There were temples, but thick groves were the favorite seats of worship. Caesar says that the Gauls were strongly addicted to religious observances.
It was at the foot of the cliff, in holes in the rocks, that, lacking wood to build themselves huts, had dwelt long ago the aboriginal inhabitants, who had slings for arms, dried cow-dung for firing, for a god the idol Heil standing in a glade at Dorchester, and for trade the fishing of that false gray coral which the Gauls called plin, and the Greeks isidis plocamos.
It was known, too, that in a protracted contest the spirits of the Samnites gradually flagged, and even the bodies of the Gauls, remarkably ill able to bear labour and heat, became quite relaxed, and although, in their first efforts, they were more than men, yet in their last they were less than women.
In this condition they left the city, and encamped by the river Allia, about ten miles from Rome, and not far from the place where it falls into the Tiber; and here the Gauls came upon them, and, after a disgraceful resistance, devoid of order and discipline, they were miserably defeated.
Such expeditions into unknown land distant regions were not unusual for the Gauls, who marched as bands of armed emigrants, troubling themselves little as to the means of cover or of retreat; but it was evident that none in Rome anticipated the dangers involved in so sudden and so mighty an invasion.
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