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"Hang round that burg Fair hangings and shields, Web by Gauls woven, And folk of the Gauls: There burn the Hun King Lying beside me. "But on the other side Burn by the Hun King Those who served me Strewn with treasure; Two at the head, And two at the feet, Two hounds therewith, And two hawks moreover: Then is all dealt With even dealing.
It was decreed that Marcus Livius, proconsul, who was continued in command for the year, should take the two legions of volunteer slaves from Caius Terentius the propraetor, and that Quintus Mamilius, transferring his judicial business to his colleague, should occupy Gaul with the army which Lucius Porcius, the praetor, had commanded, with orders to lay waste the lands of those Gauls who had revolted to the Carthaginians on the approach of Hasdrubal.
But they reckoned wrongly: the Gauls came down the left bank of the river, plundering and burning as they marched. This threw the Romans into the greatest alarm. For many miles above Rome the Tiber could not be forded, there were no bridges, and boats could not be had to convey so large an army.
The simple and ferocious German wore no decoration save his iron ring, from which his first homicide relieved him. The Gaul was irascible, furious in his wrath, but less formidable in a sustained conflict with a powerful foe. "All the Gauls are of very high stature," says a soldier who fought under Julian.
The Gauls zealously supported An'nibal when he invaded Italy, and were severely punished when the Romans finally became victorious.
We have no possible means of reconstructing the ancient world as it was lived in by the ancestors of some of the leading races in Europe, the Gauls, Spaniards, Britons, and the people of all those countries which trace themselves back to a Celtic ancestry, because these races have left no literature or records behind them, and the Greeks and Romans, who tell us about them, saw everything through the false medium of their own prejudices.
What philologist, for instance, could ever discover, if he had no history to help him, but must rely wholly on the examination of modern French, that the bulk of the population of France is connected by way of blood with ancient Gauls who spoke Celtic, until the Roman conquest caused them to adopt a vulgar form of Latin in its place.
After the first surprise, he was always beaten by the Greeks and Romans. The Greek, a warrior, but also a politician, had tactics far superior to those of the Gauls and the Asiatics. The Roman, a politician above all, with whom war was only a means, wanted perfect means. He had no illusions. He took into account human weakness and he discovered the legion.
The life of Camillus, the death of Regulus; the expectation of the senators, in their godlike state, of the victorious Gauls; the refusal of the republic to make peace with Hannibal after the battle of Cannae, were not the consequences of a refined calculation of the probable personal advantage to result from such a rhythm and order in the shows of life, to those who were at once the poets and the actors of these immortal dramas.
But whatever may be the case with the figures, it is certain that at the very first moment the national impulse answered the appeal of Vercingetorix, and that the besiegers of Alesia, Caesar and his legions, found that they were themselves all at once besieged in their intrenchments by a cloud of Gauls hurrying up to the defence of their compatriots. The struggle was fierce, but short.
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