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Updated: June 10, 2025
They were troublesome neighbours, accustomed to pillage by land and by sea: the Pisans and Massiliots suffered no little injury from their incursions and their piracies.
The Massiliots declared that they would give up the defence, but desired to conclude the capitulation with Caesar himself, and entreated the Roman commander to suspend the siege operations till Caesar's arrival. Trebonius had express orders from Caesar to spare the town as far as possible; he granted the armistice desired.
An expedition into the Alps above Nice and Antibes, directed against the Ligurian Oxybii and Decietae, was undertaken by the Romans in 600 partly at the request of the Massiliots, partly in their own interest; and after hot conflicts, some of which were attended with much loss, this district of the mountains was compelled to furnish thenceforth standing hostages to the Massiliots and to pay them a yearly tribute.
Ebusus and the Baleares, again, were occupied by the Carthaginians themselves at an early period, partly for the fisheries, partly as advanced posts against the Massiliots, with whom furious conflicts were waged from these stations. Sardinia
The fate of the town, which had ventured to thwart the plans of the master of the world and had brought him within a hair's-breadth of destruction, lay in Cæsar's hands; but he was too much of a ruler to be sensitive, and dealt with the Alexandrians as with the Massiliots.
They had met with similar blows already; they had been obliged to share with the Massiliots, the Etruscans, and the Sicilian Greeks what they had previously possessed alone; even now the possessions which they retained, Africa, Spain, and the gates of the Atlantic Ocean, were sufficient to confer power and prosperity.
The brave Massiliots maintained their ground in their own waters; but they exercised no material influence over the course of events in those of Italy. The other maritime cities hardly came as yet into serious account. Decline of the Roman Naval Power Rome itself was not exempt from a similar fate; its own waters were likewise commanded by foreign fleets.
With rare energy the Massiliots had not merely sustained a siege, but had also kept the sea against Caesar; it was their native element, and they might hope to obtain vigorous support on it from Pompeius, who in fact had the exclusive command of it.
But Caesar's lieutenant, the able Decimus Brutus, the same who had achieved the first naval victory in the Atlantic over the Veneti, managed rapidly to equip a fleet; and in spite of the brave resistance of the enemy's crews consisting partly of Albioecian mercenaries of the Massiliots, partly of slave-herdsmen of Domitius he vanquished by means of his brave marines selected from the legions the stronger Massiliot fleet, and sank or captured the greater part of their ships.
It is not improbable that about this same period the cultivation of the vine and olive, which flourished in this quarter after the model set by the Massiliots, was in the interest of the Italian landholders and merchants simultaneously prohibited throughout the territory beyond the Alps dependent on Massilia.
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